The Black Baronet; or, The Chronicles Of Ballytrain Part 18

"I who am engaged to another?"

"Yes, but clandestinely, without your father's knowledge or approbation."

"I admit my error, papa; I fully and freely acknowledge it, and the only atonement I can make to you for it is, to a.s.sure you that although I am not likely ever to marry according to your wishes, yet I shall never marry against them."

"Ha!" thought the baronet, "I have brought her down a step already."

"Now, Lucy," said he, "it is time that this undutiful obstinacy on your part should cease. It is time you should look to and respect--yes, and obey your father's wishes. I have already told you that I have impressed Lord Cullamore with a belief that you are a free and consenting party to this marriage, and I trust you have too much delicacy and self-respect to make your father a liar, for that is the word. I admit I told him a falsehood, but I did so for the honor and exaltation of my child. You will not betray me, Lucy?"

"Father," said she, "I regret that you make these torturing communications to me. G.o.d knows I wish to love and respect you, but when, under solemn circ.u.mstances, you utter, by your own admission, a deliberate falsehood to a man of the purest truth and honor; when you knowingly and wilfully mislead him for selfish and ambitious purposes;--nay, I will retract these words, and suppose it is from an anxiety to secure me rank and happiness,--I say, father, when you thus forget all that const.i.tutes the integrity and dignity of man, and stoop to the discreditable meanness of falsehood, I ask you, is it manly, or honorable, or affectionate, to involve me in proceedings so utterly shameful, and to ask me to abet you in such a wanton perversion of truth? Sir, there are fathers--indeed, I believe, most fathers living--who would rather see any child of theirs stretched and shrouded up in the grave than know them to be guilty of such a base and deliberate violation of all the sacred principles of truth as this."

"You will expose me then, and disgrace me forever with this cursed conscientious old blockhead? I tell you that he doubts my a.s.sertion as touching your consent, and is coming to hear the truth from your own lips. But hearken, girl, betray me to him, and by heavens you know not the extent to which my vengeance will carry me."

He rose up, and glared at her in a manner that made her apprehensive for her personal safety.

"Father," said she, growing pale, for the dialogue, brief as it was, had brought the color into her cheeks, "will you permit me to withdraw? I am quite unequal to these contests of temper and opinion; permit me, sir, to withdraw. I have already told you, that provided you do not attempt to force me into a marriage contrary to my wishes I shall never marry contrary to yours."

The baronet swore a deep and blasphemous oath that he would enter into no such stipulation. The thing, he said, was an evasion, an act of moral fraud and deceit upon her part, and she should not escape from him.

"You wish to gain time, madam, to work out your own treacherous purposes, and to defeat my intentions with respect to you; but it shall not be. You must see Lord Cullamore; you must corroborate my a.s.sertions to him; you must save me from shame and dishonor or dread the consequences. A paltry sacrifice, indeed, to tell a fib to a doting old peer, who thinks no one in the world honest or honorable but himself!"

"Think of the danger of what you ask," she replied; "think of the deep iniquity--the horrible guilt, and the infamy of the crime into which you wish to plunge me. Reflect that you are breaking down the restraints of honor and conscience in iny heart; that you are defiling my soul with falsehood; and that if I yield to you in this, every subsequent temptation will beset me with more success, until my faith, truth, honor, integrity, are gone forever--until I shall be lost. Is there no sense of religion, father? Is there no future life? Is there no G.o.d--no judgment? Father, in asking me to abet your falsehood, and sustain you in your deceit, you transgress the limits of parental authority, and the first principles of natural affection. You pervert them, you abuse them; and, I must say, once and for all, that be the weight of your vengeance what it may, I prefer bearing it to enduring the weight of a guilty conscience."

The baronet rose, and rushing at her, raised his open hand and struck her rather severely on the side of the head. She felt, as it were, stunned for a little, but at length she rose up, and said: "Father, this is the insanity of a bad ambition, or perhaps of affection, and you know not what you have done." She then approached him, and throwing her arms about his neck, exclaimed: "Papa, kiss me; and I shall never think of it, nor allude to it;" as she spoke the tears fell in showers from her eyes.

"No, madam," he replied, "I repulse you; I throw you off from me now and forever."

"Be calm, papa; compose yourself, my dear papa. I shall not see Lord Cullamore; it would be now impossible; I could not sustain an interview with him. You, consequently, can have nothing to fear; you can say I am ill, and that will be truth indeed."

"I shall never relax one moment," he replied, "until I either subdue you, or break your obstinate heart. Come, madam," said he, "I will conduct you to your apartment."

She submissively preceded him, until he committed her once more to the surveillance of the maid whom he had engaged and bribed to be her sentinel.

It is unnecessary to say that the visit of the honorable old n.o.bleman ended in nothing. Lucy was not in a condition to see him; and as her father at all risks reiterated his a.s.sertions as to her free and hearty consent to the match, Lord Cullamore went away, now perfectly satisfied that if his son had any chance of being reclaimed by the influence of a virtuous wife, it must be by his union with Lucy. The n.o.ble qualities and amiable disposition of this excellent young lady were so well known that only one opinion prevailed with respect to her.

Some wondered, indeed, how such a man could be father to such a daughter; but, on the other hand, the virtues of the mother were remembered, and the wonder was one no longer.

CHAPTER XIII. The Stranger's Second Visit to Father M'Mahon

--Something like an Elopement.

On the evening of the same day the stranger desired Paudeen Gair to take a place for him in the "Fly," which was to return to Dublin on that night. He had been furnished with a letter from Father M'Mahon, to whom he had, in Mr. Birney's, fully disclosed his name and objects. He felt anxious, however, to engage some trustworthy servant or attendant, on whose integrity he could fully rely, knowing, or at least apprehending, that he might be placed in circ.u.mstances where he could not himself act openly and freely without incurring suspicion or observation. Paudeen, however, or, as we shall call him in future, Pat Sharpe, had promised to procure a person of the strictest honesty, in whom every confidence could be placed. This man's name, or rather his nickname, was Dandy Dulcimer, an epithet bestowed upon him in consequence of the easy and strolling life he led, supporting himself, as he pa.s.sed from place to place, by his performances upon that simple but pleasing instrument.

"Pat," said the stranger in the course of the evening, "have you succeeded in procuring me this cousin of yours?" for in that relation he stood to Pat.

"I expect him here every minute, sir," replied Pat; "and there's one thing I'll lay down my life on--you may trust him as you would any one of the twelve apostles--barring that blackguard Judas. Take St. Pettier, or St. Paul, or any of the dacent apostles, and the divil a one of them honester than Dandy. Not that he's a saint like them either, or much overburdened with religion, poor fellow; as for honesty and truth--divil a greater liar ever walked in the mane time; but, by truth, I mane truth to you, and to any one that employs him--augh, by my soul, he's the flower of a boy."

"He won't bring his dulcimer with him, I hope."

"Won't he, indeed? Be me sowl, sir, you might as well separate sowl and body, as take Dandy from his dulcimer. Like the two sides of a scissors, the one's of no use widout the other. They must go together, or Dandy could never cut his way through the world by any chance. h.e.l.lo! here he is. I hear his voice in the hall below."

"Bring him up, Pat," said the stranger; "I must see and speak to him; because if I feel that he won't suit me, I will have nothing to do with him."

Dandy immediately entered, with his dulcimer slung like a peddler's bos at his side, and with a comic movement of respect, which no presence or position could check, he made a bow to the stranger, that forced him to smile in spite of himself.

"You seem a droll fellow," said the stranger. "Are you fond of truth?"

"Hem! Why, yes, sir. I spare it as much as I can. I don't treat it as an everyday concern. We had a neighbor once, a widow M'Cormick, who was rather penurious, and whenever she saw her servants b.u.t.tering their bread too thickly, she used to whisper to them in a confidential way, 'Ahagur, the thinner you spread it the further it will go.' Hem!

However, I must confess that once or twice a year I draw on it by way of novelty, that is, on set days or bonfire nights; and I hope, sir, you'll admit that that's treating it with respect."

"How did you happen to turn musician?" asked the other.

"Why, sir, I was always fond of a jingle; but, to tell you the truth, I would rather have the same jingle in my purse than in my instrument.

Divil such an unmusical purse ever a man was cursed with than I have been doomed to carry during my whole life."

"Then it was a natural love of music that sent you abroad as a performer?"

"Partly only, sir; for there were three causes went to it. There is a certain man named Dandy Dulcimer, that I had a very loving regard for, and I thought it against his aise and comfort to ask him to strain his poor bones by hard work. I accordingly subst.i.tuted pure idleness for it, which is a delightful thing in its way. There, sir, is two of the causes--love of melody and a strong but virtuous disinclination to work. The third--" but here he paused and his face darkened.

"Well," inquired the stranger, "the third? What about the third?"

Dandy significantly pointed back with his thumb over his shoulder, in the direction of Red Hall. "It was him," he said; "the Black Baronet--or rather the incarnate divil."

"That's truth, at all events," observed Pat corroborating the incomplete a.s.sertion.

"It was he, sir," continued Dandy, "that thrust us out of our comfortable farm--he best knows why and wherefore--and like a true friend of liberty, he set us at large from our comfortable place, to enjoy it."

"Well," replied the stranger, "if that be true it was hard; but you know every story has two sides; or, as the proverb goes, one story is well until the other is told. Let us dismiss this. If I engage you to attend me, can you be faithful, honest, and cautious?"

"To an honest man, sir, I can; but to no other. I grant I have acted the knave very often, but it was always in self-defence, and toward far greater knaves than myself. An honest man did once ax me to serve him in an honest way; but as I was then in a roguish state of mind I tould him I couldn't conscientiously do it."

"If you were intrusted with a secret, for instance, could you undertake to keep it?"

"I was several times in Dublin, sir, and I saw over the door of some public office a big, brazen fellow, with the world on his back; and you know that from what he seemed to suffer I thought he looked very like a man that was keeping a secret. To tell G.o.d's truth, sir, I never like a burden of any kind; and whenever I can get a man that will carry a share of it, I--"

"Tut! your honor, never mind him," said Pat. "What the deuce are you at, Dandy? Do you want to prevent the gintleman from engagin' you? Never mind him, sir; he's as honest as the sun."

"It matters not, Pat," said the stranger; "I like him. Are you willing to take service with me for a short time, my good fellow?"

"If you could get any one to give you a caracther, sir, perhaps I might," replied Dandy.

"How, sirrah! what do you mean?" said the stranger.

"Why, sir, that we humble folks haven't all the dishonesty to ourselves.

I think our superiors come in now and then for the lion's share of it.