The Black Baronet; or, The Chronicles Of Ballytrain Part 41

The first thing the former did was to survey the countenance of his patron, for as such he wished to consider him and to find him. There, then, Sir Thomas sat, stern but indifferent, with precisely the expression of a tiger lying gloomily in his den, the natural ferocity "in grim repose" for the time, but evidently ready to blaze up at anything that might disturb or provoke him. Had Crackenfudge been gifted with either tact or experience, or any enlarged knowledge of the human heart, especially of the deep, dark, and impetuous one that beat in the bosom then before him, he would have studied the best and least alarming manner of conveying intelligence calculated to produce such terrific effects upon a man like Sir Thomas Gourlay. Of this, however, he knew nothing, although his own intercourse with him might have well taught him the necessary lesson.

"Well, Mr. Crackenfudge," said the latter, without moving, "what's wrong now? What's the news?"

"There's nothing wrong, Sir Thomas, and a've good news."

The baronet's eye and brow lost some of their gloom; he arose and commenced, as was his custom, to walk across the room.

"Pray what is this good news, Mr. Crackenfudge? Will you be kind enough, without any unnecessary circ.u.mlocution, to favor your friends with it?"

"With pleasure, Sir Thomas, because a' know you are anxious to hear it, and it deeply concerns you."

Sir Thomas paused, turned round, looked at him for a moment with an impatient scowl; but in the meaningless and simpering face before him he could read nothing but what appeared to him to be an impudent chuckle of satisfaction; and this, indeed, was no more than what Crackenfudge felt, who had altogether forgotten the nature of the communication he was about to make, dreadful and disastrous as it was, and thought only of the claim upon Sir Thomas's influence which he was about to establish with reference to the magistracy. It was the reflection, then, of this train of little ambition which Sir Thomas read in his countenance, and mistook for some communication that might relieve him, and set his mind probably at ease. The scowl we allude to accordingly disappeared, and Sir Thomas, after the glance we have recorded, said, checking himself into a milder and more encouraging tone:

"Go on, Mr. Crackenfudge, let us hear it at once."

"Well, then, Sir Thomas, a' told you a'd keep my eye on that chap."

"On whom? name him, sir."

"A' can't, Sir Thomas; the fellow in the inn."

"Oh! what about him?"

"Why he has taken her off."

"Taken whom off?" shouted the baronet, in a voice of thunder. "You contemptible scoundrel, whom has he taken off?"

"Your daughter, Sir Thomas--Miss Gourlay. They went together in the 'Fly' on Tuesday night last to Dublin; a' followed in the 'Flash of Lightning,' and seen them in conversation. Dandy Dulcimer, who is your friend--For G.o.d's sake, Sir Thomas, be quiet. You'll shake me--a-a-ach--Sir--Thom-a-as--w-wi-will you not take my--my --li-life----"

"You lie like a villain, you most contemptible reptile," shouted the other. "My daughter, sirrah, never eloped with an adventurer. She never eloped at all, sir. She durst not elope. She knows what my vengeance would be, sirrah. She knows, you lying whelp of perdition, that I would pursue herself and her paramour to the uttermost ends of the earth; that I would shoot them both dead--that I would trample upon and spurn their worthless carca.s.ses, and make an example of them to all time, and through all eternity. And you--you prying, intermeddling scoundrel--how durst you--you petty, beggarly tyrant--hated and despised by poor and rich--was it to mock me--"

"Sir Thom-a-as, a'm--a'm--I--I--aach--ur-ur-ur-mur-murd-murd-er-er-err-errr."

"Was it to jeer and sneer at me--to insult me--you miserable knave--to drive me mad--into raging frenzy--that you came, with a smirk of satisfaction on your face, to communicate the disgrace and dishonor of my family--the ruin of my hopes--the frustration of my ambition--of all I had set my heart on, and that I perilled my soul to accomplish? Yes, you villain, your eye was smiling--elated--your heart was glad--for, sirrah, you hate me at heart."

"G.o.d! oh, oh! a'm--a'm--ur-urr-urrr--whee-ee-ee-hee-hee-hee. G.o.d ha-ha-ha-have mer-mer-mercy on my sinf-sinfu-l sou-so-soul! a'm gone."

"Yes, you hate me, villain, and this is a triumph to you; every one hates me, and every one will rejoice at my shame. I know it, you accursed miscreant, I feel it; and in return I hate, with more than the malignity of the devil, every human creature that G.o.d has made. I have been at enmity with them, and in that enmity I shall persist; deep and dark as h.e.l.l shall it be, and unrelenting as the vengeance of a devil.

There," he added, throwing the almost senseless body of Crackenfudge over on a sofa, "there, you may rest on that sofa, and get breath; get breath quickly, and mark, obey me."

"Yes, Sir Thomas, a' will; a'll do anything, provided that you'll let me escape with my life. G.o.d! a'm nearly dead, the fire's not out of my eyes yet."

"Silence, you wretched slave!" shouted the baronet, stamping with rage; not another word of complaint, but listen to n--listen to me, I say: go on, and let me hear, fully and at large, the withering history of this burning and most flagitious disgrace."

"But if a' do, you'll only beat and throttle me to death, Sir Thomas."

"Whether I may or may not do so, go on, villain, and--go on, that quickly, or by heavens I shall tear the venomous heart from your body, and trample the black intelligence out of it. Proceed instantly."

With a face of such distress as our readers may well imagine, and a voice whose quavers of terror wrere in admirable accordance with it, the unfortunate Crackenfudge related the circ.u.mstance of Lucy's visit to Dublin, as he considered it, and, in fact, so far as he was acquainted with her motions, as it appeared to him a decided elopement, without the possibility of entertaining either doubt or mistake about it.

In the meantime, how shall we describe the savage fury of the baronet, as the trembling wretch proceeded? It is impossible. His rage, the vehemence of his gestures, the spasms that seemed to sey;e sometimes upon his features and sometimes upon his limbs, as well as upon different parts of his body, transformed him into the appearance of something that was unnatural and frightful. He bit his lips in the effort to restrain these tremendous paroxysms, until the b.l.o.o.d.y foam fell in red flakes from his mouth, and as portions of it were carried by the violence of his gesticulations over several parts of his face, he had more the appearance of some b.l.o.o.d.y-fanged ghoul, reeking from the spoil of a midnight grave, than that of a human being.

"Now," said he, "how did it happen that--brainless, worthless, and beneath all contempt, as you are, most execrable scoundrel--you suffered that adroit ruffian, Dulcimer--whom I shall punish, never fear--how came it, you despicable libel on nature and common sense--that you allowed him to humbug you to your face, to laugh at you, to scorn you, to spit upon you, to poke your ribs, as if you were an idiot, as you are, and to kick you, as it were, in every imaginable part of your worthless carca.s.s--how did it come, I say, that you did not watch them properly, that you did not get them immediately arrested, as you ought to have done, or that you did not do more than would merely enable you to chronicle my disgrace and misery?"

"A' did all a' could, Sir Thomas. A' searched through all Dublin for her without success; but as to where he has her, a' can't guess. The first thing a' did, after takin' a sleep, was to come an' tell you to-day; for a' travelled home by last night's coach. You ought to do something, Sir Thomas, for every one has it now. It's through all Ballytrain. 'Deed a'

pity you, Sir Thomas."

Now this unfortunate being took it for granted that the last brief silence of the baronet resulted from, some reasonable attention to what he (Crackenfudge) had been saying, whereas the fact was, that his terrible auditor had been transfixed into the highest and most uncontrollable fit of indignation by the substance of his words.

"What!" said he, in a voice that made Crackenfudge leap at least a foot from the sofa. "You pity me, do you!--you, you diabolical eavesdropper, you pity me. Sacred heaven! And again, you searched through all Dublin for my daughter!--carrying her disgrace and infamy wherever you appeared, and advertising them as you went along, like an emissary of shame and calumny, as you are. Yes," said he, as he foamed with the fury of a raging bull; "'I--I--I,' you might have said, 'a nameless whelp, sprung from the dishonest clippings of a counter--I, I say, am in quest of Miss Gourlay, who has eloped with an adventurer, an impostor--with a brushmaker's clerk.'"

"A tooth-brush manufacturer, Sir Thomas, and, you know, they are often made of ivory."

"Come, you intermeddling rascal, I must either tear you asunder or my brain will burst; I will not have such a worthless life as yours on my hands, however; you vermin, out with you; I might have borne anything but your compa.s.sion, and even that too; but to blazon through a gaping metropolis the infamy of my family--of all that was dear to me--to turn the name of my child into a polluted word, which modest lips would feel ashamed to utter; nor, lastly, can I forgive you the crime of making me suffer this mad and unexampled agony."

Action now took the place of words, and had, indeed, come in as an auxiliary for some time previous. He seized the unfortunate Crackenfudge, and as, with red and dripping lips, he gave vent to the furious eruptions of his fiery spirit, like a living Vesuvius--for we know of no other comparison so appropriate--he kicked and cuffed the wretched and unlucky intelligencer, until he fairly threw him out at the hall-door, which he himself shut after him.

"Begone, villain!" he exclaimed; "and may you never die till you feel the torments which you have kindled, like the flames of h.e.l.l, within me!"

On entering the room again, he found, however, that with a being even so wretched and contemptible as Crackenfudge, there had departed a portion of his strength. So long as he had an object on which to launch his fury, he felt that he could still sustain the battle of his pa.s.sions.

But now a heavy sense came over him, as if of something which he could not understand or a.n.a.lyze. His heart sank, and he felt a nameless and indescribable terror within him--a terror, he thought, quite distinct from the conduct of his daughter, or of anything else he had heard. He had, in fact, lost all perception of his individual misery, and a moral gloom, black as night, seemed to cover and mingle with those fiery tortures which were consuming him. An apprehension, also, of immediate dissolution came over him--his memory grew gradually weaker and weaker, until he felt himself no longer able to account for the scene which had just taken place; and for a brief period, although he neither swooned nor fainted, nor fell into a fit of any kind, he experienced a stupor that amounted to a complete unconsciousness of being, if we except an undying impression of some great evil which had befallen him, and which lay, like a grim and insatiable monster, tearing up his heart.

At length, by a violent effort, he recovered a little, became once more conscious, walked about for some time, then surveyed himself in the gla.s.s, and what between the cadaverous hue of his face and the flakes of red foam which we have described, when taken in connection with his thick, midnight brows, it need not be wondered at that he felt alarmed at the state to which he awakened.

After some time, however, he rang for Gibson, who, on seeing him, started.

"Good G.o.d, sir!" said he, quite alarmed, "whit is the matter?"

"I did not ring for you, sir," he replied, "to ask impertinent questions. Send Gillespie to me."

Gibson withdrew, and in the mean time his master went to his dressing-room, where he washed himself free of the b.l.o.o.d.y evidences of his awful pa.s.sions. This being done, he returned to the library, where, in a few minutes, Gillespie attended him."

"Gillespie," he exclaimed, "do you fear G.o.d?"

"I hope I do, Sir Thomas, as well as another, at any rate."

"Well, then, begone, for you are useless to me--begone, sirrah, and get me some one that fears neither G.o.d nor devil."

"Why, Sir Thomas," replied the ruffian, who, having expected a job, felt anxious to retrieve himself, "as to that matter, I can't say that I ever was overburdened with much fear of either one or other of them. Indeed, I believe, thank goodness, I have as little religion as most people."

"Are you sure, sirrah, that you have no conscience?"

"Why--hem--I have done things for your honor before, you know. As to religion, however, I'll stand upon having as little of it as e'er a man in the barony. I give up to no one in a want of that commodity."

"What proof can you afford me that you are free from it?"

"Why, blow me if I know the twelve commandments, and, besides, I was only at church three times in my life, and I fell asleep under the sermon each time; religion, sir, never agreed with me."

"To blazon my shame!--bad enough; but the ruin of my hopes, d--n you, sir, how durst you publish my disgrace to the world?"