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

marry the greatest heiress and the noblest blood in England?” said Lord George haughtily.

“There’s no nobler blood in Europe than mine,” answered I: “and I tell you I don’t know whether to hope or not. But this I know, that there were days in which, poor as I am, the great heiress did not disdain to look down upon my poverty: and that any man who marries her passes over my dead body to do it. It’s lucky for you,” I added gloomily, “that on the occasion of my engagement with you, I did not know what were your views regarding my Lady Lyndon. My poor boy, you are a lad of courage and I love you. Mine is the first sword in Europe, and you would have been lying in a narrower bed than that you now occupy.”

“Boy!” said Lord George: “I am not four years younger than you are.”

“You are forty years younger than I am in experience. I have passed through every grade of life. With my own skill and daring I have made my own fortune. I have been in fourteen pitched battles as a private soldier, and have been twenty-three times on the ground, and never was touched but once; and that was by the sword of a French maître-d’armes, whom I killed. I started in life at seventeen, a beggar, and am now at seven-and-twenty, with twenty thousand guineas. Do you suppose a man of my courage and energy can’t attain anything that he dares, and that having claims upon the widow, I will not press them?”

This speech was not exactly true to the letter (for I had multiplied my pitched battles, my duels, and my wealth somewhat); but I saw that it made the impression I desired to effect upon the young gentleman’s mind, who listened to my statement with peculiar seriousness, and whom I presently left to digest it.

A couple of days afterwards I called to see him again, when I brought with me some of the letters that had passed between me and my Lady Lyndon. “Here,” said I, “look⁠—I show it you in confidence⁠—it is a lock of her Ladyship’s hair; here are her letters signed Calista, and addressed to Eugenio. Here is a poem, ‘When Sol bedecks the mead with light, And pallid Cynthia sheds her ray,’ addressed by her Ladyship to your humble servant.”

“Calista! Eugenio! Sol bedecks the mead with light?” cried the young lord. “Am I dreaming? Why, my dear Barry, the widow has sent me the very poem herself! ‘Rejoicing in the sunshine bright, Or musing in the evening grey.’ ”

I could not help laughing as he made the quotation. They were, in fact, the very words my Calista had addressed to me. And we found, upon comparing letters, that whole passages of eloquence figured in the one correspondence which appeared in the other. See what it is to be a bluestocking and have a love of letter-writing!

The young man put down the papers in great perturbation. “Well, thank Heaven!” said he, after a pause of some duration⁠—“thank Heaven for a good riddance! Ah, Mr. Barry, what a woman I might have married had these lucky papers not come in my way! I thought my Lady Lyndon had a heart, sir, I must confess, though not a very warm one; and that, at least, one could trust her. But marry her now! I would as lief send my servant into the street to get me a wife, as put up with such an Ephesian matron as that.”

“My Lord George,” said I, “you little know the world. Remember what a bad husband Lady Lyndon had, and don’t be astonished that she, on her side, should be indifferent. Nor has she, I will dare to wager, ever passed beyond the bounds of harmless gallantry, or sinned beyond the composing of a sonnet or a billet-doux.”

“My wife,” said the little lord, “shall write no sonnets or billets-doux; and I’m heartily glad to think I have obtained, in good time, a knowledge of the heartless vixen with whom I thought myself for a moment in love.”

The wounded young nobleman was either, as I have said, very young and green in matters of the world⁠—for to suppose that a man would give up forty thousand a year, because, forsooth, the lady connected with it had written a few sentimental letters to a young fellow, is too absurd⁠—or, as I am inclined to believe, he was glad of an excuse to quit the field altogether, being by no means anxious to meet the victorious sword of Redmond Barry a second time.

When the idea of Poynings’ danger, or the reproaches probably addressed by him to the widow regarding myself, had brought this exceedingly weak and feeble woman up to Dublin, as I expected, and my worthy Ulick had informed me of her arrival, I quitted my good mother, who was quite reconciled to me (indeed the duel had done that), and found the disconsolate Calista was in the habit of paying visits to the wounded swain; much to the annoyance, the servants told me, of that gentleman. The English are often absurdly high and haughty upon a point of punctilio; and, after his kinswoman’s conduct, Lord Poynings swore he would have no more to do with her.

I had this information from his Lordship’s gentleman; with whom, as I have said, I took particular care to be friends; nor was I denied admission by his porter, when I chose to call, as before.

Her Ladyship had most likely bribed that person, as I had; for she had found her way up, though denied admission; and, in fact, I had watched her from her own house to Lord George Poynings’ lodgings, and seen her descend from her chair there and enter, before I myself followed her. I proposed to await her quietly in the anteroom, to make a scene there, and reproach her with infidelity, if necessary; but matters were, as it happened, arranged much more