Red Cap Tales Part 16

In Captain Brown (or Harry Bertram, to call him by his own proper name), Colonel Mannering saw the man whom he had believed slain by his hand in India. Julia met her lover in her father's house, and apparently there by his invitation. Dominie Sampson stood half aghast to recognise the lost heir of Ellangowan. Bertram himself feared the effect which his sudden appearance might have on Julia, while honest Dandie wished his thick-soled boots and rough-spun Liddesdale plaid anywhere else than in a room filled with ladies and gentlemen.

Only the lawyer, Mr. Pleydell, was wholly master of the situation, and bustled about, putting everybody at their ease. He saw himself in the thick of a great mysterious lawsuit which he alone could unravel, and he proceeded on the spot to cross-examine Bertram as to what he remembered of his life before he went to Holland.

Bertram remembered, he said, quite clearly, a good-looking gentleman whom he had called father, a delicate lady who must have been his mother, but more distinctly than either he recalled a tall man in worn black who had taught him his lessons and whom he loved for his kindness.

At these words Dominie Sampson could contain himself no longer. He rose hastily from his chair, and with clasped hands and trembling limbs cried out, "Harry Bertram--look at me! Was not I the man?"

Bertram started up as if a sudden light had dawned upon him.

"Yes," he cried, "that is my name--Bertram--Harry Bertram! And those are the voice and figure of my kind old master!"

The Dominie threw himself into his arms, his whole frame shaking with emotion, and at last, his feelings overcoming him, he lifted up his voice and wept. Even Colonel Mannering had need of his handkerchief.

Pleydell made wry faces and rubbed hard at his gla.s.ses, while Dandie Dinmont, after two strange blubbering explosions, fairly gave way and cried out, "Deil's in the man! He's garred me do what I haena done since my auld mither died!"

After this, the examination went on more staidly. Bertram said that he remembered very well the walk he had taken with the Dominie and somebody lifting him up on horseback--then, more indistinctly, a scuffle in which he and his guide had been pulled from the saddle. Vaguely and gradually the memory came back of how he had been lifted into the arms of a very tall woman who protected him from harm. Again he was a poor half-starved cabin-boy in the Holland trade. Quickly, however, gaining the good-will of the leading partner of the firm to which the vessel belonged, he had been thoroughly well educated in Holland, before being sent to seek his fortune in India. He pa.s.sed over his career there, but told in detail the accidental way in which young Hazlewood had been wounded, and ended by a request that he should now be told who the questioner might be who took such an interest in his affairs.

"Why, for myself, sir," answered the counsellor, "I am Paulus Pleydell, an advocate at the Scottish bar. And as for you, it is not easy for the moment to say who you are. But I trust in a short time to hail you by the t.i.tle of Henry Bertram, Esquire, representative of one of the oldest families in Scotland, and heir of entail to the estates of Ellangowan."

On the morrow the plotting at Woodbourne still went on merrily, around the person of the newly found heir. The counsellor-at-law arranged his plan of campaign. The Dominie, having left Harry Bertram at half-text and words of two syllables when he was carried off in Warroch Wood, prepared to take up his education at that exact point.

"Of a surety, little Harry," he said, "we will presently resume our studies. We will begin from the foundation. Yes, I will reform your education upward from the true knowledge of English grammar, even to that of the Hebrew or Chaldaic tongue!"

In the meantime, Colonel Mannering, having first had an interview with the counsellor in his room, gently drew from Julia that it was no other than Bertram who had spoken with her under her window at Mervyn Hall; also that, though she had remained silent, she had perfectly recognised him before the scuffle took place with young Hazlewood at the pond. For these concealments from her father, Mannering as gently forgave her, and received in return a promise that, in future, she would hide nothing from him which it concerned him to know.

The first step of the conspirators was to obtain a legal release for Bertram from Sir Robert Hazlewood, who granted it most unwillingly, having (it was evident) been secretly primed by Glossin as to what he should say and do. But it was secured at last, upon Colonel Mannering's pledging his word of honour for his appearance. And while the business was being settled, Harry Bertram, with the two ladies, wandered out to a knoll above the ancient castle of Ellangowan to look once again upon the home of his ancestors.

They were standing here, looking on the crumbling walls, when suddenly, as if emerging from the earth, Meg Merrilies ascended from the hollow way beneath, and stood before them.

"I sought ye at the house," she said, "but ye are right and I was wrong.

It is here we should meet--here, on the very spot where my eyes last saw your father. And now, remember your promise and follow me!"

In spite of the unwillingness of Lucy and Julia to allow him to depart with such a companion, Bertram and Dandie (for Meg invited Dinmont also to follow her) hastened to obey the gipsy's summons. There was something weird in the steady swiftness of her gait as she strode right forward across the moor, taking no heed either of obstacle or of well-trodden path. She seemed like some strange withered enchantress drawing men after her by her witchcrafts. But Julia and Lucy were somewhat comforted by the thought that if the gipsy had meditated any evil against Bertram, she would not have asked so doughty a fighter as Dandie Dinmont to accompany him.

They therefore made the best of their way home, and while they were telling the adventure to the Colonel, young Hazlewood, who happened to be at Woodbourne, courageously offered to follow after, to see that no harm came to Dandie and his former antagonist.

Meg Merrilies led them through the wood of Warroch, along the same path by which Harry had been carried on the night of the exciseman's murder.

Turning for a moment, she asked Bertram if he remembered the way.

"Not very clearly!" he answered.

"Ay," she said, "here was the very spot where Frank Kennedy was pulled from his horse. I was hiding behind the bour-tree bush at the moment.

Sair, sair he strove and sair he cried for mercy. But he was in the hands of them that never kenned the word."

Continuing her way, she led them downward to the sea by a secret and rugged path, cut in the face of the cliff, and hidden among brushwood.

There on the sh.o.r.e lay the stone under which the body of Frank Kennedy had been found crushed. A little farther on was the cave itself in which the murderers had concealed themselves. The gipsy pointed mysteriously.

"He is there," she said, in a low voice, "the man who alone can establish your right--Jansen Hatteraick, the tyrant of your youth, and the murderer of Frank Kennedy. Follow me--I have put the fire between you. He will not see you as you enter, but when I utter the words, 'The Hour and the Man'--then do you rush in and seize him. But be prepared.

It will be a hard battle, for Hatteraick is a very devil!"

"Dandie, you must stand by me now!" said Bertram to his comrade.

"That ye need never doubt," returned the Borderer; "but a' the same it's an awesome thing to leave the blessed sun and free air, and gang and be killed like a fox in his hole. But I'll never baulk ye--it'll be a hard-bitten terrier that will worry Dandie!"

So forward they went, creeping cautiously on all fours after the gipsy woman. When they were about halfway in, a hand was laid on Dandie Dinmont's heel, and it was all the stout farmer could do to keep from crying out--which, in the defenceless position in which they were placed, might well have cost them all their lives.

However, Dandie freed his ankle with a kick, and instantly a voice behind him whispered, "It is a friend--Charles Hazlewood!"

As soon as they had gained the higher part of the cave, Meg Merrilies began rustling about among the dried branches, murmuring and singing, to cover the noise made by the entrance of the three men who followed her.

From the deep dark where they stood, they could see Dirk Hatteraick at the farther end of the cave, behind a fire which he was continually building up by throwing into it bits of dried sticks. Hatteraick was of powerful build, and his features were beyond description savage and rugged. A cutla.s.s hung by his side, and into his belt he had thrust, ready to his hand at a moment's notice, two pairs of pistols. Truly the capture of Dirk Hatteraick was no light adventure, and Bertram, having been warned by Dandie in a cautious whisper of Hazlewood's arrival, thought within himself that they would be none the worse of the third who had come so opportunely to their a.s.sistance.

"Here, beldam--deyvil's kind," cried Hatteraick in his harshest voice, "have you brought me the brandy and news of my people?"

"Here is the flask for you," answered Meg, pa.s.sing it to him; "but as for your crew, they are all cut down and scattered by the redcoats!"

"Storm and wetter, ye hag," he cried, "ye bring ill news. This coast is fatal to me! And what of Glossin?"

"Ye missed your stroke there," she said; "ye have nothing to expect from him!"

"Hagel," cried the ruffian, "if only I had him by the throat! He has led me to perdition--men lost, boat lost, credit lost. I dare never show my face in Flushing again!"

"_You will never need!_" croaked the gipsy.

Meg's sombre prophecy startled Hatteraick. He looked up suddenly.

"What is that you say, witch? And what are you doing there?" he cried.

Meg dropped a firebrand steeped in spirit upon some loose flax.

Instantly a tall column of brilliant wavering light filled the cave.

"Ye will never need to go to Flushing," she said, "because 'The Hour's come and the Man!'"

At the signal, Bertram and Dandie Dinmont, springing over the brushwood, rushed upon Hatteraick. Hazlewood, not knowing the plan of a.s.sault, was a moment later. The ruffian instantly understood that he had been betrayed, and the first brunt of his anger fell upon Meg Merrilies, at whose breast he fired a pistol point-blank. She fell with a shriek which was partly the sudden pain of the wound, and partly a shout of triumphant laughter.

"I kenned it would end that way--and it is e'en this way that it should end!"

Bertram had caught his foot on some slippery weed as he advanced, and the chance stumble saved his life. For otherwise Hatteraick's second bullet, aimed coolly and steadily, would certainly have crashed through his skull. Before he could draw a third, Dandie Dinmont was upon him.

Yet such was the giant smuggler's strength and desperation, that he actually dragged Dandie through the burning flax, before Bertram and Hazlewood could come to the farmer's a.s.sistance. Then in a moment more Hatteraick was disarmed and bound, though to master him took all the strength of three strong well-grown men.

After he had been once bound securely, Hatteraick made no further attempt to escape. He lay perfectly still while Bertram, leaving Dandie to guard his prisoner, went to look to Meg Merrilies. The soldier, familiar with gunshot wounds, knew at once that her case was hopeless.

But he did what he could to bind up the old gipsy's wound, while Dandie, his hand laid heavily on Hatteraick's breast, watched pistol in hand the entrance of the cave. Hazlewood, whose horse had been tied outside, mounted to ride for a.s.sistance, and in a few moments silence fell on the scene of so fierce a combat, broken only by the low moans of the wounded gipsy.

It was no more than three-quarters of an hour that Bertram and Dandie Dinmont had to keep their watch. But to them it seemed as if ages had pa.s.sed before Hazlewood returned and they were clear of the fatal cavern. Hatteraick allowed himself to be removed without either a.s.sisting or hindering those who had charge of him. But when his captors would have had him rest against the huge boulder which had been thrown down along with the murdered exciseman, Hatteraick shrank back with a shout:

"Hagel--not there," he cried, "you would not have me sit _there!_"

On the arrival of a doctor, he could only confirm Bertram's opinion that Meg Merrilies was indeed wounded to the death. But she had enough strength left to call the a.s.sembled people to witness that Bertram was indeed young Harry Bertram the lost heir of Ellangowan.