The Black Baronet; or, The Chronicles Of Ballytrain Part 81

"Why, sir, we had a cup o' tay together yestherday evenin', and, between you and me, I began, as it might be, to get fond of her. She's very pretty, sir; but I must say, that the man who marries her will get a mouth, plaise goodness, that he must kiss by instalments. Faith, if it could be called property, he might boast that his is extensive; and divil a mistake in it."

"She has a large mouth, then?"

"Upon my soul, sir, if you stood at the one side of it you'd require a smart telescope to see to the other. No man at one attempt could ever kiss her. I began, sir, at the left side--that's always the right side to kiss at and went on successfully enough till I got half way through; but you see, sir, the evenin's is but short yet, and as I had no time to finish, I'm to go back this evenin' to get to the other side.

"Still I'm at a loss, Dandy," replied his master, not knowing whether to smile or get angry; "finish it without going about in this manner."

"Faith, sir, and that's more than I could do in kissing the widow. Divil such a circ.u.mbendibus ever a man had as I had in gettin' as far as the nose, where I had to give up until this evenin' as I said. Now, sir, whether to consider that an advantage or disadvantage is another mysthery to me. There's some women, and they have such a small, rosy, little mouth, that a man must gather up his lips into a bird's bill to kiss them. Now, there's Miss Gour--"

A look of fury from his master divided the word in his mouth, and he paused from terror. His master became more composed, however, and said, "To what purpose have you told me all this?"

"Gad, sir to tell you the truth, I saw you were low-spirited, and wanted something to rouse you. It's truth for all that."

"Is this Mrs. Norton, however, the woman whom we are seeking?"

"Well, well," exclaimed Dandy, casting down his hand, with vexatious, vehemence, against the open air; "by the piper o' Moses, I'm the stupidest man that ever peeled a phatie. Troth, I was so engaged, sir, that I forgot it; but I'll remember it to-night, plaise goodness."

"Ah, Dandy," exclaimed his master, smiling, "I fear you are a faithless swain. I thought Alley Mahon was at least the first on the list."

"Troth, sir," replied Dandy, "I believe she is, too. Poor Alley! By the way, sir, I beg your pardon, but I have news for you that I fear will give you a heavy heart."

"How," exclaimed his master, "how--what is it? Tell me instantly."

"Miss Gourlay is ill, sir. She was goin' to be married to this lord; her father, I believe, had the day appointed, and she had given her consent."

His master seized him by the collar with both hands, and peering into his eyes, whilst his own blazed with actual fire, he held him for a moment as if in a vise, exclaiming, "Her consent, you villain!" But, as if recollecting himself, he suddenly let him go, and said, calmly, "Go on with what you were about to say."

"I have very little more to say, sir," replied Dandy; "herself and Lord Dunroe is only waitin' till she gets well and then they're to be married?"

"You said she gave her consent, did you not!"

"No doubt of it, sir, and that, I believe, is what's breakin' her heart. However, it's not my affair to direct any one; still, if I was in somebody's shoes, I know the tune I'd sing."

"And what tune would you sing?" asked his master.

Dandy sung the following stave, and, as he did it, he threw his comic eye upon his master with such humorous significance that the latter, although wrapped in deep reflection at the moment, on suddenly observing!

it, could not avoid smiling:

"Will you list, and come with me, fair maid?

Will you list, and come with me, fair maid?

Will you list, and come with me, fair maid?

And folly the lad with the white c.o.c.kade?"

"If you haven't a good voice, sir, you could whisper the words into her ear, and as you're so near the mouth--hem--a word to the wise--then point to the chaise that you'll have standin' outside, and my life for you, there's an end to the fees o' the docther."

His master, who had relapsed into thought before he concluded his advice, looked at him without seeming to have heard it. He then traversed the room several times, his chin supported by his finger and thumb, after which he seemed to have formed a resolution.

"Go, sir," said he, "and put that letter to Father M'Mahon in the post-office. I shall not want you for some time."

"Will I ordher a chaise, sir?" replied Dandy, with a serio-comic face.

One look from his master, however, sent him about his business; but the latter could hear him lilting the "White c.o.c.kade," as he went down stairs.

"Now," said he, when Dandy was gone, "can it be possible that she has at length given her consent to this marriage? Never voluntarily. It has been extorted by foul deceit and threatening, by some base fraud practised upon her generous and unsuspecting nature. I am culpable to stand tamely by and allow this great and glorious creature to be sacrificed to a bad ambition, and a worse man, without coming to the rescue. But, in the meantime, is this information true? Alas, I fear it is; for I know the unscrupulous spirit the dear girl has, alone and una.s.sisted, to contend with. Yet if it be true, oh, why should she not have written to me? Why not have enabled me to come to her defence? I know not what to think. At all events, I shall, as a last resource, call upon her father. I shall explain to him the risk he runs in marrying his daughter to this man who is at once a fool and a scoundrel. But how can I do so? Birney has not yet returned from France, and I have no proofs on which to rest such serious allegations; nothing at present but bare a.s.sertions, which her father, in the heat and fury of his ambition, might not only disbelieve, but misinterpret. Be it so; I shall at least warn him, take it as he will; and if all else should fail, I will disclose to him my name and family, in order that he may know, at all events, that I am no impostor. My present remonstrance may so far alarm him as to cause the persecution against Lucy to be suspended for a time, and on' Birney's return, we shall, I trust, be able to speak more emphatically."

He accordingly sent for a chaise, into which he stepped and ordered the driver to leave him at Sir Thomas Gourlay's and to wait there for him.

Lord Dunroe was at this period perfectly well aware that Birney's visit to France was occasioned by purposes that boded nothing favorable to his interests; and were it not for Lucy's illness, there is little doubt that the marriage would, ere now, have taken place. A fortnight had elapsed, and every day so completely filled him with alarm, that he proposed to Sir Thomas Gourlay the expediency of getting the license at once, and having the ceremony performed privately in her father's house.

To this the father would have a.s.sented, were it not that he had taken it into his head that Lucy was rallying, and would soon be in a condition to go through it, in the parish church, at least. A few days, he hoped, would enable her to bear it; but if not, he was willing to make every concession to his lords.h.i.+p's wishes. Her delicate health, he said, would be a sufficient justification. At all events, both agreed that there could be no harm in having the license provided: and, accordingly, upon the morning of the stranger's visit, Sir Thomas and Lord Dunroe had just left the house of the former for the Ecclesiastical Court, in Henrietta street, a few minutes before his arrival. Sir Thomas was mistaken, however, in imagining that his daughter's health was improving, The doctor, indeed, had ordered carriage exercise essentially necessary; and Lucy being none of those weak and foolish girls, who sink under illness and calamity by an apathetic neglect of their health, or a criminal indifference to the means of guarding and prolonging the existence into which G.o.d has called them, left nothing undone on her part to second the efforts of the physician. Accordingly, whenever she was able to be up, or the weather permitted it, she sat in the carriage for an hour or two as it drove through some of the beautiful suburban scenery by which our city is surrounded.

The stranger, on the door being opened, was told by a servant, through mistake, that Sir Thomas Gourlay was within. The man then showed him to the drawing-room, where he said there was none but Miss Gourlay, he believed, who was waiting for the carriage to take her airing.

On hearing this piece of intelligence the stranger's heart began to palpitate, and his whole system, physical and spiritual, was disturbed by a general commotion that mounted to pain, and almost banished his presence of mind for the moment. He tapped at the drawing-room door, and a low, melancholy voice, that penetrated his heart, said, "Come in." He entered, and there on a sofa sat Lucy before him. He did not bow--his heart was too deeply interested in her fate to remember the formalities of ceremony--but he stood, and fixed his eyes upon her with a long and anxious gaze. There she sat; but, oh! how much changed in appearance from what he had known her on every previous interview. Not that the change, whilst it spoke of sorrow and suffering, was one which diminished her beauty; on the contrary, it had only changed its character to something far more touching and impressive than health itself with all its blooming hues could have bestowed. Her features were certainly thinner, but there was visible in them a serene but mournful spirit--a voluptuous languor, heightened and spiritualized by purity and intellect into an expression that realized our notions rather of angelic beauty than of the loveliness of mere woman. To all this, sorrow had added a dignity so full of melancholy and commanding grace--a seriousness indicative of such truth and honor--as to make the heart of the spectator wonder, and the eye almost to weep on witnessing an a.s.sociation so strange and incomprehensible, as that of such beauty and evident goodness with sufferings that seem rather like crimes against purity and innocence, and almost tempt the weak heart to revolt against the dispensations of Providence.

When their eyes rested on each other, is it necessary to say that the melancholy position of Lucy was soon read in those large orbs that seemed about to dissolve into tears? The shock of the stranger's sudden and unexpected appearance, when taken in connection with the loss of him forever, and the sacrifice of her love and happiness, which, to save her father's life, she had so heroically and n.o.bly made, was so strong, she felt unable to rise. He approached her, struck deeply by the dignified entreaty for sympathy and pardon that was in her looks.

"I am not well able to rise, dear Charles," she said, breaking the short silence which had occurred, and extending her hand; "and I suppose you have come to reproach me. As for me, I have nothing to ask you for now--nothing to hope for but pardon, and that you will forget me henceforth. Will you be n.o.ble enough to forgive her who was once your Lucy, but who can never be so more?"

The dreadful solemnity, together with the pathetic spirit of tenderness and despair that breathed in these words, caused a pulsation in his heart and a sense of suffocation about his throat that for the moment prevented him from speaking. He seized her hand, which was placed pa.s.sively in his, and as he put it to his lips, Lucy felt a warm tear or two fall upon it. At length he spoke:

"Oh, why is this, Lucy?" he said; "your appearance has unmanned me; but I see it and feel it all. I have been sacrificed to ambition, yet I blame you not."

"No, dear Charles," she replied; look upon me and then ask yourself who is the victim."

"But what has happened?" he asked;

"What machinery of h.e.l.l has been at work to reduce you to this? Fraud, deceit, treachery have done it. But, for the sake of G.o.d, let me know, as I said, what has occurred since our last interview to occasion this deplorable change--this rooted sorrow--this awful spirit of despair that I read in your face?

"Not despair, Charles, for I will never yield to that; but it is enough to say, that a barrier deep as the grave, and which only that can remove, is between us forever in this life."

"You mean to say, then, that you never can be mine?"

"That, alas, is what I mean to say--what I must say."

"But why, Lucy--why, dearest Lucy--for still I must call you so; what has occasioned this? I cannot understand it."

She then related to him, briefly, but feelingly, the solemn promise, which, as our readers are aware of, she had given her father, and under what circ.u.mstances she had given it, together with his determination, unchanged and irrevocable, to force her to its fulfilment. Having heard it he paused for some time, whilst Lucy's eyes were fixed upon him, as if she expected a verdict of life or death from his lips.

"Alas, my dear Lucy," he said; "n.o.ble girl! how can I quarrel with your virtues? You did it to save a father's life, and have left me nothing to reproach you with; but in increasing my admiration of you, my heart is doubly struck with anguish at the thought that I must lose you."

"All, yes," she replied; "but you must take comfort from the difference in our fates. You merely have to endure the pain of loss; but I--oh, dear Charles--what have I to encounter? You are not forced into a marriage with one who possesses not a single sentiment or principle of virtue or honor in common with yourself. No; you are merely--I deprived of a woman whom you love; but you are not forced into marriage with a woman, abandoned and unprincipled, whom you hate. Yes, Charles, you must take comfort, as I said, from the difference of our fates."

"What, Lucy! do you mean to say I can take comfort from your misery? Am I so selfish or ungenerous as to thank G.o.d that you, whose happiness I prefer a thousand times to my own, are more miserable than I am? I thought you knew me better."

"Alas, Charles," she replied, "have compa.s.sion on me. The expression of these generous sentiments almost kills me. a.s.sume some moral error--some semblance of the least odious vice--some startling blemish of character--some weakness that may enable me to feel that in losing you I have not so much to lose as I thought; something that may make the contrast between the wretch to whom I am devoted and yourself less repulsive."

"Oh, I a.s.sure you, my dear Lucy," he replied, with a melancholy smile, "that I have my errors, my weaknesses, my frailties, if that will comfort you; so many, indeed, that my greatest virtue, and that of which I am most proud, is my love for you."

"Ah, Charles, you reason badly," she replied, "for you prove yourself to be capable of that n.o.ble affection which never yet existed in a vicious heart. As for me, I know not on what hand to turn. It is said that when a person hanging by some weak branch from the brow of a precipice finds it beginning to give way, and that the plunge below is unavoidable, a certain courage, gained from despair, not only diminishes the terror of the fall, but relieves the heart by a bold and terrible feeling that for the moment banishes fear, and reconciles him to his fate."