“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 varrons; 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 ringleader, ejaculated “Habet!” and with a backstroke 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 doorpost 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.
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