Die and endow a college or a cat.
POPE.
There is a fable told by Lucian, that while a troop of monkeys, well
drilled by an intelligent manager, were performing a tragedy with great
applause, the decorum of the whole scene was at once destroyed, and the
natural passions of the actors called forth into very indecent and active
emulation, by a wag who threw a handful of nuts upon the stage. In like
manner, the approaching crisis stirred up among the expectants feelings
of a nature very different from those of which, under the superintendence
of Mr. Mortcloke, they had but now been endeavouring to imitate the
expression. Those eyes which were lately devoutly cast up to heaven, or
with greater humility bent solemnly upon earth, were now sharply and
alertly darting their glances through shuttles, and trunks, and drawers,
and cabinets, and all the odd corners of an old maiden lady’s
repositories. Nor was their search without interest, though they did not
find the will of which they were in quest.
Here was a promissory note for 20 Pounds by the minister of the nonjuring
chapel, interest marked as paid to Martinmas last, carefully folded up in
a new set of words to the old tune of ‘Over the Water to Charlie’; there
was a curious love correspondence between the deceased and a certain
Lieutenant O’Kean of a marching regiment of foot; and tied up with the
letters was a document which at once explained to the relatives why a
connexion that boded them little good had been suddenly broken off, being
the Lieutenant’s bond for two hundred pounds, upon which NO interest
whatever appeared to have been paid. Other bills and bonds to a larger
amount, and signed by better names (I mean commercially) than those of
the worthy divine and gallant soldier, also occurred in the course of
their researches, besides a hoard of coins of every size and
denomination, and scraps of broken gold and silver, old earrings, hinges
of cracked, snuff-boxes, mountings of spectacles, etc. etc. etc. Still no
will made its appearance, and Colonel Mannering began full well to hope
that the settlement which he had obtained from Glossin contained the
ultimate arrangement of the old lady’s affairs. But his friend Pleydell,
who now came into the room, cautioned him against entertaining this
belief.
‘I am well acquainted with the gentleman,’ he said, ‘who is conducting
the search, and I guess from his manner that he knows something more of
the matter than any of us.’
Meantime, while the search proceeds, let us take a brief glance at one or
two of the company who seem most interested.
Of Dinmont, who, with his large hunting-whip under his arm, stood poking
his great round face over the shoulder of the homme d’affaires, it is
unnecessary to say anything. That thin-looking oldish person, in a most
correct and gentleman-like suit of mourning, is Mac-Casquil, formerly of
Drumquag, who was ruined by having a legacy bequeathed to him of two
shares in the Ayr bank. His hopes on the present occasion are founded on
a very distant relationship, upon his sitting in the same pew with the
deceased every Sunday, and upon his playing at cribbage with her
regularly on the Saturday evenings, taking great care never to come off a
winner. That other coarse-looking man, wearing his own greasy hair tied
in a leathern cue more greasy still, is a tobacconist, a relation of Mrs.
Bertram’s mother, who, having a good stock in trade when the colonial war
broke out, trebled the price of his commodity to all the world, Mrs.
Bertram alone excepted, whose tortoise-shell snuff-box was weekly filled
with the best rappee at the old prices, because the maid brought it to
the shop with Mrs. Bertram’s respects to her cousin Mr. Quid. That young
fellow, who has not had the decency to put off his boots and buckskins,
might have stood as forward as most of them in the graces of the old
lady, who loved to look upon a comely young man; but it is thought he has
forfeited the moment of fortune by sometimes neglecting her tea-table
when solemnly invited, sometimes appearing there when he had been dining
with blyther company, twice treading upon her cat’s tail, and once
affronting her parrot.
To Mannering the most interesting of the group was the poor girl who had
been a sort of humble companion of the deceased, as a subject upon whom
she could at all times expectorate her bad humour. She was for form’s
sake dragged into the room by the deceased’s favourite female attendant,
where, shrinking into a>corner as soon as possible, she saw with wonder
and affright the intrusive researches of the strangers amongst those
recesses to which from childhood she had looked with awful veneration.
This girl was regarded with an unfavourable eye by all the competitors,
honest Dinmont only excepted; the rest conceived they should find in her
a formidable competitor, whose claims might at least encumber and
diminish their chance of succession. Yet she was the only person present
who seemed really to feel sorrow for the deceased. Mrs. Bertram had been
her protectress, although from selfish motives, and her capricious
tyranny was forgotten at the moment, while the tears followed each other
fast down the cheeks of her frightened and friendless dependent. ‘There’s
ower muckle saut water there, Drumquag,’ said the tobacconist to the
ex-proprietor, ‘to bode ither folk muckle gude. Folk seldom greet that
gate but they ken what it’s for.’ Mr. Mac-Casquil only replied with a
nod, feeling the propriety of asserting his superior gentry in presence
of Mr. Pleydell and Colonel Mannering.
‘Very queer if there suld be nae will after a’, friend,’ said Dinmont,
who began to grow impatient, to the man of business.
‘A moment’s patience, if you please. She was a good and prudent woman,
Mrs. Margaret Bertram--a good and prudent and well-judging woman, and
knew how to choose friends and depositaries; she may have put her last
will and testament, or rather her mortis causa settlement, as it relates
to heritage, into the hands of some safe friend.’
‘I’ll bet a rump and dozen,’ said Pleydell, whispering to the Colonel,
‘he has got it in his own pocket.’ Then addressing the man of law, ‘Come,
sir, we’ll cut this short, if you please: here is a settlement of the
estate of Singleside, executed several years ago, in favour of Miss Lucy
Bertram of Ellangowan.’ The company stared fearfully wild. ‘You, I
presume, Mr. Protocol, can inform us if there is a later deed?’
‘Please to favour me, Mr. Pleydell’; and so saying, he took the deed out
of the learned counsel’s hand, and glanced his eye over the contents.
‘Too cool,’ said Pleydell, ‘too cool by half; he has another deed in his
pocket still.’
‘Why does he not show it then, and be d-d to him!’ said the military
gentleman, whose patience began to wax threadbare.
‘Why, how should I know?’ answered the barrister; ‘why does a cat not
kill a mouse when she takes him? The consciousness of power and the love
of teasing, I suppose. Well, Mr. Protocol, what say you to that deed?’
‘Why, Mr. Pleydell, the deed is a well-drawn deed, properly authenticated
and tested in forms of the statute.’
‘But recalled or superseded by another of posterior date in your
possession, eh?’ said the Counsellor.
‘Something of the sort, I confess, Mr. Pleydell,’ rejoined the man of
business, producing a bundle tied with tape, and sealed at each fold and
ligation with black wax. ‘That deed, Mr. Pleydell, which you produce and
found upon, is dated 1st June 17--; but this (breaking the seals and
unfolding the document slowly) is dated the 20th--no, I see it is the
21st--of April of this present year, being ten years posterior.’
‘Marry, hang her, brock!’ said the Counsellor, borrowing an exclamation
from Sir Toby Belch; ‘just the month in which Ellangowan’s distresses
became generally public. But let us hear what she has done.’
Mr. Protocol accordingly, having required silence, began to read the
settlement aloud in a slow, steady, business-like tone. The group around,
in whose eyes hope alternately awakened and faded, and who were straining
their apprehensions to get at the drift of the testator’s meaning through
the mist of technical language in which the conveyance had involved it,
might have made a study for Hogarth.
The deed was of an unexpected nature. It set forth with conveying and
disponing all and whole the estate and lands of Singleside and others,
with the lands of Loverless, Liealone, Spinster’s Knowe, and heaven knows
what beside, ‘to and in favours of (here the reader softened his voice to
a gentle and modest piano) Peter Protocol, clerk to the signet, having
the fullest confidence in his capacity and integrity--these are the very
words which my worthy deceased friend insisted upon my inserting--but in
TRUST always (here the reader recovered his voice and style, and the
visages of several of the hearers, which had attained a longitude that
Mr. Mortcloke might have envied, were perceptibly shortened)--in TRUST
always, and for the uses, ends, and purposes hereinafter mentioned.’
In these ‘uses, ends, and purposes’ lay the cream of the affair. The
first was introduced by a preamble setting forth that the testatrix was
lineally descended from the ancient house of Ellangowan, her respected
great-grandfather, Andrew Bertram, first of Singleside, of happy memory,
having been second son to Allan Bertram, fifteenth Baron of Ellangowan.
It proceeded to state that Henry Bertram, son and heir of Godfrey
Bertram, now of Ellangowan, had been stolen from his parents in infancy,
but that she, the testatrix, WAS WELL ASSURED THAT HE WAS YET ALIVE IN
FOREIGN PARTS, AND BY THE PROVIDENCE OF HEAVEN WOULD BE RESTORED TO THE
POSSESSIONS OF HIS ANCESTORS, in which case the said Peter Protocol was
bound and obliged, like as he bound and obliged himself, by acceptance of
these presents, to denude himself of the said lands of Singleside and
others, and of all the other effects thereby conveyed (excepting always a
proper gratification for his own trouble), to and in favour of the said
Henry Bertram, upon his return to his native country. And during the time
of his residing in foreign parts, or in case of his never again returning
to Scotland, Mr. Peter Protocol, the trustee, was directed to distribute
the rents of the land, and interest of the other funds (deducting always
a proper gratification for his trouble in the premises), in equal
portions, among four charitable establishments pointed out in the will.
The power of management, of letting leases, of raising and lending out
money, in short, the full authority of a proprietor, was vested in this
confidential trustee, and, in the event of his death, went to certain
official persons named in the deed. There were only two legacies; one of
a hundred pounds to a favourite waiting-maid, another of the like sum to
Janet Gibson (whom the deed stated to have been supported by the charity
of the testatrix), for the purpose of binding her an apprentice to some
honest trade.
A settlement in mortmain is in Scotland termed a mortification, and in
one great borough (Aberdeen, if I remember rightly) there is a municipal
officer who takes care of these public endowments, and is thence called
the Master of Mortifications. One would almost presume that the term had
its origin in the effect which such settlements usually produce upon the
kinsmen of those by whom they are executed. Heavy at least was the
mortification which befell the audience who, in the late Mrs. Margaret
Bertram’s parlour, had listened to this unexpected destination of the
lands of Singleside. There was a profound silence after the deed had been
read over.
Mr. Pleydell was the first to speak. He begged to look at the deed, and,
having satisfied himself that it was correctly drawn and executed, he
returned it without any observation, only saying aside to Mannering,
‘Protocol is not worse than other people, I believe; but this old lady
has determined that, if he do not turn rogue, it shall not be for want of
temptation.’
‘I really think,’ said Mr. Mac-Casquil of Drumquag, who, having gulped
down one half of his vexation, determined to give vent to the rest--‘I
really think this is an extraordinary case! I should like now to know
from Mr. Protocol, who, being sole and unlimited trustee, must have been
consulted upon this occasion--I should like, I say, to know how Mrs.
Bertram could possibly believe in the existence of a boy that a’ the
world kens was murdered many a year since?’
‘Really, sir,’ said Mr. Protocol, ‘I do not conceive it is possible for
me to explain her motives more than she has done herself. Our excellent
deceased friend was a good woman, sir--a pious woman--and might have
grounds for confidence in the boy’s safety which are not accessible to
us, sir.’
‘Hout,’ said the tobacconist, ‘I ken very weel what were her grounds for
confidence. There’s Mrs. Rebecca (the maid) sitting there has tell’d me a
hundred times in my ain shop, there was nae kenning how her leddy wad
settle her affairs, for an auld gipsy witch wife at Gilsland had
possessed her with a notion that the callant--Harry Bertram ca’s she
him?--would come alive again some day after a’. Ye’ll no deny that, Mrs.
Rebecca? though I dare to say ye forgot to put your mistress in mind of
what ye promised to say when I gied ye mony a half-crown. But ye’ll no
deny what I am saying now, lass?’
‘I ken naething at a’ about it,’ answered Rebecca, doggedly, and looking
straight forward with the firm countenance of one not disposed to be
compelled to remember more than was agreeable to her.
‘Weel said, Rebecca! ye’re satisfied wi’ your ain share ony way,’
rejoined the tobacconist.
The buck of the second-head, for a buck of the first-head he was not, had
hitherto been slapping his boots with his switch-whip, and looking like a
spoiled child that has lost its supper. His murmurs, however, were all
vented inwardly, or at most in a soliloquy such as this--‘I am sorry, by
G-d, I ever plagued myself about her. I came here, by G-d, one night to
drink tea, and I left King and the Duke’s rider Will Hack. They were
toasting a round of running horses; by G-d, I might have got leave to
wear the jacket as well as other folk if I had carried it on with them;
and she has not so much as left me that hundred!’
‘We’ll make the payment of the note quite agreeable,’ said Mr. Protocol,
who had no wish to increase at that moment the odium attached to his
office. ‘And now, gentlemen, I fancy we have no more to wait for here,
and I shall put the settlement of my excellent and worthy friend on
record to-morrow, that every gentleman may examine the contents, and have
free access to take an extract; and’--he proceeded to lock up the
repositories of the deceased with more speed than he had opened
them--‘Mrs. Rebecca, ye’ll be so kind as to keep all right here until we
can let the house; I had an offer from a tenant this morning, if such a
thing should be, and if I was to have any management.’
Our friend Dinmont, having had his hopes as well as another, had hitherto
sate sulky enough in the armchair formerly appropriated to the deceased,
and in which she would have been not a little scandalised to have seen
this colossal specimen of the masculine gender lolling at length. His
employment had been rolling up into the form of a coiled snake the long
lash of his horse-whip, and then by a jerk causing it to unroll itself
into the middle of the floor. The first words he said when he had
digested the shock contained a magnanimous declaration, which he probably
was not conscious of having uttered aloud--‘Weel, blude’s thicker than
water; she’s welcome to the cheeses and the hams just the same.’ But when
the trustee had made the above-mentioned motion for the mourners to
depart, and talked of the house being immediately let, honest Dinmont got
upon his feet and stunned the company with this blunt question, ‘And
what’s to come o’ this poor lassie then, Jenny Gibson? Sae mony o’us as
thought oursells sib to the family when the gear was parting, we may do
something for her amang us surely.’
This proposal seemed to dispose most of the assembly instantly to
evacuate the premises, although upon Mr. Protocol’s motion they had
lingered as if around the grave of their disappointed hopes. Drumquag
said, or rather muttered, something of having a family of his own, and
took precedence, in virtue of his gentle blood, to depart as fast as
possible. The tobacconist sturdily stood forward and scouted the
motion--‘A little huzzie like that was weel eneugh provided for already;
and Mr. Protocol at ony rate was the proper person to take direction of
her, as he had charge of her legacy’; and after uttering such his opinion
in a steady and decisive tone of voice, he also left the place. The buck
made a stupid and brutal attempt at a jest upon Mrs. Bertram’s
recommendation that the poor girl should be taught some honest trade; but
encountered a scowl from Colonel Mannering’s darkening eye (to whom, in
his ignorance of the tone of good society, he had looked for applause)
that made him ache to the very backbone. He shuffled downstairs,
therefore, as fast as possible.
Protocol, who was really a good sort of man, next expressed his intention
to take a temporary charge of the young lady, under protest always that
his so doing should be considered as merely eleemosynary; when Dinmont at
length got up, and, having shaken his huge dreadnought great-coat, as a
Newfoundland dog does his shaggy hide when he comes out of the water,
ejaculated, ‘Weel, deil hae me then, if ye hae ony fash wi’ her, Mr.
Protocol, if she likes to gang hame wi’ me, that is. Ye see, Ailie and me
we’re weel to pass, and we would like the lassies to hae a wee bit mair
lair than oursells, and to be neighbour-like, that wad we. And ye see
Jenny canna miss but to ken manners, and the like o’ reading books, and
sewing seams, having lived sae lang wi’ a grand lady like Lady
Singleside; or, if she disna ken ony thing about it, I’m jealous that our
bairns will like her a’ the better. And I’ll take care o’ the bits o’
claes, and what spending siller she maun hae, so the hundred pound may
rin on in your hands, Mr. Protocol, and I’ll be adding something till’t,
till she’ll maybe get a Liddesdale joe that wants something to help to
buy the hirsel. What d’ye say to that, hinny? I’ll take out a ticket for
ye in the fly to Jethart; od, but ye maun take a powny after that o’er
the Limestane Rig, deil a wheeled carriage ever gaed into Liddesdale.
[Footnote: See Note I.] And I’ll be very glad if Mrs. Rebecca comes wi’
you, hinny, and stays a month or twa while ye’re stranger like.’
While Mrs. Rebecca was curtsying, and endeavouring to make the poor
orphan girl curtsy instead of crying, and while Dandie, in his rough way,
was encouraging them both, old Pleydell had recourse to his snuff-box.
‘It’s meat and drink to me now, Colonel,’ he said, as he recovered
himself, ‘to see a clown like this. I must gratify him in his own way,
must assist him to ruin himself; there’s no help for it. Here, you
Liddesdale--Dandie--Charlie’s Hope--what do they call you?’
The farmer turned, infinitely gratified even by this sort of notice; for
in his heart, next to his own landlord, he honoured a lawyer in high
practice.
‘So you will not be advised against trying that question about your
marches?’
‘No, no, sir; naebody likes to lose their right, and to be laughed at
down the haill water. But since your honour’s no agreeable, and is maybe
a friend to the other side like, we maun try some other advocate.’
‘There, I told you so, Colonel Mannering! Well, sir, if you must needs be
a fool, the business is to give you the luxury of a lawsuit at the least
possible expense, and to bring you off conqueror if possible. Let Mr.
Protocol send me your papers, and I will advise him how to conduct your
cause. I don’t see, after all, why you should not have your lawsuits too,
and your feuds in the Court of Session, as well as your forefathers had
their manslaughters and fire-raisings.’
‘Very natural, to be sure, sir. We wad just take the auld gate as
readily, if it werena for the law. And as the law binds us, the law
should loose us. Besides, a man’s aye the better thought o’ in our
country for having been afore the Feifteen.’
‘Excellently argued, my friend! Away with you, and send your papers to
me. Come, Colonel, we have no more to do here.’
‘God, we’ll ding Jock o’ Dawston Cleugh now after a’!’ said Dinmont,
slapping his thigh in great exultation.