Willy Reilly Part 50

"Well, but come along," replied the squire; "I have changed my mind; we shall hang them both; Sir Robert will a.s.sist and support me. I could overlook the offence of a man who only took my purse; yes, I could overlook that, but the man who would rob me of my child--of the solace and prop of my heart and life--of--of--of--"

Here the tears came down his cheeks so copiously that his sobs prevented him from proceeding. He recovered himself, however, for indeed he was yet scarcely sober after the evening's indulgence, and the two parties returned to his house, where, after having two or three gla.s.ses of Burgundy to make his hand steady, he prepared himself to take the sheriff's informations and sign unfortunate Reilly's committal to Sligo jail. The vindictive tenacity of resentment by which the heart of the ruffian Rapparee was animated against that young man was evinced, on this occasion, by a satanic ingenuity of malice that was completely in keeping with the ruffian's character. It was quite clear, from the circ.u.mstances we are about to relate, that the red miscreant had intended to rob Folliard's house on the night of his attack upon it, in addition to the violent abduction of his daughter. We must premise here that Reilly and the Rapparee were each strongly guarded in different rooms, and the first thing the latter did was to get some one to inform Mr. Folliard that he had a matter of importance concerning Reilly to mention to him. This was immediately on their return, and before the informations against Reilly were drawn up. Folliard, who knew not what to think, paused for some time, and at! last, taking the sheriff along with him, went! to hear what O'Donnel had to say.

"Is that ruffian safe?" he asked, before entering the room; "have you so secured him that he can't be mischievous?"

"Quite safe, your honor, and as harmless as a lamb."

He and the sheriff then entered, and found the huge savage champing his teeth and churning with his jaws, until a line of white froth encircled his mouth, rendering him a hideous and fearful object to look at.

"What is this you want with me, you misbegotten villain," said the squire. "Stand between the ruffian and me, fellows, in the meantime--what is it, sirra?"

"Who's the robber now, Mr. Folliard?" he asked, with something, however, of a doubtful triumph in his red glaring eye. "Your daughter had jewels in a black cabinet, and I'd have secured the same jewels and your daughter along with them, on a certain night, only for Reilly; and it was very natural he should out-general me, which he did; but it was only to get both for himself. Let him be searched at wanst, and, although I don't say he has them, yet I'd give a hundred to one he has; she would never carry them while he was with her."

The old squire, who would now, with peculiar pleasure, have acted in the capacity of hangman in Reilly's case, had that unfortunate young man been doomed to undergo the penalty of the law, and that no person in the shape of Jack Ketch was forthcoming--he, we say--the squire--started at once to the room where Reilly was secured, accompanied also by the sheriff, and, after rus.h.i.+ng in with a countenance inflamed by pa.s.sion, shouted out:

"Seize and examine that villain; he has robbed me--examine him instantly: he has stolen the family jewels."

Reilly's countenance fell, for he knew his Fearful position; but that which weighed heaviest upon his heart was a consciousness of the misinterpretations which the world might put upon the motives of his conduct in this elopement, imputing it to selfishness and a mercenary spirit. When about to be searched, he said:

"You need not; I will not submit to the indignity of such an examination. I have and hold the jewels for Miss Folliard, whose individual property I believe they are; nay, I am certain of it, because she told me so, and requested me to keep them For her. Let her be sent for, and I shall hand them back to her at once, but to no other person without violence."

"But she is not in a condition to receive them," replied the sheriff (which was a fact); "I pledge my honor she, is not."

"Well, then, Mr. Sheriff, I place them in your hands; you can do with them as you wish--that is, either return them to Miss Folliard, the legal owner of them, or to her father."

The sheriff received the caske't which contained them, and immediately handed it to Mr. Folliard, who put it in his pocket, exclaiming:

"Now, Reilly, if we can hang you for nothing else, we can hang you for this; and we will, sir."

"You, sir," said Reilly, with melancholy indignation, "are privileged to insult me; so, alas! is every man now; but I can retire into the integrity of my own heart and find a consolation there of which you cannot deprive me. My life is now a consideration of no importance to myself since I shall die with the consciousness that your daughter loved me. You do not hear this for the first time, for that daughter avowed it to yourself! and if I had been mean and unprincipled enough to have abandoned my religion, and that of my persecuted forefathers, I might ere this have been her husband."

"Come," said Folliard, who was not prepared with an answer to this, "come," said he, addressing the sheriff, "come, till we make out his _mittimus_, and give him the first shove to the gallows." They then left him.

CHAPTER XXI.--Sir Robert Accepts of an Invitation.

The next morning rumor had, as they say, her hands and tongues very full of business. Reilly and the Red Rapparee were lodged in Sligo jail that night, and the next morning the fact was carried by the aforesaid rumor far and wide over the whole country. One of the first whose ears it reached was the gallant and virtuous Sir Robert Whitecraft, who no sooner heard it than he ordered his horse and rode at a rapid rate to see Mr. Folliard, in order, now that Reilly was out of the way, to propose an instant marriage with the _Cooleen Bawn_. He found the old man in a state very difficult to be described, for he had only just returned to the drawing-room from the strongly sentinelled chamber of his daughter. Indignation against Reilly seemed now nearly lost in the melancholy situation of the wretched _Cooleen Bawn_. He had just seen her, but, somehow, the interview had saddened and depressed his heart.

Her position and the state of her feelings would have been pitiable, even to the eye of a stranger; what, then, must they not have been to a father who loved her as he did? "Helen," said he, as he took a chair in her room, after her guards had been desired to withdraw for a time, "Helen, are you aware that you have eternally disgraced your own name, and that of your father and your family?"

Helen, who was as pale as death, looked at him with vacant and unrecognizing eyes, but made no reply, for it was evident that she either had not heard, or did not understand, a word he said.

"Helen," said he, "did you hear me?"

She looked upon him with a long look of distress and misery, but there was the vacancy still, and no recognition.

This, I suppose, thought the father, is just the case with every love-sick girl in her condition, who will not be allowed to have her own way; but of what use is a father unless he puts all this nonsense down, and subst.i.tutes his own judgment for that of a silly girl. I will say something now that will startle her, and I will say nothing but what I will bring about.

"Helen, my darling," he said, "are you both deaf and blind, that you can neither see nor hear your father, and to-morrow your wedding-day? Sir Robert Whitecraft will be here early; the special license is procured, and after marriage you and he start for his English estates to spend the honeymoon there, after which you both must return and live with me, for I need scarcely say, Helen, that I could not live without you. Now I think you ought to be a happy girl to get a husband possessed of such immense property."

She started and looked at him with something like returning consciousness. "But where is w.i.l.l.y Reilly?" she asked.

"The villain that would have robbed me of my property and my daughter is now safe in Sligo jail."

A flash of something like joy--at least the father took it as such--sparkled in a strange kind of triumph from her eyes.

"Ha," said she, "is that villain safe at last? Dear papa, I am tired of all this--this--yes, I am tired of it, and it is time I should; but you talked about something else, did you not? Something about Sir Robert Whitecraft and a marriage. And what is my reply to that? why, it is this, papa: I have but one life, sir. Now begone, and leave me, or, upon my honor, I will push you out of the room. Have I not consented to all your terms. Let Sir Robert come tomorrow and he shall call me his wife before the sun reaches his meridian. Now, leave me; leave me, I say."

In this uncertain state her father found himself compelled to retire to the drawing-room, where Sir Robert and he met.

"Mr. Folliard," said the baronet, "is this true?"

"Is what true, Sir Robert?" said he sharply.

"Why, that Reilly and the Red Rapparee are both in Sligo jail?"

"It is true, Sir Robert; and it must be a cursed thing to be in jail for a capital crime."

"Are you becoming penitent," asked the other, "for bringing the laws of the land to bear upon the villain that would have disgraced, and might have ruined, your only daughter?"

The father's heart was stung by the diabolical pungency of this question.

"Sir Robert," said he, "we will hang him if it was only to get the villain out of the way; and if you will be here to-morrow at ten o'clock, the marriage must take place. I'll suffer no further nonsense about it; but, mark me, after the honeymoon shall have pa.s.sed, you and she must come and reside here; to think that I could live without her is impossible. Be here, then, at ten o'clock; the special license is ready, and I have asked the Rev. Samson Strong to perform the ceremony. A couple of my neighbor Ashford's daughters will act as bridesmaids, and I myself will give her away: the marriage articles are drawn up, as you know, and there will be little time lost in signing them; and yet, it's a pity to--but no matter--be here at ten."

Whitecraft took his leave in high spirits. The arrest and imprisonment of Reilly had removed the great impediment that had hitherto lain in the way of his marriage; but not so the imprisonment of the Red Rapparee.

The baronet regretted that that public and notorious malefactor had been taken out of his own hands, because he wished, as the reader knows, to make the delivering of him up to the Government one of the elements of his reconciliation to it. Still, as matters stood, he felt on the whole gratified at what had happened.

Folliard, after the baronet had gone, knew not exactly how to dispose of himself. The truth is, the man's heart was an anomaly--a series of contradictions, in which one feeling opposed another for a brief s.p.a.ce, and then was obliged to make way for a new prejudice equally transitory and evanescent. Whitecraft he never heartily liked; for though the man was blunt, he could look through a knave, and appreciate a man of honor, with a great deal of shrewd accuracy. To be sure, Whitecraft was enormously rich, but then he was penurious and inhospitable, two vices strongly and decidedly opposed to the national feeling.

"Curse the long-legged scoundrel," he exclaimed; "if he should beget me a young breed of Whitecrafts like himself I would rather my daughter were dead than marry him. Then, on the other hand, Reilly; hang the fellow, had he only recanted his nonsensical creed, I could--but then, again, he might, after marriage, bring her over to the Papists, and then, by the Boyne, all my immense property would become Roman Catholic.

By Strongbow, he'd teach the very rivers that run through it to sing Popish psalms in Latin: he would. However, the best way is to hang him out of the way, and when Jack Ketch has done with him, so has Helen.

Curse Whitecraft, at all events!"

We may as well hint here that he had touched the Burgundy to some purpose; he was now in that state of mental imbecility where reason, baffled and prostrated by severe mental suffering and agitation, was incapable of sustaining him without having recourse to the bottle. In the due progress of the night he was helped to bed, and had scarcely been placed and covered up there when he fell fast asleep.

Whitecraft, in the meantime, suspected, of course, or rather he was perfectly aware of the fact, that unless by some ingenious manoeuvre, of which he could form no conception, a marriage with the _Cooleen Bawn_ would be a matter of surpa.s.sing difficulty; but he cared not, provided it could be effected by any means, whether foul or fair. The attachment of this scoundrel to the fair and beautiful _Cooleen Bawn_ was composed of two of the worst principles of the heart--sensuality and avarice; but, in this instance, avarice came in to support sensuality. What the licentious pa.s.sions of the debauchee might have failed to tempt him to, the consideration of her large fortune accomplished. And such was the sordid and abominable union of the motives which spurred him on to the marriage.

The next morning, being that which was fixed for his wedding-day, he was roused at an early hour by a loud rapping at his hall-door. He started on his elbow in the bed, and ringing the bell for his valet, asked, when that gentleman entered his apartment half dressed, "What was the matter?

what cursed knocking was that? Don't they know I can hunt neither priest nor Papist now, since this polite viceroy came here."

"I don't know what the matter is, Sir Robert; they are at it again; shall I open the door, sir?"

"Certainly; open the door immediately."

"I think you had better dress, Sir Robert, and see what they want."

The baronet threw his long fleshless shanks out of the bed, and began to get on his clothes as fast as he could.