The Knight Of Gwynne Volume II Part 40

"Then I don't understand you,--that's clear," exclaimed O'Reilly, testily. "You say that you do not intend to call upon her--"

"Because she's coming here to see me," cried the old man, in a scream of triumph; "read that, it's an answer to a note I sent off at eight o'clock. Joe waited and brought back this reply." As he spoke, he drew from beneath his pillow a small note, and handed it to his son. O'Reilly opened it with impatience, and read:--

"Lady Eleanor Darcy begs to acknowledge the receipt of Dr. Hickman's note, and, while greatly indisposed to accept of an interview which must be so painful to both parties without any reasonable prospect of rendering service to either, feels reluctant to refuse a request made under circ.u.mstances so trying. She will therefore comply with Dr.

Hickman's entreaty, and, to spare him the necessity of venturing abroad in this severe weather, will call upon him at twelve o'clock, should she not learn in the meanwhile that the hour is inconvenient."

"Lady Eleanor Darcy come out to call upon you, sir!" said O'Reilly, with an amazement in part simulated to flatter the old man's skill, but far more really experienced. "This is indeed success."

"Ay, you may well say so," chimed in the old man; "for besides that I always look ten years older when I 'm in bed and unshaved, with my nightcap a little off,--this way,--the very sight of these miserable walls, green with damp and mould, this broken window, and the poverty-struck furniture, will all help, and I can get up a cough, if I only draw a long breath."

"I vow, sir, you beat us all; we are mere children compared to you. This is a master-stroke of policy."

"What will Nalty say now--eh, Bob?"

"Say, sir? What can any one say, but that the move showed a master's hand, as much above our skill to accomplish as it was beyond our wit to conceive? I should like greatly to hear how you intend to play the game out," said O'Reilly, throwing a most flattering expression of mingled curiosity and astonishment into his features.

"Wait till I see what trumps the adversary has in hand, Bob; time enough to determine the lead when the cards are dealt."

"I suppose I must keep out of sight, and perhaps Nalty also."

"Nalty ought to be in the house if we want him; as my medical friend, he could a.s.sist to draw any little memorandum we might determine upon; a mere note, Bob, between friends, not requiring the interference of lawyers, eh?" There was something fiendish in the low laugh which accompanied these words. "What brings that fellow into the room so often, putting turf on, and looking if the windows are fast? I don't like him, Bob." This was said in reference to a little chubby man, in a waiter's jacket, who really had taken every imaginable professional privilege to obtrude his presence.

"There, there, that will do," said O'Reilly, harshly; "you needn't come till we ring the bell."

"Leave the turf-basket where it is. Don't you think we can mind the fire for ourselves?"

"Let Joe wait, that will be better, sir," whispered O'Reilly; "we cannot be too cautious here." And with a motion of the hand he dismissed the waiter, who, true to his order, seemed never to hear "an aside."

"Leave me by myself, Bob, for half an hour; I 'd like to collect my thoughts,--to settle and think over this meeting. It's past eleven now, and she said twelve o'clock in the note."

"Well, I 'll take a stroll over the hills, and be back for dinner about three; you'll be up by that time."

"That will I, and very hungry too," muttered the old man. "This dying scene has cost me the loss of my breakfast; and, faith, I 'm so weak and low, my head is quite dizzy. There 's an old saying, Mocking is catching; and sure enough there may be some truth in it too."

O'Reilly affected not to hear the remark, and moved towards the door, when he turned about and said,--

"I should say, sir, that the wisest course would be to avoid anything like coercion, or the slightest approach to it. The more the appeal is made to her feelings of compa.s.sion and pity--"

"For great age and bodily infirmity," croaked the old man, while the filmy orbs shot forth a flash of malicious intelligence.

"Just so, sir. To others' eyes you do indeed seem weak and bowed down with years. It is only they who have opportunity to recognize the clearness of your intellect and the correctness of your judgment can see how little inroad time has made."

"Ay, but it has, though," interposed the old man, irritably. "My hand shakes more than it used to do; there 's many an operation I 'd not be able for as I once was."

"Well, well, sir," said his son, who found it difficult to repress the annoyance he suffered from his continual reference to the old craft; "remember that you are not called upon now to perform these things."

"Sorry I am it is so," rejoined the other. "I gave up seven hundred a year when I left Loughrea to turn gentleman with you at Gwynne Abbey; and faith, the new trade isn't so profitable as the old one! So it is,"

muttered he to himself; "and now there 's a set of young chaps come into the town, with their medical halls, and great bottles of pink and blue water in the windows! What chance would I have to go back again?"

O'Reilly heard these half-uttered regrets in silence; he well knew that the safest course was to let the feeble brain exhaust its scanty memories without impediment. At length, when the old doctor seemed to have wearied of the theme, he said,--

"If she make allusion to the Dalys, sir, take care not to confess our mistake about that cabin they called 'The Corvy,' and which you remember we discovered that Daly had settled upon his servant. Let Lady Eleanor suppose that we withdrew proceedings out of respect to her."

"I know, I know," said the old man, querulously, for his vanity was wounded by these reiterated instructions.

"It is possible, too, sir, she 'd stand upon the question of rank; if so, say that Heffernan--no, say that Lord Castlereagh will advise the king to confer the baronetcy on the marriage--don't forget that, sir--on the marriage."

"Indeed, then, I'll say nothing about it," said he, with an energy almost startling. "It's that weary baronetcy cost me the loan to Heffernan on his own bare bond; I 'm well sick of it! Seven thousand pounds at five and a half per cent, and no security!"

"I only thought, sir, it might be introduced incidentally," said O'Reilly, endeavoring to calm down this unexpected burst of irritation.

"I tell you I won't. If I'm bothered anymore about that same baronetcy, I 'll make a clause in my will against my heir accepting it How bad you are for the coronet with the two b.a.l.l.s; faix, I remember when the family arms had three of them; ay, and we sported them over the door, too. Eh, Bob, shall I tell her that?"

"I don't suppose it would serve our cause much, sir," said O'Reilly, repressing with difficulty his swelling anger. Then, after a moment, he added, "I could never think of obtruding any advice of mine, sir, but that I half feared you might, in the course of the interview, forget many minor circ.u.mstances, not to speak of the danger that your natural kindliness might expose you to in any compact with a very artful woman of the world."

"Don't be afraid of that anyhow, Bob," said he, with a most hideous grin. "I keep a watchful eye over my natural kindliness, and, to say truth, it has done me mighty little mischief up to this. There, now, leave me quiet and to myself."

When the old man was left alone, his head fell slightly forward, and his hands, clasped together, rested on his breast. His eyes, half closed and downcast, and his scarcely heaving chest, seemed barely to denote life, or at most that species of life in which the senses are steeped in apathy. The grim, hard features, stiffened by years and a stern nature, never moved; the thin, close-drawn lips never once opened; and to any observer the figure might have seemed a lifeless counterfeit of old age.

And yet within that brain, fast yielding to time and infirmity, where reason came and went like the flame of some flickering taper, and where memory brought up objects of dreamy fancy as often as bygone events, even there plot and intrigue held their ground, and all the machinery of deception was at work, suggesting, contriving, and devising wiles that in their complexity were too puzzling for the faculties that originated them. Is there a Nemesis in this, and do the pa.s.sions by which we have swayed and controlled others rise up before us in our weak hours, and become the tyrants of our terror-stricken hearts?

It is not our task, were it even in our power, to trace the strange commingled web of reality and fiction that composed the old man's thoughts. At one time he believed he was supplicating the Knight to accord him some slight favor, as he had done more than once successfully. Then he suddenly remembered their relative stations, so strangely reversed; the colossal fortune he had himself acc.u.mulated; the hopes and ambitions of his son and grandson, whose only impediments to rank and favor lay in himself, the humble origin of all this wealth. How strange and novel did the conviction strike him that all the benefit of his vast riches lay in the pleasure of their acc.u.mulation, that for him fortune had no seductions to offer! Rank, power, munificence, what were they? He never cared for them.

No; it was the game he loved even more than the stake, that tortuous course of policy by which he had outwitted this man and doubled on that.

The schemes skilfully conducted, the plots artfully accomplished,--these he loved to think over; and while he grieved to reflect upon the reckless waste he witnessed in the household of his sou, he felt a secret thrill of delight that he, and he alone, was capable of those rare devices and bold expedients by which such a fortune could be ama.s.sed. Once and only once did any expression of his features sympathize with these ponderings; and then a low, harsh laugh broke suddenly from him, so fleeting that it failed to arouse even himself. It came from the thought that if after his death his son or grandson would endeavor to forget his memory, and have it forgotten by others, that every effort of display, every new evidence of their gorgeous wealth, would as certainly evoke the criticism of the envious world, who, in spite of them, would bring up the "old doctor" once more, and, by the narrative of his life, humble them to the dust.

This desire to bring down to a level with himself those around him had been the pa.s.sion of his existence. For this he had toiled and labored, and struggled through imaginary poverty when possessed of wealth; had endured scoffs and taunts,--had borne everything,--and to this desire could be traced his whole feeling towards the Darcys. It was no happiness to him to be the owner of their princely estate if he did not revel in the reflection that they were in poverty. And this envious feeling he extended to his very son. If now and then a vague thought of the object of his present journey crossed his mind, it was speedily forgotten in the all-absorbing delight of seeing the proud Lady Eleanor humbled before him, and the inevitable affliction the Knight would experience when he learned the success of this last device. That it would succeed he had little doubt; he had come too well prepared with arguments to dread failure. Nay, he thought, he believed he could compel compliance if such were to be needed.

It was in the very midst of these strangely confused musings that the doctor's servant announced to him the arrival of Lady Eleanor Darey.

The old man looked around him on the miserable furniture, the damp, discolored walls, the patched and mended window-panes, and for a moment he could not imagine where he was; the repet.i.tion of the servant's announcement, however, cleared away the cloud from his faculties, and with a slight gesture of his hand he made a sign that she should be admitted. A momentary pause ensued, and he could hear his servant expressing a hope that her Ladyship might not catch cold, as the snow-drift was falling heavily, and the storm very severe. A delay of a few minutes was caused to remove her wet cloak. What a whole story did these two or three seconds reveal to old Hickman as he thought of that Lady Eleanor Darey of whose fastidious elegance the whole "West" was full, whose expensive habits and luxurious tastes had invested her with something like an Oriental reputation for magnificence,--of her coming on foot and alone, through storm and snow, to wait upon him!

He listened eagerly; her footstep was on the stairs, and he heard a low sigh she gave, as, reaching the landing-place, she stood for a moment to recover breath.

"Say Lady Eleanor Darey," said she, unaware that her coming had been already telegraphed to the sick man's chamber.

A faint complaining cry issued from the room as she spoke, and Lady Eleanor said: "Stay! Perhaps Dr. Hickman is too ill; if so, at another time. I 'll come this evening or to-morrow."

"My master is most impatient to see your Ladyship," said the man. "He has talked of nothing else all the morning, and is always asking if it is nigh twelve o'clock."

Lady Eleanor nodded as if to concede her permission, and the servant entered the half-darkened room. A weak, murmuring sound of voices followed; and the servant returned, saying, in a cautious whisper, "He is awake, my Lady, and wishes to see your Ladyship now."

Lady Eleanor's heart beat loudly and painfully; many a sharp pang shot through it, as, with a strong effort to seem calm, she entered.

CHAPTER XXV. A DARK CONSPIRACY

Dr. Hickman was so little prepared for the favorable change in Lady Eleanor's appearance since he had last seen her, as almost to doubt that she was the same, and it was with a slight tremor of voice he said,-- "Is it age with me, my Lady, or altered health, that makes the difference, but you seem to me not what I remember you? You are fresher, pardon an old man's freedom, and I should say far handsomer too!"