Barry Lyndon eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 464 pages of information about Barry Lyndon.

Barry Lyndon eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 464 pages of information about Barry Lyndon.

I was perfectly at ease with regard to his fidelity, for I had bred the lad, and loaded him with benefits; and, besides, had had various proofs of his trustworthiness.  He it was who brought me three of Lord George’s letters, in reply to some of my Lady’s complaints; which were concealed between the leather and the boards of a book which was sent from the circulating library for her Ladyship’s perusal.  He and my Lady too had frequent quarrels.  She mimicked his gait in her pleasanter moments; in her haughty moods, she would not sit down to table with a tailor’s grandson.  ’Send me anything for company but that odious Quin,’ she would say, when I proposed that he should go and amuse her with his books and his flute; for, quarrelsome as we were, it must not be supposed we were always at it:  I was occasionally attentive to her.  We would be friends for a month together, sometimes; then we would quarrel for a fortnight; then she would keep her apartments for a month:  all of which domestic circumstances were noted down, in her Ladyship’s peculiar way, in her journal of captivity, as she called it; and a pretty document it is!  Sometimes she writes, ’My monster has been almost kind to-day;’ or, ‘My ruffian has deigned to smile.’  Then she will break out into expressions of savage hate; but for my poor mother it was always hatred.  It was, ’The she-dragon is sick to-day; I wish to Heaven she would die!’ or, ’The hideous old Irish basketwoman has been treating me to some of her Billingsgate to-day,’ and so forth:  all which expressions, read to Mrs. Barry, or translated from the French and Italian, in which many of them were written, did not fail to keep the old lady in a perpetual fury against her charge:  and so I had my watch-dog, as I called her, always on the alert.  In translating these languages, young Quin was of great service to me; for I had a smattering of French—­and High Dutch, when I was in the army, of course, I knew well—­but Italian I knew nothing of, and was glad of the services of so faithful and cheap an interpreter.

This cheap and faithful interpreter, this godson and kinsman, on whom and on whose family I had piled up benefits, was actually trying to betray me; and for several months, at least, was in league with the enemy against me.  I believe that the reason why they did not move earlier was the want of the great mover of all treasons—­ money:  of which, in all parts of my establishment, there was a woful scarcity; but of this they also managed to get a supply through my rascal of a godson, who could come and go quite unsuspected:  the whole scheme was arranged under our very noses, and the post-chaise ordered, and the means of escape actually got ready; while I never suspected their design.

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Barry Lyndon from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.