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The Black Baronet; or, The Chronicles Of Ballytrain

by William Carleton · English · Gutenberg #16003 · 1,463,944 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: The Black Baronet; or, The Chronicles Of Ballytrain

Author: William Carleton

Illustrator: M. L. Flanery


        
Release date: June 7, 2005 [eBook #16003]
                Most recently updated: March 1, 2018

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/16003

Credits: Produced by David Widger


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE BLACK BARONET; OR, THE CHRONICLES OF BALLYTRAIN ***




Produced by David Widger





THE BLACK BARONET;

OR, THE CHRONICLES OF BALLYTRAIN.


By William Carleton



     CONTENTS:

     CHAPTER

     I.--A Mail Coach by Night, and a Bit
     of Moonshine

     II.--The Town and its Inhabitants

     III.--Paudeen Gair's Receipt how to
     make a Bad Dinner a Good One
     --The Stranger finds Fenton as
     Mysterious as Himself

     IV.--An Anonymous Letter--Lucy Gourlay
     Avows a Previous Attachment

     V.--Sir Thomas Gourlay Fails in Unmasking
     the Stranger--Mysterious Conduct of Fenton

     VI.--Extraordinary Scene between Fenton
     and the Stranger

     VII.--The Baronet attempts by Falsehood
     to urge his Daughter into
     an Avowal of her Lover's Name.

     VIII.--The Fortune-Teller--An Equivocal
     Prediction

     IX. --Candor and Dissimulation

     X. --A Family Dialogue--and a Secret
     nearly Discovered

     XI.--The Stranger's Visit to Father
     MacMahon

     XII.--Crackenfudge Outwitted by Fenton
     --The Baronet, Enraged at
     his Daughter's Firmness, strikes Her

     XIII.--The Stranger's Second Visit to
     Father MacMahon--Something
     like an Elopement

     XIV.--Crackenfudge put upon a Wrong
     Scent--Miss Gourlay takes Refuge
     with an Old Friead

     XV.--Interview between Lady Gourlay
     and the Stranger--Dandy Dulcimer
     makes a Discovery--The
     Stranger Receives Mysterious
     Communications

     XVI.--Conception and Perpetration of a
     Diabolical Plot against Fenton

     XVII.--A Scene in Jemmy Trailcudgel's
     --Retributive Justice, or the Robber
     Robbed

     XVIII. --Dunphy visits the County Wicklow
     --Old Sam and his Wife

     XIX.--Interview between Trailcudgel
     and the Stranger--A Peep at
     Lord Dunroe and his Friend

     XX.--Interview between Lords Cullamore,
     Dunroe, and Lady Emily
     --Tom Norton's Aristocracy
     fails him--His Reception by
     Lord Cullamore

     XXI.--A Spy Rewarded--Sir Thomas
     Gourlay Charged Home by the
     Stranger with, the Removal and
     Disappearance of his Brother's Son

     XXII.--Lucy at.Summerfield Cottage

     XXIII.-- A Lunch in Summerfield Cottage.

     XXIV.--An Irish Watchhouse in the time
     of the “Charlies”

     XXV.--The Police Office -- Sir Spigot
     Sputter and Mr. Coke--An “Unfortunate
     Translator--Decision in “a Law Case”

     XXVI.-- The Priest Returns Sir Thomas's
     Money and Pistols--A Bit of
     Controversy--A New Light Begins
     to Appear

     XXVII. --Sir Thomas, who Shams Illness,
     is too sharp for Mrs. Mainwaring,
     who visits Him--Lucy calls upon
     Lady Gourlay, where she meets her
     Lover--Affecting Interview between
     Lucy and Lady Gourlay

     XXVIII.--Innocence and Affection
     overcome by Fraud and Hypocrisy--Lucy
     yields at Last

     XXIX.--Lord Dunroe's Affection for his
     Father--Glimpse of a new Character
     --Lord Cullamore's Rebuke to his Son,
     who greatly Refuses to give up his Friend

     XXX.--A Courtship on Novel Principles

     XXXI.--The Priest goes into Corbet's
     House very like a Thief--a Sederunt,
     with a Bright look up for Mr. Gray

     XXXII.--Discovery of the Baronet's Son
     --Who, however, is Shelved for a Time

     XXXIII.--The Priest asks for a Loan of
     Fifty Guineas, and Offers “Freney
     the Robber” as Security

     XXXIV.--Young Gourlay's Affectionate
     Interview with His Father--Risk
     of Strangulation -- Movements
     of M'Bride

     XXXV.--Lucy's Vain but Affecting
     Expostulation with her Father--Her
     Terrible Denunciation of
     Ambrose Gray

     XXXVI.--Which contains a variety of
     Matters, some to Laugh and some
     to Weep at

     XXXVII.--Dandy's Visit to Summerfield
     Cottage, where he Makes a most Ungallant
     Mistake -- Return with Tidings of both
     Mrs. Norton and Fenton--and Generously
     Patronizes his Master

     XXXVIII.--Anthony Corbet gives Important
     Documents to the Stranger--An
     Unpleasant Disclosure to Dunroe
     --Norton catches a Tartar

     XXXIX.--Fenton Recovered--The Mad-House

     XL.--Lady Gourlay sees her Son

     XLI.--Denouement





PREFACE.


The incidents upon which this book is founded seem to be extraordinary
and startling, but they are true; for, as Byron says, and as we all
know, “Truth is strange--stranger than Fiction.” Mr. West, brother to
the late member from Dublin, communicated them to me exactly as they
occurred, and precisely as he communicated them, have I given them
to the reader, at least, as far as I can depend upon my memory. With
respect, however, to his facts, they related only to the family which is
shadowed forth under the imaginary name of Gourlay; those connected with
the aristocratic house of Cullamore, I had from another source, and they
are equally authentic. The Lord Dunroe, son to the Earl of Cullamore, is
not many years dead, and there are thousands still living, who can bear
testimony to the life of profligacy and extravagance, which, to the very
last day of his existence, he persisted in leading. That his father was
obliged to get an act of Parliament passed to legitimize his children,
is a fact also pretty well known to many.

At first, I had some notion of writing a distinct story upon each class
of events, but, upon more mature consideration, I thought it better to
construct such a one as would enable me to work them both up into the
same narrative; thus contriving that the incidents of the one house
should be connected with those of the other, and the interest of both
deepened, not only by their connection, but their contrast. It is
unnecessary to say, that the prototypes of the families who appear upon
the stage in the novel, were, in point of fact, personally unknown
to each other, unless, probably, by name, inasmuch as they resided
in different and distant parts of the kingdom. They were, however,
contemporaneous. Such circumstances, nevertheless, matter very little
to the novelist, who can form for his characters whatsoever connections,
whether matrimonial or otherwise, he may deem most proper; and of this,
he must be considered himself as the sole, though probably not the best,
judge. The name of Red Hall, the residence of Sir Thomas Gourlay, is
purely fictitious, but not the description of it, which applies very
accurately to a magnificent family mansion not a thousand miles from
the thriving little town of Ballygawley. Since the first appearance,
however, of the work, I have accidentally discovered, from James
Frazer's admirable. “Hand-book for Ireland,” the best and most correct
work of the kind ever published, and the only one that can be relied
upon, that there actually is a residence named Red Hall in my own native
county of Tyrone. I mention this, lest the respectable family to whom it
belongs might take offence at my having made it the ancestral property
of such a man as Sir Thomas Gourlay, or the scene of his crimes and
outrages. On this point, I beg to assure them that the coincidence of
the name is purely accidental, and that, when I wrote the novel, I had
not the slightest notion that such a place actually existed. Some of
those coincidences are very odd and curious. For instance, it so happens
that there is at this moment a man named Dunphy actually residing on
Constitution Hill, and engaged in the very same line of life which I
have assigned to one of my principal characters of that name in the
novel, that of a huckster; yet of this circumstance I knew nothing. The
titles of Cullamore and Dunroe are taken from two hills, one greater
than the other, and not far asunder, in my native parish; and I have
heard it said, by the people of that neighborhood, that Sir William
Richardson, father to the late amiable Sir James Richardson Bunbury,
when expecting at the period of the Union to receive a coronet instead
of a baronetcy, had made his mind up to select either one or the other
of them as the designation of his rank.

I think I need scarcely assure my readers that old Sam Roberts, the
retired soldier, is drawn from life; and I may add, that I have scarcely
done the fine old fellow and his fine old wife sufficient justice. They
were two of the most amiable and striking originals I ever met. Both
are now dead, but I remember Sam to have been for many years engaged in
teaching the sword exercise in some of the leading schools in and about
Dublin. He ultimately gave this up, however, having been appointed to
some comfortable situation in the then Foundling Hospital, where his
Beck died, and he, poor fellow, did not, I have heard, long survive her.

Owing to painful and peculiar circumstances, with which it would be
impertinent to trouble the reader, there were originally only five
hundred copies of this work published. The individual for whom it was
originally written, but who had no more claim upon it than the Shah
of Persia, misrepresented me, or rather calumniated me, so grossly to
Messrs. Saunders & Otley, who published it, that he prevailed upon them
to threaten me with criminal proceedings for having disposed of my own
work, and I accordingly received an attorney's letter, affording me
that very agreeable intimation. Of course they soon found they had been
misled, and that it would have been not only an unparalleled outrage,
but a matter attended with too much danger, and involving too severe a
penalty to proceed in. Little I knew or suspected at the time, however,
that the sinister and unscrupulous delusions which occasioned me and
my family so much trouble, vexation, and embarrassment, were only the
foreshadowings of that pitiable and melancholy malady which not long
afterwards occasioned the unhappy man to be placed apart from society,
which, it is to be feared, he is never likely to rejoin. I allude to
those matters, not only to account for the limited number of the work
that was printed, but to satisfy those London publishers to whom the
individual in question so foully misrepresented me, that my conduct in
every transaction I have had with booksellers has been straightforward,
just, and honorable, and that I can publicly make this assertion,
without the slightest apprehension of being contradicted. That the book
was cushioned in this country, I am fully aware, and this is all I
shall say upon that part of the subject. Indeed it was never properly
published at all--never advertised--never reviewed, and, until now, lay
nearly in as much obscurity as if it had been still in manuscript. A few
copies of it got into circulating libraries, but, in point of fact,
it was never placed before the public at all. What-ever be its merits,
however, it is now in the hands of a gentleman who will do it justice,
if it fails, the fault will not at least be his.

My object in writing the book was to exhibit, in contrast, three of the
most powerful passions that can agitate the human heart--I mean love,
ambition, and revenge. To contrive the successive incidents, by which
the respective individuals on whose characters they were to operate
should manifest their influence with adequate motives, and without
departing from actual life and nature, as we observe them in action
about us, was a task which required a very close study of the human mind
when placed in peculiar circumstances. In this case the great struggle
was between love and ambition. By ambition, I do not mean the ambition
of the truly great man, who wishes to associate it with truth and
virtue, and whose object is, in the first place, to gratify it by
elevating his country and his kind; no, but that most hateful species
of it which exists in the contrivance and working out of family
arrangements and insane projects for the aggrandizement of our
offspring, under circumstances where we must know that they cannot be
accomplished without wrecking the happiness of those to whom they are
proposed. Such a passion, in its darkest aspect--and in this I
have drawn it--has nothing more in view than the cruel, selfish
and undignified object of acquiring some poor and paltry title
or distinction for a son or daughter, without reference either to
inclination or will, and too frequently in opposition to both. It
is like introducing a system of penal laws into domestic life, and
establishing the tyranny of a moral despot among the affections of the
heart. Sometimes, especially in the case of an only child, this ambition
grows to a terrific size, and its miserable victim acts with all the
unconscious violence of a monomaniac.

In Sir Thomas Gourlay, the reader will perceive that it became the great
and engrossing object of his life, and that its violence was strong in
proportion to that want of all moral restraint, which resulted from
the creed of an infidel and sceptic. And I may say here, that it was my
object to exhibit occasionally the gloomy agonies and hollow delusions
of the latter, as the hard and melancholy system on which he based
his cruel and unsparing ambition. His character was by far the most
difficult to manage. Love has an object; and, in this case, in the
person of Lucy Gourlay it had a reasonable and a noble one. Revenge has
an object; and in the person of Anthony Corbet, or Dunphy, it also
had, according to the unchristian maxims of life, an unusually strong
argument on which to work and sustain itself. But, as for Sir Thomas
Gourlay's mad ambition, I felt that, considering his sufficiently
elevated state of life, I could only compensate for its want of all
rational design, by making him scorn and reject the laws both civil and
religious by which human society is regulated, and all this because he
had blinded his eyes against the traces of Providence, rather than take
his own heart to task for its ambition. Had he been a Christian, I
do not think he could have acted as he did. He shaped his own creed,
however, and consequently, his own destiny. In Lady Edward Gourlay, I
have endeavored to draw such a character as only the true and obedient
Christian can present; and in that of his daughter, a girl endowed with
the highest principles, the best heart, and the purest sense of honor--a
woman who would have been precisely such a character as Lady Gourlay
was, had she lived longer and been subjected to the same trials.
Throughout the whole work, however, I trust that I have succeeded in
the purity and loftiness of the moral, which was to show the pernicious
effects of infidelity and scepticism, striving to sustain and justify an
insane ambition; or, in a word, I endeavored

     “To vindicate the ways of God to man.”

A literary friend of mine told me, a few days ago, that the poet
Massinger had selected the same subject for his play of. “A New Way to
pay Old Debts,” the same in which Sir Giles Overreach is the prominent
character. I ought to feel ashamed to say, as I did say, in reply
to this, that I never read the play alluded to, nor a single line of
Massinger's works; neither have I ever seen Sir Giles Overreach even
upon the stage. If, then, there should appear any resemblance in the
scope or conduct of the play or novel, or in the character of Sir
Thomas Gourlay and Overreach, I cannot be charged either with theft or
imitation, as I am utterly ignorant of the play and of the character of
Sir Giles Overreach alluded to.

I fear I have dwelt much too long on this subject, and I shall therefore
close it by a short anecdote.

Some months ago I chanced to read a work--I think by an American
writer--called, as well as I can recollect, “The Reminiscences of
a late Physician.” I felt curious to read the book, simply because I
thought that the man who could, after, “The Diary of a late Physician,”
 come out with a production so named, must possess at the least either
very great genius or the most astounding assurance. Well, I went on
perusing the work, and found almost at once that it was what is called a
catchpenny, and depended altogether, for its success, upon the fame and
reputation of its predecessor of nearly the same name. I saw the trick
at once, and bitterly regretted that I, in common I suppose with others,
had been taken in and bit. Judge of my astonishment, however, when, as I
proceeded to read the description of an American lunatic asylum, I found
it to be _literatim et verbatim_ taken--stolen--pirated--sentence by
sentence and page by page, from my own description of one in the third
volume of the first edition of this book, and which I myself took from
close observation, when, some years ago, accompanied by Dr. White, I was
searching in the Grangegorman Lunatic Asylum and in Swift's for a case
of madness arising from disappointment in love. I was then writing.
“Jane Sinclair,” and to the honor of the sex, I have to confess that
in neither of those establishments, nor any others either in or about
Dublin, could I find such a case. Here, however, in the Yankee's book,
there were neither inverted commas, nor the slightest acknowledgment of
the source from which the unprincipled felon had stolen it.

With respect to mad-houses, especially as they were conducted up until
within the last thirty years, I must say with truth, that if every fact
originating in craft, avarice, oppression, and the most unscrupulous
ambition for family wealth and hereditary rank, were known, such a dark
series of crime and cruelty would come to light as time public mind
could scarcely conceive--nay, as would shock humanity itself. Nor has
this secret system altogether departed from us. It is not long since
the police offices developed some facts rather suspicious, and pretty
plainly impressed with the stamp of the old practice. The Lunatic
Commission is now at work, and I trust it will not confine its
investigations merely to public institutions of that kind, but will,
if it possess authority to do so, strictly and rigidly examine every
private asylum for lunatics in the kingdom.

Of one other character, Ginty Cooper, I have a word to say. Any person
acquainted with the brilliant and classical little capital of Cultra,
lying on the confines of Monaghan and Cavan, will not fail to recognize
the remains of grace and beatty, which once characterized that
celebrated, and well-known individual.

With respect to the watch-house scene, and that in the police office,
together with the delineation of the. “Old Charlies,” as the guardians
of the night were then called; to which I may add the portraits of the
two magistrates; I can confidently refer to thousands now alive for
their truth. Those matters took place long before our present admirable
body of metropolitan police were established. At that period, the police
magistracies were bestowed, in most cases, from principles by no means
in opposition to the public good, and not, as now, upon gentlemen
perfectly free from party bias, and well qualified for that difficult
office by legal knowledge, honorable feeling, and a strong sense of
public duty, impartial justice, and humanity.

W Carleton.

(Dublin, October 26, 1857.)




CHAPTER I. A Mail-coach by Night, and a Bit of Moonshine.


It has been long observed, that every season sent by the Almighty has
its own peculiar beauties; yet, although this is felt to be universally
true--just as we know the sun shines, or that we cannot breathe without
air--still we are all certain that even the same seasons have brief
periods when these beauties are more sensibly felt, and diffuse a
more vivid spirit of enjoyment through all our faculties. Who has not
experienced the gentle and serene influence of a calm spring evening?
and perhaps there is not in the whole circle of the seasons anything
more delightful than the exquisite emotion with which a human heart,
not hardened by vice, or contaminated by intercourse with the world, is
softened into tenderness and a general love for the works of God, by the
pure spirit which breathes of holiness, at the close of a fine evening
in the month of March or April.

The season of spring is, in fact, the resurrection of nature to life and
happiness. Who does not remember the delight with which, in early youth,
when existence is a living poem, and all our emotions sanctify the
spirit-like inspiration--the delight, we say, with which our eye rested
upon a primrose or a daisy for the first time? And how many a long and
anxious look have we ourselves given at the peak of Knockmany, morning
after morning, that we might be able to announce, with an exulting
heart, the gratifying and glorious fact, that the snow had disappeared
from it--because we knew that then spring must have come! And that
universal song of the lark, which fills the air with music; how can we
forget the bounding joy with which our young heart drank it in as we
danced in ecstacy across the fields? Spring, in fact, is the season
dearest to the recollection of man, inasmuch as it is associated with
all that is pure, and innocent, and beautiful, in the transient annals
of his early life. There is always a mournful and pathetic spirit
mingled with our remembrances of it, which resembles the sorrow that we
feel for some beloved individual whom death withdrew from our affections
at that period of existence when youth had nearly completed its allotted
limits, and the promising manifestations of all that was virtuous
and good were filling the parental hearts with the happy hopes which
futurity held out to them. As the heart, we repeat, of such a parent
goes back to brood over the beloved memory of the early lost, so do
our recollections go back, with mingled love and sorrow, to the tender
associations of spring, which may, indeed, be said to perish and pass
away in its youth.

These reflections have been occasioned, first, by the fact that its
memory and associations are inexpressibly dear to ourselves; and,
secondly, because it is toward the close of this brief but beautiful
period of the year that our chronicles date their commencement.

One evening, in the last week of April, a coach called the “Fly” stopped
to change horses at a small village in a certain part of Ireland, which,
for the present, shall be nameless. The sun had just sunk behind the
western hills; but those mild gleams which characterize his setting at
the close of April, had communicated to the clouds that peculiarly soft
and golden tint, on which the eye loves to rest, but from which its
light was now gradually fading. When fresh horses had been put to, a
stranger, who had previously seen two large trunks secured on the
top, in a few minutes took his place beside the guard, and the coach
proceeded.

“Guard,” he inquired, after they had gone a couple of miles from the
village, “I am quite ignorant of the age of the moon. When shall we have
moonlight?”

“Not till it's far in the night, sir.”

“The coach passes through the town of Ballytrain, does it not?”

“It does, sir.”

“At what hour do we arrive there?”

“About half-past three in the morning sir.”

The stranger made no reply, but cast his eyes over the aspect of the
surrounding country.

The night was calm, warm, and balmy. In the west, where the sun had
gone down, there could still be noticed the faint traces of that subdued
splendor with which he sets in spring. The stars were up, and the whole
character of the sky and atmosphere was full of warmth, and softness,
and hope. As the eye stretched across a country that seemed to be rich
and well cultivated, it felt that dream-like charm of dim romance, which
visible darkness throws over the face of nature, and which invests
her groves, her lordly mansions, her rich campaigns, and her white
farm-houses, with a beauty that resembles the imagery of some delicious
dream, more than the realities of natural scenery.

On passing along, they could observe the careless-looking farmer driving
home his cows to be milked and put up for the night; whilst, further
on, they passed half-a-dozen cars returning home, some empty and
some loaded, from a neighboring fair or market, their drivers in high
conversation--a portion of them in friendship, some in enmity, and
in general all equally disposed, in consequence of their previous
libations, to either one or the other. Here they meet a solitary
traveler, fatigued and careworn, carrying a bundle slung over his
shoulder on the point of a stick, plodding his weary way to the next
village. Anon they were passed by a couple of gentlemen-farmers or
country squires, proceeding at a brisk trot upon their stout cobs or
bits of half-blood, as the case might be; and, by and by, a spanking
gig shoots rapidly ahead of them, driven by a smart-looking servant in
murrey-colored livery, who looks back with a sneer of contempt as he
wheels round a corner, and leaves the plebeian vehicle far behind him.

As for the stranger, he took little notice of those whom they met, be
their rank of position in life what it might; his eye was seldom off the
country on each side of him as they went along. It is true, when they
passed a village or small market-town, he glanced into the houses as
if anxious to ascertain the habits and comforts of the humbler classes.
Sometimes he could catch a glimpse of them sitting around a basket of
potatoes and salt, their miserable-looking faces lit by the dim light
of a rush-candle into the ghastly paleness of spectres. Again, he
could catch glimpses of greater happiness; and if, on the one hand, the
symptoms of poverty and distress were visible, on the other there was
the jovial comfort of the wealthy farmer's house, with the loud laughter
of its contented inmates. Nor must we omit the songs which streamed
across the fields, in the calm stillness of the hour, intimating that
they who sang them were in possession, at all events, of light, if not
of happy hearts.

As the night advanced, however, all these sounds began gradually to die
away. Nature and labor required the refreshment of rest, and, as the
coach proceeded at its steady pace, the varied evidences of waking life
became few and far between. One after another the lights, both near and
at a distance, disappeared. The roads became silent and solitary, and
the villages, as they passed through them, were sunk in repose, unless,
perhaps, where some sorrowing family were kept awake by the watchings
that were necessary at the bed of sickness or death, as was evident by
the melancholy steadiness of the lights, or the slow, cautious motion by
which they glided from one apartment to another.

The moon had now been for some time up, and the coach had just crossed a
bridge that was known to be exactly sixteen miles from the town of which
the stranger had made inquiries.

“I think,” said the latter, addressing the guard, “we are about sixteen
miles from Ballytrain.”

“You appear to know the neighborhood, sir,” replied the guard.

“I have asked you a question, sir,” replied the other, somewhat
sternly, “and, instead of answering it, you ask me another.”

“I beg your pardon, sir,” replied the guard, smiling, “it's the
custom of the country. Yes, sir, we're exactly sixteen miles from
Ballytrain--that bridge is the mark. It's a fine country, sir, from this
to that--”

“Now, my good fellow,” replied the stranger, “I ask it as a particular
favor that you will not open your lips to me until we reach the town,
unless I ask you a question. On that condition I will give you a
half-a-crown when we get there.”

The fellow put his hand to his lips, to hint that he was mute, and
nodded, but spoke not a word, and the coach proceeded in silence.

To those who have a temperament fraught with poetry or feeling, there
can be little doubt that to pass, of a calm, delightful spring night,
under a clear, starry sky, and a bright moon, through a country
eminently picturesque and beautiful, must be one of those enjoyments
which fill the heart with a memory that lasts forever. But when we
suppose that a person, whose soul is tenderly alive to the influence of
local affections, and, who, when absent, has brooded in sorrow over the
memory of his native hills and valleys, his lakes and mountains--the
rivers, where he hunted the otter and snared the trout, and who has
never revisited them, even in his dreams, without such strong emotions
as caused him to wake with his eyelashes steeped in tears--when such a
person, full of enthusiastic affection and a strong imagination,
returns to his native place after a long absence, under the peculiar
circumstances which we are describing, we need not feel surprised that
the heart of the stranger was filled with such a conflicting tumult of
feelings and recollections as it is utterly impossible to portray.

From the moment the coach passed the bridge we have alluded to, every
hill, and residence, and river, and lake, and meadow, was familiar to
him, and he felt such an individual love and affection for them, as
if they had been capable of welcoming and feeling the presence of the
light-hearted boy, whom they had so often made happy.

In the gairish eye of day, the contemplation of this exquisite landscape
would have been neither so affecting to the heart, nor so beautiful
to the eye. He, the stranger, had not seen it for years, except in his
dreams, and now he saw it in reality, invested with that ideal beauty in
which fancy had adorned it in those visions of the night. The river, as
it gleamed dimly, according as it was lit by the light of the moon,
and the lake, as it shone with pale but visionary beauty, possessed an
interest which the light of day would never have given them. The light,
too, which lay on the sleeping groves, and made the solitary church
spires, as they went along, visible, in dim, but distant beauty, and the
clear outlines of his own mountains, unchanged and unchangeable--all,
all crowded from the force of the recollections with which they were
associated, upon his heart, and he laid himself back, and, for some
minutes, wept tears that were at once both sweet and bitter.

In proportion as they advanced toward the town of Ballytrain, the
stranger imagined that the moon shed a diviner radiance over the
surrounding country; but this impression was occasioned by the fact that
its aspect was becoming, every mile they proceeded, better and better
known to him. At length they came to a long but gradual elevation in
the road, and the stranger knew that, on reaching its eminence, he could
command a distinct view of the magnificent valley on which his native
parish lay. He begged of the coachman to stop for half a minute, and the
latter did so. The scene was indeed unrivalled. All that constitutes a
rich and cultivated country, with bold mountain scenery in the distance,
lay stretched before him. To the right wound, in dim but silver-like
beauty, a fine river, which was lost to the eye for a considerable
distance in the wood of Gallagh. To the eye of the stranger, every scene
and locality was distinct beyond belief, simply because they were
lit up, not only by the pale light of the moon, but by the purer and
stronger light of his own early affections and memories.

Now it was, indeed, that his eye caught in, at a glance, all those
places and objects that had held their ground so strongly and firmly in
his heart. The moon, though sinking, was brilliant, and the cloudless
expanse of heaven seemed to reflect her light, whilst, at the same time,
the shadows that projected from the trees, houses, and other elevated
objects, were dark and distinct in proportion to the flood of mild
effulgence which poured down upon them from the firmament. Let not
our readers hesitate to believe us when we say, that the heart of the
stranger felt touched with a kind of melancholy happiness as he passed
through their very shadows--proceeding, as they did, from objects that
he had looked upon as the friends of his youth, before life had opened
to him the dark and blotted pages of suffering and sorrow. There, dimly
shining to the right below him, was the transparent river in which he
had taken many a truant plunge, and a little further on he could see
without difficulty the white cascade tumbling down the precipice, and
mark its dim scintillations, that looked, under the light of the
moon, like masses of shivered ice, were it not that such a notion was
contradicted by the soft dash and continuous murmur of its waters.

But where was the gray mill, and the large white dwelling of the miller?
and that new-looking mansion on the elevation--it was not there in
his time, nor several others that he saw around him; and, hold--what
sacrilege is this? The coach is not upon the old road--not on that with
every turn and winding of which the light foot of his boyhood was
so familiar! What, too! the school-house down--its very foundations
razed--its light-hearted pupils, some dead, others dispersed, its master
in the dust, and its din, bustle, and monotonous murmur--all banished
and gone, like the pageantry of a dream. Such, however, is life; and
he who, on returning to his birthplace after an absence of many years,
expects to find either the country or its inhabitants as he left
them, will experience, in its most painful sense, the bitterness of
disappointment. Let every such individual prepare himself for the
consequences of death, change, and desolation.

At length the coach drove into Ballytrain, and, in a few minutes, the
passengers found themselves opposite to the sign of the Mitre, which
swung over the door of the principal inn of that remarkable town.

“Sir,” said the guard, addressing the stranger, “I think I have kept my
word.”

The latter, without making any reply, dropped five shillings into his
hand; but, in the course of a few minutes--for the coach changed horses
there--he desired him to call the waiter or landlord, or any one to whom
he could intrust his trunks until morning.

“You are going to stop in the 'Mithre,' sir, of course,” said the guard,
inquiringly.

The traveler nodded assent, and, having seen his luggage taken into the
inn, and looking, for a moment, at the town, proceeded along the shadowy
side of the main street, and, instead of seeking his bed, had, in a
short time, altogether vanished, and in a manner that was certainly
mysterious, nor did he make his appearance again until noon on the
following day.

It may be as well to state here that he was a man of about thirty,
somewhat above the middle size, and, although not clumsy, yet, on being
closely scanned, he appeared beyond question to be very compact, closely
knit, well-proportioned, and muscular. Of his dress, however, we must
say, that it was somewhat difficult to define, or rather to infer from
it whether he was a gentleman or not, or to what rank or station of life
he belonged. His hair was black and curled; his features regular; and
his mouth and nose particularly aristocratic; but that which constituted
the most striking feature of his face was a pair of black eyes, which
kindled or became mellow according to the emotions by which he happened
to be influenced.

“My good lad,” said he to “Boots,” after his return, “Will you send me
the landlord?”

“I can't, sir,” replied the other, “he's not at home.”

“Well, then, have the goodness to send me the waiter.”

“I will, sir,” replied the monkey, leaving the room with an evident
feeling of confident alacrity.

Almost immediately a good-looking girl, with Irish features, brown hair,
and pretty blue eyes, presented herself.

“Well, sir,” she said, in an interrogative tone.

“Why,” said the stranger, “I believe it is impossible to come at any
member of this establishment; I wish to see the waiter.”

“I'm the waiter, sir,” she replied, with an unconscious face.

“The deuce you are!” he exclaimed; “however,” he added, recovering
himself, “I cannot possibly wish for a better. It is very likely that I
may stay with you for some time--perhaps a few months. Will you see now
that a room and bed are prepared for me, and that my trunks are put into
my own apartment? Get a fire into my sitting-room and bedchamber. Let
my bed be well aired; and see that everything is done cleanly and
comfortably, will you?”

“Sartinly, sir, an' I hope we won't lave you much to complain of. As for
the sheets, wait till you try them. The wild myrtles of Drumgau, beyant
the demesne 'isliout, is foulded in them; an' if the smell of them won't
make you think yourself in Paradise, 'tisn't my fault.”

The stranger, on looking at her somewhat more closely, saw that she
was an exceedingly neat, tight, clean-looking young woman, fair and
youthful.

“Have you been long in the capacity of waiter, here.” he asked.

“No, sir,” she replied; “about six months.”

“Do you never keep male waiters in this establishment,” he inquired.

“Oh, yes, sir; Paudeen Gair and I generally act week about. This is my
week, sir, an' he's at the plough.”

“And where have you been at service before you came here, my good girl?”

“In Sir Thomas Gourlay's, sir.”

The stranger could not prevent himself from starting.

“In Sir Thomas Gourlay's!” he exclaimed. “And pray in what capacity were
you there?”

“I was own maid to Miss Gourlay, sir.”

“To Miss Gourlay! and how did you come to leave your situation with
her?”

“When I find you have a right to ask, sir,” she replied, “I will tell
you; but not till then.”

“I stand reproved, my good girl,” he said; “I have indeed no right to
enter into such inquiries; but I trust I have for those that are more to
the purpose. What have you for dinner?”

“Fish, flesh, and fowl, sir,” she replied, with a peculiar smile, “and a
fine fat buck from the deer-park.”

“Well, now,” said he, “that really promises well--indeed it is more than
I expected--you had no quarrel, I hope, at parting? I beg your pardon--a
fat buck, you say. Come, I will have a slice of that.”

“Very well, sir,” she replied; “what else would you wish?”

“To know, my dear, whether Sir Thomas is as severe upon her
as--ahem!--anything at all you like--I'm not particular--only don't
forget a slice of the buck, out of the haunch, my dear; and, whisper, as
you and I are likely to become better acquainted--all in a civil way,
of course--here is a trifle of earnest, as a proof that, if you be
attentive, I shall not be ungenerous.”

“I don't know,” she replied, shaking her head, and hesitating; “you're a
sly-looking gentleman--and, if I thought that you had any--”

“Design, you would say,” he replied; “no--none, at any rate, that is
improper; it is offered in a spirit of good-will and honor, and in such
you may fairly accept of it. So,” he added, as he dropped the money into
her hand, “Sir Thomas insisted that you should go? Hem!--hem!”

The girl started in her turn, and exclaimed, with a good deal of
surprise:

“Sir Thomas insisted! How did you come to know that, sir? I tould you
no such thing.”

“Certainly, my dear, you--a--a--hem--did you not say something to that
effect? Perhaps, however,” he added, apprehensive lest he might have
alarmed, or rather excited her suspicions--“perhaps I was mistaken. I
only imagined, I suppose, that you said something to that effect; but it
does not matter--I have no intimacy with the Gourlays, I assure you--I
think that is what you call them--and none at all with Sir Thomas--is
not that his name? Goodby now; I shall take a walk through the town--how
is this you name it? Ballytrain, I think--and return at five, when I
trust you will have dinner ready.”

He then put on his hat, and sauntered out, apparently to view the town
and its environs, fully satisfied that, in consequence of his having
left it when a boy, and of the changes which time and travel had wrought
in his appearance, no living individual there could possibly recognize
him.




CHAPTER II. The Town and its Inhabitants.


The town itself contained about six thousand inhabitants, had a church,
a chapel, a meeting-house, and also a place of worship for those who
belonged to the Methodist connection, It was nearly half a mile long,
lay nearly due north and south, and ran up an elevation or slight hill,
and down again on the other side, where it tapered away into a string of
cabins. It is scarcely necessary to say that it contained a main street,
three or four with less pretensions, together with a tribe of those vile
alleys which consist of a double row of beggarly cabins, or huts, facing
each other, and lying so closely, that a tall man might almost stand
with a foot on the threshold of each, or if in the middle, that is
half-way between them, he might, were he so inclined, and without moving
to either side, shake hands with the inhabitants on his right and left.
To the left, as you went up from the north, and nearly adjoining the
cathedral church, which faced you, stood a bishop's palace, behind which
lay a magnificent demesne. At that time, it is but just to say that
the chimneys of this princely residence were never smokeless, nor its
saloons silent and deserted as they are now, and have been for years.
No, the din of industry was then incessant in and about the offices of
that palace, and the song of many a light heart and happy spirit rang
sweetly in the valleys, on the plains and hills, and over the meadows
of that beautiful demesne, with its noble deer-park stretching up to the
heathy hills behind it. Many a time, when a school-boy, have we mounted
the demesne wall in question, and contemplated its meadows, waving under
the sunny breeze, together with the long strings of happy mowers, the
harmonious swing of whose scythes, associated with the cheerful noise
of their whetting, caused the very heart within us to kindle with such a
sense of pure and early enjoyment as does yet, and ever will, constitute
a portion of our best and happiest recollections.

At the period of which we write it mattered little whether the prelate
who possessed it resided at home or not. If he did not, his family
generally did; but, at all events, during their absence, or during their
residence, constant employment was given, every working-day in the year,
to at least one hundred happy and contented poor from a neighboring and
dependent village, every one of whom was of the Roman Catholic creed.

I have stood, not long ago, upon a beautiful elevation in that demesne,
and, on looking around me, I saw nothing but a deserted and gloomy
country. The happy village was gone--razed to the very foundations--the
demesne was a solitude--the songs of the reapers and mowers had
vanished, as it were, into the recesses of memory, and the magnificent
palace, dull and lonely, lay as if it were situated in some land of the
dead, where human voice or footstep had not been heard for years.

The stranger, who had gone out to view the town, found, during that
survey, little of this absence of employment, and its consequent
destitution, to disturb him. Many things, it is true, both in the town
and suburbs, were liable to objection.

Abundance there was; but, in too many instances, he could see, at a
glance, that it was accompanied by unclean and slovenly habits, and that
the processes of husbandry and tillage were disfigured by old
usages, that were not only painful to contemplate, but disgraceful to
civilization.

The stranger was proceeding down the town, when he came in contact with
a ragged, dissipated-looking young man, who had, however, about him the
evidences of having seen better days. The latter touched his hat to him,
and observed, “You seem to be examining our town, sir?”

“Pray, what is your name?” inquired the stranger, without seeming to
notice the question.

“Why, for the present, sir,” he replied, “I beg to insinuate that I am
rather under a cloud; and, if you have no objection, would prefer to
remain anonymous, or to preserve my incognito, as they say, for some
time longer.”

“Have you no alias, by which you may be known?”

“Unquestionably, an alias I have,” replied the other; “for as to passing
through life, in the broad, anonymous sense, without some token to
distinguish you by, the thing, to a man like me, is impossible. I am
consequently known as Frank Fenton, a name I borrowed from a former
friend of mine, an old school-fellow, who, while he lived, was, like
myself, a bit of an original in his way. How do you like our town, sir,”
 he added, changing the subject.

“I have seen too little of it,” replied the stranger, “to judge. Is this
your native town, Mr. Fenton,” he added.

“No, sir; not my native town,” replied Fenton; “but I have resided here
from hand to mouth long enough to know almost every individual in the
barony at large.”

During this dialogue, the stranger eyed Fenton, as he called himself,
very closely; in fact, he watched every feature of his with a degree of
curiosity and doubt that was exceedingly singular.

“Have you, sir, been here before.” asked Fenton; “or is this your first
visit?”

“It is not my first visit,” replied the other; “but it is likely I shall
reside here for some months.”

“For the benefit of your health, I presume,” asked modest Frank.

“My good friend,” replied the stranger, “I wish to make an observation.
It is possible, I say, that I may remain here for some months; now,
pray, attend, and mark me--whenever you and I chance, on any future
occasion, to meet, it is to be understood between us that you are to
answer me in anything I ask, which you know, and I to answer you in
nothing, unless I wish it.”

“Thank you, sir,” he replied, with a low and not ungraceful bow; “that's
a compliment all to the one side, like Clogher.” *

     * The proverb is pretty general throughout Tyrone. The town
     of Clogher consists of only a single string of houses.

“Very well,” returned the stranger; “I have something to add, in order
to make this arrangement more palatable to you.”

“Hold, sir,” replied the other; “before you proceed further, you must
understand me. I shall pledge myself under no terms--and I care not what
they may be--to answer any question that may throw light upon my own
personal identity, or past history.”

“That will not be necessary,” replied the stranger.

“What do you mean, sir,” asked Fenton, starting; “do you mean to hint
that you know me?”

“Nonsense,” said the other; “how could I know a man whom I never saw
before? No; it is merely concerning the local history of Ballytrain and
its inhabitants that I am speaking.”

There was a slight degree of dry irony, however, on his face, as he
spoke.

“Well,” said the other, “in the mean time, I don't see why I am to
comply with a condition so dictatorially laid down by a person of whom I
know nothing.”

“Why, the truth is,” said our strange friend, “that you are evidently a
lively and intelligent fellow, not badly educated; I think--and, as it
is likely that you have no very direct connection with the inhabitants
of the town and surrounding country, I take it for granted that, in the
way of mere amusement, you may be able to--”

“Hem! I see--to give you all the scandal of the place for miles about;
that is what you would say? and so I can. But suppose a spark of the
gentleman should--should--but come, hang it, that is gone, hopelessly
gone. What is your wish?”

“In the first place, to see you better clothed. Excuse me--and, if I
offend you, say so--but it is not my wish to say anything that might
occasion you pain. Are you given to liquor?”

“Much oftener than liquor is given to me, I assure you; it is my meat,
drink, washing, and lodging--without it I must die. And, harkee, now;
when I meet a man I like, and who, after all, has a touch of humanity
and truth about him, to such a man, I say, I myself am all truth, at
whatever cost; but to every other--to your knave, your hypocrite, or
your trimmer, for instance, all falsehood--deep, downright, wanton
falsehood. In fact, I would scorn to throw away truth upon them.

“You are badly dressed.”

“Ah! after all, how little is known of the human heart and character!”
 exclaimed Fenton. “The subject of dress and the associations connected
with it have all been effaced from my mind and feelings for years. So
long as we are capable of looking to our dress, there is always a sense
of honor and self-respect left. Dress I never think of, unless as a mere
animal protection against the elements.”

“Well, then,” observed the other, surveying this unfortunate wretch with
compassion, “whether all perception of honor and self-respect is lost in
you I care not. Here are five pounds for you; that is to say--and pray
understand me--I commit them absolutely to your own keeping--your own
honor, your self-respect, or by whatever name you are pleased to call
it. Purchase plain clothes, get better linen, a hat and shoes: when this
is done, if you have strength of mind and resolution of character to do
it, come to me at the head inn, where I stop, and I will only ask
you, in return, to tell me anything you know or have heard about such
subjects as may chance to occur to me at the moment.”

On receiving the money, the poor fellow fastened his eyes on it with
such an expression of amazement as defies description. His physical
strength and constitution, in consequence of the life he led, were
nearly gone--a circumstance which did not escape the keen eye of
the stranger, on whose face there was an evident expression of deep
compassion. The unfortunate Frank Fenton trembled from head to foot, his
face became deadly pale, and after surveying the notes for a time, he
held them out to the other, exclaiming, as he extended his hand--

“No, no! have it, no! You are a decent fellow, and I will not impose
upon you. Take back your money; I know myself too well to accept of it.
I never could keep money, and I wouldn't have a shilling of this in my
possession at the expiration of forty-eight hours.”

“Even so,” replied the stranger, “it comes not back to me again.
Drink it--eat it--spend it is you may; but I rely on your own honor,
notwithstanding what you say, to apply it to a better purpose.”

“Well, now, let me see,” said Fenton, musing, and as if in a kind of
soliloquy; “you are a good fellow, no doubt of it--that is, if you have
no lurking, dishonest design in all this. Let me see. Why, now, it is
a long time since I have had the enormous sum of five shillings in my
possession, much less the amount of the national debt, which I presume
must be pretty close upon five pounds; and in honest bank notes, too.
One, two, three--ha!--eh! eh!--oh yes,” he proceeded, evidently struck
with some discovery that astonished him. “Ay!” he exclaimed, looking
keenly at a certain name that happened to be written upon one of the
notes; “well, it is all right! Thank you, sir; I will keep the money.”




CHAPTER III. Pauden Gair's Receipt how to make a Bad Dinner a Good One

--The Stranger finds Fenton as mysterious as Himself.


The stranger, on reaching the inn, had not long to wait for dinner,
which, to his disappointment, was anything but what he had been taught
to expect. The fair “waiter” had led his imagination a very ludicrous
dance, indeed, having, as Shakspeare says, kept the word of promise to
his ear, but broken it to his hope, and, what was still worse, to
his appetite. On sitting down, he found before him two excellent salt
herrings to begin with; and on ringing the bell to inquire why he was
provided with such a dainty, the male waiter himself, who had finished
the field he had been ploughing, made his appearance, after a delay of
about five minutes, very coolly wiping his mouth, for he had been at
dinner.

“Are you the waiter,” asked the stranger, sharply.

“No, sir, I'm not the waiter, myself; but I and Peggy Moylan is.”

“And why didn't you come when I rang for you at first?”

“I was just finishin' my dinner, sir,” replied the other, pulling a bone
of a herring from between his teeth, then going over and deliberately
throwing it into the fire.

The stranger was silent with astonishment, and, in truth, felt a
stronger inclination to laugh than to scold him. This fellow, thought
he, is clearly an original; I must draw him out a little.

“Why, sir,” he proceeded, “was I served with a pair of d--d salt
herrings, as a part of my dinner?”

“Whist, sir,” replied the fellow, “don't curse anything that
God--blessed be his name--has made; it's not right, it's sinful.”

“But why was I served with two salt herrings, I ask again?”

“Why wor you sarved with them?--Why, wasn't it what we had ourselves?”

“Was I not promised venison?”

“Who promised it to you?”

“That female waiter of yours.”

“Peggy Moylan? Well, then, I tell you the fau't wasn't hers. We had a
party o' gintlemen out here last week, and the sorra drop of it they
left behind them. Devil a drop of venison there is in the house now.
You're an Englishman, at any rate, sir, I think by your discourse?”

“Was I not promised part of a fat buck from the demesne adjoining, and
where is it? I thought I was to have fish, flesh, and fowl.”

“Well, and haven't you fish.” replied the fellow. “What do you call
them!” he added, pointing to the herrings; “an' as to a fat buck, faith,
it isn't part of one, but a whole one you have. What do you call that.”
 He lifted an old battered tin cover, and discovered a rabbit, gathered
up as if it were in the act of starting for its burrow. “You see, Peggy,
sir, always keeps her word; for it was a buck rabbit she meant. Well,
now, there's the fish and the flesh; and here,” he proceeded, uncovering
another dish, “is the fowl.”

[Illustration: PAGE 329-- A pair of enormous legs, with spurs on them]

On lifting the cover, a pair of enormous legs, with spurs on them an
inch and a half long, were projected at full length toward the guest, as
if the old cock--for such it was--were determined to defend himself to
the last.

“Well,” said the stranger, “all I can say is, that I have got a very bad
dinner.”

“Well, an' what suppose? Sure it has been many a betther man's case.
However, you have one remedy; always ait the more of it--that's the sure
card; ever and always when you have a bad dinner, ait, I say, the more
of it. I don't, think, sir, beggin' your pardon, that you've seen much
of the world yet.”

“Why do you think so,” asked the other, who could with difficulty
restrain his mirth at the fellow's cool self-sufficiency and assurance.

“Because, sir, no man that has seen the world, and knows its ups and
downs, would complain of sich a dinner as that. Do you wish for any
liquor? But maybe you don't. It's not every one carries a full purse
these times; so, at any rate, have the sense not to go beyant your
manes, or whatsomever allowance you get.”

“Allowance! what do you mean by allowance?”

“I mane,” he replied, “that there's not such a crew of barefaced liars
on the airth as you English travellers, as they call you. What do you
think, but one of them had the imperance to tell me that he was allowed
a guinea a-day to live on! Troth, I crossed mysolf, and bid him go about
his business, an' that I didn't think the house or place was safe while
he was in it--for it's I that has the mortal hatred of a liar.”

“What liquor have you got in the house?”

“No--if there's one thing on airth that I hate worse than another, it's
a man that shuffles--that won't tell the truth, or give you a straight
answer. We have plenty o' liquor in the house--more than you'll use, at
any rate.”

“But what descriptions? How many kinds? for instance--”

“Kinds enough, for that matther--all sorts and sizes of liquor.”

“Have you any wine?”

“Wine! Well, now, let me speak to you as a friend; sure, 't is n't wine
you'd be thinking of?”

“But, if I pay for it?”

“Pay for it--ay, and break yourself--go beyant your manes, as I
said. No, no--I'll give you no wine--it would be only aidin' you in
extravagance, an' I wouldn't have the sin of it to answer for. We have
all enough, and too much to answer for, God knows.”

The last observation was made _sotto voce_, and with the serious manner
of a man who uttered it under a deep sense of religious truth.

“Well,” replied the stranger, “since you won't allow me wine, have you
no cheaper liquor? I am not in the habit of dining without something
stronger than water.”

“So much the worse for yourself. We have good porther.”

“Bring me a bottle of it, then.”

“It's beautiful on draught.”

“But I prefer it in bottle.”

“I don't doubt it. Lord help us! how few is it that knows what's good
for them! Will you give up your own will for wanst, and be guided by a
wiser man? for health--an' sure health's before everything--for health,
ever and always prefer draught porther.”

“Well, then, since it must be draught, I shall prefer draught ale.”

“Rank poison. Troth, somehow I feel a liking for you, an' for that very
reason, devil a drop of draught ale I'll allow to cross your lips. Jist
be guided by me, an' you'll find that your health an' pocket will both
be the betther for it. Troth, it's fat and rosy I'll have you in no
time, all out, if you stop with us. Now ait your good dinner, and I'll
bring you the porther immediately.”

“What's your name.” asked the stranger, “before you go.”

“I'll tell you when I come back--wait till I bring you the portlier,
first.”

In the course of about fifteen mortal, minutes, he returned with a quart
of porter in his hand, exclaiming--

“Bad luck to them for pigs, they got into the garden, and I had to drive
them out, and cut a lump of a bush to stop the gap wid; however, I think
they won't go back that way again. My name you want? Why, then, my name
is Paudeen Gair--that is, Sharpe, sir; but, in troth, it is n't Sharpe
by name and Sharpe by nature wid me, although you'd get them that 'ud
say otherwise.”

“How long have you been here,” asked the other.

“I've been laborin' for the master goin' on fourteen years; but I'm only
about twelve months attendin' table.”

“How long has your fellow-servant--Peggy, I think, you call her--been
here?”

“Not long.”

“Where had she been before, do you know.”

“Do I know, is it? Maybe 'tis you may say that.”

“What do you mean? I don't understand you.”

“I know that well enough, and it is n't my intention you should.”

“In what family was she at service.”

“Whisper;--in a bad family, wid _one_ exception. God protect _her_, the
darlin'. Amin! _A wurra yeelsh!_ may the curse that's hanging over him
never fall upon her this day!”

A kind and complacent spirit beamed in the fine eyes of the stranger, as
the waiter uttered these benevolent invocations; and, putting his hand
in his pocket, he said,

“My good friend Paudeen, I am richer than you are disposed to give me
credit for; I see you are a good-hearted fellow, and here's a crown for
you.”

“No! consumin' to the farden, till I know whether you're able to afford
it or not. It's always them that has least of it, unfortunately, that's
readiest to give it. I have known many a foolish creature to do what you
are doing, when, if the truth was known, they could badly spare it; but,
at any rate, wait till I deserve it; for, upon my reputaytion, I won't
finger a testher of it sooner.”

He then withdrew, and left the other to finish his dinner as best he
might.

For the next three or four days the stranger confined himself mostly
to his room, unless about dusk, when he glided out very quietly, and
disappeared rather like a spirit than anything else; for, in point of
fact, no one could tell what had become of him, or where he could have
concealed himself, during these brief but mysterious absences. Paudeen
Gair and Peggy observed that he wrote at least three or four letters
every day, and knew that he must have put them into the post-office with
his own hands, inasmuch as no person connected with the inn had been
employed for that purpose.

On the fourth day, after breakfast, and as Pat Sharpe--by which version
of his name he was sometimes addressed--was about to take away the
things, his guest entered into conversation with him as follows:

“Paudeen, my good friend, can you tell me where the wild, ragged fellow,
called Fenton, could be found?”

“I can, sir. Fenton? Begorra, you'd hardly know him if you seen him;
he's as smooth as a new pin--has a plain, daicent suit o' clothes on
him. It's whispered about among us this long time, that, if he had his
rights, he'd be entitled to a great property; and some people say now
that he has come into a part of it.”

“And pray, what else do they say of him?”

“Wiry, then, I heard Father M'Mahon himself say that he had great
learnin', an' must a' had fine broughten-up, an' could, act the real
gintleman whenever he wished.”

“Is it known who he is, or whether he is a native of this neighborhood?”

“No, sir; he doesn't belong to this neighborhood; an' the truth is,
that nobody here that ever I heard of knows anything at all, barrin'
guesswork, about the unfortunate poor creature. If ever he was a
gintleman,” exclaimed the kind-hearted waiter, “he's surely to be
pitied, when one sees the state he's brought to.”

“Well, Paudeen, will you fetch him to me, if you know where he is? Say I
wish to see him.”

“What name, if you plaise,” asked the waiter, with assumed indifference;
for the truth was, that the whole establishment felt a very natural
curiosity to know who the stranger was.

“Never mind the name, Paudeen, but say as I desire you.”

Paudeen had no sooner disappeared than the anonymous gentleman went to
one of his trunks, and, pulling out a very small miniature, surveyed
it for nearly half a minute; he then looked into the fire, and seemed
absorbed in long and deep reflection. At length, after once more gazing
closely and earnestly at it, he broke involuntarily into the following
soliloquy:

“I know,” he exclaimed, “that resemblances are often deceitful, and not
to be depended upon. In this case, however, there is scarcely a trace
that could constitute any particular peculiarity--a peculiarity
which, if it existed, would strengthen--I know not whether to say--my
suspicions or my hopes. The early disappearance of that poor boy,
without the existence of a single vestige by which he could be traced,
resembles one of those mysteries that are found only in romances. The
general opinion is, that he has been made away with, and is long dead;
yet of late, a different impression has gone abroad, although we know
not exactly how it has originated.”

He then paced, with a countenance of gloom, uncertainty, and deep
anxiety, through the room, and after a little time, proceeded:

“I shall, at all events, enter into conversation with this person, after
which I will make inquiries concerning the gentry and nobility of the
neighborhood when I think I shall be able to observe whether he
will pass the Gourlay family over, or betray any consciousness of a
particular knowledge of their past or present circumstances. 'Tis true,
he may overreach me; but if he does, I cannot help it. Yet, after all,”
 he proceeded, “if he should prove to be the person I seek, everything
may go well; I certainly observed faint traces of an honorable feeling
about him when I gave him the money, which, notwithstanding his
indigence and dissipation, he for a time refused to take.”

He then resumed his seat, and seemed once more buried in thought and
abstraction.

Our friend Paudeen was not long in finding the unfortunate object of the
stranger's contemplation and interest. On meeting him, he perceived that
he was slightly affected with liquor, as indeed was the case generally
whenever he could procure it.

“Misther Fenton,” said Paudeen, “there's a daicent person in our house
that wishes to see you.”

“Who do you call a decent person, you bog-trotting Ganymede.” replied
the other.

“Why, a daicent tradesman, I think, from--thin sorra one of me knows
whether I ought to say from Dublin or London.”

“What trade, Ganymede?”

“Troth, that's more than I can tell; but I know that he wants you, for
he sent me to bring you to him.”

“Well, Ganymede, I shall see your tradesman,” he replied. “Come, I shall
go to him.”

On reaching the inn, Paudeen, in order to discharge the commission
intrusted to him fully, ushered Fenton upstairs, and into the stranger's
sitting-room. “What's this,” exclaimed Fenton. “Why, you have brought me
to the wrong room, you blundering villain. I thought you were conducting
me to some worthy tradesman. You have mistaken the room, you blockhead;
this is a gentleman. How do you do, sir? I hope you will excuse this
intrusion; it is quite unintentional on my part; yet I am glad to see
you.”

“There is no mistake at all in it,” replied the other, laughing. “That
will do, Paudeen,” he added, “thank you.”

“Faix,” said Paudeen to himself, when descending the stairs, “I'm afeard
that's no tradesman--whatever he is. He took on him a look like a lord
when that unfortunate Fenton went into the room. Troth, I'm fairly
puzzled, at any rate!”

“Take a seat, Mr. Fenton,” said the stranger, handing him a chair, and
addressing him in terms of respect.

“Thank, you, sir,” replied the other, putting, at the same time, a
certain degree of restraint upon his maimer, for he felt conscious of
being slightly influenced by liquor.

“Well,” continued the stranger, “I am glad to see that you have improved
your appearance.”

“Ay, certainly, sir, as far as four pounds--or, I should rather say,
three pounds went, I did something for the outer man.”

“Why not the five?” asked the other. “I wished you to make yourself as
comfortable as possible, and did not imagine you could have done it for
less.”

“No, sir, not properly, according to the standard of a gentleman; but I
assure you, that, if I were in a state of utter and absolute starvation,
I would not part with one of the notes you so generously gave me,
scarcely to save my life.”

“No!” exclaimed the stranger, with a good deal of surprise. “And pray,
why not, may I ask?”

“Simply,” said Fenton, “because I have taken a fancy for it beyond its
value. I shall retain it as pocket-money. Like the Vicar of Wakefield's
daughters, I shall always keep it about me; and then, like them also, I
will never want money.”

“That is a strange whim,” observed the other, “and rather an
unaccountable one, besides.”

“Not in the slightest degree,” replied Fenton, “if you knew as much as
I do; but, at all events, just imagine that I am both capricious and
eccentric; so don't be surprised at anything I say or do.”

“Neither shall I,” replied “the anonymous” “However, to come to other
matters, pray what kind of a town is this of Ballytrain?”

“It is by no means a bad town,” replied Fenton, “as towns and times
go. It has a market-house, a gaol, a church, as you have seen--a
Roman Catholic chapel, and a place of worship for the Presbyterian and
Methodist. It has, besides, that characteristic locality, either
of English legislation or Irish crimes--or, perhaps, of both--a
gallows-green. It has a public pump, that has been permitted to run dry,
and public stocks for limbs like those of your humble servant, that are
permitted to stand (the stocks I mean) as a libel upon the inoffensive
morals of the town.”

“How are commercial matters in it?”

“Tolerable. Our shopkeepers are all very fair as shopkeepers. But,
talking of that, perhaps you are not aware of a singular custom which
even I--for I am not a native of this place--have seen in it?”

“What may it have been.” asked the stranger.

“Why, it was this: Of a fair or market-day,” he proceeded, “there lived
a certain shopkeeper here, who is some time dead--and I mention this to
show you how the laws were respected in this country; this shopkeeper,
sir, of a fair or market-day had a post that ran from his counter to
the ceiling; to this post was attached a single handcuff, and it always
happened that, when any person was caught in the act of committing a
theft in his shop, one arm of the offender was stretched up to this
handcuff, into which the wrist was locked; and, as the handcuff was
movable, so that it might be raised up or down, according to the height
of the culprit, it was generally fastened so that the latter was forced
to stand upon the top of his toes so long as was agreeable to the
shopkeeper of whom I speak.”

“You do not mean to say,” replied his companion, who, by the way, had
witnessed the circumstances ten times for Fenton's once, “that such
an outrage upon the right of the subject, and such a contempt for the
administration of law and justice, could actually occur in a Christian
and civilized country?”

“I state to you a fact, sir,” replied Fen-ton, “which I have witnessed
with my own eyes; but we have still stranger and worse usages in this
locality.”

“What description of gentry and landed proprietors have you in the
neighborhood?”

“Hum! as to that, there are some good, more bad, and many indifferent,
among them. Their great fault in general is, that they are incapable of
sympathizing, as they ought, with their dependents. The pride of class,
and the influence of creed besides, are too frequently impediments, not
only to the progress of their own independence, but to the improvement
of their tenantry. Then, many of them employ servile, plausible, and
unprincipled agents, who, provided they wring the rent, by every species
of severity and oppression, out of the people, are considered by their
employers valuable and honest servants, faithfully devoted to their
interests; whilst the fact on the other side is, that the unfortunate
tenantry are every day so rapidly retrograding from prosperity, that
most of the neglected and oppressed who possess means to leave the
country emigrate to America.”

“Why, Fenton, I did not think that you looked so deeply into the state
and condition of the country. Have you no good specimens of character in
or about the town itself?”

“Unquestionably, sir. Look out now from this window,” he proceeded, and
he went to it as he spoke, accompanied by the stranger; “do you see,”
 he added, “that unostentatious shop, with the name of James Trimble over
the door?”

“Certainly,” replied the other, “I see it most distinctly.”

“Well, sir, in that shop lives a man who is ten times a greater
benefactor to this town and neighborhood than is the honorable and right
reverend the lordly prelate, whose silent and untenanted palace stands
immediately behind us. In every position in which you find him, this
admirable but unassuming man is always the friend of the poor. When an
industrious family, who find that they cannot wring independence, by
hard and honest labor, out of the farms or other little tenements
which they hold, have resolved to seek it in a more prosperous country,
America, the first man to whom they apply, if deficient in means to
accomplish their purpose, is James Trimble. In him they find a friend,
if he knows, as he usually does, that they have passed through life with
a character of worth and hereditary integrity. If they want a portion of
their outfit, and possess not means to procure it, in kind-hearted
James Trimble they are certain to find a friend, who will supply their
necessities upon the strength of their bare promise to repay him.
Honor,--then--honor, sir, I say again, to the unexampled faith,
truth, and high principle of the industrious Irish peasant, who, in no
instance, even although the broad Atlantic has been placed between them,
has been known to defraud James Trimble of a single shilling. In all
parochial and public meetings--in every position where his influence
can be used--he is uniformly the friend of the poor, whilst his high
but unassuming sense of honor, his successful industry, and his firm,
unshrinking independence, make him equally appreciated and respected
by the rich and poor. In fact, it is such men as this who are the
most unostentatious but practical benefactors to the lower and middle
classes.”

He had proceeded thus far, when a carriage-and-four came dashing up the
street, and stopped at the very shop which belonged to the subject
of Fenton's eulogium. Both went to the window at the same moment, and
looked out.

“Pray, whose carriage is that.” asked the stranger, fastening his eyes,
with a look of intense scrutiny, upon Fenton's face.

“That, sir,” he replied, “is the carriage of Sir Thomas Gourlay.”

As he spoke, the door of it was opened, and a lady of surpassing
elegance and beauty stepped out of it, and entered the shop of the
benevolent James Trimble.

“Pray, who is that charming girl?” asked the stranger again.

To this interrogatory, however, he received no reply. Poor Fenton
tottered over to a chair, became pale as death, and trembled with such
violence that he was incapable, for the time, of uttering a single word.

“Do you know, or have you ever known, this family?” asked the other.

After a pause of more than a minute, during which the emotion subsided,
he replied:

“I have already said that I could not--” he paused. “I am not well,”
 said he; “I am quite feeble--in fact, not in a condition to answer
anything. Do not, therefore, ask me--for the present, at least.”

Fifteen or twenty minutes had elapsed before he succeeded in mastering
this singular attack. At length he rose, and placing his chair somewhat
further back from the window, continued to look out in silence, not so
much from love of silence, as apparently from inability to speak. The
stranger, in the mean time, eyed him keenly; and as he examined his
features from time to time, it might be observed that an expression
of satisfaction, if not almost of certainty, settled upon his own
countenance. In a quarter of an hour, the sound of the carriage-wheels
was heard on its return, and Fenton, who seemed to dread also a return
of his illness, said:

“For heaven's sake, sir, be good enough to raise the window and let in
air. Thank you, sir.”

The carriage, on this occasion, was proceeding more slowly than
before--in fact, owing to a slight acclivity in that part of the street,
the horses were leisurely walking past the inn window at the moment the
stranger raised it. The noise of the ascending sash reached Miss Gourlay
(for it was she), who, on looking up, crimsoned deeply, and, with one
long taper finger on her lips, as if to intimate caution and silence,
bowed to the stranger. The latter, who had presence of mind enough to
observe the hint, did not bow in return, and consequently declined to
appropriate the compliment to himself. Fenton now surveyed his companion
with an appearance of as much interest and curiosity as the other had
bestowed on him. He felt, however, as if his physical powers were wholly
prostrated.

“I am very weak,” said he, bitterly, “and near the close of my brief and
unhappy day. I have, however, one cure--get me drink--drink, I say; that
is what will revive me. Sir, my life, for the last fourteen years, has
been a battle against thought; and without drink I should be a madman--a
madman! oh, God!”

The other remonstrated with him in vain; but he was inexorable, and
began to get fierce and frantic. At length, it occurred to him, that
perhaps the influence of liquor might render this strange individual
more communicative, and that by this means he might succeed in relieving
himself of his doubts--for he still had doubts touching Fenton's
identity. In this, however, he was disappointed, as a circumstance
occurred which prevented him from then gratifying Fenton's wish, or
winning him into confidence.




CHAPTER IV. An Anonymous Letter

--Lucy Gourlay avows a previous Attachment.


Whilst Fenton was thus sketching for the stranger a few of the public
characters of Ballytrain, a scene, which we must interrupt them to
describe, was taking place in the coffee-room of the “Mitre.” As
everything, however, has an origin, it is necessary, before we raise the
curtain, which, for the present, excludes us from that scene, to enable
the reader to become acquainted with the cause of it. That morning,
after breakfast, Sir Thomas Gourlay went to his study, where, as usual,
he began to read his letters and endorse them--for he happened to be one
of those orderly and exact men who cannot bear to see even a trifle
out of its place. Having despatched three or four, he took up one--the
last--and on opening it read, much to his astonishment and dismay, as
follows;

“Sir Thomas Gourlay,--There is an adventurer in disguise near you.
Beware of your daughter, and watch her well, otherwise she may give you
the slip. I write this, that you may prevent her from throwing herself
away upon an impostor and profligate. I am a friend to her, but none to
you; and it is on her account, as well as for the sake of another, that
you are now warned.”

On perusing this uncomfortable document, his whole frame became moved
with a most vehement fit of indignation. He rose from his seat, and
began to traverse the floor with lengthy and solemn strides, as a man
usually does who knows not exactly on whom to vent his rage. There hung
a large mirror before him, and, as he approached it from time to time,
he could not help being struck by the repulsive expression of his own
features. He was a tall, weighty man, of large bones and muscles; his
complexion was sallow, on a black ground; his face firm, but angular;
and his forehead, which was low, projected a good deal over a pair of
black eyes, in one of which there was a fearful squint. His eyebrows,
which met, were black, fierce-looking, and bushy, and, when agitated,
as now, with passion, they presented, taken in connection with his
hard, irascible lips, short irregular teeth and whole complexion, an
expression singularly stern and malignant.

On looking at his own image, he could not help feeling the conviction,
that the visage which presented itself to him was not such a one as was
calculated to diminish the unpopularity which accompanied him wherever
he went, and the obloquy which hung over his name.

Sir Thomas Gourlay, however, although an exceedingly forbidding and
ugly man, was neither a fool nor novice in the ways of the world. No man
could look upon his plotting forehead, and sunken eyes closely placed,
without feeling at once that he was naturally cunning and circumventive.
Nor was this all; along with being deep and designing, he was also
subject to sudden bursts of passion, which, although usual in such a
temperament, did not suddenly pass away. On the contrary, they were
sometimes at once so tempestuous and abiding, that he had been rendered
ill by their fury, and forced to take to his bed for days together.
On the present occasion, a considerable portion of his indignation was
caused by the fact, that he knew not the individual against whom to
direct it. His daughter, as a daughter, had been to him an object of
perfect indifference, from the day of her birth up to that moment; that
is to say, he was utterly devoid of all personal love and tenderness
for her, whilst, at the same time, he experienced, in its full force, a
cold, conventional ambition, which, although without honor, principle,
or affection, yet occasioned him to devote all his efforts and energies
to her proper establishment in the world. In her early youth, for
instance, she had suffered much from delicate health, so much, indeed,
that she was more than once on the very verge of death; yet, on no
occasion, was he ever known to manifest the slightest parental sorrow
for her illness. Society, however, is filled with such fathers, and with
too many mothers of a like stamp. So far, however, as Lucy Gourlay was
concerned, this proud, unprincipled spirit of the world supplied to her,
to a certain extent at least, the possession of that which affection
ought to have given. Her education was attended to with the most
solicitous anxiety--not in order to furnish her mind with that healthy
description of knowledge which strengthens principle and elevates the
heart, but that she might become a perfect mistress of all the necessary
and fashionable accomplishments, and shine, at a future day, an object
of attraction on that account. A long and expensive array of masters,
mistresses, and finishers, from almost every climate and country of
Europe, were engaged in her education, and the consequence was, that few
young persons of her age and sex were more highly accomplished. If his
daughter's head ached, her father never suffered that circumstance to
disturb the cold, stern tenor of his ambitious way; but, at the same
time, two or three of the most eminent physicians were sent for, as a
matter of course, and then there were nothing but consultations until
she recovered. Had she died, Sir Thomas Gourlay would not have shed one
tear, but he would have had all the pomp and ceremony due to her station
in life solemnly paraded at her funeral, and it is very likely that one
or other of our eminent countrymen, Hogan or M'Dowall, had they then
existed, would have been engaged to erect her a monument.

And yet the feeling which he experienced, and which regulated his life,
was, after all, but a poor pitiful parody upon true ambition. The latter
is a great and glorious principle, because, where it exists, it never
fails to expand the heart, and to prompt it to the performance of all
those actions that elevate our condition and dignify our nature. Had he
experienced anything like such a feeling as this, or even the beautiful
instincts of parental affection, he would not have neglected, as he
did, the inculcation of all those virtues and principles which render
education valuable, and prevent it from degenerating into an empty
parade of mere accomplishments.

It is true, Sir Thomas Gourlay enjoyed the reputation of being an
admirable father, and, indeed, from mere worldly principle he was so,
and we presume gave himself credit for being so. In the mean time, our
readers are to learn that earth scarcely contained a man who possessed
a greedier or more rapacious spirit; and, if ever the demon of envy,
especially with respect to the possession of wealth and property,
tortured the soul of a human being, it did that of our baronet. His
whole spirit, in fact, was dark, mean, and intensely selfish; and for
this reason, it was a fearful thing for any one to stand in his way when
in the execution of his sordid projects, much less to attempt his
defeat in their attainment. Reckless and unscrupulous, he left no means
unattempted, however odious and wicked, to crush those who offended him,
or such as stood in the way of his love of wealth and ambition.

For some minutes after the perusal of the anonymous letter, one would
have imagined that the image which met his gaze, from time to time, in
the looking-glass, was that of his worst and deadliest enemy, so fierce
and menacing were the glances which he cast on it as he paced the floor.
At length he took up the document, and, having read it again, exclaimed:

“Perhaps, after all, I'm angry to no purpose; certainly to no purpose,
in one sense, I am, inasmuch as I know not who this anonymous person
is. But stay, let me be cautious--is there such a person? May this
communication not be a false one--written to mislead or provoke me? Lucy
knows that I am determined she shall marry Lord Dunroe, and I am not
aware that she entertains any peculiar objection to him. In the mean
time, I will have some conversation with her, in order to ascertain what
her present and immediate feeling on the subject is. It is right that I
should see my way in this.”

He accordingly rang the bell, when a well-powdered footman, in rich
livery, entered.

“Let Miss Gourlay understand that I wish to see her.”

This he uttered in a loud, sharp tone of voice, for it was in such he
uniformly addressed his dependents.

The lackey bowed and withdrew, and, in the course of a few minutes, his
daughter entered the study, and stood before him. At the first
glance, she saw that something had discomposed him, and felt a kind of
instinctive impression that it was more or less connected with herself.

Seldom, indeed, was such a contrast between man and woman ever
witnessed, as that which presented itself on this occasion. There
stood the large, ungainly, almost misshapen father, with a countenance
distorted, by the consequences of ill-suppressed passion, into a deeper
deformity--a deformity that was rendered ludicrously hideous, by a
squint that gave, as we have said, to one of his eyes, as he looked at
her, the almost literal expression of a dagger. Before him, on the other
hand, stood a girl, whose stature was above the middle height, with a
form that breathed of elegance, ease, and that exquisite grace
which marks every look, and word, and motion of the high-minded and
accomplished lady. Indeed, one would imagine that her appearance would
have soothed and tranquillized the anger of any parent capable of
feeling that glowing and prideful tenderness, with which such an
exquisitely beautiful creature was calculated to fill a parent's heart.
Lucy Gourlay was a dark beauty--a brunette so richly tinted, that the
glow of her cheek was only surpassed by the flashing brilliancy of her
large, dark eyes, that seemed, in those glorious manifestations, to
kindle with inspiration. Her forehead was eminently intellectual, and
her general temperament--Celtic by the mother's side--was remarkable
for those fascinating transitions of spirit which passed over her
countenance like the gloom and sunshine of the early summer. Nothing
could be more delightful, nor, at the same time, more dangerous, than to
watch that countenance whilst moving under the influence of melancholy,
and to observe how quickly the depths of feeling, or the impulses of
tenderness, threw their delicious shadows into its expression--unless,
indeed, to watch the same face when lit up by humor, and animated into
radiance by mirth. Such is a faint outline of Lucy Gourlay, who, whether
in shadow or whether in light, was equally captivating and irresistible.

On entering the room, her father, incapable of appreciating even the
natural graced and beauty of her person, looked at her with a gaze of
sternness and inquiry for some moments, but seemed at a loss in what
terms to address her. She, however, spoke first, simply saying:

“Has anything discomposed you, papa?”

“I have been discomposed, Miss Gourlay”--for he seldom addressed her as
Lucy--“and I wish to have some serious conversation with you. Pray be
seated.”

Lucy sat.

“I trust, Miss Gourlay,” he proceeded, in a style partly interrogatory
and partly didactic--“I trust you are perfectly sensible that a child
like you owes full and unlimited obedience to her parents.”

“So long, at least, sir, as her parents exact no duties from her that
are either unreasonable or unjust, or calculated to destroy her own
happiness. With these limitations, I reply in the affirmative.”

“A girl like you, Miss Gourlay, has no right to make exceptions. Your
want of experience, which is only another name for your ignorance of
life, renders you incompetent to form an estimate of what constitutes,
or may constitute, your happiness.”

“Happiness!--in what sense, sir?”

“In any sense, madam.”

“Madam!” she replied, with much feeling. “Dear papa--if you will allow
me to call you so--why address me in a tone of such coldness, if not
of severity? All I ask of you is, that, when you do honor me by an
interview, you will remember that I am your daughter, and not speak to
me as you would to an utter stranger.”

“The tone which I may assume toward you, Miss Gourlay, must be regulated
by your own obedience.”

“But in what have I ever failed in obedience to you, my dear papa?”

“Perhaps you compliment your obedience prematurely, Lucy--it has never
yet been seriously tested.”

Her beautiful face crimsoned at this assertion; for she well knew that
many a severe imposition had been placed upon her during girlhood, and
that, had she been any other girl than she was, her very youth would
have been forced into opposition to commands that originated in whim,
caprice, and selfishness. Even when countenanced, however, by the
authority of her other parent, and absolutely urged against compliance
with injunctions that were often cruel and oppressive, she preferred, at
any risk, to accommodate herself to them rather than become the cause of
estrangement or ill-feeling between him and her mother, or her mother's
friends. Such a charge as this, then, was not only ungenerous, but, as
he must have well known, utterly unfounded.

“I do not wish, sir,” she replied, “to make any allusion to the past,
unless simply to say, that, if severe and trying instances of obedience
have been exacted from me, under very peculiar circumstances, I trust I
have not been found wanting in my duty to you.”

“That obedience, Miss Gourlay, which is reluctantly given, had better
been forgotten.”

“You have forced me to remember it in my own defence, papa; but I am not
conscious that it was reluctant.”

“You contradict me, madam.”

“No, sir; I only take the liberty of setting you right. My obedience,
if you recollect, was cheerful; for I did not wish to occasion ill-will
between you and mamma--my dear mamma.”

“I believe you considered that you had only one parent, Miss Gourlay?”

“That loved me, sir, you would add. But, papa, why should there be such
a dialogue as this between you and your daughter--your orphan
daughter, and your only child? It is not natural, Something, I see, has
discomposed your temper; I am ignorant of it.”

“I made you aware, some time ago, that the Earl of Cullamore and I had
entered into a matrimonial arrangement between you and his son, Lord
Dunroe.”

A deadly paleness settled upon her countenance at these words--a
paleness the more obvious, as it contrasted so strongly with the
previous rich hue of her complexion, which had been already heightened
by the wanton harshness of her father's manner. The baronet's eyes, or
rather his eye, was fixed upon her with a severity which this incident
rapidly increased.

“You grow pale, Miss Gourlay; and there seems to be something in this
allusion to Lord Dunroe that is painful to you. How is this, madam? I do
not understand it.”

“I am, indeed, pale, and I feel that I am; for what is there that could
drive the hue of modesty from the cheek of a daughter, sooner than
the fact of her own father purposing to unite her to a profligate? You
seldom jest, papa; but I hope you do so now.”

“I am not disposed to make a jest of your happiness, Miss Gourlay.”

“Nor of my misery, papa. You surely cannot but know--nay, you cannot
but feel--that a marriage between me and Lord Dunroe is impossible. His
profligacy is so gross, that his very name is indelicate in the mouth
of a modest woman. And is this the man to whom you would unite your only
child and daughter? But I trust you still jest, sir. As a man, and
a gentleman, much less as a parent, you would not think seriously of
making such a proposal to me?”

“All very fine sentiment--very fine stuff and nonsense, madam; the
young man is a little wild--somewhat lavish in expenditure--and for the
present not very select in the company he keeps; but he is no fool, as
they say, and we all know how marriage reforms a man, and thoroughly
sobers him down.”

“Often at the expense, papa,” she replied with tears, “of many a broken
heart. That surely, is not a happy argument; for, perhaps, after all,
I should, like others, become but a victim to my ineffectual efforts at
his reformation.”

“There is one thing, Miss Gourlay, you are certain to become, and that
is, Countess of Cullamore, at his father's death. Remember this; and.
remember also, that, victim or no victim, I am determined you shall
marry him. Yes, you shall marry him,” he added, stamping with vehemence,
“or be turned a beggar upon the world. Become a victim, indeed! Begone,
madam, to your room, and prepare for that obedience which your mother
never taught you.”

She rose as he spoke, and with a graceful inclination of her head,
silently withdrew.

This dialogue caused both father and daughter much pain. Certain
portions of it, especially near the close, were calculated to force
upon the memory of each, analogies that were as distressing to the
warm-hearted girl, as they were embarrassing to her parent. The truth
was, that her mother, then a year dead, had indeed become a victim to
the moral profligacy of a man in whose character there existed nothing
whatsoever to compensate her for the utter absence of domestic affection
in all its phases. His principal vices, so far as they affected the
peace of his family, were a brutal temper, and a most scandalous
dishonesty in pecuniary transactions, especially in his intercourse with
his own tenantry and tradesmen. Of moral obligation he seemed to possess
no sense or impression whatever. A single day never occurred in which
he was not guilty of some most dishonorable violation of his word to the
poor, and those who were dependent on him. Ill-temper therefore toward
herself, and the necessity of constantly witnessing a series of vile
and unmanly frauds upon a miserable scale, together with her incessant
efforts to instil into his mind some slight principle of common
integrity, had, during an unhappy life, so completely harassed a mind
naturally pure and gentle, and a constitution never strong, that, as
her daughter hinted, and as every one intimate with the family knew, she
literally fell a victim to the vices we have named, and the incessant
anxiety they occasioned her. These analogies, then, when unconsciously
alluded to by his daughter, brought tears to her eyes, and he felt that
the very grief she evinced was an indirect reproach to himself.

“Now,” he exclaimed, after she had gone, “it is clear, I think, that
the girl entertains something more than a mere moral objection to this
match. I would have taxed her with some previous engagement, but that I
fear it would be premature to do so at present. Dunroe is wild, no doubt
of it; but I cannot believe that women, who are naturally vain and fond
of display, feel so much alarm at this as they pretend. I never did
myself care much about the sex, and seldom had an opportunity of
studying their general character, or testing their principles; but
still I incline to the opinion, that, where there is not a previous
engagement, rank and wealth will, for the most part, outweigh every
other consideration. In the meantime I will ride into Ballytrain, and
reconnoitre a little. Perhaps the contents, of this communication are
true--perhaps not; but, at all events, it can be no harm to look about
me in a quiet way.”

He then read the letter a third time--examined the handwriting
closely--locked it in a private drawer--rang the bell--ordered his
horse--and in a few minutes was about to proceed to the “Mitre” inn,
in order to make secret inquiries after such persons as he might find
located in that or the other establishments of the town. At this moment,
his daughter once more entered the apartment, her face glowing with deep
agitation, and her large, mellow eyes lit up with a fixed, and, if one
could judge, a lofty purpose. Her reception, we need hardly say, was
severe and harsh.

“How, madam,” he exclaimed, “did I not order you to your room? Do you
return to bandy undutiful hints and arguments with me?”

“Father,” said she, “I am not ignorant, alas! of your stern and
indomitable character; but, upon the subject of forced and unsuitable
matches, I may and I do appeal directly to the experience of your own
married life, and of that of my beloved mother. She was, unhappily for
herself--”

“And for me, Miss Gourlay--”

“Well, perhaps so; but if ever woman was qualified to make a man happy,
she was. At all events, sir, unhappily she was forced into marriage
with you, and you deliberately took to your bosom a reluctant bride. She
possessed extraordinary beauty, and a large fortune. I, however, am not
about to enter into your heart, or analyze its motives; it is enough to
say that, although she had no previous engagement or affection for any
other, she was literally dragged by the force of parental authority
into a union with you. The consequence was, that her whole life, owing
to--to--the unsuitableness of your tempers, and the strongly-contrasted
materials which formed your characters, was one of almost unexampled
suffering and sorrow. With this example before my eyes, and with the
memory of it brooding over and darkening your own heart--yes,
papa--my dear papa, let me call you with the full and most distressing
recollections connected with it strong upon both of us, let me entreat
and implore that you will not urge nor force me into a union with
this hateful and repulsive profligate. I go upon my knees to you, and
entreat, as you regard my happiness, my honor, and my future peace of
mind, that you will not attempt to unite me to this most unprincipled
and dishonorable young man.”

Her father's brow grew black as a thunder-cloud; the veins of his
temples swelled up, as if they had been filled with ink, and, after a
few hasty strides through the study, he turned upon her such a look of
fury as we need not attempt to describe.

“Miss Gourlay,” said he, in a voice dreadfully deep and stern, “there
is not an allusion made in that undutiful harangue--for so I must call
it--that does not determine me to accomplish my purpose in effecting
this union. If your mother was unhappy, the fault lay in her own weak
and morbid temper. As for me, I now tell you, once for all, that your
destiny is either beggary or a coronet; on that I am resolved!”

She stood before him like one who had drawn strength from the full
knowledge of her fate. Her face, it is true, had become pale, but it was
the paleness of a calm but lofty spirit, and she replied, with a full
and clear voice:

“I said, sir--for I had her own sacred assurance for it--that my mother,
when she married you, had no previous engagement; it is not so with your
daughter--my affections are fixed upon another.”

There are some natures so essentially tyrannical, and to whom resistance
is a matter of such extraordinary novelty, that its manifestation
absolutely surprises them out of their natural character. In this
manner Sir Thomas Gourlay was affected. Instead of flying into a fresh
hurricane of rage, he felt so completely astounded, that he was only
capable of turning round to her, and asking, in a voice unusually calm:

“Pray name him, Miss Gourlay.”

“In that, sir, you will excuse me--for the present. The day may come,
and I trust soon will, when I can do so with honor. And now, sir, having
considered it my duty not to conceal this fact from your knowledge, I
will, with your permission, withdraw to my own apartment.”

She paid him, with her own peculiar grace, the usual obeisance, and left
the room. The stem and overbearing Sir Thomas Gourlay now felt himself
so completely taken aback by her extraordinary candor and firmness, that
he was only able to stand and look after her in silent amazement.

“Well!” he exclaimed, “I have reason to thank her for this important
piece of information. She has herself admitted a previous attachment.
So far my doubts are cleared up, and I feel perfectly certain that the
anonymous information is correct. It now remains for me to find out
who the object of this attachment is. I have no doubt that he is in the
neighborhood; and, if so, I shall know how to manage him.”

He then mounted his horse, and rode into Ballytrain, with what purpose
it is now unnecessary, we trust, to trouble the reader at farther
length.




CHAPTER V.  Sir Thomas Gourlay fails in unmasking the Stranger

--Mysterious Conduct of Fenton


When Sir Thomas Gourlay, after the delay of better than an hour in town,
entered the coffee-room of the “Mitre,” he was immediately attended by
the landlord himself.

“Who is this new guest you have got, landlord,” inquired the
baronet--“They tell me he is a very mysterious gentleman, and that no
one can discover his name. Do! you know anything about him?”

“De'il a syllable, Sir Tammas,” replied the landlord, who was a
northern--“How ir you, Counsellor Crackenfudge,” he added, speaking
to a person who passed upstairs--“There he goes,” proceeded Jack the
landlord--“a nice boy. But do you know, Sir Tammas, why he changed his
name to Crackenfudge?”

Sir Thomas's face at this moment, had grown frightful. While the
landlord was speaking, the baronet, attracted by the noise of a carriage
passing, turned to observe it, just at the moment when his daughter was
bowing so significantly to the stranger in the window over them, as
we have before stated. Here was a new light thrown upon the mystery or
mysteries by which he felt himself surrounded on all hands. The strange
guest in the Mitre inn, was then, beyond question, the very individual
alluded to in the anonymous letter. The baronet's face had, in the
scowl of wrath, got black, as mine host was speaking. This expression,
however, gradually diminished in the darkness of that wrathful shadow
which lay over it. After a severe internal struggle with his tremendous
passions, he at length seemed to cool down. His face became totally
changed; and in a few minutes of silence and struggle, it passed from
the blackness of almost ungovernable rage to a pallid hue, that might
not most aptly be compared to the summit of a volcano covered with snow,
when about to project its most awful and formidable eruptions.

The landlord, while putting the question to the baronet, turned his
sharp, piercing eyes upon him, and, at a single glance, perceived that
something had unusually moved him.

“Sir Tammas,” said he, “there is no use in denyin' it, now--the blood's
disturbed in you.”

“Give your guest my compliments--Sir Thomas Gourlay's compliments--and I
should feel obliged by a short interview.”

On going up, Jack found the stranger and Fenton as we have already
described them--“Sir,” said he, addressing the former--“there's a
gentleman below who wishes to know who you ir.”

“Who I am!” returned the other, quite unmoved; “and, pray who may he
be?”

“Sir Tammas Gourlay; an' all tell you what, if you don't wish to see
him, why don't see him. A 'll take him the message, an' if there's
anything about you that you don't wish to be known or heard, make
him keep his distance. He's this minute in a de'il of a passion about
something, an' was comin' up as if he'd ait you without salt, but a'
would n't allow it; so, if you don't wish to see him, am the boy won't
be afeard to say so. He's not coming as a friend, a' can tell you.”

“Sir Thomas Gourlay's in the house, then,” said the stranger, with a
good deal of surprise. He then paused for some time, and, during this
pause, he very naturally concluded that the baronet had witnessed his
daughter's bow, so cautiously and significantly made to himself as she
passed. Whilst he turned over these matters in his mind, the landlord
addressed Fenton as follows:

“You can go to another room, Fenton. A'm glad to see you in a decent
suit of clothes, any way--a' hope you'll take yourself up, and avoid
drink and low company; for de'il a haet good ever the same two brought
anybody; but, before you go, a'll give you a gless o' grog to drink the
Glorious Memory. Come, now, tramp, like a good fellow.”

“I have a particular wish,” said the stranger, “that Mr. Fenton should
remain; and say to Sir Thomas Gourlay that I am ready to see him.”

“A' say, then,” said Jack, in a friendly whisper, “be on your edge with
him, for, if he finds you saft, the very de'il won't stand him.”

“The gentleman, Sir Tammas,” said Jack, on going down stairs, “will be
glad to see you. He's overhead.”

Fenton, himself, on hearing that Sir Thomas was about to come up,
prepared to depart; but the other besought him so earnestly to stay,
that he consented, although with evident reluctance. He brought his
chair over to a corner of the room, as if he wished to be as much out of
the way as possible, or, it may be, as far from Sir Thomas's eye, as
the size of the apartment would permit. Be this as it may, Sir Thomas
entered, and brought his ungainly person nearly to the centre of
the room before he spoke. At length he did so, but took care not to
accompany his words with that courtesy of manner, or those rules of
good-breeding, which ever prevail among gentlemen, whether as friends or
foes. After standing for a moment, he glanced from the one to the other,
his face still hideously pale; and ultimately, fixing his eye upon the
stranger, he viewed him from head to foot, and again from foot to head,
with a look of such contemptuous curiosity, as certainly was strongly
calculated to excite the stranger's indignation. Finding the baronet
spoke not, the other did.

“To what am I to attribute the honor of this visit, sir?”

Sir Thomas even then did not speak, but still kept looking at him with
the expression we have described. At length he did speak:

“You have been residing for some time in our neighborhood, sir.” The
stranger simply bowed.

“May I ask how long?”

“I have the honor, I believe, of addressing Sir Thomas Gourlay?”

“Yes, you have that honor.”

“And may I beg to know his object in paying me this unceremonious
visit, in which he does not condescend either to announce himself, or to
observe the usual rules of good-breeding?”

“From my rank and known position in this part of the country, and in my
capacity also as a magistrate, sir,” replied the baronet, “I'm entitled
to make such inquiries as I may deem necessary from those who appear
here under suspicious circumstances.”

“Perhaps you may think so, but I am of opinion, sir, that you would
consult the honor of the rank and position you allude to much more
effectually, by letting such inquiries fall within the proper province
of the executive officers of law, whenever you think there is a
necessity for it.”

“Excuse me, but, in that manner, I shall follow my own judgment, not
yours.”

“And under what circumstances of suspicion do you deem me to stand at
present?”

“Very strong circumstances. You have been now living here nearly a week,
in a privacy which no gentleman would ever think of observing. You have
hemmed yourself in by a mystery, sir; you have studiously concealed your
name--your connections--and defaced every mark by which you could be
known or traced. This, sir, is not the conduct of a gentleman; and
argues either actual or premeditated guilt.”

“You seem heated, sir, and you also reason in resentment, whatever may
have occasioned it. And so a gentleman is not to make an excursion to a
country town in a quiet way--perhaps to recruit his health, perhaps to
relax his mind, perhaps to gratify a whim--but he must be pounced upon
by some outrageous dispenser of magisterial justice, who thinks,
that, because he wishes to live quietly and unknown, he must be some
cutthroat, or raw-head-and-bloody-bones coming to eat half the country?”

“I dare say, sir, that is all very fine, and very humorous; but when
these mysterious vagabonds--”

The eye of the stranger blazed; lightning itself, in fact, was not
quicker than the fire which gleamed from it, as the baronet uttered the
last words. He walked over deliberately, but with a step replete with
energy and determination:

“How, sir,” said he, “do you dare to apply such an expression to me?”

The baronet's eye quailed. He paused a moment, during which he could
perceive that the stranger had a spirit not to be tampered with.

“No, sir,” he replied, “not exactly to you, but when persons such as
you come in this skulking way, probably for the purpose of insinuating
themselves into families of rank--”

“Have I, sir, attempted to insinuate myself into yours,” asked the
stranger, interrupting him.

“When such persons come under circumstances of strong suspicion,”
 said the other, without replying to him, “it is the business of every
gentleman in the country to keep a vigilant eye upon them.”

“I shall hold myself accountable to no such gentleman,” replied the
stranger; “but will consider every man, no matter what his rank or
character may be, as unwarrantably impertinent, who arrogantly attempts
to intrude himself in affairs that don't--” he was about to add, “that
don't concern him,” when he paused, and added, “into any man's affairs.
Every man has a right to travel incognito, and to live incognito, if he
chooses; and, on that account, sir, so long as I wish to maintain mine,
I shall allow no man to assume the right of penetrating it. If this has
been the object of your visit, you will much oblige me by relinquishing
the one, and putting an end to the other, as soon as may be.”

“As a magistrate, sir, I demand to know your name,” said the baronet,
who thought that, in the stranger's momentary hesitation, he had
observed symptoms of yielding.

“As an independent man, sir, and a gentleman, I shall not answer such a
question.”

“You brave me, sir--you defy me.” continued the other, his face still
pale, but baleful in its expression.

“Yes, sir,” replied the other, “I brave you--I defy you.”

“Very well, sir,” returned the baronet--“remember these words.”

“I am not in the habit of forgetting anything that a man of spirit
ought to remember,” said the other--“I have the honor of wishing you a
good-morning.”

The baronet withdrew in a passion that had risen to red heat, and was
proceeding to mount his horse at the door, when Counsellor Crackenfudge,
who had followed him downstairs, thus addressed him:

“I beg your pardon, Sir Thomas; I happened to be sitting in the
back-room while you were speaking to that strange fellow above; I pledge
you my honor I did not listen; but I could not help overhearing, you
know--well, Sir Thomas, I can tell you something about him.”

“How!” said the baronet, whose eye I gleamed with delight--“Can you, in
truth, tell me anything about him, Mr. Crackenfudge? You will oblige me
very much if you do.”

“I will tell you all I know about him, Sir Thomas,” replied the worthy
counsellor; “and that is, that I know he has paid many secret visits to
Mr. Birney the attorney.”

“To Birney!” exclaimed the other; and, as he spoke, he seemed actually
to stagger back a step or two, whilst the paleness of his complexion
increased to a hue that was ghastly--“to Birney!--to my blackest
and bitterest enemy--to the man who, I suspect, has important
family documents of mine in his possession. Thanks, even for this,
Crackenfudge--you are looking to become of the peace. Hearken now; aid
me in ferreting out this lurking scoundrel, and I shall not forget your
wishes.” He then rode homewards.

The stranger, during this stormy dialogue with Sir Thomas Gourlay,
turned his eye, from time to time, toward Fenton, who appeared to have
lost consciousness itself so long as the baronet was in the room. On the
departure, however, of that gentleman, he went over to him, and said:

“Why, Fenton, what's the matter?” Fenton looked at him with a face of
great distress, from which the perspiration was pouring, but seemed
utterly unable to speak.




CHAPTER VI. Extraordinary Scene between Fenton and the Stranger.

The character of Fenton was one that presented an extraordinary variety
of phases. With the exception of the firmness and pertinacity with which
he kept the mysterious secret of his origin and identity--that is, if
he himself knew them, he was never known to maintain the same moral
temperament for a week together. Never did there exist a being so
capricious and unstable. At one time, you found him all ingenuousness
and candor; at another, no earthly power could extort a syllable of
truth from his lips. For whole days, if not for weeks together, he
dealt in nothing but the wildest fiction, and the most extraordinary and
grotesque rodomontade. The consequence was, that no reliance could be
placed on anything he said or asserted. And yet--which appeared to
be rather unaccountable in such a character--it could be frequently
observed that he was subject to occasional periods of the deepest
dejection. During those painful and gloomy visitations, he avoided
all intercourse with his fellow-men, took to wandering through the
country--rarely spoke to anybody, whether stranger or acquaintance, but
maintained the strictest and most extraordinary silence. If he passed a
house at meal-time he entered, and, without either preface or apology,
quietly sat down and joined them. To this freedom on his part, in a
country so hospitable as Ireland in the days of her prosperity was, and
could afford to be, no one ever thought of objecting.

“It was,” observed the people, “only the poor young gentleman who is not
right in the head.”

So that the very malady which they imputed to him was only a passport
to their kindness and compassion. Fenton had no fixed residence, nor any
available means of support, save the compassionate and generous interest
which the inhabitants of Ballytrain took in him, in consequence of those
gentlemanly manners which he could assume whenever he wished, and the
desolate position in which some unknown train of circumstances had
unfortunately placed him.

When laboring under these depressing moods to which we have alluded,
his memory seemed filled with recollections that, so far as appearances
went, absolutely stupefied his heart by the heaviness of the suffering
they occasioned it; and, when that heart, therefore, sank as far as its
powers of endurance could withstand this depression, he uniformly had
recourse to the dangerous relief afforded by indulgence in the fiery
stimulant of liquor, to which he was at all times addicted.

Such is a slightly detailed sketch of an individual whose fate is deeply
involved in the incidents and progress of our narrative.

The horror which we have described as having fallen upon this
unfortunate young man, during Sir Thomas Gourlay's stormy interview with
the stranger, so far from subsiding, as might be supposed, after his
departure, assumed the shape of something bordering on insanity. On
looking at his companion, the wild but deep expression of his eyes began
to change into one of absolute frenzy, a circumstance which could not
escape the stranger's observation, and which, placed as he was in the
pursuit of an important secret, awoke a still deeper interest, whilst at
the same time it occasioned him much pain.

“Mr. Fenton,” said he, “I certainly have no wish, by any proceeding
incompatible with an ungentlemanly feeling of impertinent curiosity, to
become acquainted with the cause of this unusual excitement, which the
appearance of Miss Gourlay and her father seems to produce upon you,
unless in so far as its disclosure, in honorable confidence, might
enable me, as a person sincerely your friend, to allay or remove it.”

“Suppose, sir, you are mistaken.” replied the other--“Do you not know
that there are memories arising from association, that are touched and
kindled into great pain, by objects that are by no means the direct
cause of them, or the cause of them in any sense?”

“I admit the truth of what you say, Mr. Fenton; but we can only draw our
first inferences from appearances. It is not from any idle or prurient
desire to become acquainted with the cause of your emotion that I
speak, but simply from a wish to serve you, if you will permit me. It is
distressing to witness what you suffer.”

“I have experienced,” said Fenton, whose excitement seemed not only to
rise as he proceeded, but in a considerable degree to give that fervor
and elevation to his language, which excitement often gives; “yes, sir,”
 he proceeded, his eyes kindling almost into fury, “I have experienced
much treacherous and malignant sympathy, under the guise of pretended
friendship--sympathy! why do I say sympathy? Persecution--vengeance.
Yes, sir, till I have become mad--or--or nearly so. No,” he added, “I
am not mad--I never was mad--but I understand your object--avaunt,
sir--begone--or I shall throw you out of the window.”

“Be calm, Mr. Fenton--be calm,” replied the stranger, “and collect
yourself. I am, indeed, sincerely your friend.”

“Who told you, sir, that I was mad?”

“I never said so, Mr. Fenton.”

“It matters not, sir--you are a traitor--and as such I denounce you.
This room is mine, sir, and I shall forthwith expel you from it--” and,
as he spoke, he started up, and sprung at the stranger, who, on
seeing him rise for the purpose, instantly rang the bell. The waiter
immediately entered, and found the latter holding poor Fenton by the
two wrists, and with such a tremendous grasp as made him feel like an
infant, in point of strength, in his hands.

“This is unmeaning violence, sir,” exclaimed the latter, calmly but
firmly, “unless you explain yourself, and give a reason for it. If you
are moved by any peculiar cause of horror, or apprehension, or danger,
why not enable me to understand it, in order that you may feel assured
of my anxious disposition to assist you?”

“Gintlemen,” exclaimed Paudeen, “what in the name of Pether White and
Billy Neelins is the reason of this? But I needn't ax--it's one of Mr.
Fenton's tantrams--an' the occasion of it was, lying snug and warm
this mornin', in one of Andy Trimble's whiskey barrels. For shame, Mr.
Fenton, you they say a gintleman born, and to thrate one of your own
rank--a gintleman that befriended you as he did, and put a daicint shoot
of clo'es on your miserable carcase; when you know that before he did
it, if the wind was blowing from the thirty-two points of the compass,
you had an openin' for every point, if they wor double the number.
Troth, now, you're ongrateful, an' if God hasn't said it, you'll thravel
from an onpenitent death-bed yet. Be quiet, will you, or my sinful sowl
to glory, but I'll bundle you downstairs?”

“He will be quiet, Pat,” said the stranger. “In truth, after all, this
is a mere physical malady, Mr. Fenton, and will pass away immediately,
if you will only sit down and collect yourself a little.”

Fenton, however, made another unavailable attempt at struggle, and
found that he was only exhausting himself to no purpose. All at once, or
rather following up his previous suspicions, he seemed to look upon the
powerful individual who held him, as a person who had become suddenly
invested with a new character that increased his terrors; and yet, if
we may say so, almost forced him into an anxiety to suppress their
manifestation. His limbs, however, began to tremble excessively; his
eyes absolutely dilated, and became filled by a sense of terror, nearly
as wild as despair itself. The transitions of his temper, however, like
those of his general conduct, supervened upon each other with remarkable
rapidity, and, as it were, the result of quick, warm, and inconsiderate
impulses.

“Well,” he exclaimed at length, “I will be quiet, I am, I assure you,
perfectly harmless; but, at the same time,” he added, sitting down, “I
know that the whole dialogue between you and that awful-looking man, was
a plot laid for me. Why else did you insist on my being present at it?
This accounts for your giving me a paltry sum of money, too--it does,
sir--and for your spurious and dishonest humanity in wishing to see me
well clothed. Yes, I perceive it all; but, let what may happen, I
will not wear these clothes any longer. They are not the offering of a
generous heart, but the fraudulent pretext for insinuating yourself
into my confidence, in order to--to--yes, but I shall not say it--it
is enough that I know you, sir--that I see through, and penetrate your
designs.”

He was about to put his threat with respect to the clothes into instant
execution, when the stranger, once more seizing him, exclaimed--“You
must promise, Mr. Fenton, before you leave my grasp, that you will make
no further attempt to tear off your dress. I insist on this;” and as he
spoke he fixed his eye sternly and commandingly on that of Fenton.

“I will not attempt it,” replied the latter; “I promise it, on the word
of a gentleman.”

“There, then,” said the stranger--“Keep yourself quiet, and, mark me,
I shall expect that you will not violate that word, nor yield to these
weak and silly paroxysms.”

Fenton merely nodded submissively, and the other proceeded, still with a
view of sounding him: “You say you know me; if so, who and what am I?”

“Do not ask me to speak at further length,” replied Fenton; “I am quite
exhausted, and I know not what I said.”

He appeared now somewhat calmer, or, at least, affected to be so. By
his manner, however, it would appear that some peculiar opinion or
apprehension, with reference either to the baronet or the stranger,
seemed as if confirmed, whilst, at the same time, acting under one of
his rapid transitions, he spoke and looked like a man who was influenced
by new motives. He then withdrew in a mood somewhat between sullenness
and regret.

When the stranger was left to himself, he paced the room some time in
a state of much anxiety, if not distress. At length he sat down, and,
leaning his head upon his hand, exclaimed unconsciously aloud:

“Alas! I fear this search is vain. The faint traces of imaginary
resemblance, which I thought I had discovered in this young man's
features, are visible no longer. It is; true, this portrait,” looking
once more at the miniature, “was taken when the original was only
a child of five years; but still it was remarked that the family
resemblances were, from childhood up, both strong and striking. Then,
this unfortunate person is perfectly inscrutable, and not to be managed
by any ordinary procedure at present intelligible to me. Yet,--after
all, as far as I have been able to conjecture, there is a strong
similarity in the cases. The feeling among the people here is, that he
is a gentleman by birth: but this may proceed from the air and manners
which he can assume when he pleases. I would mention my whole design
and object at hazard, but this would be running an unnecessary risk by
intrusting my secret to him; and, although it is evident that he can
preserve his own, it does not necessarily follow that he would keep
mine. However, I must only persevere and bide my time, as the Scotch
say.”

He again rose, and, pacing the apartment once more, his features assumed
a still deeper expression of inward agitation.

“And, again,” he exclaimed, “that unfortunate rencounter! Great Heavens,
what if I stand here a murderer, with the blood of a fellow-creature,
hurried, I fear, in the very midst of his profligacy, into eternity! The
thought is insupportable; and I know not, unless I can strictly preserve
my incognito, whether I am at this moment liable, if apprehended, to pay
the penalty which the law exacts. The only consolation that remains
for me is, that the act was not of my seeking, but arrogantly and
imperiously forced upon me.”




CHAPTER VII. The Baronet attempts by Falsehood

The Baronet attempts by Falsehood to urge his Daughter into an Avowal of
her Lover's Name.


Sir Thomas Gourlay, after his unpleasant interview with the stranger,
rode easily home, meditating upon some feasible plan by which he hoped
to succeed in entrapping his daughter into the avowal of her lover's
name, for he had no doubt whatsoever that the gentleman at the inn and
he were one and the same individual. For this purpose, he determined
to put on a cheerful face, and assume, as far as in him lay, an air of
uncommon satisfaction. Now this was a task of no ordinary difficulty for
Sir Thomas to encounter. The expression of all the fiercer and darker
passions was natural to such a countenance as his; but even to imagine
such a one lit up with mirth, was to conceive an image so grotesque and
ridiculous, that the firmest gravity must give way before it. His frown
was a thing perfectly intelligible, but to witness his smile, or rather
his effort at one, was to witness an unnatural phenomenon of the most
awful kind, and little short of a prodigy. If one could suppose the sun
giving a melancholy and lugubrious grin through the darkness of a total
eclipse, they might form some conception of the jocular solemnity which
threw its deep but comic shadow over his visage. One might expect the
whole machinery of the face, with as much probability as that of a mill,
to change its habitual motions, and turn in an opposite direction. It
seemed, in fact, as if a general breaking up of the countenance was
about to take place, and that the several features, like a crew of
thieves and vagabonds flying from the officers of justice, were all
determined to provide for themselves.

Lucy saw at a glance that her father was about to get into one of those
tender and complacent moods which were few and far between, and, made
wise by experience, she very properly conjectured, from his appearance,
that some deep design was concealed under it. Anxious, therefore, to
avoid a prolonged dialogue, and feeling, besides, her natural candor
and invincible love of truth to a certain extent outraged by this
treacherous assumption of cordiality, she resolved to commence the
conversation.

“Has anything agreeable happened; papa?”

“Agreeable, Lucy, ahem!--why, yes--something agreeable has happened.
Now, Lucy, poor foolish girl, would it not have been better to have
placed confidence in me with respect to this lover of yours? Who can
feel the same interest in your happiness that I do?”

“None, certainly, sir; unless some one whose happiness may probably
depend on mine.”

“Yes, your lover--well, that now is a natural enough distinction; but
still, you foolish, naughty girl, don't you know that you are to inherit
my wealth and property, and that they will make you happy? You silly
thing, there's a truth for you.”

“Were you yourself happy, papa, when we separated this morning? Are
you happy this moment? Are you generally happy? Is there no rankling
anxiety--no project of ambition--no bitter recollection corroding
your heart? Does the untimely loss of my young brother, who would have
represented and sustained your name, never press heavily upon it? I ask
again, Papa, are you generally happy? Yet you are in possession of all
the wealth and property you speak of.”

“Tut, nonsense, silly child! Nothing is more ridiculous than to hear
a girl like you, that ought to have no will but mine, reasoning like a
philosopher.”

“But, dear papa,” proceeded Lucy, “if you should persist in marrying me
to a profligate, merely because he is a nobleman--oh, how often is that
honorable name prostituted!--and could give me a title, don't you see
how wretched I should be, and how completely your wealth and property
would fail to secure my happiness?”

“Very well argued, Lucy, only that you go upon wrong principles. To be
sure, I know that young ladies--that is, very young and inexperienced
ladies, somewhat like yourself, Lucy--have, or pretend to have--poor
fools--a horror of marrying those they don't love; and I am aware,
besides, that a man might as well attempt to make a stream run up hill
as combat them upon this topic. As for me, in spite of all my wealth and
property--I say this in deference to you--I am really very happy this
moment.”

“I am delighted to hear it, papa. May I ask, what has contributed to
make you so?”

“I shall mention that presently; but, in the mean time, my theory on
this subject is, that, instead of marrying for love, I would recommend
only such persons to contract matrimony as entertain a kind of lurking
aversion for each other. Let the parties commence with, say, a tolerably
strong stock of honest hatred on both sides. Very well; they, are
united. At first, there is a great deal of heroic grief, and much
exquisite martyrdom on the part of the lady, whilst the gentleman is at
once, if I may say so, indifferent and indignant. By and by, however,
they become tired of this. The husband, who, as well as the wife,
we shall suppose, has a strong spice of the devil in him, begins to
entertain a kind of diabolical sympathy for the fire and temper she
displays; while she, on the other hand, comes by degrees to admire in
him that which she is conscious of possessing herself, that is to say,
a sharp tongue and an energetic temperament. In this way, Lucy, they
go on, until habit has become a second nature to them. The appetite
for strife has been happily created. At length, they find themselves
so completely captivated by it that it becomes the charm of their
existence. Thenceforth a bewitching and discordant harmony prevails
between them, and they entertain a kind of hostile affection for each
other that is desperately delightful.”

“Why, you are quite a painter, papa; your picture is admirable; all it
wants is truth and nature.”

“Thank you, Lucy; you are quite complimentary, and have made an artist
of me, as artists now go. But is not this much more agreeable and
animated than the sweet dalliance of a sugar-plum life, or the dull,
monotonous existence resembling a Dutch canal, which we term connubial
happiness?”

“Well, now, papa, suppose you were to hear me through?”

“Very well,” he replied; “I will.”

“I do not believe, sir, that life can present us with anything more
beautiful and delightful than the union of two hearts, two minds, two
souls, in pure and mutual affection, when that affection is founded upon
something more durable than mere beauty or personal attraction--that is,
when it is based upon esteem, and a thorough knowledge of the object we
love.”

“Yes, Lucy; but remember there are such things as deceit, dissimulation,
and hypocrisy in the world.”

“Yes, and goodness, and candor, and honor, and truth, and fidelity,
papa; do you remember that? When two beings, conscious, I say, of each
other's virtues--each other's failings, if you will--are united in the
bonds of true and pure affection, how could it happen that marriage,
which is only the baptism of love upon the altar of the heart, should
take away any of the tenderness of this attachment, especially when we
reflect that its very emotions are happiness? Granting that love, in its
romantic and ideal sense, may disappear after marriage, I have heard,
and I believe, that it assumes a holier and still more tender spirit,
and reappears under the sweeter and more beautiful form of domestic
affection. The very consciousness, I should suppose, that our destinies,
our hopes, our objects, our cares--in short, our joys and sorrows, are
identical and mutual, to be shared with and by each other, and that
all those delightful interchanges of a thousand nameless offices of
tenderness that spring up from the on-going business of our own
peculiar life--these alone, I can very well imagine, would constitute
an enjoyment far higher, purer, holier, than mere romantic love. Then,
papa, surely we are not to live solely for ourselves. There are the
miseries and wants of others to be lessened or relieved, calamity to
be mitigated, the pale and throbbing brow of sickness to be cooled, the
heart of the poor and neglected to be sustained and cheered, and the
limbs of the weary to be clothed and rested. Why, papa,” she proceeded,
her, dark eye kindling at the noble picture of human duty she had
drawn, “when we take into contemplation the delightful impression of two
persons going thus, hand in hand, through life, joining in the discharge
of their necessary duties, assisting their fellow-creatures, and
diffusing good wherever they go--each strengthening and reflecting the
virtues of the other, may we not well ask how they could look upon each
other without feeling the highest and noblest spirit of tenderness,
affection, and esteem?”

“O yes, I was right, Lucy; all romances, all imagination, all honeypot,
with a streak of treacle here and there for the shading,” and, as he
spoke, he committed another felony in the disguise of a horse-laugh,
which, however, came only from the jaws out.

“But, papa,” she proceeded, anxious to change the subject and curtail
the interview, “as I said, I trust something agreeable has happened; you
seem in unusually good spirits.”

“Why, yes, Lucy,” he replied, setting his eyes upon her with an
expression of good-humor that made her tremble--“yes, I was in
Ballytrain, and had an interview with a friend of yours, who is stopping
in the 'Mitre.' But, my dear, surely that is no reason why you should
all at once grow so pale! I almost think that you have contracted a
habit of becoming pale. I observed it this morning--I observe it now;
but, after all, perhaps it is only a new method of blushing--the blush
reversed--that is to say, blushing backwards. Come, you foolish girl,
don't be alarmed; your lover had more sense than you have, and knew when
and where to place confidence.”

He rose up now, and having taken a turn or two across the room,
approached her, and in deep, earnest, and what he intended to be, and
was, an impressive and startling voice, added:

“Yes, Miss Gourlay, he has told me all.”

Lucy looked at him, unmoved as to the information, for she knew it
was false; but she left him nothing to complain of with--regard to her
paleness now. In fact, she blushed deeply at the falsehood he attempted
to impose upon her. The whole tenor and spirit of the conversation was
instantly changed, and assumed for a moment a painful and disagreeable
formality.

“To whom do you allude, sir.” she asked.

“To the gentleman, madam, to whom you bowed so graciously, and, let me
add, significantly, to-day.”

“And may I beg to know, sir, what he has told you?”

“Have I not already said that he has told me all? Yes, madam, I have
said so, I think. But come, Lucy,” he added, affecting to relax, “be a
good girl; as you said, yourself, it should not be sir and madam between
you and me. You are all I have in the world--my only child, and if I
appear harsh to you, it is only because I love and am anxious to make
you happy. Come, my dear child, put confidence in me, and rely upon my
affection and generosity.”

Lucy was staggered for a moment, but only for a moment, for she
thoroughly understood him.

“But, papa, if the gentleman you allude to has told you all, what is
there left for me to confide to you?”

“Why, the truth is, Lucy, I was anxious to test his sincerity, and
to have your version as well as his. He appears, certainly, to be a
gentleman and a man of honor.”

“And if he be a man of honor, papa, how can you require such a test?”

“I said, observe, that he appears to be such; but, you know, a man may
be mistaken in the estimate he forms of another in a first interview.
Come, Lucy, do something to make me your friend.”

“My friend!” she replied, whilst the tears rose to her eyes. “Alas,
papa, must I hear such language as this from a father's lips? Should
anything be necessary to make that father the friend of his only child?
I know not how to reply to you, sir; you have placed me in a position of
almost unexampled distress and pain. I cannot, without an apparent want
of respect and duty, give expression to what I know and feel.”

“Why not, you foolish girl, especially when you see me in such
good-humor? Take courage. You will find me more indulgent than you
imagine. Imitate your lover yonder.”

She looked at him, and her eyes sparkled through her tears with shame,
but not merely with shame, for her heart was filled with such an
indignant and oppressive sense of his falsehood as caused her to weep
and sob aloud for two or three minutes.

“Come, my dear child, I repeat--imitate your lover yonder. Confess; but
don't weep thus. Surely I am not harsh to you now?”

“Papa,” she replied, wiping her eyes, “the confidence which you solicit,
it is not in my power to bestow. Do not, therefore, press me on this
subject. It is enough that I have already confessed to you that my
affections are engaged. I will now add what perhaps I ought to have
added before, that this was with the sanction of my dear mamma. Indeed,
I would have said so, but that I was reluctant to occasion reflections
from you incompatible with my affection for her memory.”

“Your mother, madam,” he added, his face blackening into the hue of his
natural temper, “was always a poor, weak-minded woman. She was foolish,
madam, and indiscreet, and has made you wicked--trained you up to
hypocrisy, falsehood, and disobedience. Yes, madam, and in every
instance where you go contrary to my will, you act upon her principles.
Why do you not respect truth, Miss Gourlay?”

“Alas, sir!” she replied, stung and shocked by his unmanly reflections
upon the memory of her mother, whilst her tears burst out afresh, “I am
this moment weeping for my father's disregard of it.”

“How, madam! I am a liar, am I? Oh, dutiful daughter!”

“Mamma, sir, was all truth, all goodness, all affection. She was at once
an angel and a martyr, and I will not hear her blessed memory insulted
by the very man who, above all others, ought to protect and revere it.
I am not, papa, to be intimidated by looks. If it be our duty to defend
the absent, is it not ten thousand times more so to defend the dead?
Shall a daughter hear with acquiescence the memory of a mother, who
would have died for her, loaded with obloquy and falsehood? No, sir!
Menace and abuse myself as much as you wish, but I tell you, that while
I have life and the power of speech, I will fling back, even into a
father's face, the falsehoods--the gross and unmanly falsehoods--with
which he insults her tomb, and calumniates her memory and her virtues.
Do not blame me, sir, for this language; I would be glad to honor you if
I could; I beseech you, my father, enable me to do so.”

“I see you take a peculiar--a wanton pleasure in calling me a liar.”

“No, sir, I do not call you a liar; but I know you regard truth no
farther than it serves your own purposes. Have you not told me just now,
that the gentleman in the Mitre Inn has made certain disclosures to you
concerning himself and me? And now, father, I ask you, is there one word
of truth in this assertion? You know there is not. Have you not
sought my confidence by a series of false pretences, and a relation of
circumstances that were utterly without foundation? All this, however,
though inexpressibly painful to me as your daughter, I could overlook
without one word of reply; but I never will allow you to cast foul
and cowardly reproach upon the memory of the best of mothers--upon the
memory of a wife of whom, father, you were unworthy, and whom, to my own
knowledge, your harshness and severity hurried into a premature grave.
Oh, never did woman pay so dreadful a penalty for suffering herself
to be forced into marriage with a man she could not love, and who was
unworthy of her affection! That, sir, was the only action of her life in
which her daughter cannot, will not, imitate her.”

She rose to retire, but her father, now having relapsed into all his
dark vehemence of temper, exclaimed--

“Now mark me, madam, before you go. I say you shall sleep under lock and
key this night. I tell you that I shall use the most rigorous measures
with you, the severest, the harshest, that I can devise, or I shall I
break that stubborn will of yours. Do not imagine for one moment that
you shall overcome me, or triumph in your disobedience. No, sooner than
you should, I would break your spirit--I would break your heart”

“Be it so, sir. I am ready to suffer anything, provided only you will
forbear to insult the memory of my mother.”

With these words she sought her own room, where she indulged in a long
fit of bitter grief.

Sir Thomas Gourlay, in these painful contests of temper with his candid
and high-minded daughter, was by no means so cool and able as when
engaged in similar exercitations with strangers. The disadvantage
against him in his broils with Lucy, arose from the fact that he had
nothing in this respect to conceal from her. He felt that his natural
temper and disposition were known, and that the assumption of any and
every false aspect of character, must necessarily be seen through by
her, and his hypocrisy detected and understood. Not so, however, with
strangers. When manoeuvring with them, he could play, if not a deeper,
at least a safer game; and of this he himself was perfectly conscious.
Had his heart been capable of any noble or dignified emotion, he must
necessarily have admired the greatness of his daughter's mind, her
indomitable love of truth, and the beautiful and undying tenderness with
which her affection brooded over the memory of her mother. Selfishness,
however, and that low ambition which places human happiness in the
enjoyment of wealth, and honors, and empty titles, had so completely
blinded him to the virtues of his daughter, and to the sacred character
of his own duties as a father, bound by the first principles of nature
to promote her happiness, without corrupting her virtues, or weakening
her moral impressions--we say these things had so blinded him, and
hardened his heart against all the purer duties and responsibilities of
life, that he looked upon his daughter as a hardened, disobedient girl,
dead to the influence of his own good--the ambition of the world--and
insensible to the dignified position which awaited her among the
votaries of rank and fashion. But, alas, poor man! how little did he
know of the healthy and substantial virtues which confer upon those
whose station lies in middle and in humble life, a benevolent and hearty
consciousness of pure enjoyment, immeasurably superior to the hollow
forms of life and conduct in aristocratic circles, which, like the
tempting fruit of the Dead Sea, seem beautiful to the eye, but are
nothing more, when tested by the common process of humanity, than ashes
and bitterness to the taste. We do not now speak of a whole class, for
wherever human nature is, it will have its virtues as well as its vices;
But we talk of the system, which cannot be one of much happiness or
generous feeling, so long as it separates itself from the general
sympathies of mankind.




CHAPTER VIII. The Fortune-Teller--An Equivocal Prediction.


The stranger's appearance at the “Mitre,” and the incident which
occurred there, were in a peculiar degree mortifying to the Black
Baronet, for so he was generally called. At this precise period he had
projected the close of the negotiation with respect to the contemplated
marriage between Lucy and Lord Dunroe. Lord Cullamore, whose residence
was only a few miles from Red Hall, had been for some time in delicate
health, but he was now sufficiently recovered to enter upon the
negotiation proposed, to which, were it not for certain reasons that
will subsequently appear, he had, in truth, no great relish; and this,
principally on Lucy Gourlay's account, and with a view to her future
happiness, which he did not think had any great chance of being promoted
by a matrimonial alliance with his son.

Not many minutes after the interview between Lucy and her father, a
liveried servant arrived, bearing a letter in reply to one from Sir
Thomas, to the following effect:

“My Dear Gourlay,--I have got much stronger within the last fortnight;
that is, so far as my mere bodily health is concerned. As I shall
proceed to London in a day or two, it is perhaps better that I should
see you upon the subject of this union, between your daughter and my
son, especially as you seem to wish it so anxiously. To tell you the
truth, I fear very much that you are, contrary to remonstrance, and
with your eyes open to the consequences, precipitating your charming and
admirable Lucy upon wretchedness and disconsolation for the remainder
of her life; and I can tell her, and would if I were allowed, that the
coronet of a countess, however highly either she or you may appreciate
it, will be found but a poor substitute for the want of that affection
and esteem, upon which only can be founded domestic happiness and
contentment.

“Ever, my dear Gourlay, faithfully yours,

“CULLAMORE.”


The baronet's face, after having perused this epistle, brightened up
as much as any face of such sombre and repulsive expression could be
supposed to do; but, again, upon taking into consideration what he
looked upon as the unjustifiable obstinacy of his daughter, it became
once more stern and overshadowed. He ground his teeth with vexation
as he paced to and fro the room, as was his custom when in a state of
agitation or anger. After some minutes, during which his passion seemed
only to increase, he went to her apartment, and, thrusting in his head
to ascertain that she was safe, he deliberately locked the door,
and, putting the key in his pocket, once more ordered his horse, and
proceeded to Glenshee Castle, the princely residence of his friend, Lord
Cullamore.

None of our readers, we presume, would feel disposed to charge our
hardened baronet with any tendency to superstition. That he felt its
influence, however, was a fact; for it may have been observed that there
is a class of minds which, whilst they reject all moral control when any
legitimate barrier stands between them and the gratification of their
evil passions or designs, are yet susceptible of the effects which are
said to proceed from such slight and trivial incidents as are supposed
to be invested with a mysterious and significant influence upon the
actions of individuals. It is not, however, those who possess the
strongest passions that are endowed with the strongest principles,
unless when it happens that these passions are kept in subjection by
religion or reason. In fact, the very reverse of the proposition in
general holds true; and, indeed, Sir Thomas Gourlay was a strong and
startling proof of this. In his case, however, it might be accounted
for by the influence over his mind, when young, of a superstitious nurse
named Jennie Corbet, who was a stout believer in all the superstitious
lore which at that time constituted a kind of social and popular creed
throughout the country. It was not that the reason of Sir Thomas was at
all convinced by, or yielded any assent to, such legends, but a habit of
belief in them, which he was never able properly to throw off, had been
created, which left behind it a lingering impression resulting from
their exhibition, which, in spite of all his efforts, clung to him
through life.

Another peculiarity of his we may as well mention here, which related
to his bearing while on horseback. It had been shrewdly observed by the
people, that, whilst in the act of concocting any plan, or projecting
any scheme, he uniformly rode at an easy, slow, and thoughtful pace;
but, when under the influence of his angry passions, he dashed along
with a fury and vehemence of speed that startled those whom he met, and
caused them to pause and look after him with wonder.

The distance between Red Hall and Glenshee Castle was not more than four
miles; the estates of both proprietors lying, in fact, together. The
day was calm, mild, and breathed of the fragrant and opening odors of
spring. Sir Thomas had nearly measured half the distance at a very slow
pace, for, in truth, he was then silently rehearsing his part in the
interview which was about to take place between him and his noble
friend. The day, though calm, as we said, was nevertheless without
sunshine, and, consequently, that joyous and exhilarating spirit of
warmth and light which the vernal sun floods down upon all nature,
rendering earth and air choral with music, was not felt so powerfully.
On the contrary, the silence and gloom were somewhat unusual,
considering the mildness which prevailed. Every one, however,
has experienced the influence of such days--an influence which,
notwithstanding the calm and genial character of the day itself, is felt
to be depressing, and at variance with cheerfulness and good spirits.

Be this as it may, Sir Thomas was proceeding leisurely along, when a
turn of the road brought him at once upon the brow of the small valley
from which the residence of the Cullamore family had its name--Glenshee,
or, in English, the Glen of the Fairies. Its sides were wild, abrupt,
and precipitous, and partially covered with copse-wood, as was the
little brawling stream which ran through it, and of which the eye of
the spectator could only catch occasional glimpses from among the hazel,
dogberry, and white thorn, with which it was here and there covered.
In the bottom, there was a small, but beautiful green carpet, nearly,
if not altogether circular, about a hundred yards in diameter, in the
centre of which stood one of those fairy rings that gave its name
and character to the glen. The place was, at all times, wild, and so
solitary that, after dusk, few persons in the neighborhood wished to
pass it alone. On the day in question, its appearance was still and
impressive, and, owing to the gloom which prevailed, it presented a
lonely and desolate aspect, calculated, certainly, in some degree, to
inspire a weak mind with something of that superstitious feeling which
was occasioned by its supernatural reputation. We said that the baronet
came to a winding part of the road which brought this wild and startling
spot before him, and just at the same moment he was confronted by
an object quite as wild and as startling. This was no-other than a
celebrated fortune-teller of that day, named Ginty Cooper, a middle-aged
sibyl, who enjoyed a very wide reputation for her extraordinary insight
into futurity, as well as for performing a variety of cures upon both
men and cattle, by her acquaintance, it was supposed, with fairy lore,
the influence of charms, and the secret properties of certain herbs with
which, if you believed her, she had been made acquainted by the _Dainhe
Shee_, or good people themselves.

The baronet's first feeling was one of annoyance and vexation, and for
what cause, the reader will soon understand.

“Curse this ill-looking wretch,” he exclaimed mentally; “she is the first
individual I have met since I left home. It is not that I regard the
matter a feather, but, somehow, I don't wish that a woman--especially
such a blasted looking sibyl as this--should be the first person I meet
when going on any business of importance.” Indeed, it is to be observed
here, that some of Ginty's predictions and cures were such as, among an
ignorant and credulous people, strongly impressed by the superstitions
of the day, and who placed implicit reliance upon her prophetic and
sanative faculties, were certainly calculated to add very much to her
peculiar influence over them, originating, as they believed, in her
communion with supernatural powers. Her appearance, too, was strikingly
calculated to sustain the extraordinary reputation which she bore, yet
it was such as we feel it to be almost impossible to describe. Her face
was thin, and supernaturally pale, and her features had a death-like
composure, an almost awful rigidity, that induced the spectator to
imagine that she had just risen from the grave. Her thin lips were
repulsively white, and her teeth so much whiter that they almost filled
you with fear; but it was in her eye that the symbol of her prophetic
power might be said to lie. It was wild, gray, and almost transparent,
and whenever she was, or appeared to be, in a thoughtful mood,
or engaged in the contemplation of futurity, it kept perpetually
scintillating, or shifting, as it were, between two proximate objects,
to which she seemed to look as if they had been in the far distance of
space--that is, it turned from one to another with a quivering rapidity
which the eye of the spectator was unable to follow. And yet it was
evident on reflection, that in her youth she must have been not only
good-looking, but handsome. This quick and unnatural motion of the eye
was extremely wild and startling, and when contrasted with the white and
death-like character of her teeth, and the moveless expression of her
countenance, was in admirable keeping with the supernatural qualities
attributed to her. She wore no bonnet, but her white death-bed like cap
was tied round her head by a band of clean linen, and came under her
chin, as in the case of a corpse, thus making her appear as if she
purposely assumed the startling habiliments of the grave. As for the
outlines of her general person, they afforded evident proof--thin and
emaciated as she then was--that her figure in early life must have been
remarkable for great neatness and symmetry. She inhabited a solitary
cottage in the glen, a fact which, in the opinion of the people,
completed the wild prestige of her character.

“You accursed hag,” said the baronet, whose vexation at meeting her was
for the moment beyond any superstitious impression which he felt, “what
brought you here? What devil sent you across my path now? Who are you,
or what are you, for you look like a libel on humanity?”

“If I don't,” she replied, bitterly, “I know who does. There is not much
beauty between us, Thomas Gourlay.”

“What do you mean by Thomas Gourlay, you sorceress?”

“You'll come to know that some day before you die, Thomas; perhaps
sooner than you can think or dream of.”

“How can you tell that, you irreverent old viper?”

“I could tell you much more than that, Thomas,” she replied, showing her
corpse-like teeth with a ghastly smile of mocking bitterness that was
fearful.

The Black Baronet, in spite of himself, began to feel somewhat uneasy,
for, in fact, there appeared such a wild but confident significance in
her manner and language that he deemed it wiser to change his tactics
with the woman, and soothe her a little if he could. In truth, her words
agitated him so much that he unconsciously pulled out of his waistcoat
pocket the key of Lucy's room, and began to dangle with it as he
contemplated her with something like alarm.

“My poor woman, you must be raving,” he replied. “What could a destitute
creature like you know about my affairs? I don't remember that I ever
saw you before.”

“That's not the question, Thomas Gourlay, but the question is, what have
you done with the child of your eldest brother, the lawful heir of the
property and title that you now bear, and bear unjustly.”

He was much startled by this allusion, for although aware that the
disappearance of the child in question had been for many long years well
known, yet, involved, as it was, in unaccountable mystery, still the
circumstance had never been forgotten.

“That's an old story, my good woman,” he replied. “You don't charge me,
I hope, as some have done, with making away with him? You might as well
charge me with kidnapping my own son, you foolish woman, who, you know,
I suppose, disappeared very soon after the other.”

“I know he did,” she replied; “but neither I nor any one else ever
charged you with that act; and I know there are a great many of opinion
that both acts were committed by some common enemy to your house, who
wished, for some unknown cause of hatred, to extinguish your whole
family. That is, indeed, the best defence you have for the disappearance
of your brother's son; but, mark me, Thomas Gourlay--that defence will
not pass with God, with me, nor with your own heart. I have my own
opinion upon that subject, as well as upon many others. You may ask your
own conscience, Thomas Gourlay, but he'll be a close friend of yours
that will ever hear its answer.”

“And is this all you had to say to me, you ill-thinking old vermin.” he
replied, again losing his temper.

“No,” she answered, “I wish to tell your fortune; and you will do well
to listen to me.”

“Well,” said he, in a milder tone, putting at the same time the key of
Lucy's door again into his pocket, without being in the slightest degree
conscious of it, “if you are, I suppose I must cross your hand with
silver as usual; take this.”

“No,” she replied, drawing back with another ghastly smile, the meaning
of which was to him utterly undefinable, “from your hand nothing in the
shape of money will ever pass into mine; but listen”--she looked at him
for some moments, during which she paused, and then added--“I will not
do it, I am not able to render good for evil, yet; I will suffer you to
run your course. I am well aware that neither warning nor truth would
have any effect upon you, unless to enable you to prepare and sharpen
your plans with more ingenious villany. But you have a daughter; I will
speak to you about her.”

“Do,” said the baronet; “but why not take the silver?”

“You will know that one day before you die, too,” said she, “and I don't
think it will smooth your death-bed pillow.”

“Why, you are a very mysterious old lady.”

“I'll now give you a proof of that. You locked in your daughter before
you left home.”

Sir Thomas could not for his life prevent himself from starting so
visibly that she observed it at once.

“No such thing,” he replied, affecting a composure which he certainly
did not feel; “you are an impostor, and I now see that you know
nothing.”

“What I say is true,” she replied, solemnly, “and you have stated,
Thomas Gourlay, what you know to be a falsehood; I would be glad to
discover you uttering truth unless with some evil intention. But now for
your daughter; you wish to hear her fate?”

“Certainly I do; but then you know nothing. You charge me with
falsehood, but it is yourself that are the liar.”

She waved her hand indignantly.

“Will my daughter's husband be a man of title?” he asked, his mind
passing to the great and engrossing object of his ambition.

“He will be a man of title,” she replied, “and he will make her a
countess.”

“You must take money,” said he, thrusting his hand into his pocket, and
once more pulling out his purse--“that is worth something, surely.”

She waved her hand again, with a gesture of repulse still more indignant
and frightful than before, and the bitter smile she gave while doing it
again displayed her corpse-like teeth in a manner that was calculated to
excite horror itself.

“Very well,” replied the baronet; “I will not press you, only don't make
such cursed frightful grimaces. But with respect to my daughter, will
the marriage be with her own consent?”

“With her own consent--it will be the dearest wish of her heart.”

“Could you name her husband?”

“I could and will. Lord Dunroe will be the man, and he will make her
Countess of Cullamore.”

“Well, now,” replied the other, “I believe you can speak truth, and are
somewhat acquainted with the future. The girl certainly is attached to
him, and I have no doubt the union will be, as you say, a happy one.”

“You know in your soul,” she replied, “that she detests him; and you
know she would sacrifice her life this moment sooner than marry him.”

“What, then, do you mean.” he asked, “and why do you thus contradict
yourself?”

“Good-by, Thomas Gourlay,” she replied. “So far as regards either the
past or the future, you will hear nothing further from me to-day; but,
mark me, we shall meet again---and we have met before.”

“That, certainly, is not true,” he said, “unless it might be
accidentally on the highway; but, until this moment, my good woman, I
don't remember to have seen your face in my life.”

[Illustration: PAGE 350-- How will you be prepared to render an account]

She looked toward the sky, and pointing her long, skinny finger upwards,
said, “How will you be prepared to render an account of all your deeds
and iniquities before Him who will judge you there!”

There was a terrible calmness, a dreadful solemnity on her white,
ghastly features as she spoke, and pointed to the sky, after which she
passed on in silence and took no further notice of the Black Baronet.

It is very difficult to describe the singular variety of sensations
which her conversation, extraordinary, wild, and mysterious as it was,
caused this remarkable man to experience. He knew not what to make of
it. One thing was certain, however, and he could not help admitting it
to himself, that, during their short and singular dialogue, she had, he
knew not how, obtained and exercised an extraordinary ascendency over
him. He looked after her, but she was proceeding calmly along, precisely
as if they had not spoken.

“She is certainly the greatest mystery in the shape of woman,” he said
to himself, as he proceeded, “that I have ever yet met--that is, if she
be a thing of flesh and blood--for to me she seems to belong more to
death and its awful accessories, than to life and its natural reality.
How in the devil's name could she have known that I locked that
obstinate and undutiful girl up. This is altogether inexplicable, upon
principles affecting only the ordinary powers of common humanity. Then
she affirmed, prophesied, or what you will, that Lucy and Dunroe will
be married--willingly and happily! That certainly is strange, and as
agreeable as strange; but I will doubt nothing after the incident of the
locking up, so strangely revealed to me too, at a moment when, perhaps,
no human being knew it but Lucy and myself. And, what is stranger still,
she knows the state of the girl's affections, and that she at present
detests Dunroe. Yet, stay, have I not seen her somewhere before? She
said so herself. There is a faint impression on me that her face is not
altogether unfamiliar to me, but I cannot recall either time or place,
and perhaps the impression is a wrong one.”




CHAPTER IX. Candor and Dissimulation


Glenshee Castle was built by the father of the then Lord Cullamore, at
a cost of upwards of one hundred thousand pounds. Its general effect and
situation were beautiful, imposing, and picturesque in the extreme. Its
north and east sides, being the principal fronts, contained the state
apartments, while the other sides, for the building was a parallelogram,
contained the offices, and were overshadowed, or nearly altogether
concealed, by trees of a most luxuriant growth. In the east front stood
a magnificent circular tower, in fine proportion with it; whilst an
octagon one, of proportions somewhat inferior, terminated the northern
angle. The front, again, on the north, extending from the last mentioned
tower, was connected with a fine Gothic chapel, remarkable for the
beauty of its stained windows, supervening buttresses, and a belfry at
its western extremity. On the north front, which was the entrance, rose
a porch leading into a vestibule, and from thence into the magnificent
hall. From this sprung a noble stone staircase, with two inferior
flights that led to a corridor, which communicated with a gorgeous suit
of bedchambers. The grand hall communicated on the western side with
those rooms that were appropriated to the servants, and those on the
opposite, with the state apartments, which were of magnificent size
and proportions, having all the wood-work of Irish oak, exquisitely
polished. The gardens were in equal taste, and admirably kept. The
pleasure grounds were ornamented with some of the rarest exotics. On
each side of the avenue, as you approached the castle, stood a range
of noble elms, beeches, and oaks intermingled; and, as you reached the
grand entrance, you caught a view of the demesne and deer-park, which
were, and are, among the finest in the kingdom. There was also visible,
from the steps of the hall and front window, the bends of a sweet, and
winding river near the centre of the demesne, spanned by three or four
light and elegant arches, that connected the latter and the deer-park
with each other. Nothing, however, was so striking in the whole
landscape as the gigantic size and venerable appearance of the wood,
which covered a large portion of the demesne, and the patriarchal
majesty of those immense trees, which stood separated from the mass
of forest, singly or in groups, in different parts of it. The evening
summer's deep light, something between gold and purple, as it poured its
mellow radiance upon the green openings between these noble trees, or
the evening smoke, as it arose at the same hour from the chimneys of the
keepers' houses among their branches, were sights worth a whole gallery
of modern art.

As the baronet approached the castle, he thought again of the woman
and her prophecies, and yielded to their influence, in so far as they
assured him that his daughter was destined to become the proud mistress
of all the magnificence by which he was surrounded. The sun had now
shone forth, and as its clear light fell upon the house, its beautiful
pleasure-grounds, its ornamented lawns, and its stately avenues, he
felt that there was something worth making a struggle for, even at the
expense of conscience, when he contemplated, with the cravings of an
ambitious heart, the spirit of rich and deep repose in which the whole
gorgeous spectacle lay.

On reaching the hall he rang, and in a few minutes was admitted to his
friend, Lord Cullamore.

Lord Cullamore was remarkable for that venerable dignity and graceful
ease, which, after all, can only result from early and constant
intercourse with polished and aristocratic society. This person was
somewhat above the middle size, his eye clear and significant, his
features expressive, and singularly indicative of what he felt or said.
In fact, he appeared to be an intelligent, candid man, who, in addition
to that air bestowed upon him by his rank and position, and which could
never for a moment be mistaken, was altogether one of the best specimens
of his class. He had neither those assumptions of hateful condescension,
nor that eternal consciousness of his high birth, which too frequently
degrade and disgrace the commonplace and vulgar nobleman; especially
when he makes the privileges of his class an offence and an oppression
to his inferiors, or considers it a crime to feel or express those noble
sympathies, which, as a first principle, ought to bind him to that class
by whom he lives, and who constitute the great mass of humanity, from
whose toil and labor originate the happiness of his order. When in
conversation, the natural animation of his lordship's countenance was
checked, not only by a polite and complacent sense of what was due to
those with whom he spoke, and a sincere anxiety to put them at their
ease, but evidently by an expression that seemed the exponent of some
undivulged and corroding sorrow. We may add, that he was affectionate,
generous, indolent; not difficult to be managed when he had no strong
purpose to stimulate him; keen of observation, but not prone to
suspicion; consequently often credulous, and easily imposed upon; but,
having once detected fraud or want of candor, the discovery was certain
forever to deprive the offending party of his esteem--no matter what
their rank or condition in life might be.

We need scarcely say, therefore, that this, amiable nobleman, possessing
as he did all the high honor and integrity by which his whole life was
regulated, (with one solitary exception, for which his heart paid a
severe penalty,) carried along with him, in his old age, that respect,
reverence, and affection, to which the dignified simplicity of his life
entitled him. He was, indeed, one of those few noblemen whose virtues
gave to the aristocratic spirit, true grace and appropriate dignity,
instead of degrading it, as too many of his caste do, by pride,
arrogance, and selfishness.

Sir Thomas Gourlay, on entering the magnificent library to which he was
conducted, found his lordship in the act of attaching his signature to
some papers. The latter received him kindly and graciously, and shook
hands with him, but without rising, for which he apologized.

“I am not at all strong, Sir Thomas,” he added; “for although this last
attack has left me, yet I feel that it has taken a considerable
portion of my strength along with it. I am, however, free from pain and
complaint, and my health is gradually improving.”

“But, my lord, do you think you will be able to encounter the fatigue
and difficulties of a journey to London.” replied the other--“Will you
have strength for it?”

“I hope so; travelling by sea always agreed with and invigorated my
constitution. The weather, too, is fine, and. I will take the long
voyage. Besides, it is indispensable that I should go. This wild son
of mine has had a duel with some one in a shooting gallery--has been
severely hit--and is very ill; but, at the same time, out of danger.”

“A duel! Good heavens! My lord, how did it happen.” asked the baronet.

“I am not exactly aware of all the particulars; but I think they cannot
be creditable to the parties, or to Dunroe, at least; for one of
his friends has so far overshot the mark as to write to me, for my
satisfaction, that they have succeeded in keeping the affair out of the
papers. Now, there must be something wrong when my son's friends are
anxious to avoid publicity in the matter. The conduct of that young man,
my dear Sir Thomas, is a source of great affliction to me; and I tremble
for the happiness of your daughter, should they be united.”

“You are too severe on Dunroe, my lord,” replied the baronet--“It is
better for a man to sow his wild oats in season than out of season.
Besides, you know the proverb, 'A reformed rake,' etc.”

“The popularity of a proverb, my good friend, is no proof of its truth;
and, besides, I should wish to place a hope of my son's reformation upon
something firmer and more solid than the strength of an old adage.”

“But you know, my lord,” replied the other, “that the instances of
post-matrimonial reformation, if I may use the word, from youthful
folly, are sufficient to justify the proverb. I am quite certain, that,
if Lord Dunroe were united to a virtuous and sensible wife, he would
settle down into the character of a steady, honorable, and independent
man. I could prove this by many instances, even within your knowledge
and mine. Why, then, exclude his lordship from the benefit of a
contingency, to speak the least, which we know falls out happily in so
many instances?”

“You mean you could prove the probability of it, my dear baronet; for,
at present, the case is not susceptible of proof. What you say may
be true; but, on the other hand, it may not; and, in the event of his
marrying without the post-matrimonial reformation you speak of, what
becomes of your daughter's happiness?”

“Nay, I know generous Dunroe so well, my lord, that I would not, even as
Lucy's father, hesitate a moment to run the risk.”

“But what says Lucy herself? And how does she stand affected toward him?
For that is the main point. This matter, you know, was spoken over some
few years ago, and conditionally approved of by us both; but my son was
then very young, and had not plunged into that course of unjustifiable
extravagance and profligacy which, to my cost, has disgraced his
latter years. I scorn to veil his conduct, baronet, for it would be
dishonorable under the circumstances between us, and I trust you will be
equally candid in detailing to me the sentiments of your daughter on the
subject.”

“My lord, I shall unquestionably do so; but Lucy, you must know, is a
girl of a very peculiar disposition. She possesses, in fact, a good deal
of her unworthy father's determination and obstinacy. Urge her with too
much vehemence, and she will resist; try to accelerate her pace, and
she will stand still; but leave her to herself, to the natural and
reasonable suggestions of her excellent sense, and you will get her to
do anything.”

“That is but a very indifferent character you bestow upon your daughter,
Sir Thomas,” replied his lordship--“I trust she deserves a better one at
your hands.”

“Why, my lord,” replied the baronet, smiling after his own peculiar
fashion, that is to say, with a kind of bitter sarcasm, “I have as good
a right, I think, to exaggerate the failings of my daughter as you have
to magnify those of your son. But a truce to this, and to be serious:
I know the girl; you know, besides, something about women yourself, my
lord, and I need not say that it is unwise to rely upon the moods and
meditations of a young lady before marriage. Upon the prospect of such
an important change in their position, the best of them will assume a
great deal. The period constitutes the last limited portion of their
freedom; and, of course, all the caprices of the heart, and all the
giddy ebullitions of gratified vanity, manifest themselves so strangely,
that it is extremely difficult to understand them, or know their wishes.
Under such circumstances, my lord, they will, in the very levity of
delight, frequently say 'no,' when they mean 'yes,' and vice versa.”

“Sir Thomas,” replied his lordship, gravely, “marriage, instead of being
the close, should be the commencement, of their happiness. No woman,
however, of sense, whether before marriage or after it, is difficult to
be understood. Upon a subject of such importance--one that involves the
happiness of her future life--no female possessing truth and principle
would, for one moment, suffer a misconception to exist. Now your
daughter, my favorite Lucy, is a girl of fine sense and high feeling,
and I am at a loss, Sir Thomas, I assure you, to reconcile either one
or the other with your metaphysics. If Miss Gourlay sat for the
disagreeable picture you have just drawn, she must be a great hypocrite,
or you have grossly misrepresented her, which I conceive it is not now
your interest or your wish to do.”

“But, my lord, I was speaking of the sex in general.”

“But, sir,” replied his lordship with dignity, “we are here to speak of
your daughter.”

Our readers may perceive that the wily baronet was beating about the
bush, and attempting to impose upon his lordship by vague disquisitions.
He was perfectly aware of Lord Cullamore's indomitable love of truth,
and he consequently feared to treat him with a direct imposition, taking
it for granted that, if he had, an interview of ten minutes between
Lucy and his lordship might lead to an exposure of his duplicity and
falsehood. He felt himself in a painful and distressing dilemma. Aware
that, if the excellent peer had the slightest knowledge of Lucy's
loathing horror of his son, he would never lend his sanction to the
marriage, the baronet knew not whether to turn to the right or to the
left, or, in other words, whether to rely on truth or falsehood. At
length, he began to calculate upon the possibility of his daughter's
ultimate acquiescence, upon the force of his own unbending character,
her isolated position, without any one to encourage or abet her in what
he looked upon as her disobedience, consequently his complete control
over her; having summoned up all those points together, he resolved to
beat about a little longer, but, at all events, to keep the peer in the
dark, and, if pressed, to hazard the falsehood. He replied, however, to
his lordship's last observation:

“I assure you, my lord, I thought not of my daughter while I drew the
picture.”

“Well, then,” replied his lordship, smiling, “all I have to say is, that
you are very eloquent in generalities--generalities, too, my friend,
that do not bear upon the question. In one word, is Miss Gourlay
inclined to this marriage? and I beseech you, my dear baronet, no more
of these generalities.”

“She is as much so, my lord,” replied the other, “as nineteen women out
of every twenty are in general. But it is not to be expected, I repeat,
that a delicately-minded and modest young creature will at once step
forward unabashed and exclaim, 'Yes, papa, I will marry him.' I protest,
my lord, it would require the desperate heroism of an old maid on the
last legs of hope, or the hardihood of a widow of three husbands, to go
through such an ordeal. We consequently must make allowance for those
delicate and blushing evasions which, after all, only mask compliance.”

By this reply the baronet hoped to be able to satisfy his friend,
without plunging into the open falsehood. The old nobleman, however,
looked keenly at him, and asked a question which penetrated like a
dagger into the lying soul within him.

“She consents, then, in the ordinary way?”

“She does, my lord.”

“Well,” replied the peer, “that, as the world goes, is, perhaps, as much
as can be expected at present. You have not, I dare say, attempted to
force her very much on the subject, and the poor girl has no mother.
Under such circumstances, the delicacy of a young lady is certainly
entitled to a manly forbearance. Have you alluded to Dunroe's want of
morals?”

“Your opinion of his lordship and mine differ on this point
considerably, my lord,” replied the baronet--“You judge him with
the severity of a father, I with the moderation of a friend. I have
certainly made no allusion to his morals.”

“Of course, then, you are aware, that it is your duty to do so; as a
father, that it is a most solemn and indispensable duty?”

The soul of Sir Thomas Gourlay writhed within him like a wounded
serpent, at the calm but noble truth contained in this apophthegm. He
was not, however, to be caught; the subtlety of his invention enabled
him to escape on that occasion at least.

“It has this moment occurred to me, my lord, with reference to this very
point, that it may be possible, and by no means improbable--at least I
for one anxiously hope it--that the recent illness of my Lord Dunroe may
have given him time to reflect upon his escapades and follies, and
that he will rejoin society a wiser and a better man. Under these
expectations, I appeal to your own good sense, my lord, whether it would
be wise or prudent by at present alluding--especially if it be
rendered unnecessary by his reformation--to his want of morals, in any
conversation I may hold with my daughter, and thereby deprive him of her
personal respect and esteem, the only basis upon which true affection
and domestic happiness can safely rest. Let us therefore wait, my lord.
Perhaps the loss of some of his hot blood may have cooled him. Perhaps,
after all,” he added, smiling, “we may have reason to thank his
phlebotomist.”

The peer saw Sir Thomas's play, and, giving him another keen glance,
replied:

“I never depended much upon a dramatic repentance, my dear baronet. Many
a resolution of amendment has been made on the sick bed; but we know in
general how they are kept, especially by the young. Be this as it may,
our discussion has been long enough, and sufficiently ineffectual. My
impression is, that Miss Gourlay is disinclined to the alliance. In
truth, I dare say she is as well acquainted with his moral reputation as
we are--perhaps better. Dunroe's conduct has been too often discussed in
fashionable life to be a secret to her, or any one else who has access
to it. If she reject him from a principle of virtuous delicacy and
honor, she deserves a better fate than ever to call him husband. But
perhaps she may have some other attachment?”

“My lord,” replied Sir Thomas, rising, “I think I can perceive on which
side the disinclination lies. You have--and pray excuse me for saying
so--studiously thrown, during the present conference, every possible
obstruction in the way of an arrangement on this subject. If your
lordship is determined that the alliance between our families shall not
take place, I pray you to say so. Upon your own showing my daughter will
have little that she ought to regret in escaping Dunroe.”

“And Dunroe would have much to be thankful to God for in securing your
daughter. But, Sir Thomas Gourlay, I will be candid and open with you.
Pray observe, sir, that, during this whole discussion, conference, or
what you will, I did not get out of you a single direct answer, and that
upon a subject involving the life-long happiness of your only child.
I tell you, baronet, that your indirectness of purpose, and--you will
excuse me, too, for what I am about to say, the importance of the
subject justifies me--your evasions have excited my suspicions, and
my present impression is, that Miss Gourlay is averse to a matrimonial
union with my son; that she has heard reports of his character which
have justly alarmed her high-minded sense of delicacy and honor; and
that you, her parent, are forcing her into a marriage which she detests.
Look into your own heart, Sir Thomas, and see whether you are not
willing to risk her peace of mind for the miserable ambition of seeing
her one day a countess. Alas! my friend,” he continued, “there is no
talisman in the coronet of a countess to stay the progress of sorrow, or
check the decline of a breaking heart. If Miss Gourlay be, as I fear
she is, averse to this union, do not sacrifice her to ambition and a
profligate. She is too precious a treasure to be thrown away upon two
objects so utterly worthless. Her soul is too pure to be allied to
contamination--her heart too noble, too good, too generous, to be broken
by unavailing grief and a repentance that will probably come too late.”

“If I assure you, my lord, that she is not averse to the
match--nay”--and here this false man consoled his conscience by falling
back upon the prophecy of Ginty Cooper--“if I assure you that she will
marry Dunroe willingly--nay, with delight, will your lordship then rest
satisfied?”

“I must depend upon your word, Sir Thomas; am I not in conversation with
a gentleman?”

“Well, then, my lord, I assure you that it is so. Your lordship will
find, when the time comes, that my daughter is not only not
indisposed to this union, but absolutely anxious to become your
daughter-in-law”--bad as he was, he could not force himself to say,
in so many plain words, “the wife of your son”--“But, my lord,” he
proceeded, “if you will permit me to make a single observation, I will
thank you, and I trust you will excuse me besides.”

“Unquestionably, Sir Thomas.”

“Well, then, my lord, what I have observed during our conversation, with
great pain, is, that you seem to entertain--pardon me, I speak in good
feeling, I assure your lordship--that you seem, I say, to entertain
a very unkind and anything but a parental feeling for your son. What,
after all, do his wild eccentricities amount to more than the freedom
and indulgence in those easy habits of life which his wealth and station
hold out to him with greater temptation than they do to others? I
cannot, my lord, in fact, see anything so monstrous in the conduct of
a young nobleman like him, to justify, on the part of your lordship,
language so severe, and, pardon me, so prejudicial to his character.
Excuse me, my lord, if I have taken a liberty to which I am in nowise
entitled.” Socrates himself could scarcely have assumed a tone more
moral, or a look of greater sincerity, or more anxious interest, than
did the Black Baronet whilst he uttered these words.

The peer rose up, and his eye and whole person were marked by an
expression and an air of the highest dignity, not unmingled with deep
and obvious feeling.

“Sir Thomas Gourlay,” said he, “you seem to forget the object of our
conference, and our respective positions.”

“My Lord,” exclaimed the other, in a deprecating tone, “I meant no
offence, upon my honor.”

“I have taken none,” replied his lordship; “but I must teach you to
understand me. Whatever my son's conduct may be, one thing is evident,
that you are his apologist; now, as a moral man, anxious for the
happiness of your child, I tell you that you ought to have exchanged
positions with me; it is you who, when about to intrust your daughter to
him for life, ought to have investigated his moral character and habits,
and manifested an anxiety to satisfy yourself whether they were such
as would reflect honor upon her, and secure her peace of mind and
tranquillity in the married state. You say, too, that I do not speak
of my son in a kind or parental feeling; but do you imagine, sir, that,
engaged as I am here, in a confidential and important conference, the
result of which may involve the happiness or misery of two persons
so dear to us both, I would be justified in withholding the truth, or
lending myself to a course of dishonorable deception?”

He sat down again, and seemed deeply affected.

“God knows,” he said, “that I love that wild and unthinking young man,
perhaps more than I ought; but do you imagine, sir, that, because I have
spoken of him with the freedom necessary and due to the importance
and solemnity of our object in meeting, I could or would utter such
sentiments to the world at large? I pray you, sir, then, to make and
observe the distinction; and, instead of assailing me for want of
affection as a parent, to thank me for the candor with which I have
spoken.”

The baronet felt subdued; it is evident that his mind was too coarse and
selfish to understand the delicacy, the truth, and high, conscientious
feeling with which Lord Cullamore conducted his part of this
negotiation.

“My lord,” said the baronet, who thought of another point on which to
fall back, “there is one circumstance, one important fact, which we have
both unaccountably overlooked, and which, after all, holds out a greater
promise of domestic happiness between these young persons than anything
we have thought of. His lordship is attached to my daughter. Now, where
there is love, my lord, there is every chance and prospect of happiness
in the married life.”

“Yes, if it be mutual, Sir Thomas; everything depends on that. I am
glad, however, you mentioned it. There is some hope left still; but
alas, alas! what is even love when opposed to selfishness and ambition?
I could--I myself could----” he seemed deeply moved, and paused for some
time, as if unwilling to trust himself with speech--“Yes, I am glad you
mentioned it, and I thank you, Sir Thomas, I thank you. I should wish
to see these two young people happy. I believe he is attached to your
daughter, and I will now mention a fact which certainly proves it. The
gentleman with whom he fought that unfortunate duel was forced into it
by Dunroe, in consequence of his having paid some marked attentions to
Miss Gourlay, when she and her mother were in Paris, some few months
before Lady Gourlay's decease. I did not wish to mention this before,
out of respect for your daughter; but I do so now, confidentially, of
course, in consequence of the turn our conversation has taken.”

Something on the moment seemed to strike the baronet, who started,
for he was unquestionably an able hand at putting scattered facts and
circumstances together, and weaving a significant conclusion from them.

“That, my lord, at all events,” said the coarse-minded man, after having
recovered himself, “that is gratifying.”

“What!” exclaimed Lord Cullamore, “to make your daughter the cause and
subject of a duel, an intemperate brawl in a shooting gallery. The only
hope I have is, that I trust she was not named.”

“But, my lord, it is, after all, a proof of his affection for her.”

His lordship smiled sarcastically, and looked at him with something like
amazement, if not with contempt; but did not deign to reply.

“And now, my lord,” continued the baronet, “what is to be the result
of our conference? My daughter will have all my landed property at my
death, and a large marriage-portion besides, now in the funds. I am
apparently the last of my race. The disappearance and death--I take it
for granted, as they have never since been heard of--of my brother Sir
Edward's heir, and very soon after of my own, have left me without a
hope of perpetuating my name; I shall settle my estates upon Lucy.”

His lordship appeared abstracted for a few moments--“Your brother and
you,” he observed, “were on terms of bitter hostility, in consequence
of what you considered an unequal marriage on his part, and I
candidly assure you, Sir Thomas, that, were it not for the mysterious
disappearance of your own son, so soon after the disappearance of his,
it would have been difficult to relieve you from dark and terrible
suspicions on the subject. As it is, the people, I believe, criminate
you still; but that is nothing; my opinion is, that the same enemy
perpetrated the double crime. Alas! the worst and bitterest of all
private feuds are the domestic. There is my own brother; in a moment of
passion and jealousy he challenged me to single combat; I had sense to
resist his impetuosity. He got a foreign appointment, and there has been
a gulf like that of the grave between him and his, and me and mine, ever
since.”

“Nothing, my lord,” replied Sir Thomas, his countenance, as he spoke,
becoming black with suppressed rage, “will ever remove the impression
from my mind, that the disappearance or murder of my son was not a
diabolical act of retaliation committed under the suspicion that I was
privy to the removal or death, as the case may be, of my brother's heir;
and while I have life I will persist in charging Lady Gourlay, as I must
call her so, with the crime.”

“In that impression,” replied his lordship, “you stand alone. Lady
Gourlay, that amiable, mild, affectionate, and heart-broken woman, is
utterly incapable of that, or any act of cruelty whatsoever. A woman who
is the source of happiness, kindness, relief, and support, to so many of
her humble and distressed fellow-creatures, is not likely to commit or
become accessory in any way to such a detestable and unnatural crime.
Her whole life and conduct render such a supposition monstrous and
incredible.”

Both, after he had closed his observations, mused for some time, when
the baronet, rising and pacing to and fro, as was his custom, at
length asked--“Well, my lord, what say you? Are we never to come to a
conclusion?”

“My determination is simply this, my dear baronet,--that, if you
and Miss Gourlay are satisfied to take Lord Dunroe, with all his
imperfections on his head, I shall give no opposition. She will, unless
he amends and reforms, take him, I grant you, at her peril; but be it
so. If the union, as, you say, will be the result of mutual attachment,
in God's name let them marry. It is possible, we are assured, that the
'unbelieving husband may be saved by the believing wife.'”

“I am quite satisfied, my lord, with this arrangement; it is fair, and
just, and honorable, and I am perfectly willing to abide by it. When
does your lordship propose to return to us?”

“I am tired of public life, my dear baronet. My daughter, Lady Emily,
who, you know, has chiefly resided with her maiden aunt, hopes to
succeed in prevailing on her to accompany us to Glenshee Castle, to
spend the summer and autumn, and visit some of the beautiful scenery of
this unknown land of ours. Something, as to time, depends upon Dunroe's
convalescence. My stay in England, however, will be as short as I can
make it. I am getting too old for the exhausting din and bustle of
society; and what I want now, is quiet repose, time to reflect upon my
past life, and to prepare myself, as well as I can, for a new change. Of
course, we will be both qualified to resume the subject of this marriage
after my return, and, until then, farewell, my dear baronet. But mark
me--no force, no violence.”

Sir Thomas, as he shook hands with him, laughed--“None will be
necessary, my lord, I assure you--I pledge you my honor for that.”

The worthy baronet, on mounting his horse, paced him slowly out of the
grounds, as was his custom when in deep meditation.

“If I don't mistake,” thought he, “I have a clew to this same mysterious
gentleman in the inn. He has seen and become acquainted with Lucy in
Paris, under sanction of her weak-minded and foolish mother. The girl
herself admitted that her engagement to him was with her consent.
Dunroe, already aware of his attentions to her, becomes jealous, and on
meeting him in London quarrels with him, that is to say, forces him, I
should think, into one;--not that the fellow seems at all to be a coward
either,--but why the devil did not the hot-headed young scoundrel take
steadier aim, and send the bullet through his heart or brain? Had he
pinked him, it would have saved me much vexation and trouble.”

He then passed to another train of thought--“Thomas Gourlay,--plain
Thomas Gourlay--what the devil could the corpse-like hag mean by that?
Is it possible that this insane scoundrel will come to light in spite of
me? Would to Heaven that I could ascertain his whereabouts, and get
him into my power once more. I would take care to put him in a place of
safety.” He then touched his horse with the spurs, and proceeded to Red
Hall at a quicker pace.




CHAPTER X. A Family Dialogue--and a Secret nearly Discovered.


Our scene must necessarily change to a kind of inn or low tavern, or, as
they are usually denominated, eating-houses, in Little Mary street,
on the north side of the good city of Dublin. These eating-houses were
remarkable for the extreme neatness and cleanliness with which they
were kept, and the wonderful order and regularity with which they were
conducted. For instance, a lap of beef is hung from an iron hook on the
door-post, which, if it be in the glorious heat of summer, is half black
with flies, but that will not prevent it from leaving upon your coat a
deep and healthy streak of something between grease and tallow as you
necessarily brush against it--first, on your going in, and secondly, on
your coming out.

The evening was tolerably advanced, and the hour of dinner long past;
but, notwithstanding this, there were several persons engaged in
dispatching the beef and cabbage we have described. Two or three
large county Meath farmers, clad in immense frieze jackets, corduroy
knee-breeches, thick woollen stockings, and heavy soled, shoes, were not
so much eating as devouring the viands that were before them; whilst in
another part of the rooms sat two or three meagre-looking scriveners'
clerks, rather out at elbows, and remarkable for an appearance of
something that might, without much difficulty, be interpreted into
habits that could not be reconciled with sobriety.

As there is not much, however, that is either picturesque or agreeable
in the description of such an establishment, we shall pass into an inner
room, where those who wished for privacy and additional comfort might
be entertained on terms somewhat more expensive. We accordingly beg our
readers to accompany us up a creaking pair of stairs to a small backroom
on the first floor, furnished with an old, round oak table, with turned
legs, four or five old-fashioned chairs, a few wood-cuts, daubed with
green and yellow, representing the four seasons, a Christmas carol,
together with that miracle of ingenuity, a reed in a bottle, which stood
on the chimney-piece.

In this room, with liquor before them, which was procured from a
neighboring public house--for, in establishments of this kind, they are
not permitted to keep liquor for sale--sat three persons, two men and a
woman. One of the men seemed, at first glance, rather good-looking, was
near or about fifty, stout, big-boned, and apparently very powerful as
regarded personal strength. He was respectably enough dressed, and,
as we said, unless when it happened that he fell into a mood of
thoughtfulness, which he did repeatedly, had an appearance of frankness
and simplicity which at once secured instant and unhesitating good will.
When, however, after putting the tumbler to his lips, and gulping down a
portion of it, and then replacing the liquor on the table, he folded his
arms and knitted his brows, in an instant the expression of openness and
good humor changed into one of deep and deadly malignity.

The features of the elder person exhibited a comic contrast between
nature and habit--between an expression of good humor, broad and
legible, which no one could mistake for a moment, and an affectation
of consequence, self-importance, and mock heroic dignity that were
irresistible. He was a pedagogue.

The woman who accompanied them we need not describe, having already
made the reader acquainted with her in the person of the female
fortune-teller, who held the mysterious dialogue with Sir Thomas Gourlay
on his way to Lord Cullamore's.

“This liquor,” said the schoolmaster, “would be nothing the worse of
a little daicent mellowness and flavor; but, at the same time, we must
admit that, though sadly deficient in a spirit of exhilaration, it bears
a harmonious reference to the beautiful beef and cabbage which we got
for dinner. The whole of them are what I designate as sorry specimens of
metropolitan luxury. May I never translate a classic, but I fear I
shall soon wax aegrotat--I feel something like a telegraphic despatch
commencing between my head and my stomach; and how the communication
may terminate, whether peaceably or otherwise, would require, O divine
Jacinta! your tripodial powers or prophecy to predict. The whiskey, in
whatever shape or under whatever disguise you take it, is richly worthy
of all condemnation.”

“I will drink no more of it, uncle,” replied the other man; “it would
soon sicken me, too. This shan't pass; it's gross imposition--and that
is a bad thing to practise in this world. Ginty, touch the bell, will
you?--we will make them get us better.”

A smile of a peculiar nature passed over the woman's ghastly features as
she looked with significant caution at her brother, for such he was.

“Yes, do get better whiskey,” she said; “it's too bad that we should
make my uncle sick from mere kindness.”

“I cannot exactly say that I am much out of order as yet,” replied the
schoolmaster, “but, as they say, if the weather has not broken, the sky
is getting troubled; I hope it is only a false, alarm, and may pass away
without infliction. If there is any of the minor miseries of life more
trying than another, it is to drink liquor that fires the blood, splits
the head, but basely declines to elevate and rejoice the heart. O,
divine poteen! immortal essence of the _hordeum beatum!_--which is
translated holy barley--what drink, liquor, or refreshment can be
placed, without the commission of something like small sacrilege,
in parallel with thee! When I think of thy soothing and gradually
exhilarating influence, of the genial spirit of love and friendship
which, owing to thee, warms the heart of man, and not unfrequently of
the softer sex also; when I reflect upon the cheerful light which
thou diffusest by gentle degrees throughout the soul, filling it with
generosity, kindness, and courage, enabling it to forget care and
calamity, and all the various ills that flesh is heir to; when I
remember too that thou dost so frequently aid the inspiration of the
bard, the eloquence of the orator, and changest the modesty of the
diffident lover into that easy and becoming assurance which is so
grateful to women, is it any wonder I should feel how utterly incapable
I am, without thy own assistance, to expound thy eulogium as I ought!
Hand that tumbler here, Charley,--bad as it is, there is no use, as
the proverb says, in laving one's liquor behind them. We will presently
correct it with better drink.”

Charley Corbet, for such was the name of the worthy schoolmaster's
nephew, laughed heartily at the eloquence of his uncle, who, he could
perceive, had been tampering a little with something stronger than water
in the course of the evening.

“What can keep this boy.” exclaimed Ginty; “he knew we were waiting for
him, and he ought to be here now.”

“The youth will come,” said the schoolmaster, “and a hospitable youth
he is--_me ipso teste_, as I myself can bear witness. I was in his
apartments in the _Collegium Sanctae Trinitatis_, as they say, which
means the blessed union of dulness, laziness, and wealth, for which
the same divine establishment has gained an appropriate and just
celebrity--I say I was in his apartments, where I found himself and
a few of his brother students engaged in the agreeable relaxation of
taking a hair of the same dog that bit them, after a liberal compotation
on the preceding night. Third place, as a scholar! Well! who may he
thank for that, I interrogate. Not one Denis O'Donegan!--O no; the said
Denis is an ignoramus, and knows nothing of

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