The Black Baronet; or, The Chronicles Of Ballytrain Part 67

"Bekaise I did not wish to see you, then."

"Well, that's the truth," said the priest, "and I know it. But why did you not wish to see me?" he inquired; "you must have had some reason for it."

"I had my suspicions."

"You had, Anthony; and you've had the same suspicions this many a long year--ever since the day I saw you pa.s.s through the hall in the private mad-house in--."

"Was that the time Mr. Quin was there? asked Anthony, unconsciously committing himself from the very apprehension of doing so by giving a direct answer to the question.

"Ah! ha! Anthony, then you knew Mr. Quin was there. That will do; but there's not the slightest use in beating about the bush any longer. You have within the last half-hour let your secret out, within my own ears, and before my own eyes. And so you have a pension from the Black Baronet; and you, an old man, and I fear a guilty one, are receiving the wages of iniquity and corruption from that man--from the man that first brought shame and everlasting disgrace, and guilt and madness into and upon your family and name--a name that had been without a stain before.

Yes; you have sold yourself as a slave--a bond-slave--have become the creature and instrument of his vices--the clay in his hands that he can mould as he pleases, and that he will crush and trample on, and s.h.i.+ver to pieces, the moment his cruel, unjust, and diabolical purposes are served."

Anthony's face was a study, but a fearful study, whilst the priest spoke. As the reverend gentleman went on, it darkened into the expression of perfect torture; he gasped and started as if every word uttered had given him a mortal stab; his keen old eye nickered with scintillations of unnatural and turbid fire, until the rebuke was ended.

The priest had observed this, and naturally imputed the feeling to an impression of remorse, not, it is true, unmingled with indignation. We may imagine his surprise, therefore, on seeing that face suddenly change into one of the wildest and most malignant delight. A series of dry, husky hiccoughs, or what is termed the black laugh, rapidly repeated, proceeded from between his thin jaws, and his eyes now blazed with an expression of such fiery and triumphant vengeance, that the other felt as if some fiendish incarnation of malignity, and not a man, sat before him.

"Crush me!" he exclaimed, "crush me, indeed! Wait a little. What have I been doin' all this time? I tell you that I have been every day for this many a long year windin' myself like a serpent about him, till I get him fairly in my power; and when I do--then for one sharp, deadly sting into his heart:--ay, and, like the serpent, it's in my tongue that sting lies--from that tongue the poison must come that will give me the revenge that I've been long waitin' for."

"You speak," replied the priest, "and, indeed, you look more like an evil spirit than a man, Anthony. This language is disgraceful and unchristian, and such as no human being should utter. How can you think of death with such principles in your heart?"

"I'll tell you how I think on death: I'm afeared of it when I think of that poor, heartbroken woman, Lady Gourlay; but when I think of him--of him--I do hope and expect that my last thought in this world will be the delightful one that I've had my revenge on him."

"And you would risk the misery of another world for the gratification of one evil pa.s.sion in this! Oh, G.o.d help you, and forgive you, and turn your heart!"

"G.o.d help me, and forgive me, and turn my heart! but not so far as he is consarned. I neither wish it, nor pray for it, and what's more, if you were fifty priests, I never will. Let us drop this subject, then, for so long as we talk of him, I feel as if the blood in my ould veins was all turned into fire."

The priest saw and felt that this was true, and resolved to be guided by the hint he had unconsciously received. To remonstrate with him upon Christian principles, in that mood of mind, would, he knew, be to no purpose. If there were an a.s.sailable point about him, he concluded, from his own words, that it was in connection with the sufferings of Lady Gourlay, and the fate of her child. On this point, therefore, he resolved to sound him, and ascertain, without, if possible, alarming him, how far he would go on--whether he felt disposed to advance at all, or not.

"Well," said the priest, "since you are resolved upon an act of vengeance--against which, as a Christian priest and a Christian man, I doubly protest--I think it only right that you should perform an act of justice also. You know it is wrong to confound the innocent with the guilty. There is Lady Gourlay, with the arrow of grief, and probably despair, rankling in her heart for years. Now, you could restore that woman to happiness--you could restore her lost child to happiness, and bid the widowed mother's heart leap for joy."

"It isn't for that I'd do it, or it would, maybe, be done long ago; but I'm not sayin' I know where her son is. Do you think now, if I did, that it wouldn't gratify my heart to pull down that black villain--to tumble him down in the eyes of all the world with disgrace and shame, from the height he's sittin' on, and make him a world's wondher of villany and wickedness?"

"I know very well," replied the priest, who, not wis.h.i.+ng to use an unchristian argument, thought it still too good to be altogether left out, "I know very well that you cannot restore Lady Gourlay's son, without punis.h.i.+ng the baronet at the same time. If you be guided by me, however, you will think only of what is due to the injured lady herself."

"Do you think, now," persisted Corbet, not satisfied with the priest's answer, and following up his interrogatory, "do you think, I say, that I wouldn't 'a' dragged him down like a dog in the kennel, long ago, if I knew where his brother's son was."

"From your hatred to Sir Thomas Gourlay," replied the other, "I think it likely you would have tumbled him long since if you could."

"Why," exclaimed Corbet, with another sardonic and derisive grin, "that's a proof of how little you know of a man's heart. Do you forget what I said awhile ago about the black villain--that I have been windin'

myself about him for years, until I get him fairly into my power? When that time comes, you'll see what I'll do."

"But will that time soon come?" asked the other. "Recollect that you are now an old man, and that old age is not the time to nourish projects of vengeance. Death may seize you--may take you at a short notice--so that it is possible you may never live to execute your devilish purpose on the one hand, nor the act of justice toward Lady Gourlay on the other.

Will that time soon come, I ask?"

"So far I'll answer you. It'll take a month or two--not more. I have good authority for what I'm sayin'."

"And what will you do then?"

"I'll tell you that," he replied; and rising up, he shut his two hands, turning in his thumbs, and stretching his arms down along his body on each side, he stooped down, and looking directly and fully into the priest's eyes, he replied, "I'll give him back his son."

"Tut!" returned the clergyman, whose honest heart, and sympathies were all with the widow and her sorrows; "I was thinking of Lady Gourlay's son. In the mane time, that's a queer way of punis.h.i.+ng the baronet.

You'll give him back his son?--pooh!"

"Ay," replied Corbet, "that's the way I'll have my revenge; and maybe it'll be a greater one than you think. That's all."

This was accompanied by a sneer and a chuckle, which the ambiguous old sinner could not for the blood of him suppress. "And now," he added, "I must be off."

"Sir," said Father M'Mahon, rising up and traversing the room with considerable heat, "you have been tampering with the confidence I was disposed to place in you. Whatever dark game you are playing, or have been playing, I know not; but this I can a.s.sure you, that Lady Gourlay's friends know more of your secrets than you suspect. I believe you to be nothing more nor less than a hardened old villain, whose heart is sordid, and base, and cruel--corrupted, I fear, beyond all hope of redemption. You have been playing with me, sir--sneering at me in your sleeve, during this whole dialogue. This was a false move, however, on your part, and you will find it so. I am not a man to be either played with or sneered at by such a snake-like and diabolical old scoundrel as you are. Listen, now, to me. You think your secret is safe; you think you are beyond the reach of the law; you think we know nothing of your former movements under the guidance and in personal company with the Black Baronet. Pray, did you think it impossible that there was above you a G.o.d of justice, and of vengeance, too, whose providential disclosures are sufficient to bring your villany to light? Anthony Corbet, be warned in time. Let your disclosures be voluntary, and they will be received with grat.i.tude, with deep thanks, with ample rewards; refuse to make them, endeavor still further to veil the crimes to which I allude, and sustain this flagitious compact, and we shall drag them up your throat, and after forcing you to disgorge them, we shall send you, in your wicked and impenitent old age, where the clank of the felon's chain will be the only music in your ears, and that chain itself the only garter that will ever keep up your Connemaras. Now begone, and lay to heart what I've said to you. It wasn't my intention to have let you go without a bit of something to eat, and a gla.s.s of something to wash it down afterwards; but you may travel now; nothing stronger than pure air will cross your lips in this house, unless at your own cost."

The old fellow seemed to hesitate, as if struck by some observation contained in the priest's lecture.

"When do you lave town, sir?" he asked.

"Whenever it's my convanience," replied the other; "that's none of your affair. I'll go immediately and see Skipton."

The priest observed that honest Anthony looked still graver at the mention of this name. "If you don't go," he added, "until a couple of days hence, I'd like to see you again, about this hour, the day afther tomorrow."

"Whether I'll be here, or whether I won't is more than I know. I may be brought to judgment before then, and so may you. You may come then, or you may stay away, just as you like. If you come, perhaps I'll see you, and perhaps I won't. So now good-by! Thank goodness we are not depending on you!"

Anthony then slunk out of the room with a good deal of hesitation in his manner, and on leaving the hall-door he paused for a moment, and seemed disposed to return. At length he decided, and after lingering awhile, took his way toward Const.i.tution Hill.

This interview with the priest disturbed Corbet very much. His selfishness, joined to great caution and timidity of character, rendered him a very difficult subject for any man to wield according to his purposes. There could be no doubt that he entertained feelings of the most diabolical resentment and vengeance against the baronet, and yet it was impossible to get out of him the means by which he proposed to visit them upon him. On leaving Father M'Mahon, therefore, he experienced a state of alternation between a resolution to make disclosures and a determination to be silent and work out his own plans. He also feared death, it is true: but this was only when those rare visitations of conscience occurred that were awakened by superst.i.tion, instead of an enlightened and Christian sense of religion. This latter was a word he did not understand, or rather one for which he mistook superst.i.tion itself. Be this as it may, he felt uneasy, anxious, and irresolute, wavering between the right and the wrong, afraid to take his stand by either, and wis.h.i.+ng, if he could, to escape the consequences of both.

Other plans, however, were ripening as well as his, under the management of those who were deterred by none of his cowardice or irresolution. The consideration of this brings us to a family discussion; which it becomes our duty to detail before we proceed any further in our narrative.

On the following day, then, nearly the same party of which we have given an account in an early portion of this work, met in the same eating-house we have already described; the only difference being that instead of O'Donegan, the cla.s.sical teacher, old Corbet himself was present. The man called Thomas Corbet, the eldest son Anthony, Ginty Cooper the fortune-teller, Ambrose Gray, and Anthony himself, composed this interesting sederunt. The others had been a.s.sembled for some time before the arrival of Anthony, who consequently had not an opportunity of hearing the following brief dialogue.

"I'm afraid of my father," observed Thomas; "he's as deep as a draw-well, and it's impossible to know what he's at. How are we to manage him at all?"

"By following his advice, I think," said Ginty. "It's time, I'm sure, to get this boy into his rights."

"I was very well disposed to help you in that," replied her brother; "but of late he has led such a life, that I fear if he comes into the property, he'll do either us or himself little credit; and what is still worse, will he have sense to keep his own secret? My father says his brother, the legitimate son, is dead; that he died of scarlet-fever many years ago in the country---and I think myself, by the way, that he looks, whenever he says it, as if he himself had furnished the boy with the fever. That, however, is not our business. If I had been at Red Hall, instead of keeping the house and place in town, it's a short time the other--or Fenton as he calls himself--would be at large. He's now undher a man that will take care of him. But indeed it's an easy task.

He'll never see his mother's face again, as I well know. Scarman has him, and I give the poor devil about three months to live. He doesn't allow him half food, but, on the other hand, he supplies him with more whiskey than he can drink; and this by the baronet's own written orders.

As for you, Mr. Gray, for we may as well call you so yet awhile, your conduct of late has been disgraceful."

"I grant it," replied Mr. Gray, who was now sober; "but the truth is, I really looked, after some consideration, upon the whole plan as quite impracticable. As the real heir, however, is dead--"

"Not the real heir, Amby, if you please. He, poor fellow, is in custody that he will never escape from again. Upon my soul, I often pitied him."

"How full of compa.s.sion you are!" replied his sister.

"I have very little for the baronet, however," he replied; "and I hope he will never die till I scald the soul in his body. Excuse me, Amby.

You know all the circ.u.mstances of the family, and, of course, that you are the child of guilt and shame."

"Why, yes, I'm come on the wrong side as to birth, I admit; but if I clutch the property and t.i.tle, I'll thank heaven every day I live for my mother's frailty."

"It was not frailty, you unfeeling boy," replied Ginty, "so much as my father's credulity and ambition. I was once said to be beautiful, and he, having taken it into his head that this man, when young, might love me, went to the expense of having me well educated. He then threw me perpetually into his society; but I was young and artless at the time, and believed his solemn oaths and promises of marriage."

"And the greater villain he," observed her brother; "for I myself did not think there could be danger in your intimacy, because you and he were foster-children; and, except in his case, I never knew another throughout the length and breadth of the country, where the obligation of that tie was forgotten."