Part 50 (2/2)
”The villain that would have robbed me of my property and my daughter is now safe in Sligo jail.”
A flash of something like joy--at least the father took it as such--sparkled in a strange kind of triumph from her eyes.
”Ha,” said she, ”is that villain safe at last? Dear papa, I am tired of all this--this--yes, I am tired of it, and it is time I should; but you talked about something else, did you not? Something about Sir Robert Whitecraft and a marriage. And what is my reply to that? why, it is this, papa: I have but one life, sir. Now begone, and leave me, or, upon my honor, I will push you out of the room. Have I not consented to all your terms. Let Sir Robert come tomorrow and he shall call me his wife before the sun reaches his meridian. Now, leave me; leave me, I say.”
In this uncertain state her father found himself compelled to retire to the drawing-room, where Sir Robert and he met.
”Mr. Folliard,” said the baronet, ”is this true?”
”Is what true, Sir Robert?” said he sharply.
”Why, that Reilly and the Red Rapparee are both in Sligo jail?”
”It is true, Sir Robert; and it must be a cursed thing to be in jail for a capital crime.”
”Are you becoming penitent,” asked the other, ”for bringing the laws of the land to bear upon the villain that would have disgraced, and might have ruined, your only daughter?”
The father's heart was stung by the diabolical pungency of this question.
”Sir Robert,” said he, ”we will hang him if it was only to get the villain out of the way; and if you will be here to-morrow at ten o'clock, the marriage must take place. I'll suffer no further nonsense about it; but, mark me, after the honeymoon shall have pa.s.sed, you and she must come and reside here; to think that I could live without her is impossible. Be here, then, at ten o'clock; the special license is ready, and I have asked the Rev. Samson Strong to perform the ceremony. A couple of my neighbor Ashford's daughters will act as bridesmaids, and I myself will give her away: the marriage articles are drawn up, as you know, and there will be little time lost in signing them; and yet, it's a pity to--but no matter--be here at ten.”
Whitecraft took his leave in high spirits. The arrest and imprisonment of Reilly had removed the great impediment that had hitherto lain in the way of his marriage; but not so the imprisonment of the Red Rapparee.
The baronet regretted that that public and notorious malefactor had been taken out of his own hands, because he wished, as the reader knows, to make the delivering of him up to the Government one of the elements of his reconciliation to it. Still, as matters stood, he felt on the whole gratified at what had happened.
Folliard, after the baronet had gone, knew not exactly how to dispose of himself. The truth is, the man's heart was an anomaly--a series of contradictions, in which one feeling opposed another for a brief s.p.a.ce, and then was obliged to make way for a new prejudice equally transitory and evanescent. Whitecraft he never heartily liked; for though the man was blunt, he could look through a knave, and appreciate a man of honor, with a great deal of shrewd accuracy. To be sure, Whitecraft was enormously rich, but then he was penurious and inhospitable, two vices strongly and decidedly opposed to the national feeling.
”Curse the long-legged scoundrel,” he exclaimed; ”if he should beget me a young breed of Whitecrafts like himself I would rather my daughter were dead than marry him. Then, on the other hand, Reilly; hang the fellow, had he only recanted his nonsensical creed, I could--but then, again, he might, after marriage, bring her over to the Papists, and then, by the Boyne, all my immense property would become Roman Catholic.
By Strongbow, he'd teach the very rivers that run through it to sing Popish psalms in Latin: he would. However, the best way is to hang him out of the way, and when Jack Ketch has done with him, so has Helen.
Curse Whitecraft, at all events!”
We may as well hint here that he had touched the Burgundy to some purpose; he was now in that state of mental imbecility where reason, baffled and prostrated by severe mental suffering and agitation, was incapable of sustaining him without having recourse to the bottle. In the due progress of the night he was helped to bed, and had scarcely been placed and covered up there when he fell fast asleep.
Whitecraft, in the meantime, suspected, of course, or rather he was perfectly aware of the fact, that unless by some ingenious manoeuvre, of which he could form no conception, a marriage with the _Cooleen Bawn_ would be a matter of surpa.s.sing difficulty; but he cared not, provided it could be effected by any means, whether foul or fair. The attachment of this scoundrel to the fair and beautiful _Cooleen Bawn_ was composed of two of the worst principles of the heart--sensuality and avarice; but, in this instance, avarice came in to support sensuality. What the licentious pa.s.sions of the debauchee might have failed to tempt him to, the consideration of her large fortune accomplished. And such was the sordid and abominable union of the motives which spurred him on to the marriage.
The next morning, being that which was fixed for his wedding-day, he was roused at an early hour by a loud rapping at his hall-door. He started on his elbow in the bed, and ringing the bell for his valet, asked, when that gentleman entered his apartment half dressed, ”What was the matter?
what cursed knocking was that? Don't they know I can hunt neither priest nor Papist now, since this polite viceroy came here.”
”I don't know what the matter is, Sir Robert; they are at it again; shall I open the door, sir?”
”Certainly; open the door immediately.”
”I think you had better dress, Sir Robert, and see what they want.”
The baronet threw his long fleshless shanks out of the bed, and began to get on his clothes as fast as he could.
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