The Luck of Barry Lyndon, William Makepeace Thackeray [best ereader under 100 .txt] 📗

had to cross to get to their chaise, and of pistolling the young traitor before Lady Lyndon’s eyes; but, on second thoughts, it was quite clear that the news of the escape would make a noise through the country, and rouse the confounded justice’s people about my ears, and bring me no good in the end. So I was obliged to smother my just indignation, and to content myself by crushing the foul conspiracy, just at the moment it was about to be hatched.

I went home, and in half-an-hour, and with a few of my terrible looks, I had Lady Lyndon on her knees, begging me to forgive her; confessing all and everything; ready to vow and swear she would never make such an attempt again; and declaring that she was fifty times on the point of owning everything to me, but that she feared my wrath against the poor young lad her accomplice: who was indeed the author and inventor of all the mischief. This⁠—though I knew how entirely false the statement was⁠—I was fain to pretend to believe; so I begged her to write to her cousin, Lord George, who had supplied her with money, as she admitted, and with whom the plan had been arranged, stating, briefly, that she had altered her mind as to the trip to the country proposed; and that, as her dear husband was rather in delicate health, she preferred to stay at home and nurse him. I added a dry postscript, in which I stated that it would give me great pleasure if his Lordship would come and visit us at Castle Lyndon, and that I longed to renew an acquaintance which in former times gave me so much satisfaction. “I should seek him out,” I added, “so soon as ever I was in his neighbourhood, and eagerly anticipated the pleasure of a meeting with him.” I think he must have understood my meaning perfectly well; which was, that I would run him through the body on the very first occasion I could come at him.

Then I had a scene with my perfidious rascal of a nephew; in which the young reprobate showed an audacity and a spirit for which I was quite unprepared. When I taxed him with ingratitude, “What do I owe you?” said he. “I have toiled for you as no man ever did for another, and worked without a penny of wages. It was you yourself who set me against you, by giving me a task against which my soul revolted⁠—by making me a spy over your unfortunate wife, whose weakness is as pitiable as are her misfortunes and your rascally treatment of her. Flesh and blood could not bear to see the manner in which you used her. I tried to help her to escape from you; and I would do it again, if the opportunity offered, and so I tell you to your teeth!” When I offered to blow his brains out for his insolence, “Pooh!” said he⁠—“kill the man who saved your poor boy’s life once, and who was endeavouring to keep him out of the ruin and perdition into which a wicked father was leading him, when a Merciful Power interposed, and withdrew him from this house of crime? I would have left you months ago, but I hoped for some chance of rescuing this unhappy lady. I swore I would try, the day I saw you strike her. Kill me, you woman’s bully! You would if you dared; but you have not the heart. Your very servants like me better than you. Touch me, and they will rise and send you to the gallows you merit!”

I interrupted this neat speech by sending a water-bottle at the young gentleman’s head, which felled him to the ground; and then I went to meditate upon what he had said to me. It was true the fellow had saved poor little Bryan’s life, and the boy to his dying day was tenderly attached to him. “Be good to Redmond, papa,” were almost the last words he spoke; and I promised the poor child, on his deathbed, that I would do as he asked. It was also true, that rough usage of him would be little liked by my people, with whom he had managed to become a great favourite: for, somehow, though I got drunk with the rascals often, and was much more familiar with them than a man of my rank commonly is, yet I knew I was by no means liked by them; and the scoundrels were murmuring against me perpetually.

But I might have spared myself the trouble of debating what his fate should be, for the young gentleman took the disposal of it out of my hands in the simplest way in the world: viz. by washing and binding up his head so soon as he came to himself: by taking his horse from the stables; and, as he was quite free to go in and out of the house and park as he liked, he disappeared without the least let or hindrance; and leaving the horse behind him at the ferry, went off in the very post-chaise which was waiting for Lady Lyndon. I saw and heard no more of him for a considerable time; and now that he was out of the house, did not consider him a very troublesome enemy.

But the cunning artifice of woman is such that, I think, in the long run, no man, were he Machiavel himself, could escape from it; and though I had ample proofs in the above transaction (in which my wife’s perfidious designs were frustrated by my foresight), and under her own handwriting, of the deceitfulness of her character and her hatred for me, yet she actually managed to deceive me, in spite of all my precautions and the vigilance of my mother in my behalf. Had I followed that good lady’s advice, who scented the danger from afar off, as it were, I