University of Virginia Library

GUY HEAVYSTONE;
OR, “ENTIRE.”
A Muscular Novel.
BY THE AUTHOR OF “SWORD AND GUN.”

1. CHAPTER I.

A dingy, swashy, splashy afternoon in October;
a school-yard filled with a mob of riotous boys. A
lot of us standing outside.

Suddenly came a dull, crashing sound from the
school-room. At the ominous interruption I shuddered
involuntarily, and called to Smithsye:

“What's up, Smithums?”

“Guy's cleaning out the fourth form,” he replied.

At the same moment George de Coverly passed
me, holding his nose, from whence the bright Norman

blood streamed redly. To him the plebeian
Smithsye laughingly:

“Cully! how's his nibs?”

I pushed the door of the school-room open. There
are some spectacles which a man never forgets. The
burning of Troy probably seemed a large-sized conflagration
to the pious æneas, and made an impression
on him which he carried away with the feeble
Anchises.

In the centre of the room, lightly brandishing
the piston-rod of a steam engine, stood Guy Heavystone
alone. I say alone, for the pile of small boys
on the floor in the corner could hardly be called
company.

I will try and sketch him for the reader. Guy
Heavystone was then only fifteen. His broad, deep
chest, his sinewy and quivering flank, his straight
pastern showed him to be a thorough-bred. Perhaps
he was a trifle heavy in the fetlock, but he held his
head haughtily erect. His eyes were glittering but
pitiless. There was a sternness about the lower part
of his face—the old Heavystone look—a sternness,
heightened, perhaps, by the snaffle-bit which, in one of
his strange freaks, he wore in his mouth to curb his occasional
ferocity. His dress was well adapted to his
square set and herculean frame. A striped knit undershirt,
close fitting striped tights, and a few spangles
set off his figure; a neat Glengarry cap adorned
his head. On it was displayed the Heavystone crest,
a cock regardant on a dunghill or, and the motto,
“Devil a better!”

I thought of Horatius on the bridge, of Hector
before the walls. I always make it a point to think
of something classical at such times.

He saw me, and his sternness partly relaxed.
Something like a smile struggled through his grim
lineaments. It was like looking on the Jungfrau
after having seen Mont Blanc—a trifle, only a trifle
less sublime and awful. Resting his hand lightly on
the shoulder of the head-master, who shuddered and
collapsed under his touch, he strode toward me.

His walk was peculiar. You could not call it a
stride. It was like the “crest-tossing Bellerophon”
—a kind of prancing gait. Guy Heavystone pranced
toward me.

2. CHAPTER II.

It was the winter of 186-, when I next met Guy
Heavystone. He had left the University and had
entered the 76th “Heavies.” “I have exchanged
the gown for the sword, you see,” he said, grasping
my hand, and fracturing the bones of my little finger,
as he shook it.”

I gazed at him with unmixed admiration. He was
squarer, sterner and in every way smarter and more
remarkable than ever. I began to feel toward this
man as Phalaster felt towards Phyrgino, as somebody
must have felt toward Archididasculus, as Boswell
felt toward Johnson.

“Come into my den,” he said, and lifting me gently
by the seat of my pantaloons, he carried me up
stairs and deposited me, before I could apologize, on
the sofa. I looked around the room. It was a
bachelor's apartment, characteristically furnished in
the taste of the proprietor. A few claymores and
battle-axes were ranged against the wall, and a culverin,
captured by Sir Ralph Heavystone, occupied
the corner, the other end of the room being taken up
by a light battery. Foils, boxing-gloves, saddles
and fishing-poles lay around carelessly. A small
pile of billets-doux lay upon a silver salver. The
man was not an anchorite, nor yet a Sir Galahad.

I never could tell what Guy thought of women.
“Poor little beasts,” he would often say when the
conversation turned on any of his fresh conquests.
Then, passing his hand over his marble brow, the
old look of stern fixedness of purpose and unflinching
severity would straighten the lines of his mouth,
and he would mutter, half to himself, “S'death!”

“Come with me to Heavystone Grange. The
Exmoor Hounds throw off to-morrow. I'll give you
a mount,” he said, as he amused himself by rolling
up a silver candlestick between his fingers. “You
shall have Cleopatra. But stay,” he added, thoughtfully;
“now I remember, I ordered Cleopatra to be
shot this morning.”

“And why?” I queried.

“She threw her rider yesterday and fell on him—”

“And killed him?”

“No. That's the reason why I have ordered her

to be shot. I keep no animals that are not dangerous—I
should add—deadly!” He hissed the last
sentence between his teeth, and a gloomy frown descended
over his calm brow.

I affected to turn over the tradesman's bills that
lay on the table; for, like all of the Heavystone race,
Guy seldom paid cash, and said:

“You remind me of the time when Leonidas—”

“O, bother Leonidas and your classical allusions.
Come!”

We descended to dinner.

3. CHAPTER III.

“There is Flora Billingsgate, the greatest coquette
and hardest rider in the country,” said my companion,
Ralph Mortmain, as we stood upon Dingleby
Common before the meet.

I looked up and beheld Guy Heavystone bending
haughtily over the saddle, as he addressed a beautiful
brunette. She was indeed a splendidly groomed
and high-spirited woman. We were near enough to
overhear the following conversation, which any high-toned
reader will recognize as the common and natural
expression of the higher classes.

“When Diana takes the field the chase is not

wholly confined to objects ferœ naturœ,” said Guy,
darting a significant glance at his companion. Flora
did not shrink either from the glance or the meaning
implied in the sarcasm.

“If I were looking for an Endymion, now—” she
said archly, as she playfully cantered over a few
hounds and leaped a five-barred gate.

Guy whispered a few words, inaudible to the rest
of the party, and curvetting slightly, cleverly cleared
two of the huntsmen in a flying leap, galloped up
the front steps of the mansion, and dashing at full
speed through the hall, leaped through the drawingroom
window and rejoined me, languidly, on the
lawn.

“Be careful of Flora Billingsgate,” he said to me,
in low stern tones, while his pitiless eye shot a baleful
fire. “Gardez vous!”

“Gnothi seauton,” I replied calmly, not wishing to
appear to be behind him in perception or verbal felicity.

Guy started off in high spirits. He was well carried.
He and the first whip, a ten-stone man, were
head and head at the last fence, while the hounds
were rolling over their fox, a hundred yards farther
in the open.

But an unexpected circumstance occurred. Coming
back, his chestnut mare refused a ten-foot wall.
She reared and fell backward. Again he led her up
to it lightly; again she refused, falling heavily from
the coping. Guy started to his feet. The old pitiless
fire shone in his eyes; the old stern look settled

around his mouth. Seizing the mare by the tail and
mane he threw her over the wall. She landed twenty
feet on the other side, erect and trembling.
Lightly leaping the same obstacle himself, he remounted
her. She did not refuse the wall the next
time.

4. CHAPTER IV.

Guy was in the north of Ireland, cock-shooting.
So Ralph Mortmain told me, and also that the match
between Mary Brandagee and Guy had been broken
off by Flora Billingsgate. “I don't like those Billingsgates,”
said Ralph, “they're a bad stock. Her
father, Smithfield de Billingsgate, had an unpleasant
way of turning up the knave from the bottom of the
pack. But nous verrons; let us go and see Guy.”

The next morning we started for Fin-ma-Coul's
Crossing. When I reached the shooting-box, where
Guy was entertaining a select company of friends,
Flora Billingsgate greeted me with a saucy smile.

“Guy was even squarer and sterner than ever.
His gusts of passion were more frequent, and it was
with difficulty that he could keep an able-bodied
servant in his family. His present retainers were
more or less maimed from exposure to the fury of
their master. There was a strange cynicism, a cutting
sarcasm in his address piercing through his
polished manner. I thought of Timon, etc., etc.

One evening, we were sitting over our Chambertin,
after a hard day's work, and Guy was listlessly
turning over some letters, when suddenly he uttered
a cry. Did you ever hear the trumpeting
of a wounded elephant? It was like that.

I looked at him with consternation. He was
glancing at a letter which he held at arm's length,
and snorting, as it were, at it as he gazed. The
lower part of his face was stern, but not as rigid
as usual. He was slowly grinding between his
teeth the fragments of the glass he had just been
drinking from. Suddenly, he seized one of his
servants, and, forcing the wretch upon his knees,
exclaimed with the roar of a tiger:

“Dog! why was this kept from me?”

“Why, please, sir, Miss Flora said as how it was
a reconciliation, from Miss Brandagee, and it was to
be kept from you where you would not be likely to
see it—and—and—”

“Speak, dog! and you—”

“I put it among your bills, sir!”

With a groan, like distant thunder, Guy fell
swooning to the floor.

He soon recovered, for the next moment a servant
came rushing into the room with the information
that a number of the ingenuous peasantry of the
neighborhood were about to indulge that evening in
the national pastime of burning a farmhouse and
shooting a landlord. Guy smiled a fearful smile,
without, however, altering his stern and pitiless expression.

“Let them come,” he said calmly; “I feel like
entertaining company.”

We barricaded the doors and windows, and then
chose our arms from the armory. Guy's choice was
a singular one: it was a landing net with a long
handle, and a sharp cavalry sabre.

We were not destined to remain long in ignorance
of its use. A howl was heard from without, and a
party of fifty or sixty armed men precipitated themselves
against the door.

Suddenly the window opened. With the rapidity
of lightning, Guy Heavystone cast the net over the
head of the ring-leader, ejaculated “Habet!” and
with a back stroke of his cavalry sabre, severed the
member from its trunk, and drawing the net back
again, cast the gory head upon the floor, saying
quietly:

“One.”

Again the net was cast, the steel flashed, the net
was withdrawn and an ominous “Two!” accompanied
the head as it rolled on the floor.

“Do you remember what Pliny says of the gladiator?”
said Guy, calmly wiping his sabre. “How
graphic is that passage commencing: `Inter nos, etc.”'
The sport continued until the heads of twenty desperadoes
had been gathered in. The rest seemed
inclined to disperse. Guy incautiously showed himself
at the door; a ringing shot was heard, and he
staggered back pierced through the heart. Grasping
the door post in the last unconscious throes of his
mighty frame, the whole side of the house yielded to

that earthquake tremor, and we had barely time to
escape before the whole building fell in ruins. I
thought of Samson, the Giant Judge, etc., etc.; but
all was over.

Guy Heavystone had died as he had lived—hard.