It is enough for our present purpose that this arrangement is not yet made; and that in consequence of the want of a suitable supply, poor Philip Martindale was placed under the disagreeable necessity of paying great attention to Miss Sampson; and poor Lord Martindale was also under the same necessity of submitting to see and approve it.
We have already spoken of Miss Sampson, and have said or intimated that she was not a fool. We have also spoken of Sir Gilbert Sampson, and we have acknowledged that he was a man of good understanding. Miss Sampson had been an indulged child; some called her a spoiled child, but we do not admit that indulgence always spoils children. There is a great deal depending on the manner in which indulgence is administered. Indulgence or strictness in the hands of a simpleton may be made equally injurious. Miss Sampson certainly had not been snubbed, lectured, scolded at, talked to, and dragged about all her life in leading-strings; and Miss Sampson was certainly a thoughtless, good-tempered creature, not overburdened with taste, and not always so very attentive to minuter observances as many others of her own station; but whether she would have been any more thoughtful and reserved by a continued course of sloppy, sleepy, prosy, common-place lecturing, is very doubtful. Miss Sampson and her father were by no means proud, resentful, or suspicious. For though they both had heard the rumor touching the probable evanescence of Mr. John Martindale’s property; and though they both might have had reason to suppose that only property could induce Mr. Philip to make advances of a serious nature, and though he had once before paid, and afterwards discontinued his attentions, yet Sir Gilbert Sampson, who was a sensible man, and Miss Sampson, who was not a fool, were pleased with the very particular notice taken of the latter under present circumstances. The parties were therefore quits; for if it was manifest to Miss Sampson that Philip Martindale’s affection for her was only founded on her property, it was as manifest to Philip Martindale that Miss Sampson’s regard for him could only be on account of his title.
When the following day dawned upon the Abbey of Brigland, and the guests there visiting had an opportunity, unconstrained by the presence of the tenant of the great house, to discuss and discourse upon the interesting topic of the discovery of the preceding day, various and wise were the observations which they made; but one of the wisest of all was, that it would be desirable for them to hasten their departure; for it occurred to them that Mr. Philip might prefer being alone, now he had so much to occupy his thoughts. Sir Andrew Featherstone and his family recollected that it was absolutely necessary that they should be at home in a day or two, for they were expecting company. The Misses Woodstock also thought that it was very rude of Mr. John Martindale to take his departure so suddenly, and leave them without an apology; and Lady Woodstock thought that, though visiting at the Abbey, her visit was rather to Mr. John Martindale than to Mr. Philip; and even Sir Gilbert and Miss Sampson thought that they should be better able to ascertain Mr. Philip’s intentions by taking their departure than by prolonging their visit; and as the time was nearly arrived that they should have taken their leave in the ordinary course of things, the making a movement a day or two sooner might not be a matter of such great moment. In fact, there was among the whole party an unpleasant and awkward kind of restraint, which they could only get rid of by separation; and they certainly had a right to be offended at Mr. John Martindale for his rudeness in leaving so abruptly, and not giving any explanation, or even saying when he should return. Lady Featherstone was the first of the party who started the subject of departure; and when it was mentioned, or rather hinted, to Mr. Philip, he did not receive the intelligence with any affectation of concern; and thus the matter was easily managed by the rest of the party, who soon took leave, excepting, of course, Lord and Lady Martindale. The worthy persons who took their departure rather hastily, made up their minds to forgive old Mr. Martindale for his rudeness, provided that it should turn out that he had not lost any very considerable part of his fortune.
Being now left to his own meditations, and the good counsel of his father and mother, the Hon. Philip Martindale began to employ himself in deliberating on what steps it would be prudent for him to take in the present conjuncture of affairs. As yet, he knew nothing for certainty. It was still possible that the story circulating in Brigland, and brought to his ears by the trusty and honest Oliver, might not be altogether correct, and he might yet be able to keep himself pure from the degradation of marrying below his rank, provided he took care not to give offence to the old gentleman; and yet when he thought of the very cool and abrupt manner in which his cousin had announced his design of going hastily to London, and of his allusion to the capacity of Oliver for invention, he feared that some of his own proceedings were not unknown to his relative, and that they had effected an alienation of his regards. He knew well enough the eagerness with which all idle reports are received and circulated, without any regard to their truth or even probability, and therefore he considered that it would be a fruitless toil to interrogate Mr. Denver, or any of the people in the town upon the subject; and indeed, he did not think such proceeding very consistent with his dignity.
It occurred to his mind, however, that it might not be very unsuitable just to look in at the cottage where old Richard Smith used to live; for Mr. John Martindale had rebuked his relative for neglect in this matter. He took, therefore, an early opportunity of walking round by the heath, to avoid passing through the town; and he called at the cottage. The door was fastened, and he was under the necessity of making a long loud knocking before he could obtain admittance; at length, the door was opened from within by a little old woman who was as deaf as a post, or who affected to be so. Very little information indeed could he extract from her. He learned, however, that his cousin had not gone alone, but that there were three persons with him from the cottage; and that of these three, one was the young woman who was called the niece of Richard Smith, and the other two were the father and mother of the young woman. He also ascertained that the cottage was no longer to be occupied by these persons, and that it was not expected that any one of them should return to Brigland. Whether in this party was the claimant to the old gentleman’s property was not to be ascertained; and indeed that question was not directly asked, and the old woman did not seem at all inclined to answer any questions which were not loudly, decidedly, and frequently repeated. Philip amused himself with looking at the drawings which decorated the cottage-walls, and he was surprised to see such decorations in such a place; but he soon found an interpretation of that difficulty when he observed the scenes which they represented, and when he recollected the Italian officer whom he had met in London. Now, though he had, as we have observed above, some faint recollection of having heard something of old Mr. Martindale’s voyage to Genoa in search of some individual or other, who, for aught he knew to the contrary, might be a claimant, but he could not see how property in England should be claimed by a native Italian, as Colonel Rivolta clearly was. Very little information, therefore, did he acquire, and no satisfaction could he gain by this visit to the cottage.
In spite, however, of all his feeling of dignity and propriety, he felt an irresistible propensity to call on Mr. Denver, who, as a public intelligencer, was certainly one of the most able men in the town of Brigland. The very polite and exquisitely courteous manner in which the reverend perpetual curate received the tenant of the Abbey, was not at all indicative of falling fortunes or painful change of circumstance. Low as usual did he bow, graciously as ever did he smile. Courtesy and politeness, however, were essential and component parts of Mr. Denver’s constitution. We cannot say quite so much of the Hon. Philip Martindale; for his style of address was abrupt, and his manners very unceremonious; and so far was he from endeavouring to correct this habit, that he was in a measure absolutely proud of it. Receiving Mr. Denver’s homage as due to his own exalted rank and dignified character, he began his inquiries by lamenting the death of poor Richard Smith, and expressing a hope that the poor man had had proper medical assistance in his illness. To all this a satisfactory answer was given, accompanied, as was very suitable and regular, with a compliment to Mr. Philip’s very great kindness and condescension. The inquirer then proceeded to throw out an intimation, that it would be very agreeable to him to be informed as to who and what the stranger was, who had recently taken up his abode at the old man’s cottage. As far as Mr. Denver knew, he informed Mr. Philip; telling him also the particulars of the interview at Mr. John Martindale’s residence, as we have already narrated it. For we will do Mr. Denver the justice to say of him, that although he was now and then unconsciously guilty of circulating an incorrect narrative, he was never deliberately and wilfully guilty of fabricating one. Whatever he himself had seen and heard, he told, according to the best of his ability, as he saw and heard it. But if, as it sometimes happened, he heard Mrs. Denver, Mrs. Price, and Mrs. Flint, all talking together, and telling in one voice him and one another the same story, but with diversified embellishment and frequent mutual contradiction, many interruptions, and various repetitions and emendations; then, poor man, he was certainly to be forgiven, if his second-hand repetition of such story should not be altogether coherent in its parts, lucid in its arrangement, or exquisitely veracious in every particular. Nor should we severely condemn him, if, with a laudable eagerness to administer early intelligence, he should now and then run away with an ill-understood tale only heard by halves. Thus it often happens, that those newspapers which are proud of their early intelligence, are occasionally exposed to the temptation of inserting that which needs contradiction.
When Philip Martindale had thus fairly committed himself as an inquirer, he went into the subject very fully; and from all that he could learn from Mr. Denver, there did not appear to be any very powerful evidence of the existence of any claimant of the Martindale property; but it was at the same time very clear that Mr. John Martindale was gone to London, and that these three people had gone with him, and that they had all gone in his own carriage. Now it was not likely that the old gentleman should carry the oddity of his humor so far as to accommodate a claimant of his property with the use of his own carriage. There was a mystery in all this not to be solved. Philip’s inquiries were fruitless, therefore, at Mr. Denver’s; and all that he had ascertained was, that nobody knew what was the cause of the extraordinary movements of his extraordinary relative.