Guy Mannering Or the Astrologer — Complete, Page 4

  CHAPTER II

  Comes me cranking in, And cuts me from the best of all my land A huge half-moon, a monstrous cantle, out

  Henry IV, Part 1.

  The company in the parlour at Ellangowan consisted of the Laird and asort of person who might be the village schoolmaster, or perhaps theminister's assistant; his appearance was too shabby to indicate theminister, considering he was on a visit to the Laird.

  The Laird himself was one of those second-rate sort of persons that areto be found frequently in rural situations. Fielding has described oneclass as feras consumere nati; but the love of field-sports indicates acertain activity of mind, which had forsaken Mr. Bertram, if ever hepossessed it. A good-humoured listlessness of countenance formed theonly remarkable expression of his features, although they were ratherhandsome than otherwise. In fact, his physiognomy indicated the inanityof character which pervaded his life. I will give the reader someinsight into his state and conversation before he has finished a longlecture to Mannering upon the propriety and comfort of wrapping hisstirrup-irons round with a wisp of straw when he had occasion to ridein a chill evening.

  Godfrey Bertram of Ellangowan succeeded to a long pedigree and a shortrent-roll, like many lairds of that period. His list of forefathersascended so high that they were lost in the barbarous ages of Galwegianindependence, so that his genealogical tree, besides the Christian andcrusading names of Godfreys, and Gilberts, and Dennises, and Rolandswithout end, bore heathen fruit of yet darker ages--Arths, and Knarths,and Donagilds, and Hanlons. In truth, they had been formerly the stormychiefs of a desert but extensive domain, and the heads of a numeroustribe called Mac-Dingawaie, though they afterwards adopted the Normansurname of Bertram. They had made war, raised rebellions, beendefeated, beheaded, and hanged, as became a family of importance, formany centuries. But they had gradually lost ground in the world, and,from being themselves the heads of treason and traitorous conspiracies,the Bertrams, or Mac-Dingawaies, of Ellangowan had sunk intosubordinate accomplices. Their most fatal exhibitions in this capacitytook place in the seventeenth century, when the foul fiend possessedthem with a spirit of contradiction, which uniformly involved them incontroversy with the ruling powers. They reversed the conduct of thecelebrated Vicar of Bray, and adhered as tenaciously to the weaker sideas that worthy divine to the stronger. And truly, like him, they hadtheir reward.

  Allan Bertram of Ellangowan, who flourished tempore Caroli primi, was,says my authority, Sir Robert Douglas, in his Scottish Baronage (seethe title 'Ellangowan'), 'a steady loyalist, and full of zeal for thecause of His Sacred Majesty, in which he united with the great Marquisof Montrose and other truly zealous and honourable patriots, andsustained great losses in that behalf. He had the honour of knighthoodconferred upon him by His Most Sacred Majesty, and was sequestrated asa malignant by the parliament, 1642, and afterwards as a resolutionerin the year 1648.' These two cross-grained epithets of malignant andresolutioner cost poor Sir Allan one half of the family estate. His sonDennis Bertram married a daughter of an eminent fanatic who had a seatin the council of state, and saved by that union the remainder of thefamily property. But, as ill chance would have it, he became enamouredof the lady's principles as well as of her charms, and my author giveshim this character: 'He was a man of eminent parts and resolution, forwhich reason he was chosen by the western counties one of the committeeof noblemen and gentlemen to report their griefs to the privy councilof Charles II. anent the coming in of the Highland host in 1678.' Forundertaking this patriotic task he underwent a fine, to pay which hewas obliged to mortgage half of the remaining moiety of his paternalproperty. This loss he might have recovered by dint of severe economy,but on the breaking out of Argyle's rebellion Dennis Bertram was againsuspected by government, apprehended, sent to Dunnotar Castle on thecoast of the Mearns, and there broke his neck in an attempt to escapefrom a subterranean habitation called the Whigs' Vault, in which he wasconfined with some eighty of the same persuasion. The apprizertherefore (as the holder of a mortgage was then called) entered uponpossession, and, in the language of Hotspur, 'came me cranking in,' andcut the family out of another monstrous cantle of their remainingproperty.

  Donohoe Bertram, with somewhat of an Irish name and somewhat of anIrish temper, succeeded to the diminished property of Ellangowan. Heturned out of doors the Reverend Aaron Macbriar, his mother's chaplain(it is said they quarrelled about the good graces of a milkmaid); drankhimself daily drunk with brimming healths to the king, council, andbishops; held orgies with the Laird of Lagg, Theophilus Oglethorpe, andSir James Turner; and lastly, took his grey gelding and joined Claversat Killiecrankie. At the skirmish of Dunkeld, 1689, he was shot dead bya Cameronian with a silver button (being supposed to have proof fromthe Evil One against lead and steel), and his grave is still called theWicked Laird's Lair.

  His son Lewis had more prudence than seems usually to have belonged tothe family. He nursed what property was yet left to him; for Donohoe'sexcesses, as well as fines and forfeitures, had made another inroadupon the estate. And although even he did not escape the fatality whichinduced the Lairds of Ellangowan to interfere with politics, he had yetthe prudence, ere he went out with Lord Kenmore in 1715, to convey hisestate to trustees, in order to parry pains and penalties in case theEarl of Mar could not put down the Protestant succession. But Scyllaand Charybdis--a word to the wise--he only saved his estate at expenseof a lawsuit, which again subdivided the family property. He was,however, a man of resolution. He sold part of the lands, evacuated theold cattle, where the family lived in their decadence as a mouse (saidan old farmer) lives under a firlot. Pulling down part of thesevenerable ruins, he built with the stones a narrow house of threestories high, with a front like a grenadier's cap, having in the verycentre a round window like the single eye of a Cyclops, two windows oneach side, and a door in the middle, leading to a parlour andwithdrawing-room full of all manner of cross lights.

  This was the New Place of Ellangowan, in which we left our hero, betteramused perhaps than our readers, and to this Lewis Bertram retreated,full of projects for re-establishing the prosperity of his family. Hetook some land into his own hand, rented some from neighbouringproprietors, bought and sold Highland cattle and Cheviot sheep, rode tofairs and trysts, fought hard bargains, and held necessity at thestaff's end as well as he might. But what he gained in purse he lost inhonour, for such agricultural and commercial negotiations were very illlooked upon by his brother lairds, who minded nothing butcock-fighting, hunting, coursing, and horse-racing, with now and thenthe alternative of a desperate duel. The occupations which he followedencroached, in their opinion, upon the article of Ellangowan's gentry,and he found it necessary gradually to estrange himself from theirsociety, and sink into what was then a very ambiguous character, agentleman farmer. In the midst of his schemes death claimed histribute, and the scanty remains of a large property descended uponGodfrey Bertram, the present possessor, his only son.

  The danger of the father's speculations was soon seen. Deprived ofLaird Lewis's personal and active superintendence, all his undertakingsmiscarried, and became either abortive or perilous. Without a singlespark of energy to meet or repel these misfortunes, Godfrey put hisfaith in the activity of another. He kept neither hunters nor hounds,nor any other southern preliminaries to ruin; but, as has been observedof his countrymen, he kept a man of business, who answered the purposeequally well. Under this gentleman's supervision small debts grew intolarge, interests were accumulated upon capitals, movable bonds becameheritable, and law charges were heaped upon all; though Ellangowanpossessed so little the spirit of a litigant that he was on twooccasions charged to make payment of the expenses of a long lawsuit,although he had never before heard that he had such cases in court.Meanwhile his neighbours predicted his final ruin. Those of the higherrank, with some malignity, accounted him already a degraded brother.The lower classes, seeing nothing enviable in his situation, marked hisembarrassments with more compassion. He was even a kind
of favouritewith them, and upon the division of a common, or the holding of ablack-fishing or poaching court, or any similar occasion when theyconceived themselves oppressed by the gentry, they were in the habit ofsaying to each other, 'Ah, if Ellangowan, honest man, had his ain thathis forbears had afore him, he wadna see the puir folk trodden downthis gait.' Meanwhile, this general good opinion never prevented theirtaking advantage of him on all possible occasions, turning their cattleinto his parks, stealing his wood, shooting his game, and so forth,'for the Laird, honest man, he'll never find it; he never minds what apuir body does.' Pedlars, gipsies, tinkers, vagrants of alldescriptions, roosted about his outhouses, or harboured in his kitchen;and the Laird, who was 'nae nice body,' but a thorough gossip, likemost weak men, found recompense for his hospitality in the pleasure ofquestioning them on the news of the country side.

  A circumstance arrested Ellangowan's progress on the highroad to ruin.This was his marriage with a lady who had a portion of about fourthousand pounds. Nobody in the neighbourhood could conceive why shemarried him and endowed him with her wealth, unless because he had atall, handsome figure, a good set of features, a genteel address, andthe most perfect good-humour. It might be some additionalconsideration, that she was herself at the reflecting age oftwenty-eight, and had no near relations to control her actions orchoice.

  It was in this lady's behalf (confined for the first time after hermarriage) that the speedy and active express, mentioned by the old dameof the cottage, had been despatched to Kippletringan on the night ofMannering's arrival.

  Though we have said so much of the Laird himself, it still remains thatwe make the reader in some degree acquainted with his companion. Thiswas Abel Sampson, commonly called, from his occupation as a pedagogue,Dominie Sampson. He was of low birth, but having evinced, even from hiscradle, an uncommon seriousness of disposition, the poor parents wereencouraged to hope that their bairn, as they expressed it, 'might waghis pow in a pulpit yet.' With an ambitious view to such aconsummation, they pinched and pared, rose early and lay down late, atedry bread and drank cold water, to secure to Abel the means oflearning. Meantime, his tall, ungainly figure, his taciturn and gravemanners, and some grotesque habits of swinging his limbs and screwinghis visage while reciting his task, made poor Sampson the ridicule ofall his school-companions. The same qualities secured him at GlasgowCollege a plentiful share of the same sort of notice. Half the youthfulmob of 'the yards' used to assemble regularly to see Dominie Sampson(for he had already attained that honourable title) descend the stairsfrom the Greek class, with his lexicon under his arm, his longmisshapen legs sprawling abroad, and keeping awkward time to the playof his immense shoulder-blades, as they raised and depressed the looseand threadbare black coat which was his constant and only wear. When hespoke, the efforts of the professor (professor of divinity though hewas) were totally inadequate to restrain the inextinguishable laughterof the students, and sometimes even to repress his own. The long,sallow visage, the goggle eyes, the huge under-jaw, which appeared notto open and shut by an act of volition, but to be dropped and hoistedup again by some complicated machinery within the inner man, the harshand dissonant voice, and the screech-owl notes to which it was exaltedwhen he was exhorted to pronounce more distinctly,--all added freshsubject for mirth to the torn cloak and shattered shoe, which haveafforded legitimate subjects of raillery against the poor scholar fromJuvenal's time downward. It was never known that Sampson eitherexhibited irritability at this ill usage, or made the least attempt toretort upon his tormentors. He slunk from college by the most secretpaths he could discover, and plunged himself into his miserablelodging, where, for eighteenpence a week, he was allowed the benefit ofa straw mattress, and, if his landlady was in good humour, permissionto study his task by her fire. Under all these disadvantages, heobtained a competent knowledge of Greek and Latin, and someacquaintance with the sciences.

  In progress of time, Abel Sampson, probationer of divinity, wasadmitted to the privileges of a preacher. But, alas! partly from hisown bashfulness, partly owing to a strong and obvious disposition torisibility which pervaded the congregation upon his first attempt, hebecame totally incapable of proceeding in his intended discourse,gasped, grinned, hideously rolled his eyes till the congregationthought them flying out of his head, shut the Bible, stumbled down thepulpit-stairs, trampling upon the old women who generally take theirstation there, and was ever after designated as a 'stickit minister.'And thus he wandered back to his own country, with blighted hopes andprospects, to share the poverty of his parents. As he had neitherfriend nor confidant, hardly even an acquaintance, no one had the meansof observing closely how Dominie Sampson bore a disappointment whichsupplied the whole town with a week's sport. It would be endless evento mention the numerous jokes to which it gave birth, from a balladcalled 'Sampson's Riddle,' written upon the subject by a smart youngstudent of humanity, to the sly hope of the Principal that the fugitivehad not, in imitation of his mighty namesake, taken the college gatesalong with him in his retreat.

  To all appearance, the equanimity of Sampson was unshaken. He sought toassist his parents by teaching a school, and soon had plenty ofscholars, but very few fees. In fact, he taught the sons of farmers forwhat they chose to give him, and the poor for nothing; and, to theshame of the former be it spoken, the pedagogue's gains never equalledthose of a skilful ploughman. He wrote, however, a good hand, and addedsomething to his pittance by copying accounts and writing letters forEllangowan. By degrees, the Laird, who was much estranged from generalsociety, became partial to that of Dominie Sampson. Conversation, it istrue, was out of the question, but the Dominie was a good listener, andstirred the fire with some address. He attempted even to snuff thecandles, but was unsuccessful, and relinquished that ambitious post ofcourtesy after having twice reduced the parlour to total darkness. Sohis civilities, thereafter, were confined to taking off his glass ofale in exactly the same time and measure with the Laird, and inuttering certain indistinct murmurs of acquiescence at the conclusionof the long and winding stories of Ellangowan.

  On one of these occasions, he presented for the first time to Manneringhis tall, gaunt, awkward, bony figure, attired in a threadbare suit ofblack, with a coloured handkerchief, not over clean, about his sinewy,scraggy neck, and his nether person arrayed in grey breeches, dark-bluestockings, clouted shoes, and small copper buckles.

  Such is a brief outline of the lives and fortunes of those two personsin whose society Mannering now found himself comfortably seated.