The Luck of Barry Lyndon by William Makepeace Thackeray (good english books to read TXT) 📕

a chair, and suffering pangs of agony, yet you would see him every morning and every evening at his post behind the delightful green cloth: and if, as it would often happen, his own hands were too feeble or inflamed to hold the box, he would call the mains, nevertheless, and have his valet or a friend to throw for him. I like this courageous spirit in a man; the greatest successes in life have been won by such indomitable perseverance.

I was by this time one of the best-known characters in Europe; and the fame of my exploits, my duels, my courage at play, would bring crowds around me in any public society where I appeared. I could show reams of scented paper, to prove that this eagerness to make my acquaintance was not confined to the gentlemen only; but that I hate boasting, and only talk of myself in so far as it is necessary to relate myself’s adventures: the most singular of any man’s in Europe. Well, Sir Charles Lyndon’s first acquaintance with me originated in the right honourable knight’s winning 700 pieces of me at picquet (for which he was almost my match); and I lost them with much good-humour, and paid them: and paid them, you may be sure, punctually. Indeed, I will say this for myself, that losing money at play never in the least put me out of good-humour with the winner, and that wherever I found a superior, I was always ready to acknowledge and hail him.

Lyndon was very proud of winning from so celebrated a person, and we contracted a kind of intimacy; which, however, did not for a while go beyond pump-room attentions, and conversations over the supper-table at play: but which gradually increased, until I was admitted into his more private friendship. He was a very free-spoken man (the gentry of those days were much prouder than at present), and used to say to me in his haughty easy way, “Hang it, Mr. Barry, you have no more manners than a barber, and I think my black footman has been better educated than you; but you are a young fellow of originality and pluck, and I like you, sir, because you seem determined to go to the deuce by a way of your own.” I would thank him laughingly for this compliment, and say, that as he was bound to the next world much sooner than I was, I would be obliged to him to get comfortable quarters arranged there for me. He used also to be immensely amused with my stories about the splendour of my family and the magnificence of Castle Brady: he would never tire of listening or laughing at those histories.

“Stick to the trumps, however, my lad,” he would say, when I told him of my misfortunes in the conjugal line, and how near I had been winning the greatest fortune in Germany. “Do anything but marry, my artless Irish rustic” (he called me by a multiplicity of queer names). “Cultivate your great talents in the gambling line; but mind this, that a woman will beat you.”

That I denied; mentioning several instances in which I had conquered the most intractable tempers among the sex.

“They will beat you in the long run, my Tipperary Alcibiades. As soon as you are married, take my word of it, you are conquered. Look at me. I married my cousin, the noblest and greatest heiress in England⁠—married her in spite of herself almost” (here a dark shade passed over Sir Charles Lyndon’s countenance). “She is a weak woman. You shall see her, sir, how weak she is; but she is my mistress. She has embittered my whole life. She is a fool; but she has got the better of one of the best heads in Christendom. She is enormously rich; but somehow I have never been so poor as since I married her. I thought to better myself; and she has made me miserable and killed me. And she will do as much for my successor, when I am gone.”

“Has her Ladyship a very large income?” said I. At which Sir Charles burst out into a yelling laugh, and made me blush not a little at my gaucherie; for the fact is, seeing him in the condition in which he was, I could not help speculating upon the chance a man of spirit might have with his widow.

“No, no!” said he, laughing. “Waugh hawk, Mr. Barry; don’t think, if you value your peace of mind, to stand in my shoes when they are vacant. Besides, I don’t think my Lady Lyndon would quite condescend to marry a⁠—”

“Marry a what, sir?” said I, in a rage.

“Never mind what: but the man who gets her will rue it, take my word on’t. A plague on her! had it not been for my father’s ambition and mine (he was her uncle and guardian, and we wouldn’t let such a prize out of the family), I might have died peaceably, at least; carried my gout down to my grave in quiet, lived in my modest tenement in Mayfair, had every house in England open to me; and now, now I have six of my own, and every one of them is a hell to me. Beware of greatness, Mr. Barry. Take warning by me. Ever since I have been married and have been rich, I have been the most miserable wretch in the world. Look at me. I am dying a worn-out cripple at the age of fifty. Marriage has added forty years to my life. When I took off Lady Lyndon, there was no man of my years who looked so young as myself. Fool that I was! I had enough with my pensions, perfect freedom, the best society in Europe; and I gave up all these, and married, and was miserable. Take a warning by me, Captain Barry, and stick to the trumps.”

Though my intimacy with the knight was considerable, for a long time I never