Barry Lyndon by William Makepeace Thackeray (robert munsch read aloud txt) 📕

cut across the bridge, and his beauty spoiled for ever. Ulick shook himself, sat down quietly, filled a bumper, and pushed the bottle to me. ‘There, you young donkey,’ said he, ‘sup that; and let’s hear no more of your braying.’

‘In Heaven’s name, what does all the row mean?’ says my uncle. ‘Is the boy in the fever again?’

‘It’s all your fault,’ said Mick sulkily: ‘yours and those who brought him here.’

‘Hold your noise, Mick!’ says Ulick, turning on him; ‘speak civil of my father and me, and don’t let me be called upon to teach you manners.’

‘It IS your fault,’ repeated Mick. ‘What business has the vagabond here? If I had my will, I’d have him flogged and turned out.’

‘And so he should be,’ said Captain Quin.

‘You’d best not try it, Quin,’ said Ulick, who was always my champion; and turning to his father, ‘The fact is, sir, that the young monkey has fallen in love with Nora, and finding her and the Captain mighty sweet in the garden to-day, he was for murdering Jack Quin.’

‘Gad, he’s beginning young,’ said my uncle, quite good-humouredly. ‘’Faith, Fagan, that boy’s a Brady, every inch of him.’

‘And I’ll tell you what, Mr. B.,’ cried Quin, bristling up: ‘I’ve been insulted grossly in this ‘OUSE. I ain’t at all satisfied with these here ways of going on. I’m an Englishman I am, and a man of property; and I—I’—‘If you’re insulted, and not satisfied, remember there’s two of us, Quin,’ said Ulick gruffly. On which the Captain fell to washing his nose in water, and answered never a word.

‘Mr. Quin,’ said I, in the most dignified tone I could assume, ‘may also have satisfaction any time he pleases, by calling on Redmond Barry, Esquire, of Barryville.’ At which speech my uncle burst out a-laughing (as he did at everything); and in this laugh, Captain Fagan, much to my mortification, joined. I turned rather smartly upon him, however, and bade him to understand that as for my cousin Ulick, who had been my best friend through life, I could put up with rough treatment from him; yet, though I was a boy, even that sort of treatment I would bear from him no longer; and any other person who ventured on the like would find me a man, to their cost. ‘Mr. Quin,’ I added, ‘knows that fact very well; and if HE’S a man, he’ll know where to find me.’

My uncle now observed that it was getting late, and that my mother would be anxious about me. ‘One of you had better go home with him,’ said he, turning to his sons, ‘or the lad may be playing more pranks.’ But Ulick said, with a nod to his brother, ‘Both of us ride home with Quin here.’

‘I’m not afraid of Freny’s people,’ said the Captain, with a faint attempt at a laugh; ‘my man is armed, and so am I.’

‘You know the use of arms very well, Quin,’ said Ulick; ‘and no one can doubt your courage; but Mick and I will see you home for all that.’

‘Why, you’ll not be home till morning, boys. Kilwangan’s a good ten mile from here.’

‘We’ll sleep at Quin’s quarters,’ replied Ulick: ‘WE’RE GOING TO STOP A WEEK THERE.’

‘Thank you,’ says Quin, very faint; ‘it’s very kind of you.’

‘You’ll be lonely, you know, without us.’

‘Oh yes, very lonely!’ says Quin.

‘And in ANOTHER WEEK, my boy,’ says Ulick (and here he whispered something in the Captain’s ear, in which I thought I caught the words ‘marriage,’ ‘parson,’ and felt all my fury returning again).

‘As you please,’ whined out the Captain; and the horses were quickly brought round, and the three gentlemen rode away.

Fagan stopped, and, at my uncle’s injunction, walked across the old treeless park with me. He said that after the quarrel at dinner, he thought I would scarcely want to see the ladies that night, in which opinion I concurred entirely; and so we went off without an adieu.

‘A pretty day’s work of it you have made, Master Redmond,’ said he. ‘What! you a friend to the Bradys, and knowing your uncle to be distressed for money, try and break off a match which will bring fifteen hundred a year into the family? Quin has promised to pay off the four thousand pounds which is bothering your uncle so. He takes a girl without a penny—a girl with no more beauty than yonder bullock. Well, well, don’t look furious; let’s say she IS handsome—there’s no accounting for tastes,—a girl that has been flinging herself at the head of every man in these parts these ten years past, and MISSING them all. And you, as poor as herself, a boy of fifteen—well, sixteen, if you insist—and a boy who ought to be attached to your uncle as to your father’—

‘And so I am,’ said I.

‘And this is the return you make him for his kindness! Didn’t he harbour you in his house when you were an orphan, and hasn’t he given you rent-free your fine mansion of Barryville yonder? And now, when his affairs can be put into order, and a chance offers for his old age to be made comfortable, who flings himself in the way of him and competence?—You, of all others; the man in the world most obliged to him. It’s wicked, ungrateful, unnatural. From a lad of such spirit as you are, I expect a truer courage.’

‘I am not afraid of any man alive,’ exclaimed I (for this latter part of the Captain’s argument had rather staggered me, and I wished, of course, to turn it—as one always should when the enemy’s too strong); ‘and it’s I am the injured man, Captain Fagan. No man was ever, since the world began, treated so. Look here—look at this riband. I’ve worn it in my heart for six months. I’ve had it there all the time of the fever. Didn’t Nora take it out of her own bosom and give it me? Didn’t she kiss me when she gave it me, and call me her darling Redmond?’

‘She was PRACTISING,’ replied Mr. Fagan, with a sneer. ‘I know women, sir. Give them time, and let nobody else come to the house, and they’ll fall in love with a chimney-sweep. There was a young lady in Fermoy’—

‘A young lady in flames,’ roared I (but I used a still hotter word). ‘Mark this; come what will of it, I swear I’ll fight the man who pretends to the hand of Nora Brady. I’ll follow him, if it’s into the church, and meet him there. I’ll have his blood, or he shall have mine; and this riband shall be found dyed in it. Yes, and if I kill him, I’ll pin it on his breast, and then she may go and take back her token.’ This I said because I was very much excited at the time, and because I had not read novels and romantic plays for nothing.

‘Well,’ says Fagan after a pause, ‘if it must be, it must. For a young fellow, you are the most blood-thirsty I ever saw. Quin’s a determined fellow, too.’

‘Will you take my message to him?’ said I, quite eagerly.

‘Hush!’ said Fagan: ‘your mother may be