Delphi Complete Works of Sheridan Le Fanu

by J. Sheridan le Fanu

  “SIR HUGH WILLOUGHBY — On tomorrow night, Glindarragh Castle will be wrecked, and your cattle and property plundered and wasted. For God’s sake, seek not to defend them; save what you can, but fly. If you resist, evils a thousandfold greater will follow upon you. Your enemies expect you to defend the place; disappoint them — save yourself and your child. Fly! For the sake of your daughter, escape. You are among the toils; if you stay but forty-eight hours more, you are lost. One chance — and but one remains — take it and fly.

  “This comes from a friend, long unseen, but too well known.”

  When the tall, slender character in which these lines were written met the gaze of the old man, he staggered backward, like one who has received a sudden blow — the blood mounted dizzily to his head, and the feeble letters swam in mist before his eyes; then, as suddenly, the fevered tide retired, and pale and heart-sick (though not by reason of the tidings which the letter conveyed, dismaying as they were), he slowly read and re-read the paper.

  Meanwhile, Jeremiah Tisdal, having hailed the boat which was gradually floating toward the bridge, but without affecting the motion of those who sat within it, any more than he could have arrested, by his challenge, the foam flakes which drifted by upon the eddies of the stream, drew back from his post of observation, and stood once more upon the floor of the chamber.

  “Ha! but a stone and a letter!” said Tisdal, as his eye glanced from the missile and the loosened cord to the paper, upon which the agitated gaze of the knight was fixed. The sound of the puritan’s voice aroused Sir Hugh.

  “Where are they? — for God’s sake, where? Tisdal, call to them — stop them,” cried he, distractedly, as he moved, first towards the door, and then towards the window.

  “They’re under the bridge by this time,” said Tisdal; “they are in the small boat, and heeded not my calling.”

  “Let’s after them, in heaven’s name, quickly — for your life, quickly,” cried the old knight, frantically, as with head uncovered, he rushed from the chamber, followed closely by Tisdal, and down the steep and narrow winding-stair, across the castleyard, unlocked and unbarred the portal in the great gate with breathless haste, and without exchanging a word with the astounded porter, who, with starting eyes and mouth agape, beheld the breathless and disorderly race in which his master and the puritan seemed to strive which should out run the other. With a hasty order from Tisdal to watch at the gates they both passed in a moment from the sight of the old dependant, and, panting and breathless, reached the bridge together.

  “There they are, as the Lord liveth, there!” cried Tisdal, whose phlegmatic nature was now thoroughly excited by the unwonted and violent exercise in which he had engaged.

  “Holloa boat! holloa there! — bring to — stop, I say — turn her in there — stop, or by — I fire upon you,” shouted the knight, furiously, as he beheld the two figures, instead of obeying his call, poling with all their strength down the rapids.

  Swift as an arrow the skiff flew down the rushing stream, until about three hundred yards below the bridge, when they saw the two forms who manned her fling down their poles, and jumping into the shallows, reach the bank, where, in an instant, they were lost among the brushwood; further pursuit was now, of course, out of the question.

  “Tisdal,” said the master of Glindarragh Castle, in a changed and subdued voice, as he turned from the vain pursuit, “I have had another warning, and such a one as leaves in my mind no doubt of the meditated outrage, of which your message was the first and imperfect intimation. We must now prepare as best we may; be you with me by sunrise in the morning, and get such of your goods as you can easily remove within the keep of these strong walls. They shall not carry it here as they have done elsewhere, for, although I stood alone, I would defend the old house while I had power to draw a trigger.”

  He shook the puritan strongly by the hand, and with a stern but friendly good night, they parted.

  Sir Hugh hurried across the castleyard, his heart swelling with a thousand feelings, which none suspected but himself, and hastening into the chamber where he had just held his exciting conference with Tisdal, he locked the door, seized the mysterious note, which lay open upon the table, and kissing it again and again, and pressing it passionately to his heart, he threw himself into his chair, and wept and sobbed like a child.

  CHAPTER X.

  CAPTAIN BOWSHANKS AND DICK SLASH.

  As Tisdal approached the strong and formal farmhouse of Drumgunniol, his quick eye was attracted by the glow of an unusually fierce and ruddy fire, streaming from the narrow windows of the kitchen, and flooding the stones and bushes of the opposing hillock with a blush of dusky red, which contrasted cosily with the cold spectral lights and shadows of the misty moonshine —

  “By my troth,” muttered the master of the mansion, as he drew nigh, “this is but ill husbandry of turf and firewood. Master Bligh, methinks your supper must needs be something of the largest to need so fierce a blaze — this must be seen to — this must be seen to — but, ha! what have we here?”

  This sudden ejaculation was caused by the unwonted sounds of profane singing which somewhat boisterously arose from the interior of the mansion; and Tisdal’s heart faltered with a dreadful misgiving as this unusual ministrelsy reached his ear. He no longer approached his dwelling with the bold, firm, and consequential step which usually characterised the proprietor of Drumgunniol — he drew nigh rather with the stealthy caution of a thief, prowling fearfully about some rich man’s house, cowering from view, and dreading even the sound of his own cautious footfalls. Thus did Jeremiah Tisdal draw near to his kitchen-window, avoiding the light which poured from the casement, and scarcely daring to breathe lest his presence should be detected. When he looked in, his worst fears were at once realised. Seated in the chimney-corner, with a mug of stout home-brewed ale beside him, while he carelessly chopped and shredded a pipe full of tobacco on the table, sate the identical tattered and ill-favoured traveller, whose appearance had so fearfully disconcerted him in the ruin but a few hours before. The stranger was singing with a loud voice and a rollicking air, one of the low licentious ballads of the day, to which, with shame and confusion of face be it written, the saintly Master Praise-God Bligh appeared to listen from the opposite corner with a great deal of sly and quiet relish. Tisdal drew back from the window in extreme trepidation; he smote his clenched hands upon his breast and ground his teeth in bootless rage and despair; again he peered like a skulking spy into his own comfortable kitchen, and again withdrew in anguish and desperation into the darkest recesses of the high-walled yard.

  Meanwhile the ballad ended, and Praise-God Bligh walked forth to bolt the strong oak shutters upon the outside of the window. He had hardly entered the open yard when he was confronted by his master —

  “Come hither, sir,” said Tisdal, in a stern harsh whisper, while he dragged the astonished domestic under the shadow of the stable wall. “How dare you, idiot — how dare you suffer that man within my house?” he whispered, with such vehemence and fury that the froth found its way through his clenched teeth and gathered upon his lips. “Dog, do you hear me? Your life — your life hangs on your answer,” he continued, while he shook the terrified servant by the throat. “How came you to admit that — that — man within my house — are you drunk or moonstruck — answer, how?”

  “Deal patiently I pray thee with thy servant,” muttered the domestic, terrified no less at the unwonted violence of his master than at the expression of preterhuman rage and agony which blackened his terrific countenance; “hear me — for God’s sake, hear me, and loosen your hold of my throat — pray — pray good master, patience and do but hear me.”

  “How came you to admit that person within my house?” reiterated the master of Drumgunniol.

  “I will tell you all about it if you will but loosen your hold,” replied the servant entreatingly.

  “Speak, then, and plainly, or by Him that made me you’ll have cause to rue it,” retorted Tisd
al, with stern deliberateness.

  “Hear me, then, and may I die the death if I speak not as plainly as you desire,” continued the domestic with imploring earnestness; “he told me that he was a sort of cousin of yours, that he came all the way from Lincoln to find you out, and that he brings good news with him, and this is all I know of the matter as I hope for salvation.”

  “You lie, you infernal traitor, you lie like your master the devil; he told you no such cock-and-a-bull story,” retorted his master, in a furious whisper, forgetting in an instant all the sanctimonious conventionalities of his sect, while he advanced his clenched fist within an inch of the affrighted servant’s face; “it’s a lie — all a lie — a villanous lie from beginning to end. He gave you money — money — or promised it — promised money for your treason — bribed, perfidious spy! did he, miscreant, did he, or not? Answer I say.”

  With an imprecation too awful here to be expressed, and an earnestness so palpably sincere as to leave no possible doubt of his veracity, the servant denied the charge.

  “Then you are a greater idiot than I took you for, that’s all,” replied Tisdal through his set teeth, and with a savage scowl of the blackest rage. “A blessed driveller to leave in charge of one’s house and substance!”

  The whole of this conference was rendered the more singular, and perhaps not the less horrible, that it was conducted in whispers.

  He turned abruptly, and walked a few steps toward the house; and then, with a gesture of despair, he strode back again to the amazed and awe-stricken domestic.

  “Idiot — idiot — accursed, execrable idiot — you have ruined — destroyed your master!” ejaculated he, frantically; and at the same moment he struck the unsuspecting man with all the force of fury, with his doubled fist, in the face. The servant staggered backward, stunned and bloody, and fell heavily upon the rough pavement under the wall. Unheeding his fall, Tisdal again turned toward the house, and again unable to summon resolution for the dreaded meeting, paused. He approached the window, looked in once more; then drew back, adjusted his disordered dress, called all his firmness to his aid, and, with a steady pace and resolute mien, entered the door of his house, and walking straight into the kitchen, confronted the sinister-looking personage, who sate, very much at his ease, beneath the comfortable canopy of the great kitchen chimney.

  Cosey, warm, and cheery was the kitchen of the grange of Drumgunniol; the crisp turf and unctuous bogwood glowed, blazed, and sparkled in the mighty hearth, flooding the chamber even to its remotest nooks and most forgotten recesses with a genial warmth, and pouring abroad a ruddy light, that danced pleasantly along the smoke-dried rafters, and blazed and flashed in the rows of burnished pewter, which furnished the cumbrous old cupboard at the further end. Good cheer enough, for a year and more depended in inviting festoonery from the ceiling alone — golden bunches of onions, whole bushes of dried pot-herbs, smoked beef, hams, and flitches, and dried salmon, threw their flickering shadows far along the broad ceiling; the irregular dark walls glittered redly with crowded utensils, and loomed with high-piled shelves; a comfortable old clock ticked vigilantly in a recess near the window, and a matchlock and a short musket, together with several fishing-rods of sundry lengths, added to the homely decorations of the mantelpiece; and several cloaks and other pieces of drapery, together with sundry old hats and a saddle, depended from certain pegs in the side boarding of a cumbrous stair, which communicated with the loft above; the cat sat purring in the inmost corner of the hearth, and the dog dozed lazily, stretched at his full length before its glow. Such was the hospitable chamber which smiled a ruddy welcome upon the master of Drumgunniol, as he passed the threshold of his home, and shut his door with a lusty swing in the face of the chill night air.

  Deadly and stern, however, was the contrast between this snug scene of homely abundance and the sinister and evil looks of the two personages who formed its only occupants. Tisdal fixed upon the stranger a look of gloomy menace, which his visitant returned with a tranquil grin, half of sarcasm, half of defiance; and thus, for nearly a minute, the two old acquaintances regarded each other without interchanging a single syllable.

  The kitchen clock in the grange of Drumgunniol might have ticked some two or three dozen times ere Tisdal spoke.

  The disreputable looking stranger sate quietly by the fire, leering slyly from the corner of his eye upon his agitated host, while a slight smile added a still more unpleasant meaning to his pale and sinister face.

  At length Tisdal broke the silence.

  “How came you, sir,” said, he, sternly, “to establish yourself as a guest in my house, uninvited and undesired by me?”

  “Pooh, pooh, brother Snap, never mind mouthing with me; look like yourself, bold Captain Gordon, alias Burnt-brandy-for-two, or if you like the new name better, Saint Jeremiah Tisdal,” retorted the stranger glibly. “Come, I say — come, man, never stand striving to look like one of the postles in a church window there, for it won’t go down with me. Little Dick Slash is the same offhand fellow that he ever was, though not quite such a beau; and I’m shot, if you’ll come the saint over him. Ha, ha! — egad your high crown and black toggery is enough to tickle one into absolute convulsions.”

  “I am indeed a changed man,” replied Tisdal, slowly and sternly, as soon as the harsh cachinnation with which his old acquaintance wound up, had quite subsided; “and it were well for you, Richard Deverel, if you were so, too.”

  “Why, that depends very much on the sort of change a man might make,” answered Deverel, briskly. “For instance, a new hat, a suit of green and silver, a well-lined purse, and an active nag, were a change of affairs, I grant you, highly desirable just now. But, odds boddikins! such a change as yours! Why, if you had turned monk, or astrologer, or doctor, or any thing else, with a relish of the old dead knowledge, good living and burnt-brandy-for-two sort of style about it — odds! if you had done this, and taken a town lodging, where, as thou knowest, brother Jeremiah, there is no lack of monied flats, comely wenches, bully boys, sack, brandy, and so following, why, man, I could have understood and admired thee; but a puritan at the back of a bog, in the heart of a wilderness — gibbet me! if I can comprehend that.”

  “The place has been mine for nigh eleven years,” replied Tisdal, doggedly. “I have lived here for that term an altered man, eschewing evil, and seeking the Lord. I affect no company save my own, and have desired no habitation save this house, ever since it has come to me.”

  “Come to you!” echoed the visitor, with a smile worthy of Mephistophiles himself. “I was by, Captain Gordon, I believe, when it came to you, as you say.”

  Tisdal drew his brows together in a deep, black scowl, like a man stung with a sudden pang of bodily anguish, and uttered from the depths of his wrung heart, agroan of the fiercest torture; while Deveril carelessly filled the bowl of his pipe, and lighted the tobacco at the candle.

  “Come, old Bowshanks — brave brother Snap — valiant captain,” exclaimed the visitor, as soon as he had got his tobacco-pipe in full play, “this is, after all, but a scurvy welcome. Let’s have some supper, and a glass of your old favourite. You forget, my boy, how long it is since we two have met.”

  “Look ye, Richard Deveril,” said Tisdal, with startling abruptness, and eyeing his visitor with a deadly scowl, while he disclosed a long-barrelled pistol gleaming in his hand, “what’s to prevent my dealing with you on the spot, as — as — a robber?”

  “And what’s to prevent my dealing with you, in like manner, as a murderer?” retorted Deveril, coolly; while, without even disarranging his negligent attitude, he as instantaneously levelled a pistol at the body of his host. “One, two, three — move but a finger, and I whip you through — heart, liver, lights, pluck, and all.”

  Tisdal stood unmoved before the muzzle of the villain’s pistol, as if his own personal risk were a matter wholly unrecognised in the stern debate which at that moment occupied his mind.

  “Put up your barking-iron, and no
more noise,” said Deveril, with sarcastic coolness. “We know one another; and two can play at that game. Odd rat it, man, and did you fancy that little Dick Slash would pay his old friend, Captain Bowshanks, a visit at this time of night, and in his country-house, too, without the lead towels about him. Tut, man, I’m not a fool.”

  “You’re the same cool villain you ever were,” said Tisdal.

  “I’ faith, Master Snap, and so are you,” rejoined Deveril. “Bulldog every inch both of us; so better not to quarrel — eh?”

  “What seek you here, and with me?” urged Tisdal, gloomily.

  “Look at my clothes. Pooh, pooh, you know well enough what I want,” retorted Deveril. “Help, that’s all.”

  “Just so; you come here to extort money,” continued Tisdal.

  “And find you prepared to give it,” said the stranger. “Why, see you, Master Tisdal, I have not a shilling — scarce a rag. I swallowed my last crust to-day, and have nothing left on the face of the earth but these my old pair of barkers. Now, turn from me to you. What’s your case? The devil, or what you will, has prospered you, fed your belly, clothed your back. Your steeple hat throws off the weather; that black blanket about your shoulders keeps you warm; your shoes are sound, your doublet whole; you are blessed with a house, a kitchen, coin, and what not; — in short, you are a comfortable, greasy, well-fed, rich old dog; while I — not one bit a worse man than yourself — I am all but begging my way up to Dublin. Come, come, look at the matter fairly, and say ought you to grudge a lift to an old comrade. I don’t want much; you’ll find me reasonable. Put up your pistols; and if you don’t like my offer, it’s time enough to talk big, and tap claret afterwards.”