Hamilton received pressing letters from his Scottish friends to repair to the north, to arrange some concerns with his elder brother, possessor of his paternal estate; and saw the necessity of compliance. He wished his destiny to be irrevocably united to his Eliza’s before his departure; but the affair being referred to the arbitration of the vicar, he in a friendly award recommended to the parties to postpone the accomplishment of their purpose until after Hamilton’s return. The reasons which he assigned for this procrastination, though not conformable to the wishes of the lovers, were such as their judgments could not but approve.
Hamilton accordingly set off for his own country, and arrived at the seat of his ancestors. His elder brother, Hamilton, of Etterick, was a country gentleman, of about five and thirty, mild in his temper, amiable in his disposition, and hospitable in his manner of living. He possessed a good estate, and, being still a bachelor, proposed by marriage to make it better. He had, indeed, for several years been, to use his own expression, looking about him for a wife. This circumspiciency was not without discrimination. His object was what the Scotch call a well-tochered lass, that is, a young lady with a good portion. Having this simple purpose in view, he had made his addresses successively to every heiress within forty miles of him, and had not neglected the proprietors of legacies from old aunts, cousins, or any other enriching windfall, nor even dowagers if they had a fortune as well as a jointure. Indeed it had been observed, that when a lady, to whom he had paid no attention before, happened to have benefited by any such casualty, he immediately ordered a new pair of buck-skin breeches, and rode off a courting. If these expeditions proved unsuccessful, it was not for the want of a fixed plan of operations. He had been instructed by a friend, that ladies were fond of receiving love-letters. He, therefore, like Parson Adams with his sermons, generally travelled with one about him, in case of what might happen. Not being a man of very fertile invention, the composition of such productions was not to him a matter of ready execution. The best substitute for riches is parsimony. If, therefore, his genius could not do much, the next best means was to make a little go a great way. He very cunningly contrived that one letter should serve many courtships. He, as was before observed, proceeded by regular approaches, being well apprised of the stores in the garrison. His disposition for the siege were first, as we have said, the buck-skin breeches, with which he proposed to open the trenches, that he might make good his communication with the covered way. His next step was the letter, or proffered terms of capitulation. This summons was to the following effect:—
“Madam, having by the death of my mother, and the marriage of my sisters, a kind of vacancy in the family, that makes the house somewhat lonesome, I find I shall be obliged to enter into the matrimonial state. Understanding, from report, that you are not disinclineable to the married condition, I have thought of making you proposals. All my friends give you a very high character, that I assure you, not any consideration of property is what now induces me to make bold. Besides the extraordinary beauty of your face and person, the whiteness of your skin, your shining eyes, and the fine fall of your shoulders, the dignity of your walk, not to mention other charms, which, though invisible, may be well supposed, has created in me a passion, which preys upon my heart, and will, if not gratified, throw me into a consumption; which, as the Family Physician observes, is, in this country, a very frequent and dangerous distemper. Your fortune, I do assure you, is totally out of my thoughts, and, if you had not a shilling, I should prefer you to any other woman, though mistress of all the riches in the city of Glasgow. I hope, therefore, you will have compassion upon your sincere lover, who thinks of nothing but your charms. My lawyer will meet with yours whenever you may please to appoint.—I propose a jointure, which, if you should survive me, will give you ten per cent. for your money; the said money thereupon to become my property.—With the most disinterested love, I am, madam, your adoring swain,
Duncan Hamilton.”
Though this letter, in many cases, answered pretty well, yet, in some, it did not altogether suit. Among the various objects of his passion was a Creole, to whom the praise of whiteness of skin did not entirely apply; a lady who squinted, that could not so properly be praised for her eyes. To a third, the fall of the shoulders had been as well left out, as she happened to be somewhat humpbacked; a fourth, that limped, might have dispensed with the encomiums bestowed on gracefulness of gesture.—The laird of Etterick having circulated his courtship to every opulent lady that he could hear of was soon smoaked. The portioned misses and dames began to compare notes, and found that as the object was the same in all his love pursuits, viz. the rent-roll, funded property, and cash at their bankers’, the means were similar in every case. At last the laird of Etterick’s courtship became a jest in the country, and he, now approaching forty, was a bachelor. His personal charms were not very likely to shorten his celibacy. He was about five feet four inches high, and extremely slender, with stooping shoulders, and a pair of legs, whose shape, though often rousing men to martial deeds, when beating on a kettle-drum, were not the most promising supporters for a lover.
Hamilton found his worthy senior extremely rejoiced to see him, but somewhat downcast at a late disappointment. An estate within two or three miles of him had, it seems, devolved upon an elderly maiden by the death of a nephew. As, besides her age, she happened to have but one eye, he had sanguinely hoped for success, and made his addresses a few days after the interment; but the lady, large raw-boned and red hair, bestowed her hand and fortune on an Irish recruiting sergeant of grenadiers.—As rebuffs, however, were familiar to this suitor, he was not very deeply afflicted. Major Hamilton soon opened to his brother his engagements with the fair Eliza, and expatiated on the charms of his lovely mistress. The brother confined his remarks to one question, whether the property of her father was in land, mortgages, or the funds? As the major, though he strongly praised other qualifications of his fair mistress, did not dwell upon her fortune, the laird was not without apprehensions that he had neglected the main chance, and advised him to be cautious. “As to love,” says he, “my dear brother, it does not make the pot boil, and as you soldiers are none of the richest, I think it would be much better for you to look after a girl of substance, than to give up your mind to beauty. There are close by the Eilden hills two young women, just come to capital fortunes, by the death of their uncle, a rich Paisley weaver. I only heard of it two days ago, and should have been off immediately myself, but that I was waiting for you, and also for a pair of new boots. They have ten thousand pounds each, besides a good freehold estate;—that, my dear brother, would be just the thing to fit us. Indeed I have even made up my mind how we should dispose of the money; I would sell to you, for seven thousand pounds, my spouse’s half of the estate, so that you would be a landed gentleman of five hundred a year, with three thousand more to get you on in the army, which, being now time of peace, is as good a way of laying out your money as any other. Besides, then I could afford to pay you your portion, which, now as I have been making purchases and improvements, would derange my plans. I think there is no time to be lost; for there will be other chaps in the market; and it being indifferent to me which I shall marry, you may have your choice.” —The major was totally unmoved by the proffered pieces of manufactory, but informed his brother, that respecting his portion, about fifteen hundred pounds, he knew that the proprietor of Etterick could command such a sum at a day’s notice, and that, as he might have immediate occasion for it, it would be necessary to make arrangements for its payment when demanded. This intimation the laird, who gained much more by his employment of this sum than he paid for its use, did not altogether relish, but as he could not contest the point, he answered;—Certainly it was reasonable the major should receive his money, but that it was not so easy to be raised as he imagined. Hamilton had, indeed, made repeated applications from abroad, to have the sum in question remitted to a banker in London, to be vested in the funds. But the laird as often eluded the requisition.—Though really attached to his brother, yet he did not forget that, like the brother of every body else, he was mortal, and probably the sooner for his profession; and thought that, to use his own phrase, “a bird in hand was worth two in the bush; and the money, to which he was eventually heir, was as well in his own custody.” The laird, with a very moderate understanding, and mild milkiness of disposition, had a heart less contracted by interested selfishness, than debarred from benevolent exertion, by feeble timidity, or misguided by family vanity. His heiress-hunting adventures did not arise so much from grasping avarice, as from a desire of aggrandizing the house of Etterick. His pecuniary anxieties resulted less from the desire of accumulation, the means of gratifying which he had fully in his power, than the fear of incurring difficulties, for which there were, in his situation, no probable grounds. Hamilton had written him on his arrival in England, that he desired to have the disposal of his own money; the laird having lately bought a property contiguous to his estate, saw that he could not discharge his brother’s claim without borrowing, and conceived himself about to be embarrassed, although his estate was two thousand a year, without any other incumbrance. He had complained to their mutual friends, of the loss that would accrue to him, if the major insisted on payment. Those friends, knowing the little foundation for the laird’s apprehensions, urged his brother to have the affair settled as speedily as possible, by coming to the spot himself.
The proprietor of Etterick, during the first days of Hamilton’s visit, repeatedly endeavoured to dissuade him from his intended marriage, and from taking his money into his own management; but found himself entirely disappointed in both. At last, a neighbouring gentleman advanced the sum upon the laird’s personal bond, and Hamilton soon after returned to the south. He had meanwhile arranged, by letters, the investment of his property, and the prolongation of his leave of absence, so that the six following months he could, without interruption, devote to love and his Eliza.
CHAPTER III.
After an absence of six weeks, which had appeared as many years, he found himself in sight of the vicarage, and as his chaise ascended the hill, hailed old Maxwell, who blessed him with the intelligence, that Miss Wentbridge was in perfect health; and in a few minutes he was in the vicar’s parlour, and received by the object of his fond attachment, in such a manner as shewed, that his mistress’s love, though less impetuous, was no less ardent than his own. The worthy vicar who, superintending the labours of the opening spring, had, from an adjacent field, beheld his arrival, in a few minutes joined the enchanted couple, and diverted their emotions. During the absence of Hamilton, the vicar had, in an annual visit at the archi-episcopal palace of York, become acquainted with a general officer of distinguished fame, who spoke very highly of the abilities, virtues, and high promises of Hamilton. The testimony of so competent a judge, coinciding with the opinion which he had himself formed, enhanced Wentbridge’s estimation of the merits of his brave young friend; and in the destined husband of his daughter, he fancied he beheld a future commander-in-chief of an army, fighting for his king and country. Mr. Wentbridge, with the expansion of the philosophical scholar, and the liberality of the enlightened gentleman, was not without a professional predilection for forms of little intrinsic importance. He preferred marriage after the more tedious process of publishing the banns, to the expedition a licence, so much more consonant to the eagerness of lovers. As he was extremely tenacious on this subject, the impatience of the gentleman, and perhaps of the lady, was obliged to give way.—To divide the feelings of so very tantalizing a situation, the judicious clergyman promoted parties and amusements. One of these was a visit to Doncaster, to be present at a ball. Among the company there came, in the party of the mayoress, two ladies, the one old and the other young, both remarkable for the supercilious sourness of their countenances, which, though not entirely ugly, were extremely disagreeable. The old one, naturally short, appeared still more abridged by a habit of stooping, arising chiefly from the eager anxiety with which she bent herself in company to listen to what was going forward, especially if there was any appearance of whispering; and as she had of late become a little deaf, greater efforts were necessary: so that, next to the acidity which we have before remarked, the chief expression of her visage was the straining of curiosity not altogether gratified.—The young one, though not much sweeter than the other in the natural cast of her visage, tried to make up that deficiency by industry, and where a young man to her mind made his appearance, she smiled, and simpered, and lisped, but all could not conceal the groundwork. On these occasions she succeeded no better than children who, attempting to lessen the bitterness of the apothecary’s potions by lumps of sugar, only make the dose more mawkish and loathsome.
This mother and daughter (for so they were) were hardly seated, when Hamilton and his mistress rose to dance a minuet. The beauties of Eliza’s face and person, with the graces of her performance, were of themselves sufficient to rouse the censorious animadversions of Mrs. Sourkrout; but another cause called forth associations of more poignant malignity. She fancied she recognized the exact image of one who had gained the affections of the man whom she had destined for herself. Enquiring the name of the miss that (as she phrased it) was figuring away, she was confirmed in her conjecture, on hearing it was Wentbridge. This Mrs. Sourkrout was that niece of a right reverend bishop, whom we have before mentioned, as intended by his lordship, as the condition to be annexed to the gift which he would have bestowed upon Mr. Wentbridge, for the cure of souls. By the unexpected death of her uncle, failing in her hopes of a spiritual incumbent, she had accepted of a carnal, and became the lady of a topping butcher, extremely proud of the honour of having to wife the nevoy of my lord the bishop. Mr. Sourkrout throve a-pace, rose to be alderman of the corporation, and at last to be mayor. Madam was not insensible to this elevation, and deported herself with what she conceived suitable dignity, by taking the lead in all companies of the borough, that was the scene of her grandeur. Even afterwards, when, upon the decease of her spouse, she began to think herself slighted in the scene of her late glory, and retired to a distant part of the country, she, among her new acquaintances, as the dowager of a mayor, expected an homage and deference, which she was not always so fortunate as to meet; and, happening to fix upon a neighbourhood not deficient in real gentry, she found herself less valued there, than when presiding over the municipal gossips of her corporation entertainment. This inattention to her dignity added to the sourness of her temper, not naturally very sweet. There was another source of bitterness; the lapse of many years had not obliterated the disappointment of her youth, and if love for the husband might have, perhaps, evaporated from a heart not the best adapted for retaining tender affections, there was one passion which remained in its earliest force, hatred for the wife. She had hated her when alive, and still hated her when dead. Brooding over her detestation, her fancy saw its object in all that torture and tormenting beauty and loveliness, which had captivated the object of her own passion. She had heard, with rage, of the charms of Eliza, and her striking resemblance of her mother. As the devil, in sending envy to the human heart, sends its severest punishment in the admiration of its object, and its own rankling gall, she could not, for her soul, avoid thinking Eliza the most engaging woman in the room. Nay, her attempts, in her own mind, to under-rate the charms of Miss Wentbridge, recoiled on herself in exaggerating their witchery. But though envy cannot really force itself to a contempt of its object, it may easily try to assume that disguise. Mrs. Sourkrout, while pining at the perception of such excellence, observed to her next neighbour, that the young person on the floor, though awkward and hoydenish, was a decent enough looking girl. “I suppose,” says she, “she is the daughter of some farmer, curate, or excise-man; it is wrong of them people bringing their daughters into genteel company; it gives them high and foolish notions; don’t you think so, my dear,” said she, turning to her daughter; “Yes ma’am,” was all the answer that came from Miss, who, had paid little attention to the question or antecedent conversation. Miss’s thoughts were indeed far otherwise employed.