"We can talk about that another time," said the doctor, who began to feel an excessive wish to be out of the house.
"There"s no time like the present, when I"ve got it in my mind; and, if you"ll wait, I can settle it all for you to-night. I was telling you that I hate farming, and so I do. There are thirty or five-and-thirty acres of land about the house, and lying round to the back of the town; you shall take them off my hands, and welcome."
This was too good an offer to be resisted, and Colligan said he would take the land, with many thanks, if the rent any way suited him.
"We"ll not quarrel about that, you may be sure, Colligan," continued Barry; "and as I said fifty acres at first--it was fifty acres I think you were saying you wished for--I"ll not baulk you, and go back from my own word."
"What you have yourself, round the house, "ll be enough; only I"m thinking the rent "ll be too high."
"It shall not; it shall be low enough; and, as I was saying, you shall have the remainder, at the same price, immediately after Michaelmas, as soon as ever those devils are ejected."
"Well;" said Colligan, who was now really interested, "what"s the figure?"
Barry had been looking steadfastly at the fire during the whole conversation, up to this: playing with the poker, and knocking the coals about. He was longing to look into the other"s face, but he did not dare. Now, however, was his time; it was now or never: he took one furtive glance at the doctor, and saw that he was really anxious on the subject--that his attention was fixed.
"The figure," said he; "the figure should not trouble you if you had no one but me to deal, with. But there"ll be Anty, confound her, putting her fist into this and every other plan of mine!"
"I"d better deal with the agent, I"m thinking," said Colligan; "so, good night."
"You"ll find you"d a deal better be dealing with me: you"ll never find an easier fellow to deal with, or one who"ll put a better thing in your way."
Colligan again sat down. He couldn"t quite make Barry out: he suspected he was planning some iniquity, but he couldn"t tell what; and he remained silent, looking full into the other"s face till he should go on. Barry winced under the look, and hesitated; but at last he screwed himself up to the point, and said,
"One word, between two friends, is as good as a thousand. If Anty dies of this bout, you shall have the fifty acres, with a lease for perpetuity, at sixpence an acre. Come, that"s not a high figure, I think."
"What?" said Colligan, apparently not understanding him, "a lease for perpetuity at how much an acre?"
"Sixpence--a penny--a pepper-corn--just anything you please. But it"s all on Anty"s dying. While she"s alive I can do nothing for the best friend I have."
"By the Almighty above us," said the doctor, almost in a whisper, "I believe the wretched man means me to murder her--his own sister!"
"Murder?--Who talked or said a word of murder?" said Barry, with a hoa.r.s.e and croaking voice--"isn"t she dying as she is?--and isn"t she better dead than alive? It"s only just not taking so much trouble to keep the life in her; you"re so exceeding clever you know!"--and he made a ghastly attempt at smiling. "With any other doctor she"d have been dead long since: leave her to herself a little, and the farm"s your own; and I"m sure there"ll "ve been nothing at all like murder between us."
"By Heavens, he does!"--and Colligan rose quickly from his seat "he means to have her murdered, and thinks to make me do the deed! Why, you vile, thieving, murdering reptile!" and as he spoke the doctor seized him by the throat, and shook him violently in his strong grasp--"who told you I was a fit person for such a plan? who told you to come to me for such a deed? who told you I would sell my soul for your paltry land?"--and he continued grasping Barry"s throat till he was black in the face, and nearly choked. "Merciful Heaven! that I should have sat here, and listened to such a scheme! Take care of yourself," said he; and he threw him violently backwards over the chairs--"if you"re to be found in Connaught to-morrow, or in Ireland the next day, I"ll hang you!"--and so saying, he hurried out of the room, and went home.
"Well," thought he, on his road: "I have heard of such men as that before, and I believe that when I was young I read of such: but I never expected to meet so black a villain! What had I better do?--If I go and swear an information before a magistrate there"ll be nothing but my word and his. Besides, he said nothing that the law could take hold of.
And yet I oughtn"t to let it pa.s.s: at any rate I"ll sleep on it." And so he did; but it was not for a long time, for the recollection of Barry"s hideous proposal kept him awake.
Barry lay sprawling among the chairs till the sound of the hall door closing told him that his guest had gone, when he slowly picked himself up, and sat down upon the sofa. Colligan"s last words were ringing in his ear--"If you"re found in Ireland the next day, I"ll hang you."--Hang him!--and had he really given any one the power to speak to him in such language as that? After all, what had he said?--He had not even whispered a word of murder; he had only made an offer of what he would do if Anty should die: besides, no one but themselves had heard even that; and then his thoughts went off to another train. "Who"d have thought," he said to himself, "the man was such a fool! He meant it, at first, as well as I did myself. I"m sure he did. He"d never have caught as he did about the farm else, only he got afraid--the confounded fool!
As for hanging, I"ll let him know; it"s just as easy for me to tell a story, I suppose, as it is for him." And then Barry, too, dragged himself up to bed, and cursed himself to sleep. His waking thoughts, however, were miserable enough.
XXVIII. f.a.n.n.y WYNDHAM REBELS
We will now return to Grey Abbey, Lord Cashel, and that unhappy love-sick heiress, his ward, f.a.n.n.y Wyndham. Affairs there had taken no turn to give increased comfort either to the earl or to his niece, during the month which succeeded the news of young Harry Wyndham"s death.
The former still adhered, with fixed pertinacity of purpose, to the matrimonial arrangement which he had made with his son. Circ.u.mstances, indeed, rendered it even much more necessary in the earl"s eyes than it had appeared to be when he first contemplated this scheme for releasing himself from his son"s pecuniary difficulties. He had, as the reader will remember, advanced a very large sum of money to Lord Kilcullen, to be repaid out of f.a.n.n.y Wyndham"s fortune, This money Lord Kilcullen had certainly appropriated in the manner intended by his father, but it had anything but the effect of quieting the creditors. The payments were sufficiently large to make the whole hungry crew hear that his lordship was paying his debts, but not at all sufficient to satisfy their craving. Indeed, nearly the whole went in liquidation of turf engagements, and gambling debts. The Jews, money-lenders, and tradesmen merely heard that money was going from Lord Kilcullen"s pocket; but with all their exertions they got very little of it themselves.
Consequently, claims of all kinds--bills, duns, remonstrances and threats, poured in not only upon the son but also upon the father. The latter, it is true, was not in his own person liable for one penny of them, nor could he well, on his own score, be said to be an embarra.s.sed man; but he was not the less uneasy. He had determined if possible to extricate his son once more, and as a preliminary step had himself already raised a large sum of money which it would much trouble him to pay; and he moreover, as he frequently said to Lord Kilcullen, would not and could not pay another penny for the same purpose, until he saw a tolerably sure prospect of being repaid out of his ward"s fortune.
He was therefore painfully anxious on the subject; anxious not only that the matter should be arranged, but that it should be done at once.
It was plain that Lord Kilcullen could not remain in London, for he would be arrested; the same thing would happen at Grey Abbey, if he were to remain there long without settling his affairs; and if he were once to escape his creditors by going abroad, there would be no such thing as getting him back again. Lord Cashel saw no good reason why there should be any delay; Harry Wyndham was dead above a month, and f.a.n.n.y was evidently grieving more for the loss of her lover than that of her brother; she naturally felt alone in the world--and, as Lord Cashel thought, one young viscount would be just as good as another.
The advantages, too, were much in favour of his son; he would one day be an earl, and possess Grey Abbey. So great an accession of grandeur, dignity, and rank could not but be, as the earl considered, very delightful to a sensible girl like his ward. The marriage, of course, needn"t be much hurried; four or five months" time would do for that; he was only anxious that they should be engaged--that Lord Kilcullen should be absolutely accepted--Lord Ballindine finally rejected.
The earl certainly felt some scruples of conscience at the sacrifice he was making of his ward, and stronger still respecting his ward"s fortune; but he appeased them with the reflection that if his son were a gambler, a _roue_, and a scamp, Lord Ballindine was probably just as bad; and that if the latter were to spend all f.a.n.n.y"s money there would be no chance of redemption; whereas he could at any rate settle on his wife a jointure, which would be a full compensation for the loss of her fortune, should she outlive her husband and father-in-law. Besides, he looked on Lord Kilcullen"s faults as a father is generally inclined to look on those of a son, whom he had not entirely given up--whom he is still striving to redeem. He called his iniquitous vices, follies--his licentiousness, love of pleasure--his unprincipled expenditure and extravagance, a want of the knowledge of what money was: and his worst sin of all, because the one least likely to be abandoned, his positive, unyielding d.a.m.ning selfishness, he called "fashion"--the fashion of the young men of the day.
Poor Lord Cashel! he wished to be honest to his ward; and yet to save his son, and his own pocket at the same time, at her expense: he wished to be, in his own estimation, high-minded, honourable, and disinterested, and yet he could not resist the temptation to be generous to his own flesh and blood at the expense of another. The contest within him made him miserable; but the devil and mammon were too strong for him, particularly coming as they did, half hidden beneath the gloss of parental affection. There was little of the Roman about the earl, and he could not condemn his own son; so he fumed and fretted, and twisted himself about in the easy chair in his dingy book-room, and pa.s.sed long hours in trying to persuade himself that it was for f.a.n.n.y"s advantage that he was going to make her Lady Kilcullen.
He might have saved himself all his anxiety. f.a.n.n.y Wyndham had much too strong a mind--much too marked a character of her own, to be made Lady Anything by Lord Anybody. Lord Cashel might possibly prevent her from marrying Frank, especially as she had been weak enough, through ill-founded pique and anger, to lend him her name for dismissing him; but neither he nor anyone else could make her accept one man, while she loved another, and while that other was unmarried.
Since the interview between f.a.n.n.y and her uncle and aunt, which has been recorded, she had been nearly as uncomfortable as Lord Cashel, and she had, to a certain extent, made the whole household as much so as herself. Not that there was anything of the kill-joy character in f.a.n.n.y"s composition; but that the natural disposition of Grey Abbey and all belonging to it was to be dull, solemn, slow, and respectable.
f.a.n.n.y alone had ever given any life to the place, or made the house tolerable; and her secession to the ranks of the sombre crew was therefore the more remarked. If f.a.n.n.y moped, all Grey Abbey might figuratively be said to hang down its head. Lady Cashel was, in every sense of the words, continually wrapped up in wools and worsteds. The earl was always equally ponderous, and the specific gravity of Lady Selina could not be calculated. It was beyond the power of figures, even in algebraic denominations, to describe her moral weight.
And now f.a.n.n.y did mope, and Grey Abbey was triste [43] indeed.
Griffiths in my lady"s boudoir rolled and unrolled those huge white bundles of mysterious fleecy hosiery with more than usually slow and unbroken perseverance. My lady herself bewailed the fermentation among the jam-pots with a voice that did more than whine, it was almost funereal. As my lord went from breakfast-room to book-room, from book-room to dressing-room, and from dressing-room to dining-room, his footsteps creaked with a sound more deadly than that of a death-watch.
The book-room itself had caught a darker gloom; the backs of the books seemed to have lost their gilding, and the mahogany furniture its French polish. There, like a G.o.d, Lord Cashel sate alone, throned amid clouds of awful dulness, ruling the world of nothingness around by the silent solemnity of his inertia.
[FOOTNOTE 43: triste--(French) sad, mournful, dull, dreary]
Lady Selina was always useful, but with a solid, slow activity, a dignified intensity of heavy perseverance, which made her perhaps more intolerable than her father. She was like some old coaches which we remember--very sure, very respectable; but so tedious, so monotonous, so heavy in their motion, that a man with a spark of mercury in his composition would prefer any danger from a faster vehicle to their horrid, weary, murderous, slow security. Lady Selina from day to day performed her duties in a most uncompromising manner; she knew what was due to her position, and from it, and exacted and performed accordingly with a stiff, steady propriety which made her an awful if not a hateful creature. One of her daily duties, and one for the performance of which she had unfortunately ample opportunity, was the consolation of f.a.n.n.y under her troubles. Poor f.a.n.n.y! how great an aggravation was this to her other miseries! For a considerable time Lady Selma had known nothing of the true cause of f.a.n.n.y"s gloom; for though the two cousins were good friends, as far as Lady Selina was capable of admitting so human a frailty as friendship, still f.a.n.n.y could not bring herself to make a confidante of her. Her kind, stupid, unpretending old aunt was a much better person to talk to, even though she did arch her eyebrows, and shake her head when Lord Ballindine"s name was mentioned, and a.s.sure her niece that though she had always liked him herself, he could not be good for much, because Lord Kilcullen had said so. But f.a.n.n.y could not well dissemble; she was tormented by Lady Selina"s condolements, and recommendations of Gibbon, her encomiums on industry, and anathemas against idleness; she was so often reminded that weeping would not bring back her brother, nor inactive reflection make his fate less certain, that at last she made her monitor understand that it was about Lord Ballindine"s fate that she was anxious, and that it was his coming back which might be effected by weeping--or other measures.
Lady Selina was shocked by such feminine, girlish weakness, such want of dignity and character, such forgetfulness, as she said to f.a.n.n.y, of what was due to her own position. Lady Selina was herself unmarried, and not likely to marry; and why had she maintained her virgin state, and foregone the blessings of love and matrimony? Because, as she often said to herself, and occasionally said to f.a.n.n.y, she would not step down from the lofty pedestal on which it had pleased fortune and birth to place her.
She learned, however, by degrees, to forgive, though she couldn"t approve, f.a.n.n.y"s weakness; she remembered that it was a very different thing to be an earl"s niece and an earl"s daughter, and that the same conduct could not be expected from f.a.n.n.y Wyndham and Lady Selina Grey.
The two were sitting together, in one of the Grey Abbey drawing-rooms, about the middle of April. f.a.n.n.y had that morning again been talking to her guardian on the subject nearest to her heart, and had nearly distracted him by begging him to take steps to make Frank understand that a renewal of his visits at Grey Abbey would not be ill received.
Lord Cashel at first tried to frighten her out of her project by silence, frowns, and looks: but not finding himself successful, he commenced a long oration, in which he broke down, or rather, which he had to cut up into sundry short speeches; in which he endeavoured to make it appear that Lord Ballindine"s expulsion had originated with f.a.n.n.y herself, and that, banished or not banished, the less f.a.n.n.y had to do with him the better. His ward, however, declared, in rather a tempestuous manner, that if she could not see him at Grey Abbey she would see him elsewhere; and his lordship was obliged to capitulate by promising that if Frank were unmarried in twelve months" time, and f.a.n.n.y should then still be of the same mind, he would consent to the match and use his influence to bring it about. This by no means satisfied f.a.n.n.y, but it was all that the earl would say, and she had now to consider whether she would accept those terms or act for herself. Had she had any idea what steps she could with propriety take in opposition to the earl, she would have withdrawn herself and her fortune from his house and hands, without any scruples of conscience.
But what was she to do? She couldn"t write to her lover and ask him to come back to her!--Whither could she go? She couldn"t well set up house for herself.
Lady Selina was bending over her writing-desk, and penning most decorous notes, with a precision of calligraphy which it was painful to witness. She was writing orders to Dublin tradesmen, and each order might have been printed in the Complete Letter-Writer, as a specimen of the manner in which young ladies should address such correspondents.
f.a.n.n.y had a volume of French poetry in her hand, but had it been Greek prose it would have given her equal occupation and amus.e.m.e.nt. It had been in her hands half-an-hour, and she had not read a line.
"f.a.n.n.y," said Lady Selina, raising up her thin red spiral tresses from her desk, and speaking in a firm, decided tone, as if well a.s.sured of the importance of the question she was going to put; "don"t you want some things from Ellis"s?"
"From where, Selina?" said f.a.n.n.y, slightly starting.
"From Ellis"s," repeated Lady Selina.
"Oh, the man in Grafton Street.--No, thank you." And f.a.n.n.y returned to her thoughts.
"Surely you do, f.a.n.n.y," said her ladyship. "I"m sure you want black c.r.a.pe; you were saying so on Friday last."
"Was I?--Yes; I think I do. It"ll do another time, Selina; never mind now."
"You had better have it in the parcel he will send to-morrow; if you"ll give me the pattern and tell me how much you want, I"ll write for it."