THROUGH storm and darkness a young Oxford scholar came to the New Place
of Ellangowan. He had been again and again refused shelter along the
road for himself and his tired horse, but at last he found himself
welcomed by Godfrey Bertram, the Laird of Ellangowan, attended by
Dominie Sampson, his faithful companion, the village schoolmaster, on
the threshold of the great house.
That very night an heir was born to the line of the Bertrams of
Ellangowan, one of the most ancient in Galloway, and as usual the New
Place was full of company come from far and near to make merry over the
event. Godfrey himself, a soft, good-natured, pliable man, welcomed
Mannering (for that was the name of the young Oxford student), and set
him forthwith to calculating the horoscope of the babe from the stars.
This, Mannering, to whom astrology seemed no better than child's play,
was at first unwilling to do, until the awkward opposition of Dominie
Sampson, as well as some curiosity to see if he could remember the terms
of the sham-science learned in youth, caused him to consent to make the
calculation.
He was still further pushed on by the appearance of a wild gipsy woman,
a sort of queen among the ragged wandering tribe which camped in a
little hamlet on the Laird's estates. She entered the house singing
shrilly a kind of ancient spell:
"Trefoil, vervain, John's wort, dill,
Hinder witches of their will!
Weel is them, that weel may
Fast upon Saint Andrew's day.
Saint Bride and her brat,
Saint Colme and his cat,
Saint Michael and his spear
Keep the house frae reif and weir."
So sang Meg Merrilies, the gipsy, a great cudgel in her hand, and her
dress and bearing more like those of a man than of a woman. Elf-locks
shot up through the holes in her bonnet, and her black eyes rolled with
a kind of madness. Soon, however, Godfrey, who evidently only half
disbelieved in her powers as a witch, dismissed her to the kitchen with
fair words, while Guy Mannering, whom his strange adventure had rendered
sleepless, walked forth into the night. The vast ruins of the ancient
castle of the Bertrams rose high and silent on the cliffs above him, but
beneath, in the little sandy cove, lights were still moving briskly,
though it was the dead hour of the night. A smuggler brig was disloading
a cargo of brandy, rum, and silks, most likely, brought from the Isle of
Man.
At sight of his figure moving on the cliffs above, a voice on the shore
sang out, "Ware hawk! Douse the glim!" And in a moment all was darkness
beneath him.
When Mannering returned to his chamber in the dim light of the morning,
he proceeded to carry out his calculations according to the strictest
rules of astrology, marking carefully the hour of the birth of the babe.
He found that young Harry Bertram, for so it had been decided to name
the child, was threatened with danger in his _fifth_, his _tenth_, and
his _twenty-first_ years.
More dissatisfied than he cared to own with these results, Mannering
walked out again to view the ruins of the old castle of Ellangowan in
the morning light. They were, he now saw, of vast extent and much
battered on the side toward the sea--so much so, indeed, that he could
observe through a gap in the mason-work, the smuggling brig getting
ready to be off with the tide. Guy Mannering penetrated into the
courtyard, and was standing there quietly, thinking of the past
greatness of the house of Bertram, when suddenly, from a chamber to the
left, he heard the voice of the gipsy, Meg Merrilies. A few steps took
him to a recess from which, unseen himself, he could observe what she
was doing. She continued to twirl her distaff, seemingly unconscious of
his presence, and also, after her own fashion, to "spae" the fortune of
young Harry Bertram, just as Mannering had so lately been doing himself.
Curiosity as to whether their results would agree kept him quiet while
she wove her spell. At last she gave her verdict: "A long life, three
score and ten years, but thrice broken by trouble or danger. The threads
thrice broke, three times united. He'll be a lucky lad if he wins
through wi' it!"
Mannering had hardly time to be astonished at the manner in which the
gipsy's prophecy confirmed his own half-playful calculations, before a
voice, loud and hoarse as the waves that roared beneath the castle,
called to the witch-wife, "Meg, Meg Merrilies--gipsy--hag--tousand
deyvils!"
"Coming, Captain--I am coming!" answered Meg, as calmly as if some one
had been calling her pet names. Through the broken portion of the wall
to seaward a man made his appearance. He was hard of feature,
savage-looking, and there was a cruel glint in his eyes which told of a
heart without pity.
The man's body, powerful and thick-set as an oak, his immense strength,
his savage temper made him shunned and disliked. There were few indeed
who would have ventured to cross the path of Dirk Hatteraick, whose best
name was "black smuggler," and whose worst a word it was safest to speak
in a whisper, lest a bird of the air should carry the matter.
On the present occasion Dirk had come to the gipsy queen to demand of
her a charm for a fair wind and a prosperous voyage. For the less
religion such a man has, the more superstitious he is apt to be.
"Where are you, Mother Deyvilson?" he cried again. "Donner and blitzen,
here we have been staying for you full half an hour! Come, bless the
good ship and the voyage--and be cursed to ye for a hag of Satan!"
At that moment, catching sight of Mannering, the smuggler stopped with a
strange start. He thrust his hand into his pocket as if to draw out a
hidden weapon, exclaiming: "What cheer, brother? You seem on the
outlook, eh?"
But with a glance at the intruder Meg Merrilies checked him. In a moment
Hatteraick had altered his tone, and was speaking to Mannering civilly,
yet still with an undercurrent of sullen suspicion which he tried to
disguise under a mask of familiarity.
"You are, I suppose," said Mannering, calmly, "the master of that vessel
in the bay?"
"Ay, ay, sir," answered the sailor, "I am Captain Dirk Hatteraick of the
_Yungfrauw Hagenslaapen_, and I am not ashamed of my name or of my
vessel, either. Right cognac I carry--rum, lace, real Mechlin, and
Souchong tea--if you will come aboard, I will send you ashore with a
pouchful of that last--Dirk Hatteraick knows how to be civil!"
Mannering got rid of his offers without openly offending the man, and
was well content to see the precious pair vanish down the stone stairs
which had formerly served the garrison of the castle in time of siege.
On his return to the house of Ellangowan, Mannering related his
adventure, and asked of his host who this villanous-looking Dutchman
might be, and why he was allowed to wander at will on his lands.
This was pulling the trigger, and Mr. Bertram at once exploded into a
long catalogue of griefs. According to him, the man was undoubtedly one
Captain Dirk Hatteraick, a smuggler or free-trader. As for allowing him
on his lands--well, Dirk was not very canny to meddle with. Besides,
impossible as it was to believe, he, Godfrey Bertram of Ellangowan, was
not upon his Majesty's commission of the peace for the county. Jealousy
had kept him off--among other things the ill-will of the sitting member.
Besides which--after all a gentleman must have his cognac, and his lady
her tea and silks. Only smuggled articles came into the country. It was
a pity, of course, but he was not more to blame than others.
Thus the Laird maundered on, and Mannering, glad to escape being asked
about the doubtful fortune which the stars had predicted for the young
heir, did not interrupt him. On the next day, however, before he mounted
his horse, he put the written horoscope into a sealed envelope, and,
having strictly charged Bertram that it should not be opened till his
son reached the age of five years, he took his departure with many
expressions of regret.
The next five years were outwardly prosperous ones for Godfrey Bertram
of Ellangowan. As the result of an election where he had been of much
service to the winning candidate, he was again made a Justice of the
Peace, and immediately he set about proving to his brothers of the bench
that he could be both a determined and an active magistrate. But this
apparent good, brought as usual much of evil with it. Many old kindly
customs and courtesies had endeared Godfrey Bertram to his poorer
neighbours. He was, they said, no man's enemy, and even the gipsies of
the little settlement would have cut off their right hands before they
touched a pennyworth belonging to the Laird, their patron and protector.
But the other landlords twitted him with pretending to be an active
magistrate, and yet harbouring a gang of gipsies at his own door-cheek.
Whereupon the Laird went slowly and somewhat sadly home, revolving
schemes for getting rid of the colony of Derncleugh, at the head of
which was the old witch-wife Meg Merrilies.
Occasions of quarrel were easy to find. The sloe-eyed gipsy children
swinging on his gates were whipped down. The rough-coated donkeys
forbidden to eat their bite of grass in peace by the roadside. The men
were imprisoned for poaching, and matters went so far that one stout
young fellow was handed over to the press-gang at Dumfries and sent to
foreign parts to serve on board a man-of-war.
The gipsies, on their side, robbed the Ellangowan hen-roosts, stole the
linen from my lady's bleaching-green, cut down and barked the young
trees--though all the while scarce believing that their ancient friend
the Laird of Ellangowan had really turned against them.
During these five years the son, so strangely brought into the world on
the night of Mannering's visit, had been growing into the boldest and
brightest of boys. A wanderer by nature from his youth, he went
fearlessly into each nook and corner of his father's estates in search
of berries and flowers. He hunted every bog for rushes to weave
grenadiers' caps, and haled the hazelnuts from the lithe coppice boughs.
To Dominie Sampson, long since released from his village school, the
difficult task was committed of accompanying, restraining, and guiding
this daring spirit and active body. Shy, uncouth, awkward, with the
memory of his failure in the pulpit always upon him, the Dominie was
indeed quite able to instruct his pupil in the beginnings of learning,
but it proved quite out of his power to control the pair of twinkling
legs belonging to Master Harry Bertram. Once was the Dominie chased by a
cross-grained cow. Once he fell into the brook at the stepping-stones,
and once he was bogged in his middle in trying to gather water-lilies
for the young Laird. The village matrons who relieved Dominie Sampson
on this last occasion, declared that the Laird might just as well "trust
the bairn to the care o' a tatie-bogle!"[2] But the good tutor, nothing
daunted, continued grave and calm through all, only exclaiming, after
each fresh misfortune, the single word "Prodeegious!"
Often, too, Harry Bertram sought out Meg Merrilies at Derncleugh, where
he played his pranks among the gipsies as fearlessly as within the walls
of Ellangowan itself. Meanwhile the war between that active magistrate
Godfrey Bertram and the gipsies grew ever sharper. The Laird was
resolved to root them out, in order to stand well with his brother
magistrates. So the gipsies sullenly watched while the ground officer
chalked their doors in token that they must "flit" at the next term.
At last the fatal day arrived. A strong force of officers summoned the
gipsies to quit their houses, and when they did not obey, the sheriff's
men broke down the doors and pulled the roofs off the poor huts of
Derncleugh.
Godfrey Bertram, who was really a kindly man, had gone away for the day
to avoid the sight, leaving the business to the chief exciseman of the
neighbourhood,--one Frank Kennedy, a bold, roistering blade, who knew no
fear, and had no qualms whatever about ridding the neighbourhood of a
gang of "sorners and thieves," as he called the Derncleugh gipsies.
But as Godfrey was riding back to Ellangowan with a single servant,
right in the middle of the King's highway, he met the whole congregation
of the exiles, evicted from their ruined houses, and sullenly taking
their way in search of a new shelter against the storms of the oncoming
winter. His servant rode forward to command every man to stand to his
beast's head while the Laird was passing.
"He shall have his half of the road," growled one of the tall thin
gipsies, his features half-buried in a slouch hat, "but he shall have no
more. The highway is as free to our cuddies as to his horse."
Never before had the Laird of Ellangowan received such a discourteous
reception. Anxious at the last to leave a good impression, he stammered
out as he passed one of the older men, "And your son, Gabriel Baillie,
is he well?" (He meant the young man who had been sent by means of the
press-gang to foreign parts.) With a deep scowl the old man replied, "If
I had heard otherwise, _you_ would have heard it too!"
At last Godfrey Bertram thought that he had escaped. He had passed the
last laden donkey of the expelled tribe. He was urging his beast toward
Ellangowan with a saddened spirit, when suddenly at a place where the
road was sunk between two high banks, Meg Merrilies appeared above him,
a freshly cut sapling in her hand, her dark eyes flashing anger, and her
elf-locks straying in wilder confusion than ever.
"Ride your ways, Laird of Ellangowan," she cried, "ride your ways,
Godfrey Bertram! This day ye have quenched seven smoking hearths--see if
the fire in your own parlour burns the brighter for that? Ye have riven
the thatch off seven cottars' houses--look if your roof-tree stands the
faster. There are thirty yonder that would have shed their lifeblood for
you--thirty, from the child of a week to the auld wife of a hundred,
that you have made homeless, that you have sent out to sleep with the
fox and the blackcock. Our bairns are hanging on our weary backs--look
to it that your braw cradle at hame is the fairer spread! Now ride your
ways, Godfrey Bertram. These are the last words ye shall ever hear from
Meg Merrilies, and this the last staff that I shall ever cut in the
bonny woods of Ellangowan!"
[Illustration: "MEG MERRILIES appeared above him, a freshly cut sapling
in her hand, her dark eyes flashing anger, and her elf-locks straying
in wilder confusion than ever.
"'Ride your ways, Laird of Ellangowan,' she cried, 'ride your ways,
Godfrey Bertram! This day ye have quenched seven smoking hearths--see if
the fire in your own parlour burns the brighter for that!'"]
And with the gesture of a queen delivering sentence she broke the
sapling she had held in her hand, and flung the fragments into the road.
The Laird was groping in his pocket for half a crown, and thinking
meanwhile what answer to make. But disdaining both his reply and his
peace-offering, Meg strode defiantly downhill after the caravan.
* * * * *
Not only was there war by land at Ellangowan. There was also war by sea.
The Laird, determined for once not to do things by halves, had begun to
support Frank Kennedy, the chief revenue officer, in his campaign
against the smugglers. Armed with Ellangowan's warrant, and guided by
his people who knew the country, Kennedy swooped down upon Dirk
Hatteraick as he was in the act of landing a large cargo upon
Ellangowan's ground. After a severe combat he had been able to clap the
government broad-arrow upon every package and carry them all off to the
nearest customs' post. Dirk Hatteraick got safely away, but he went,
vowing in English, Dutch, and German, the direst vengeance against Frank
Kennedy, Godfrey Bertram, and all his enemies.
It was a day or two after the eviction of the gipsies when the Lady of
Ellangowan, suddenly remembering that it was her son Harry's fifth
birthday, demanded of her husband that he should open and read the
horoscope written by the wandering student of the stars five years
before. While they were arguing about the matter, it was suddenly
discovered that little Harry was nowhere to be found. His guardian,
Dominie Sampson, having returned without him, was summoned to give an
account of his stewardship by the angry mother.
"Mr. Sampson," she cried, "it is the most extraordinary thing in the
world wide, that you have free up-putting in this house,--bed, board,
washing, and twelve pounds sterling a year just to look after that
boy,--and here you have let him out of your sight for three hours at a
time!"
Bowing with awkward gratitude at each clause in this statement of his
advantages, the poor Dominie was at last able to stammer out that Frank
Kennedy had taken charge of Master Harry, in the face of his protest,
and had carried him off to Warroch Head to see the taking of Dirk
Hatteraick's ship by the King's sloop-of-war, which he had ridden all
the way to Wigton Bay to bring about.
"And if that be so," cried the Lady of Ellangowan, "I am very little
obliged to Frank Kennedy. The bairn may fall from his horse, or anything
may happen."
The Laird quieted his wife by telling her that he and Frank Kennedy had
together seen the sloop-of-war giving chase to Dirk Hatteraick's ship,
and that even then the Dutchman, disabled and on fire, was fast drifting
upon the rocks. Frank Kennedy had ridden off to assist in the capture by
signalling to the man-of-war from Warroch Head, and had evidently picked
up little Harry upon the way. He would doubtless, continued the Laird,
be back in a little time. For he had ordered the punch-bowl to be made
ready, that they might drink good luck to the King's service and
confusion to all smugglers and free-traders wherever found.
But hour after hour went by, and neither Frank Kennedy nor the boy Harry
returned. The night approached. Parties of searchers anxiously beat the
woods and patrolled the cliffs. For long they found nothing, but at last
a boat's crew, landing perilously at the foot of the precipices, came
upon the body of the excise officer, a sword-cut in his head, lying
half in and half out of the water. He had been flung from the cliffs
above. Frank Kennedy was dead--as to that there was no question. But
what had become of the child, Harry Bertram? That--no one could answer.
Not a trace of him was to be found. The smuggler's ship still burned
fiercely, but Dirk Hatteraick and his men had completely vanished. Some
one suggested the gipsies, whereupon the Laird mounted the first horse
he came across and rode furiously to the huts of Derncleugh. Bursting in
a door, he found on the ruined hearth of the house that had once
sheltered Meg Merrilies, a fire still smouldering. But there, too,
Godfrey Bertram discovered nothing and no one.
While he remained on the spot, dazed and uncertain, looking at the
blackened hearthstone, his old servant entered hastily to bid him return
at once to Ellangowan. His wife had been taken dangerously ill. Godfrey
spurred as fast as horse would carry him, but Death had gone faster, and
had arrived before him. When he reached the gate, the Lady of Ellangowan
was dead, leaving him with a little baby girl less than an hour old. The
shock of Kennedy's murder and her own little Harry's loss had killed
her.