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Only the Christian is then miserable, and Lord Mergwain was relieved; for did he not then come to himself? and did he know anything better to arrive at than just that wretched self of his? A glass or two more, and he laughed at the terror by night.
Warlock, though I have not had the same opportunity of indulging them." He seemed rapidly returning to the semblance of what he would have called a gentleman. He rose, and the laird led the way. Lord Mergwain followed; and Cosmo, coming immediately behind, heard him muttering to himself all down the stairs: "Mere confounded nonsense! Nothing whatever but the drink!
Lord Mergwain lay with his mouth wide open, and the same look with which they found him the night before prostrate in the guest-chamber. His arm stuck straight out from his body. The laird pressed it down, but it rose again as soon as he left it. He could not for a moment doubt the man was dead; there was that about him that assured him of it, but what it was he could not have told.
That courage also which is mere insensibility crumbles at once before any object of terror able to stir the sluggish imagination. There is a fear, this for one, that for another, which can appall the stoutest who is not one with the essential. Lord Mergwain emerged from the influence of his imagination and his fears, and went under that of his senses and himself.
Warlock!" said Lord Mergwain, and spoke with a snarl, "you will not deprive us of the only pleasure we have that of your company?" "I shall be back in a few minutes, my lord," replied his host; and added, "I must see about lunch too." "That was wonderful claret!" said his lordship, thoughtfully. "I shall see to the claret, my lord." "If I MIGHT suggest, let it be brought here.
My brother does not know that you are here." Now Cosmo had never imagined that Lord Mergwain did not know he was at the castle. It was true he had not come to see him, but nothing was simpler if Lord Mergwain desired to see Cosmo as little as Cosmo desired, from his recollection of him at Castle Warlock, to see Lord Mergwain.
Lord Mergwain made no answer, but in his silence seemed to be making up his mind to the ineludible. "Have you any more of that claret?" he asked. "Not much, I am sorry to say," answered the laird, "but it is your lordship's while it lasts." "If this lasts, I shall drink your cellar dry," rejoined his lordship with a feeble grin. "I may as well make a clean breast of it.
In an instant they had the door jammed into its place, with the bolt in the catch as Mergwain had left it. "Now," said Cosmo, "we must get down the stair, and hide somewhere below, till he passes, and comes up here again." They ran to the kitchen, and made for a small cellar opening off it. Hardly were they in it when they heard him re-enter and go up the stair.
Lord Mergwain was again lying back exhausted in his chair, with his eyes closed. "Why don't you give me my brandy do you hear?" all at once he cried. " Oh, I thought it was my own rascal! Get me some brandy, will you?" "There is none in the house, my lord," said his host. "What a miserable sort of public to keep! No brandy!"
The fact was, that, like not a few old people, Lord Mergwain had fallen into such a habit of speaking in his worse moods without the least restraint, that in his better moods, which were indeed only good by comparison, he spoke in the same way, without being aware of it, and of himself seldom discovering that he had spoken. The rest of the breakfast passed in peace.
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