 | CHAPTER IV. Condensed novels and other papers |  |
4. CHAPTER IV.
“He holds him by his glittering eye.”
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
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.
| CHAPTER IV. Condensed novels and other papers | |