Chapter LIX…

Chapter LIX

TELLING HOW A COACH DREW UP AT THE ELMS, AND TWO FINE LADIES, DRESSED FOR THE BALL, STEPPED IN.

It was now more than a fortnight since Sturk's mishap in the Butcher's Wood, and he was still alive, but still under the spell of coma. He was sinking, but very slowly; yet it was enough to indicate the finality of that 'life in death.'

Dangerfield once or twice attacked Toole rather tartly about Sturk's case.

'Can nothing be done to make him speak? Five minutes' consciousness would unravel the mystery.'

Then Toole would shrug, and say, 'Pooh--pooh! my dear Sir, you know nothing.'

'Why, there's life!'

'Ay, the mechanical functions of life, but the brain's over-powered,' replied Toole, with a wise frown.

'Well, relieve it.'

'By Jupiter, Sir, you make me laugh,' cried Toole with a grin, throwing up his eyebrows. 'I take it, you think we doctors can work miracles.'

'Quite the reverse, Sir,' retorted Dangerfield, with a cold scoff. 'But you say he may possibly live six weeks more; and all that time the wick is smouldering, though the candle's short--can't you blow it in, and give us even one minute's light?'

'Ay, a smouldering wick and a candle if you please; but enclosed in a glass bottle, how the deuce are you to blow it?'

'Pish!' said the silver spectacles, with an icy flash from his glasses.

'Why, Sir, you'll excuse me--but you don't understand,' said Toole, a little loftily. 'There are two contused wounds along the scalp as long as that pencil--the whole line of each partially depressed, the depression all along being deep enough to lay your finger in. You can ask Irons, who dresses them when I'm out of the way.'

'I'd rather ask you, Sir,' replied Dangerfield, in turn a little high.

'Well, you can't apply the trepan, the surface is too extended, and all unsound, and won't bear it--'twould be simply killing him on the spot--don't you see? and there's no way else to relieve him.'

General Chattesworth had not yet returned. On his way home he had wandered aside, and visited the fashionable wells of Buxton, intending a three days' sojourn, to complete his bracing up for the winter. But the Pool of Siloam did not work pleasantly in the case of the robust general, who was attacked after his second dip with a smart fit of the gout in his left great-toe, where it went on charmingly, without any flickering upward, quite stationary and natural for three weeks.

About the end of which time the period of the annual ball given by the officers of the Royal Irish Artillery arrived. It was a great event in the town. To poor Mrs. Sturk, watching by her noble Barney, it seemed, of course, a marvellous insensibility and an outrage. But the world must follow its instinct and vocation, and attend to its business and amuse itself too, though noble Barneys lie a-dying here and there.

Aunt Becky and Gertrude drew up at the Elms, the rector's house, with everything very handsome about them, and two laced footmen, with flambeaux, and went in to see little Lily, on their way to the ball, and to show their dresses, which were very fine, indeed, and to promise to come next day and tell her all the news; for Lily, as I mentioned, was an invalid, and balls and flicflacs were not for her.

Little Lily smiled her bright girlish smile, and threw both her arms round grand Aunt Becky's neck.

'You good dear Aunt Becky, 'twas so kind and like you to come--you and Gertie. And oh, Geminie! what a grand pair of ladies!' and she made a little rustic courtesy, like Nell in the farce. 'And I never saw this before (a near peep at Gertrude's necklace), and Aunt Becky, what beautiful lace. And does not she look handsome, Gertie? I never saw her look so handsome. She'll be the finest figure there. There's no such delicate waist anywhere.' And she set her two slender little forefingers and thumbs together, as if spanning it. 'You've no chance beside her, Gertie; she'll set all the young fellows a-sighing and simpering.'

'You wicked little rogue! I'll beat you black and blue, for making fun of old Aunt Becky,' cried Miss Rebecca, and ran a little race at her, about two inches to a step; her fan raised in her finger and thumb, and a jolly smile twinkling in her face, for she knew it was true about her waist, and she liked to be quizzed by the daring little girl. Her diamonds were on too, and her last look in her mirror had given her a satisfactory assurance, and she always played with little Lily, when they met; everyone grew gay and girlish with her.

So they stayed a full quarter of an hour, and the footman coughing laboriously outside the window reminded Aunt Rebecca at last how time flew; and Lily was for sitting down and playing a minuet and a country dance, and making them rehearse their steps, and calling in old Sally to witness the spectacle before they went; and so she and Aunt Becky had another little sportive battle--they never met, and seldom parted, without one. How was it that when gay little Lily provoked these little mimic skirmishes Aunt Becky would look for a second or two an inexpressibly soft and loving look upon her, and become quite girlish and tender? I think there is a way to every heart, and some few have the gift to reach it unconsciously and always.

So away rustled the great ladies, leaving Lily excited, and she stood at the window, with flushed cheek, and her fingers on the sash, looking after them, and she came back with a little smile and tears in her eyes. She sat down, with a bright colour in her cheeks, and did play a country dance, and then a merry old Irish air, full of frolic and spirit, on the harpsichord; and gentle old Sally's face peeped in with a wistful smile, at the unwonted sounds.

'Come, sober old Sally, my sweetheart! I've taken a whim in my head, and you shall dress me, for to the ball I'll go.'

'Tut, tut, Miss Lily, darling,' said old Sally, with a smile and a shake of the head. 'What would the doctors say?'

'What they please, my darling.'

And up stood little Lily, with her bright colour and lustrous eyes.

'Angel bright!' said the old woman, looking in that beloved and lovely young face, and quite 'filling up,' as the saying is, 'there is not your peer on earth--no--not one among them all to compare with our Miss Lilias,' and she paused, smiling, and then she said--'But, my darling, sure you know you weren't outside the door this five weeks.'

'And is not that long enough, and too long, to shut me up, you cruel old woman? Come, come, Sally, girl, I'm resolved, and to the ball I'll go; don't be frightened. I'll cover my head, and send in for Aunt Becky, and only just peep in, muffled up, for ten minutes; and I'll go and come in the chair, and what harm can I take by it?'

Was it spirit? Did she want to show the folk that she did not shrink from meeting somebody; or that, though really ill, she ventured to peep in, through sheer liking for the scrape of the fiddle, and the fun, to show them that at least she was not heart-sick? Or was it the mysterious attraction, the wish to see him once more, just through her hood, far away, with an unseen side glance, and to build endless speculations, and weave the filmy web of hope, for who knows how long, out of these airy tints, a strange, sad smile, or deep, wild glance, just seen and fixed for ever in memory? She had given him up in words, but her heart had not given him up. Poor little Lily! She hoped all that was so bad in him would one day mend. He was a hero still--and, oh! she hoped, would be true to her. So Lily's love, she scarce knew how, lived on this hope--the wildest of all wild hopes--waiting on the reformation of a rake.

'But, darling Miss Lily, don't you know the poor master would break his heart if he thought you could do such a wild thing as to go out again 'the doctors' orders, at this time o' night, and into that hot place, and out again among the cold draughts.'

Little Lily paused.

''Tis only a step, Sally; do you honestly think it would vex him?'

'Vex him, darling? no, but break his heart. Why, he's never done asking about you, and--oh! its only joking you are, my darling, that's all.'

'No, Sally, dear love, I meant it,' said little Lily, sadly; 'but I suppose it was a wild thought, and I'm better at home.'

And she played a march that had somehow a dash of the pathetic in it, in a sort of reverie, and she said:

'Sally, do you know that?'

And Sally's gentle face grew reflective, and she said:

'Sure, Miss Lily, that's the tune--isn't it--the Artillery plays when they march out to the park?'

Lily nodded and smiled, and the tune moved on, conjuring up its pictured reverie. Those review days were grand things when little Lily was a child--magnanimous expenditure of hair and gunpowder was there. There sat General Chattesworth, behind his guns, which were now blazing away like fun, wearing his full uniform, point cravat and ruffles, and that dignified and somewhat stern aspect which he put on with the rest of his review-day costume, bestriding his cream-coloured charger, Bombardier, and his plume and powdered ails de pigeon, hardly distinguishable from the smoke which enveloped him, as a cloud does a demigod in an allegorical picture.

Chord after chord brought up all this moving pageant, unseen by Sally's dim old eyes, before the saddened gaze of little Lily, whose life was growing to a retrospect. She stood in the sunny street, again a little child, holding old Sally by the hand, on a soft summer day. The sentries presented arms, and the corps marched out resplendent. Old General Chattesworth, as proud as Lucifer, on Bombardier, who nods and champs, prancing and curvetting, to the admiration of the women; but at heart the mildest of quadrupeds, though passing, like an impostor as he was, for a devil incarnate; the band thundering melodiously that dashing plaintive march, and exhilarating and firing the souls of all Chapelizod. Up went the windows all along the street, the rabble-rout of boys yelled and huzzaed like mad. The maids popped their mob-caps out of the attics, and giggled, and hung out at the risk of their necks. The serving men ran out on the hall-door steps. The village roués emerged in haste from their public houses. The whole scene round and along from top to bottom, was grinning and agape. Nature seemed to brighten up at sight of them; and the sun himself came out all in his best, with an unparalleled effulgence.

Yes, the town was proud of its corps, and well it might. As gun after gun, with its complement of men and its lieutenant fireworkers, with a 'right wheel,' rolled out of the gate upon the broad street, not a soul could look upon the lengthening pageant of blue and scarlet, with its symmetrical diagonals of snowy belt and long-flapped white cartouche boxes, moving together with measured swing; its laced cocked-hats, leggings, and courtly white shorts and vests, and ruffles, and all its buttons and brasses flashing up to the sun, without allowing it was a fine spirited sight.

And Lily, beholding the phantom regiment, with mournful eyes, played their grand sad march proudly as they passed.

They looked so dashing and so grand; they were the tallest, shapeliest fellows. Faith, I can tell you, it was no such trifle, pulling along all those six and four pounders; and they needed to be athletic lads; and the officers were, with hardly an exception, martial, high-bred gentlemen, with aristocratic bearing, and some of them, without question, confoundedly handsome.

And always there was one light, tall shape; one dark handsome face, with darker, stranger eyes, and a nameless grace and interest, moving with the march of the gay pageant, before her mind's eye, to this harmonious and regretful music, which, as she played on, and her reverie deepened, grew slower and more sad, till old Sally's voice awoke the dreamer. The chords ceased, the vision melted, and poor little Lily smiled sadly and kindly on old Sally, and took her candle, and went up with her to her bed.

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Chapter LX

BEING A CHAPTER OF HOOPS, FEATHERS, AND BRILLIANTS, AND BUCKS AND FIDDLERS.

It was a mighty grand affair, this ball of the Royal Irish Artillery. General Chattesworth had arrived that morning, just in time to preside over the hospitalities--he could not contribute much to the dancing--and his advent, still a little lame, but looking, as his friends told him, ten years younger for his snug little fit of the gout at Buxton, reinstated Aunt Becky in her place of power, to the secret disappointment of Madame Strafford, who had set her heart on doing the honours, and rehearsed for weeks, over her toilet, and even in bed, her little speeches, airs, and graces.

Lord Castlemallard was there, of course--and the gay and splendid Lady Moira--whom I mention because General Chattesworth opened the ball in a minuet with her ladyship--hobbling with wonderful grace, and beaming with great ceremonious smiles through his honourable martyrdom. But there were more than a score of peers there beside, with their peeresses in tall feathers, diamonds, and monstrous hoops. And the lord lieutenant was very near coming--and a lord lieutenant in those days, with a parliament to open, and all the regalia of his office about him, was a far greater personage than, in our democratic age, the sovereign in person.

Captain Cluffe had gone down in a chair to Puddock's lodgings, to borrow a pair of magnificent knee-buckles. Puddock had a second pair, and Cluffe's own had not, he thought, quite recovered their good looks since that confounded ducking on the night of the serenade. The gallant captain, learning that Puddock and Devereux intended walking--it was only a step across to the barrack-yard--and finding that Puddock could not at the moment lay his hand upon the buckles, and not wishing to keep the chair longer--for he knew delay would inflame the fare, and did not like dispensing his shillings--

'Hey! walk? I like the fancy,' cried the gay captain, sending half-a-crown down stairs to his 'two-legged ponies,' as people pleasantly called them. 'I'd rather walk with you than jog along in a chair by myself, my gay fellows, any day.'

Most young fellows of spirit, at the eve of a ball, have their heads pretty full. There is always some one bright particular star to whom, even as they look on their own handsome features in the mirror, their adoration is paid.

Puddock's shoe-buckles flashed for Gertrude Chattesworth, as he turned out his toes. For her his cravat received its last careless touch--his ruffles shook themselves, and fell in rich elegance about his plump little hands. For her his diamond ring gleamed like a burning star from his white little finger; and for her the last fragrance was thrown over his pocket-handkerchief, and the last ogle thrown upon his looking-glass. All the interest of his elaborate toilet--the whole solemn process and detail--was but a worship of his divinity, at which he officiated. Much in the same way was Cluffe affected over his bedizenment in relation to his own lady-love; but in a calmer and more long-headed fashion. Devereux's toilet most of the young fellows held to be perfection; yet it seemed to trouble him less than all the rest. I believe it was the elegant and slender shape that would have set off anything, and that gave to his handsome costume and 'properties' an undefinable grace not their own. Indeed, as he leaned his elbow upon the window sash, looking carelessly across the river, he did not seem much to care what became of the labours of his toilet.

'I have not seen her since I came; and now I'm going to this stupid ball on the chance of meeting her there. And she'll not come--she avoids me--the chance of meeting her--and she'll not come. Well! if she be not kind to me, what care I for whom she be? And what great matter, after all, if she were there. She'd be, I suppose, on her high horse--and--and 'tis not a feather to me. Let her take her own way. What care I? If she's happy, why shouldn't I--why shouldn't I?'

Five minutes after:--

'Who the plague are these fellows in the Phoenix? How the brutes howl over their liquor!' said Devereux, as he and Puddock, at the door-steps, awaited Cluffe, who was fixing his buckles in the drawing-room.

'The Corporation of Tailors,' answered Puddock, a little loftily, for he was not inwardly pleased that the precincts of the 'Phoenix' should be profaned by their mechanical orgies.

Through the open bow window of the great oak parlour of the inn was heard the mighty voice of the president, who was now in the thick of his political toasts.

'Odds bud!' lisped little Puddock, 'what a stentorian voice!'

'Considering it issues from a tailor!' acquiesced Devereux, who thought he recognised the accents, and hated tailors, who plagued him with long bills and dangerous menaces.

'May the friends of the Marquis of Kildare be ever blessed with the tailor's thimble,' declaimed the portentous toast master. 'May the needle of distress be ever pointed at all mock patriots; and a hot needle and a burning thread to all sewers of sedition!' and then came an applauding roar.

'And may you ride into town on your own goose, with a hot needle behind you, you roaring pigmy!' added Devereux.

'The Irish cooks that can't relish French sauce!' enunciated the same grand voice, that floated, mellowed, over the field.

'Sauce, indeed!' said Puddock, with an indignant lisp, as Cluffe, having joined them, they set forward together; 'I saw some of them going in, Sir, and to look at their vulgar, unthinking countenances, you'd say they had not capacity to distinguish between the taste of a quail and a goose; but, by Jove! Sir, they have a dinner. You're a politician, Cluffe, and read the papers. You remember the bill of fare--don't you?--at the Lord Mayor's entertainment in London.'

Cluffe, whose mind was full of other matters, nodded his head with a grunt.

'Well, I'll take my oath,' pursued Puddock, 'you couldn't have made a better dinner at the Prince of Travendahl's table. Spanish olea, if you please--ragou royal, cardoons, tendrons, shellfish in marinade, ruffs and rees, wheat-ears, green morels, fat livers, combs and notts. 'Tis rather odd, Sir, to us who employ them, to learn that our tailors, while we're eating the dinners we do--our tailors, Sir, are absolutely gorging themselves with such things--with our money, by Jove!'

'Yours, Puddock, not mine,' said Devereux. 'I haven't paid a tailor these six years. But, hang it, let's get on.'

So, in they walked by the barrack-yard, lighted up now with a splendid red blaze of torches, and with different emotions, entered the already crowded ball-room.

Devereux looked round the room, among nodding plumes and flashing brilliants, and smirking old bucks, and simpering young ones, amidst the buzz of two or three hundred voices, and the thunder and braying of the band. There were scores of pretty faces there--blondes and brunettes--blue eyes and brown--and more spirit and animation, and, I think, more grace too, in dance and talk, than the phlegmatic affectation of modern days allows; and there were some bright eyes that, not seeming to look, yet recognised, with a little thrill at the heart, and a brighter flush, the brilliant, proud Devereux--so handsome, so impulsive, so unfathomable--with his gipsy tint, and great enthusiastic eyes, and strange melancholy, sub-acid smile. But to him the room was lifeless, and the hour was dull, and the music but a noise and a jingle.

'I knew quite well she wasn't here, and she never cared for me, and I--why should I trouble my head about her? She makes her cold an excuse. Well, maybe yet she'll wish to see Dick Devereux, and I far away. No matter. They've heard slanders of me, and believe them. Amen, say I. If they're so light of faith, and false in friendship to cast me off for a foul word or an idle story--curse it--I'm well rid of that false and foolish friendship, and can repay their coldness and aversion with a light heart, a bow, and a smile. One slander I'll refute--yes--and that done, I'll close this idle episode in my cursed epic, and never, never think of her again.'

But fancy will not be controlled by resolutions, though ne'er so wise and strong, and precisely as the captain vowed 'never'--away glided that wild, sad sprite across the moonlit river, and among the old black elms, and stood unbidden beside Lilias. Little Lily, as they used to call her five years ago; and Devereux, who seemed to look so intently and so strangely on the flash and whirl of the dancers, saw but an old fashioned drawing-room, with roses clustering by the windows, and heard the sweet rich voice, to him the music of Ariel, like a far-off dirge--a farewell--sometimes a forgiveness--and sometimes the old pleasant talk and merry little laugh, all old remembrances or vain dreams now.

But Devereux had business on his hands that night, and about eleven o'clock he had disappeared. 'Twas easy to go and come in such a crowd, and no one perceive it.

But Puddock was very happy and excited. Mervyn, whom he had once feared, was there, a mere spectator, however, to witness that night's signal triumph. He had never danced so much with Miss Gertrude before, that is to say, at a great ball like this at which there was a plenty of bucks with good blood and lots of money; and indeed, it seemed to favour the idea of his success that Aunt Rebecca acknowledged him only with a silent and by no means gracious courtesy.

She was talking to Toole about Lilias, and saying how much better she had looked that evening.

'She's not better, Ma'am; I'd rather she hadn't the bright flush you speak of, there's something, you see, not quite right in that left lung, and that bright tint, Madam, is hectic--she's not better, Madam, not that we don't hope to see her so--Heaven forbid--but 'tis an anxious case;' and Toole shook his head gravely.

When Aunt Becky was getting on her hood and mantle, she invariably fell into talk with some crony who had a story to tell, or a point to discuss. So as she stood listening to old Colonel Bligh's hard, reedy gabble, and popping in her decisive word now and then, Gertrude, equipped for the night air, and with little Puddock for her escort, glided out and took her place in the great state coach of the Chattesworths, and the door being shut, she made a little nod and a faint smile to her true knight, and said with the slightest possible shrug--

'How cold it is to-night; my aunt, I think, will be obliged for your assistance, Lieutenant Puddock; as for me, I must shut up my window and wish you good-night.'

And with another smile she accordingly shut up the window, and when his best bow was accomplished, she leaned back with a pale and stricken countenance, and a great sigh--such a one as caused Lady Macbeth's physician, long ago, to whisper, 'What a sigh is there! the heart is sorely charged.' The footmen were standing by the open door, through which Aunt Becky was to come, and there were half a dozen carriages crowded side by side, the lackeys being congregated, with links lighted, about the same place of exit; and things being so, there came a small sharp tapping at the far window of the carriage, and with a start Gertrude saw the identical mantle, and the three-cocked-hat with the peculiar corners, which had caused certain observers so much speculation on another night, and drawing close to the window, whereat this apparition presented itself, she let it down.

'I know, beloved Gertrude, what you would say,' he softly said; 'but be it frenzy or no, I cannot forbear; I am unalterable--be you the same.'

A white, slender hand glided in and seized hers, not resisting.

'Yes, Mordaunt, the same; but, oh! how miserable!' said Gertrude, and with just the slightest movement in the fingers of her small hand, hardly perceptible, and yet how fond a caress!

'I'm like a man who has lost his way among the catacombs--among the dead,' whispered this muffled figure, close to the window, still fervently holding her hand, 'and sees at last the distant gleam that shows him that his wanderings are to end. Yes, Gertrude, my beloved--yes, Gertrude, idol of my solitary love--the mystery is about to end--I'll end it. Be I what I may you know the worst, and have given me your love and troth--you are my affianced bride; rather than lose you, I would die; and I think, or I am walking in a dream, I've but to point my finger against two men, and all will be peace and light--light and peace--to me long strangers!'

At this moment Aunt Becky's voice was heard at the door, and the flash of the flambeaux glared on the window. He kissed the hand of the pale girl hurriedly, and the French cocked-hat and mantle vanished.

In came Aunt Rebecca in a fuss, and it must be said in no very gracious mood, and rather taciturn and sarcastic; and so away they rumbled over the old bridge towards Belmont.

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LXI. IN WHICH THE GHOSTS OF A BY-GONE SIN KEEP TRYST

Devereux, wrapped in his cloak, strode into the park, through Parson's-gate, up the steep hill, and turned towards Castleknock and the furze and hawthorn wood that interposes. The wide plain spread before him in solitude, with the thin vapours of night, lying over it like a film in the moonlight.

Two or three thorn trees stood out from the rest, a pale and solitary group, stooping eastward with the prevailing sweep of a hundred years or more of westerly winds. To this the gipsy captain glided, in a straight military line, his eye searching the distance; and, after a while, from the skirts of the wood, there moved to meet him a lonely female figure, with her light clothing fluttering in the cold air. At first she came hurriedly, but as they drew near, she came more slowly.

Devereux was angry, and, like an angry man, he broke out first with--

'So, your servant, Mistress Nan! Pretty lies you've been telling of me--you and your shrew of a mother. You thought you might go to the rector and say what you pleased, and I hear nothing.'

Nan Glynn was undefinably aware that he was very angry, and had hesitated and stood still before he began, and now she said imploringly--

'Sure, Masther Richard, it wasn't me.'

'Come, my lady, don't tell me. You and your mother--curse her!--went to the Elms in my absence--you and she--and said I had promised to marry you! There--yes or no. Didn't you? And could you or could she have uttered a more utterly damnable lie?'

''Twas she, Master Richard--troth an' faith. I never knew she was going to say the like--no more I didn't.'

'A likely story, truly, Miss Nan!' said the young rake, bitterly.

'Oh! Masther Richard! by this cross!--you won't believe me--'tis as true as you're standin' there--until she said it to Miss Lily--'

'Hold your tongue!' cried Devereux, so fiercely, that she thought him half wild; 'do you think 'tis a pin's point to me which of you first coined or uttered the lie? Listen to me; I'm a desperate man, and I'll take a course with you both you'll not like, unless you go to-morrow and see Dr. Walsingham yourself, and tell him the whole truth--yes, the truth--what the devil do I care?--speak that, and make the most of it. But tell him plainly that your story about my having promised to marry you--do you hear--was a lie, from first to last--a lie--a lie--without so much as a grain of truth mixed up in it. All a cursed--devil's--woman's invention. Now, mind ye, Miss Nan, if you don't, I'll bring you and your mother into court, or I'll have the truth out of you.'

'But there's no need to threaten, sure, you know, Masther Richard, I'd do anything for you--I would. I'd beg, or I'd rob, or I'd die for you, Masther Richard; and whatever you bid me, your poor wild Nan 'ill do.'

Devereux was touched, the tears were streaming down her pale cheeks, and she was shivering.

'You're cold, Nan; where's your cloak and riding hood?' he said, gently.

'I had to part them, Masther Richard.'

'You want money, Nan,' he said, and his heart smote him.

'I'm not cold when I'm near you, Masther Richard. I'd wait the whole night long for a chance of seeing you; but oh! ho--(she was crying as if her heart would break, looking in his face, and with her hands just a little stretched towards him), oh, Masther Richard, I'm nothing to you now--your poor wild Nan!'

Poor thing! Her mother had not given her the best education. I believe she was a bit of a thief, and she could tell fibs with fluency and precision. The woman was a sinner; but her wild, strong affections were true, and her heart was not in pelf.

'Now, don't cry--where's the good of crying--listen to me,' said Devereux.

'Sure I heerd you were sick, last week, Masther Richard,' she went on, not heeding, and with her cold fingers just touching his arm timidly--and the moon glittered on the tears that streamed down her poor imploring cheeks--'an' I'd like to be caring you; an' I think you look bad, Masther Richard.'

'No, Nan--I tell you, no--I'm very well, only poor, just now, Nan, or you should not want.'

'Sure I know, Masther Richard: it is not that. I know you'd be good to me if you had it: and it does not trouble me.'

'But see, Nan, you must speak to your friends, and say--'

'Sorra a friend I have--sorra a friend, Masther Richard; and I did not spake to the priest this year or more, and I darn't go near him,' said the poor Palmerstown lass that was once so merry.

'Why won't you listen to me, child? I won't have you this way. You must have your cloak and hood. 'Tis very cold; and, by Heavens, Nan, you shall never want while I have a guinea. But you see I'm poor now, curse it--I'm poor--I'm sorry, Nan, and I have only this one about me.'

'Oh, no, Masther Richard, keep it--maybe you'd want it yourself.'

'No, child, don't vex me--there--I'll have money in a week or two, and I'll send you some more, Nan--I'll not forget you.' He said this in a sadder tone; 'and, Nan, I'm a changed man. All's over, you know, and we'll see one another no more. You'll be happier, Nan, for the parting, so here, and now, Nan, we'll say good-bye.'

'Oh! no--no--no--not good-bye; you couldn't--couldn't--couldn't--your poor wild Nan.'

And she clung to his cloak, sobbing in wild supplication.

'Yes, Nan, good-bye, it must be--no other word.'

'An' oh, Masther Richard, is it in airnest? You wouldn't, oh! sure you wouldn't.'

'Now, Nan, there's a good girl; I must go. Remember your promise, and I'll not forget you, Nan--on my soul, I won't.'

'Well, well, mayn't I chance to see you, maybe? mayn't I look at you marching, Masther Richard, at a distance only? I wouldn't care so much, I think, if I could see you sometimes.'

'Now, there, Nan, you must not cry; you know 'tis all past and gone more than a year ago. 'Twas all d----d folly--all my fault; I'm sorry, Nan--I'm sorry; and I'm a changed man, and I'll lead a better life, and so do you, my poor girl.'

'But mayn't I see you? Not to spake to you, Masther Richard. Only sometimes to see you, far off, maybe.' Poor Nan was crying all the time she spoke.--'Well, well, I'll go, I will, indeed, Masther Richard; only let me kiss your hand--an' oh! no, no, don't say good-bye, an' I'll go--I'm gone now, an' maybe--just maybe, you might some time chance to wish to see your poor, wild Nan again--only to see her, an' I'll be thinking o' that.'

The old feeling--if anything so coarse deserved the name--was gone; but he pitied her with all his heart; and that heart, such as it was--though she did not know it--was bleeding for her.

He saw her, poor creature, hurrying away in her light clothing, through the sharp, moonlight chill, which, even in the wrapping of his thick cloak, he felt keenly enough. She looked over her shoulder--then stopped; perhaps, poor thing, she thought he was relenting, and then she began to hurry back again. They cling so desperately to the last chance. But that, you know, would never do. Another pleading--another parting--So he turned sharply and strode into the thickets of the close brushwood, among which the white mists of night were hanging. He thought, as he stepped resolutely and quickly on, with a stern face, and heavy heart, that he heard a wild sobbing cry in the distance, and that was poor Nan's farewell.

So Devereux glided on like a ghost, through the noiseless thicket, and scarcely knowing or caring where he went, emerged upon the broad open plateau, and skirting the Fifteen Acres, came, at last, to a halt upon the high ground overlooking the river--which ran, partly in long trains of silver sparkles, and partly in deep shadow beneath him. Here he stopped; and looked towards the village where he had passed many a pleasant hour--with a profound and remorseful foreboding that there were no more such pleasant hours for him; and his eye wandered among the scattered lights that still twinkled from the distant windows; and he fancied he knew, among them all, that which gleamed pale and dim through the distant elms--the star of his destiny; and he looked at it across the water--a greater gulf severed them--so near, and yet a star in distance--with a strange mixture of sadness and defiance, tenderness and fury.

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Chapter LXII

OF A SOLEMN RESOLUTION WHICH CAPTAIN DEVEREUX REGISTERED AMONG HIS HOUSEHOLD GODS, WITH A LIBATION.

When Devereux entered his drawing-room, and lighted his candles, he was in a black and bitter mood. He stood at the window for a while, and drummed on the pane, looking in the direction of the barrack, where all the fun was going on, but thinking, in a chaotic way, of things very different, and all toned with that strange sense of self-reproach and foreboding which, of late, had grown habitual with him--and not without just cause.

'This shall be the last. 'Twas dreadful, seeing that poor Nan; and I want it--I can swear, I really and honestly want it--only one glass to stay my heart. Everyone may drink in moderation--especially if he's heart-sick, and has no other comfort--one glass and no more--curse it.'

So one glass of brandy--I'm sorry to say, unmixed with water--the handsome misanthropist sipped and sipped, to the last drop; and then sat down before his fire, and struck, and poked, and stabbed at it in a bitter, personal sort of way, until here and there some blazes leaped up, and gave his eyes a dreamy sort of occupation; and he sat back, with his hands in his pockets, and his feet on the fender, gazing among the Plutonic peaks and caverns between the bars.

'I've had my allowance for to-night; to-morrow night, none at all. 'Tis an accursed habit: and I'll not allow it to creep upon me. No, I've never fought it fairly, as I mean to do now--'tis quite easy, if one has but the will to do it.'

So he sat before his fire, chewing the cud of bitter fancy only; and he recollected he had not quite filled his glass, and up he got with a swagger, and says he--

'We'll drink fair, if you please--one glass--one only--but that, hang it--a bumper.'

So he made a rough calculation.

'We'll say so much--here or there, 'tis no great matter. A thimble full won't drown me. Pshaw! that's too much. What am I to do with it?--hang it. Well, we can't help it--'tis the last.'

So whatever the quantity may have been, he drank it too, and grew more moody; and was suddenly called up from the black abyss by the entrance of little Puddock, rosy and triumphant, from the ball.

'Ha! Puddock! Then, the fun's over. I'm glad to see you. I've been tête-à-tête with my shadow--cursed bad company, Puddock. Where's Cluffe?'

'Gone home, I believe.'

'So much the better. You know Cluffe better than I, and there's a secret about him I never could find out. You have, maybe?'

'What's that?' lisped Puddock.

'What the deuce Cluffe's good for.'

'Oh! tut! We all know Cluffe's a very good fellow.'

Devereux looked from under his finely pencilled brows with a sad sort of smile at good little Puddock.

'Puddock,' says he, 'I'd like to have you write my epitaph.

Puddock looked at him with his round eyes a little puzzled, and then he said--

'You think, maybe, I've a turn for making verses; and you think also I like you, and there you're quite right.'

Devereux laughed, but kindly, and shook the fat little hand he proffered.

'I wish I were like you, Puddock. We've the knowledge of good and evil between us. The knowledge of good is all yours: you see nothing but the good that men have; you see it--and, I dare say, truly--where I can't. The darker knowledge is mine.'

Puddock, who thought he thoroughly understood King John, Shylock, and Richard III., was a good deal taken aback by Devereux's estimate of his penetration.

'Well, I don't think you know me, Devereux,' resumed he with a thoughtful lisp. 'I'm much mistaken, or I could sound the depths of a villain's soul as well as most men.'

'And if you did you'd find it full of noble qualities,' said Dick Devereux. 'What book is that?'

'The tragical history of Doctor Faustus,' answered Puddock. 'I left it here more than a week ago. Have you read it?'

'Faith, Puddock, I forgot it! Let's see what 'tis like,' said Devereux. 'Hey day!' And he read--

'Now, Faustus, let thine eyes with horror stare Into that vast perpetual torture-house; There are the furies tossing damned souls On burning forks; their bodies boil in lead; There are live quarters broiling on the coals That ne'er can die; this ever-burning chair Is for o'er-tortured souls to rest them in; These that are fed with sops of flaming fire Were gluttons, and loved only delicates, And laughed to see the poor starve at their gates.

'Tailors! by Jupiter! Serve'em right, the rogues. Tailors lining upon ragou royal, Spanish olea, Puddock--fat livers, and green morels in the Phoenix, the scoundrels, and laughing to see poor gentlemen of the Royal Irish Artillery starving at their gates--hang 'em.'

'Well! well! Listen to the Good Angel,' said Puddock, taking up the book and declaiming his best--

'O thou hast lost celestial happiness, Pleasures unspeakable, bliss without end. Hadst thou affected sweet divinity, Hell or the devil had no power on thee-- Hadst thou kept on that way. Faustus, behold In what resplendent glory thou hadst sat, On yonder throne, like those bright shining spirits, And triumphed over hell! That hast thou lost; And now, poor soul, must thy good angel leave thee; The jaws of hell are open to receive thee.'

'Stop that; 'tis all cursed rant,' said Devereux. 'That is, the thing itself; you make the most it.'

'Why, truly,' said Puddock, 'there are better speeches in it. But 'tis very late; and parade, you know--I shall go to bed. And you--'

'No. I shall stay where I am.'

'Well, I wish you good-night, dear Devereux.'

'Good-night, Puddock'

And the plump little fellow was heard skipping down stairs, and the hall-door shut behind him. Devereux took the play that Puddock had just laid down, and read for a while with a dreary kind of interest. Then he got up, and, I'm sorry to say, drank another glass of the same strong waters.

'To-morrow I turn over a new leaf;' and he caught himself repeating Puddock's snatch of Macbeth, 'To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow.'

Devereux looked out, leaning on the window-sash. All was quiet now, as if the rattle of a carriage had never disturbed the serene cold night. The town had gone to bed, and you could hear the sigh of the river across the field. A sadder face the moon did not shine upon.

'That's a fine play, Faustus--Marlowe,' he said. Some of the lines he had read were booming funereally in his ear like a far-off bell. 'I wonder whether Marlowe had run a wild course, like some of us here--myself--and could not retrieve. That honest little mountebank, Puddock, does not understand a word of it. I wish I were like Puddock. Poor little fellow!'

So, after awhile, Devereux returned to his chair before the fire, and on his way again drank of the waters of Lethe, and sat down, not forgetting, but remorseful, over the fire.

'I'll drink no more to-night--there--curse me if I do.'

The fire was waxing low in the grate. 'To-morrow's a new day. Why, I never made a resolution about it before. I can keep it. 'Tis easily kept. To-morrow I begin.'

And with fists clenched in his pockets, he vowed his vow, with an oath into the fire; and ten minutes were not past and over when his eye wandered thirstily again to the flask on the middle of the table, and with a sardonic, flushed smile, he quoted the 'Good Angel's' words:--

'O, Faustus, lay that damned book aside, And gaze not on it lest it tempt thy soul.'

And then pouring out a dram, he looked on it, and said, with the 'Evil Angel'--

'Go forward, Faustus, in that famous art, Wherein all Nature's treasure is contained: Be thou on earth as Jove is in the sky, Lord and commander of the elements.'

And then, with a solitary sneer, he sipped it. And after awhile he drank one glass more--they were the small glasses then in vogue--and shoved it back, with--

'There; that's the last.'

And then, perhaps, there was one other 'last;' and after that 'the very last.' Hang it! it must be the last, and so on, I suppose. And Devereux was pale, and looked wild and sulky on parade next morning.

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Chapter LXIII

IN WHICH A LIBERTY IS TAKEN WITH MR. NUTTER'S NAME, AND MR. DANGERFIELD STANDS AT THE ALTAR.

Poor Mrs. Nutter continued in a state of distracted and flighty tribulation, not knowing what to make of it, nor, indeed, knowing the worst; for the neighbours did not tell her half they might, nor drop a hint of the dreadful suspicion that dogged her absent helpmate.

She was sometimes up rummaging among the drawers, and fidgeting about the house, without any clear purpose, but oftener lying on her bed, with her clothes on, crying. When she got hold of a friend, she disburthened her soul, and called on him or her for endless consolations and assurances, which, for the most part, she herself prescribed. There were, of course, fits of despair as well as starts of hope; and bright ideas, accounting for everything, and then clouds of blackness, and tornadoes of lamentation.

Father Roach, a good-natured apostle, whose digestion suffered when anyone he liked was in trouble, paid her a visit; and being somehow confounded with Dr. Toole, was shown up to her bed-room, where the poor little woman lay crying under the coverlet. On discovering where he was, the good father was disposed to flinch, and get down stairs, in tenderness to his 'character,' and thinking what a story 'them villians o' the world'id make iv it down at the club there.' But on second thoughts, poor little Sally being neither young nor comely, he ventured, and sat down by the bed, veiled behind a strip of curtain, and poured his mellifluous consolations into her open ears.

And poor Sally became eloquent in return. And Father Roach dried his eyes, although she could not see him behind the curtain, and called her 'my daughter,' and 'dear lady,' and tendered such comforts as his housekeeping afforded. 'Had she bacon in the house?' or 'maybe she'd like a fat fowl?' 'She could not eat?' 'Why then she could make elegant broth of it, and dhrink it, an' he'd keep another fattenin' until Nutter himself come back.'

'And then, my honey, you an' himself'll come down and dine wid ould Father Austin; an' we'll have a grand evenin' of it entirely, laughin' over the remimbrance iv these blackguard troubles, acuishla! Or maybe you'd accept iv a couple o' bottles of claret or canaries? I see--you don't want for wine.'

So there was just one more offer the honest fellow had to make, and he opened with assurances 'twas only between himself an' her--an' not a sowl on airth 'id ever hear a word about it--and he asked her pardon, but he thought she might chance to want a guinea or two, just till Nutter came back, and he brought a couple in his waistcoat pocket.

Poor Father Roach was hard-up just then. Indeed, the being hard-up was a chronic affection with him. Two horses were not to be kept for nothing. Nor for the same moderate figure was it possible to maintain an asylum for unfortunates and outlaws--pleasant fellows enough, but endowed with great appetites and an unquenchable taste for consolation in fluid forms.

A clerical provision in Father Roach's day, and church, was not by any means what we have seen it since. At all events he was not often troubled with the possession of money, and when half-a-dozen good weddings brought him in fifty or a hundred pounds, the holy man was constrained forthwith to make distribution of his assets among a score of sour, and sometimes dangerous tradespeople. I mention this in no disparagement of Father Roach, quite the contrary. In making the tender of his two guineas--which, however, Sally declined--the worthy cleric was offering the widow's mite; not like some lucky dogs who might throw away a thousand or two and be nothing the worse; and you may be sure the poor fellow was very glad to find she did not want it.

'Rather hard measure, it strikes me,' said Dangerfield, in the club, 'to put him in the Hue-and-Cry.'

But there he was, sure enough, 'Charles Nutter, Esq., formerly of the Mills, near Knockmaroon, in the county of Dublin;' and a full description of the dress he wore, as well as of his height, complexion, features--and all this his poor little wife, still inhabiting the Mills, and quite unconscious that any man, woman, or child, who could prosecute him to conviction, for a murderous assault on Dr. Sturk, should have £50 reward.

'News in to-day, by Jove,' said Toole, bustling solemnly into the club; 'by the packet that arrived at one o'clock, a man taken, answering Nutter's description exactly, just going aboard of a Jamaica brig at Gravesend, and giving no account of himself. He's to be sent over to Dublin for identification.'

And when that was thoroughly discussed two or three times over, they fell to talking of other subjects, and among the rest of Devereux, and wondered what his plans were; and, there being no brother officers by, whether he meant to keep his commission, and various speculations as to the exact cause of the coldness shown him by General Chattesworth. Dick Spaight thought it might be that he had not asked Miss Gertrude in marriage.

But this was pooh-poohed. 'Besides, they knew at Belmont,' said Toole, who was an authority upon the domestic politics of that family, and rather proud of being so, 'just as well as I did that Gipsy Dick was in love with Miss Lilias; and I lay you fifty he'd marry her to-morrow if she'd have him.'

Toole was always a little bit more intimate with people behind their backs, so he called Devereux 'Gipsy Dick.'

'She's ailing, I hear,' said old Slowe.

'She is, indeed, Sir,' answered the doctor, with a grave shake of the head.

'Nothing of moment, I hope?' he asked.

'Why, you see it may be; she had a bad cough last winter, and this year she took it earlier, and it has fallen very much on her lungs; and you see, we can't say, Sir, what turn it may take, and I'm very sorry she should be so sick and ailing--she's the prettiest creature, and the best little soul; and I don't know, on my conscience, what the poor old parson would do if anything happened her, you know. But I trust, Sir, with care, you know, 'twill turn out well.'

The season for trout-fishing was long past and gone, and there were no more pleasant rambles for Dangerfield and Irons along the flowery banks of the devious Liffey. Their rods and nets hung up, awaiting the return of genial spring; and the churlish stream, abandoned to its wintry mood, darkled and roared savagely under the windows of the Brass Castle.

One dismal morning, as Dangerfield's energetic step carried him briskly through the town, the iron gate of the church-yard, and the door of the church itself standing open, he turned in, glancing upward as he passed at Sturk's bed-room windows, as all the neighbours did, to see whether General Death's white banners were floating there, and his tedious siege ended--as end it must--and the garrison borne silently away in his custody to the prison house.

Up the aisle marched Dangerfield, not abating his pace, but with a swift and bracing clatter, like a man taking a frosty constitutional walk.

Irons was moping softly about in the neighbourhood of the reading-desk, and about to mark the places of psalms and chapters in the great church Bible and Prayer-book, and sidelong he beheld his crony of the angle marching, with a grim confidence and swiftness, up the aisle.

'I say, where's Martin?' said Dangerfield, cheerfully.

'He's gone away, Sir.'

'Hey! then you've no one with you?'

'No, Sir.'

Dangerfield walked straight on, up the step of the communion-table, and shoving open the little balustraded door, he made a gay stride or two across the holy precinct, and with a quick right-about face, came to a halt, the white, scoffing face, for exercise never flushed it, and the cold, broad sheen of the spectacles, looked odd in the clerk's eyes, facing the church-door, from beside the table of the sacrament, displayed, as it were, in the very frame--foreground, background, and all--in which he was wont to behold the thoughtful, simple, holy face of the rector.

'Alone among the dead; and not afraid?' croaked the white face pleasantly.

The clerk seemed always to writhe and sweat silently under the banter of his comrade of the landing-net, and he answered, without lifting his head, in a constrained and dogged sort of way, like a man who expects something unpleasant--

'Alone? yes, Sir, there's none here but ourselves.'

And his face flushed, and the veins on his forehead stood out, as will happen with a man who tugs at a weight that is too much for him.

'I saw you steal a glance at Charles when he came into the church here, and it strikes me I was at the moment thinking of the same thing as you, to wit, will he require any special service at our hands? Well, he does! and you or I must do it. He'll give a thousand pounds, mind ye; and that's something in the way of fellows like you and me; and whatever else he may have done, Charles has never broke his word in a money matter. And, hark'ee, can't you thumb over that Bible and Prayer-book on the table here as well as there? Do so. Well--'

And he went on in a lower key, still looking full front at the church-door, and a quick glance now and then upon Irons, across the communion-table.

''Tis nothing at all--don't you see--what are you afraid of? It can't change events--'tis only a question of to-day or to-morrow--a whim--a maggot--hey? You can manage it this way, mark ye.'

He had his pocket-handkerchief by the two corners before him, like an apron, and he folded it neatly and quickly into four.

'Don't you see--and a little water. You're a neat hand, you know; and if you're interrupted, 'tis only to blow your nose in't--ha, ha, ha!--and clap it in your pocket; and you may as well have the money--hey? Good-morning.'

And when he had got half-way down the aisle, he called back to Irons, in a loud, frank voice--

'And Martin's not here--could you say where he is?'

But he did not await the answer, and glided with quick steps from the porch, with a side leer over the wavy green mounds and tombstones. He had not been three minutes in the church, and across the street he went, to the shop over the way, and asked briskly where Martin, the sexton, was. Well, they did not know.

'Ho! Martin,' he cried across the street, seeing that functionary just about to turn the corner by Sturk's hall-door steps; 'a word with you. I've been looking for you. See, you must take a foot-rule, and make all the measurements of that pew, you know; don't mistake a hair's breadth, d'ye mind, for you must be ready to swear to it; and bring a note of it to me, at home, to-day, at one o'clock, and you shall have a crown-piece.'

From which the reader will perceive--as all the world might, if they had happened to see him enter the church just now--that his object in the visit was to see and speak with Martin; and that the little bit of banter with Irons, the clerk, was all by-play, and parenthesis, and beside the main business, and, of course, of no sort of consequence.

Mr. Irons, like most men of his rank in life, was not much in the habit of exact thinking. His ruminations, therefore, were rather confused, but, perhaps, they might be translated in substance, into something like this--

'Why the ---- can't he let them alone that's willing to let him alone? I wish he was in his own fiery home, and better people at rest. I can't mark them places--I don't know whether I'm on my head or heels.'

And he smacked the quarto Prayer-book down upon the folio Bible with a sonorous bang, and glided out, furious, frightened, and taciturn, to the Salmon House.

He came upon Dangerfield again only half-a-dozen steps from the turn into the street. He had just dismissed Martin, and was looking into a note in his pocket-book, and either did not see, or pretended not to see, the clerk. But some one else saw and recognised Mr. Irons; and, as he passed, directed upon him a quick, searching glance. It was Mr. Mervyn, who happened to pass that way. Irons and Dangerfield, and the church-yard--there was a flash of association in the group and the background which accorded with an old suspicion. Dangerfield, indeed, was innocently reading a leaf in his red and gilt leather pocket-book, as I have said. But Irons's eyes met the glance of Mervyn, and contracted oddly, and altogether there gleamed out something indefinable in his look. It was only for a second--a glance and an intuition; and from that moment it was one of Mervyn's immovable convictions, that Mr. Dangerfield knew something of Irons's secret. It was a sort of intermittent suspicion before--now it was a monstrous, but fixed belief.

So Mr. Irons glided swiftly on to the Salmon House, where, in a dark corner, he drank something comfortable; and stalked back again to the holy pile, with his head aching, and the world round him like a wild and evil dream.

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Chapter LXIV

BEING A NIGHT SCENE, IN WHICH MISS GERTRUDE CHATTESWORTH, BEING ADJURED BY AUNT BECKY, MAKES ANSWER.

In Aunt Becky's mind, the time could not be far off when the odd sort of relations existing between the Belmont family and Mr. Dangerfield must be defined. The Croesus himself, indeed, was very indulgent. He was assiduous and respectful; but he wisely abstained from pressing for an immediate decision, and trusted to reflection and to Aunt Becky's good offices; and knew that his gold would operate by its own slow, but sure, gravitation.

At one time he had made up his mind to be peremptory--and politely to demand an unequivocal 'yes,' or 'no.' But a letter reached him from London; it was from a great physician there. Whatever was in it, the effect was to relieve his mind of an anxiety. He never, indeed, looked anxious, or moped like an ordinary man in blue-devils. But his servants knew when anything weighed upon his spirits, by his fierce, short, maniacal temper. But with the seal of that letter the spell broke, the evil spirit departed for a while, and the old jocose, laconic irony came back, and glittered whitely in the tall chair by the fire, and sipped its claret after dinner, and sometimes smoked its long pipe and grinned into the embers of the grate. At Belmont, there had been a skirmish over the broiled drum-sticks at supper, and the ladies had withdrawn in towering passions to their nightly devotions and repose.

Gertrude had of late grown more like herself, but was quite resolute against the Dangerfield alliance, which Aunt Becky fought for, the more desperately that in their private confidences under the poplar trees she had given the rich cynic of the silver spectacles good assurance of success.

Puddock drank tea at Belmont--nectar in Olympus--that evening. Was ever lieutenant so devoutly romantic? He had grown more fanatical and abject in his worship. He spoke less, and lisped in very low tones. He sighed often, and sometimes mightily; and ogled unhappily, and smiled lackadaisically. The beautiful damsel was, in her high, cold way, kind to the guest, and employed him about the room on little commissions, and listened to his speeches without hearing them, and rewarded them now and then with the gleam of a smile, which made his gallant little heart flutter up to his solitaire, and his honest powdered head giddy.

'I marvel, brother,' ejaculated Aunt Becky, suddenly, appearing in the parlour, where the general had made himself comfortable over his novel, and opening her address with a smart stamp on the floor. The veteran's heart made a little jump, and he looked up over his gold spectacles.

'I marvel, brother, what you can mean, desire, or intend, by all this ogling, sighing, and love-making; 'tis surely a strange way of forwarding Mr. Dangerfield's affair.'

He might have blustered a little, as he sometimes did, for she had startled him, and her manner was irritating; but she had caught him in a sentimental passage between Lovelace and Miss Harlowe, which always moved him--and he showed no fight at all; but his innocent little light blue eyes looked up wonderingly and quite gently at her.

'Who--I? What ogling, Sister Becky?'

'You! tut! That foolish, ungrateful person, Lieutenant Puddock; what can you propose to yourself, brother, in bringing Lieutenant Puddock here? I hate him.'

'Why, what about Puddock--what has he done?' asked the general, with round eyes still, and closing his book on his finger.

'What has he done! Why, he's at your daughter's feet,' cried Aunt Becky, with scarlet cheeks, and flashing eyes; 'and she--artful gipsy, has brought him there by positively making love to him.'

'Sweet upon Toodie (the general's old pet name for Gertrude); why, half the young fellows are--you know--pooh, pooh,' and the general stood up with his back to the fire--looking uneasy; for, like many other men, he thought a woman's eyes saw further in such a case than his.

'Do you wish the young hussy--do you--to marry Lieutenant Puddock? I should not wonder! Why, of course, her fortune you and she may give away to whom you like; but remember, she's young, and has been much admired, brother; and may make a great match; and in our day, young ladies were under direction, and did not marry without apprising their parents or natural guardians. Here's Mr. Dangerfield, who proposes great settlements. Why won't she have him? For my part, I think we're little better than cheats; and I mean to write to-morrow morning and tell the poor gentleman that you and I have been bamboozling him to a purpose, and meant all along to marry the vixen to a poor lieutenant in your corps. Speak truth, and shame the devil, brother; for my part, I'm sick of the affair; I'm sick of deception, ingratitude, and odious fools.

Aunt Becky had vanished in a little whirlwind, leaving the general with his back to the fire, looking blank and uncomfortable. And from his little silver tankard he poured out a glassful of his mulled claret, not thinking, and smelled to it deliberately, as he used to do when he was tasting a new wine, and looked through it, and set the glass down, forgetting he was to drink it, for his thoughts were elsewhere.

On reaching her bed-room, which she did with impetuous haste, Aunt Becky shut the door with a passionate slam, and said, with a sort of choke and a sob, 'There's nought but ingratitude on earth--the odious, odious, odious person!'

And when, ten minutes after, her maid came in, she found Aunt Rebecca but little advanced in her preparations for bed; and her summons at the door was answered by a fierce and shrilly nose-trumpeting, and a stern 'Come in, hussy--are you deaf, child?' And when she came in, Aunt Becky was grim, and fussy, and her eyes red.

Miss Gertrude was that night arrived just on that dim and delicious plateau--that debatable land upon which the last waking reverie and the first dream of slumber mingle together in airy dance and shifting colours--when, on a sudden, she was recalled to a consciousness of her grave bed-posts, and damask curtains, by the voice of her aunt.

Sitting up, she gazed on the redoubted Aunt Becky through the lace of her bonnet de nuit, for some seconds, in a mystified and incredulous way.

Mistress Rebecca Chattesworth, on the other hand, had drawn the curtains, and stood, candle in hand, arrayed in her night-dress, like a ghost, only she had on a pink and green quilted dressing-gown loosely over it.

She was tall and erect, of course; but she looked softened and strange; and when she spoke, it was in quite a gentle, humble sort of way, which was perfectly strange to her niece.

'Don't be frightened, sweetheart,' said she, and she leaned over and with her arm round her neck, kissed her. 'I came to say a word, and just to ask you a question. I wish, indeed I do--Heaven knows, to do my duty; and, my dear child, will you tell me the whole truth--will you tell me truly?--You will, when I ask it as a kindness.'

There was a little pause, and Gertrude looked with a pale gaze upon her aunt.

'Are you,' said Aunt Becky--'do you, Gertrude--do you like Lieutenant Puddock?'

'Lieutenant Puddock!' repeated the girl, with the look and gesture of a person in whose ear something strange has buzzed.

'Because, if you really are in love with him, Gertie; and that he likes you; and that, in short--' Aunt Becky was speaking very rapidly, but stopped suddenly.

'In love with Lieutenant Puddock!' was all that Miss Gertrude said.

'Now, do tell me, Gertrude, if it be so--tell me, dear love. I know 'tis a hard thing to say,' and Aunt Becky considerately began to fiddle with the ribbon at the back of her niece's nightcap, so that she need not look in her face; 'but, Gertie, tell me truly, do you like him; and--and--why, if it be so, I will mention Mr. Dangerfield's suit no more. There now--there's all I want to say.'

'Lieutenant Puddock!' repeated young Madam in the nightcap; and by this time the film of slumber was gone; and the suspicion struck her somehow in altogether so comical a way that she could not help laughing in her aunt's sad, earnest face.

'Fat, funny little Lieutenant Puddock!--was ever so diverting a disgrace? Oh! dear aunt, what have I done to deserve so prodigious a suspicion?'

It was plain, from her heightened colour, that her aunt did not choose to be laughed at.

'What have you done?' said she, quite briskly; 'why--what have you done?' and Aunt Becky had to consider just for a second or two, staring straight at the young lady through the crimson damask curtains. 'You have--you--you--why, what have you done? and she covered her confusion by stooping down to adjust the heel of her slipper.

'Oh! it's delightful--plump little Lieutenant Puddock!' and the graver her aunt looked the more irrepressibly she laughed; till that lady, evidently much offended, took the young gentlewoman pretty roundly to task.

'Well! I'll tell you what you have done,' said she, almost fiercely. 'As absurd as he is, you have been twice as sweet upon him as he upon you; and you have done your endeavour to fill his brain with the notion that you are in love with him, young lady; and if you're not, you have acted, I promise you, a most unscrupulous and unpardonable part by a most honourable and well-bred gentleman--for that character I believe he bears. Yes--you may laugh, Madam, how you please; but he's allowed, I say, to be as honest, as true, as fine a gentleman as--as--'

'As ever surprised a weaver,' said the young lady, laughing till she almost cried. In fact, she was showing in a new light, and becoming quite a funny character upon this theme. And, indeed, this sort of convulsion of laughing seemed so unaccountable on natural grounds to Aunt Rebecca, that her irritation subsided into perplexity, and she began to suspect that her extravagant merriment might mean possibly something which she did not quite understand.

'Well, niece, when you have quite done laughing at nothing, you will, perhaps, be so good as to hear me. I put it to you now, young lady, as your relation and your friend, once for all, upon your sacred honour--remember you're a Chattesworth--upon the honour of a Chattesworth' (a favourite family form of adjuration on serious occasions with Aunt Rebecca), 'do you like Lieutenant Puddock?'

It was now Miss Gertrude's turn to be nettled, and to remind her visitor, by a sudden flush in her cheek and a flash from her eyes, that she was, indeed, a Chattesworth; and with more disdain than, perhaps, was quite called for, she repelled the soft suspicion.

'I protest, Madam,' said Miss Gertrude, ''tis too bad. Truly, Madam, it is vastly vexatious to have to answer so strange and affronting a question. If you ever took the trouble, aunt, to listen to, or look at, Lieutenant Puddock, you might--'

'Well, niece,' quoth Aunt Becky, interrupting, with a little toss of her head, 'young ladies weren't quite so hard to please in my time, and I can't see or hear that he's so much worse than others.'

'I'd sooner die than have him,' said Miss Gertie, peremptorily.

'Then, I suppose, if ever, and whenever he asks you the question himself, you'll have no hesitation in telling him so?' said Aunt Becky, with becoming solemnity.

'Laughable, ridiculous, comical, and absurd, as I always thought and believed Lieutenant Puddock to be, I yet believe the asking such a question of me to be a stretch of absurdity, from which his breeding, for he is a gentleman, will restrain him. Besides, Madam, you can't possibly be aware of the subjects on which he has invariably discoursed whenever he happened to sit by me--plays and players, and candied fruit. Really, Madam, it is too absurd to have to enter upon one's defence against so incredible an imagination.'

Aunt Rebecca looked steadily for a few seconds in her niece's face, then drew a long breath, and leaning over, kissed her again on the forehead, and with a grave little nod, and looking on her again for a short space, without saying a word more, she turned suddenly and left the room.

Miss Gertrude's vexation again gave way to merriment; and her aunt, as she walked sad and stately up stairs, heard one peal of merry laughter after another ring through her niece's bed-room. She had not laughed so much for three years before; and this short visit cost her, I am sure, two hours' good sleep at least.

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Chapter LXV

RELATING SOME AWFUL NEWS THAT REACHED THE VILLAGE, AND HOW DR. WALSINGHAM VISITED CAPTAIN RICHARD DEVEREUX AT HIS LODGINGS.

And now there was news all over the town, to keep all the tongues there in motion.

News--news--great news!--terrible news! Peter Fogarty, Mr. Tresham's boy, had it that morning from his cousin, Jim Redmond, whose aunt lived at Ringsend, and kept the little shop over against the 'Plume of Feathers,' where you might have your pick and choice of all sorts of nice and useful things--bacon, brass snuff-boxes, penny ballads, eggs, candles, cheese, tobacco-pipes, pinchbeck buckles for knee and instep, soap, sausages, and who knows what beside.

No one quite believed it--it was a tradition at third hand, and Peter Fogarty's cousin, Jim Redmond's aunt, was easy of faith;--Jim, it was presumed, not very accurate in narration, and Peter, not much better. Though, however, it was not actually 'intelligence,' it was a startling thesis. And though some raised their brows and smiled darkly, and shook their heads, the whole town certainly pricked their ears at it. And not a man met another without 'Well! anything more? You've heard the report, Sir--eh?'

It was not till Doctor Toole came out of town, early that day, that the sensation began in earnest.

'There could be no doubt about it--'twas a wonderful strange thing certainly. After so long a time--and so well preserved too.'

'What was it--what is it?'

'Why, Charles Nutter's corpse is found, Sir!'

'Corpse--hey!'

'So Toole says. Hollo! Toole--Doctor Toole--I say. Here's Mr. Slowe hasn't heard about poor Nutter.'

'Ho! neighbour Slowe--give you good-day, Sir--not heard it? By Jove, Sir--poor Nutter!--'tis true--his body's found--picked up this morning, just at sunrise, by two Dunleary fishermen, off Bullock. Justice Lowe has seen it--and Spaight saw it too. I've just been speaking with him, not an hour ago, in Thomas Street. It lies at Ringsend--and an inquest in the morning.'

And so on in Doctor Toole's manner, until he saw Dr. Walsingham, the good rector, pausing in his leisurely walk just outside the row of houses that fronted the turnpike, in one of which were the lodgings of Dick Devereux.

The good Doctor Toole wondered what brought his reverence there, for he had an inkling of something going on. So he bustled off to him, and told his story with the stern solemnity befitting such a theme, and that pallid, half-suppressed smile with which an exciting horror is sometimes related. And the good rector had many ejaculations of consternation and sympathy, and not a few enquiries to utter. And at last, when the theme was quite exhausted, he told Toole, who still lingered on, that he was going to pay his respects to Captain Devereux.

'Oh!' said cunning little Toole, 'you need not, for I told him the whole matter.'

'Very like, Sir,' answered the doctor; 'but 'tis on another matter I wish to see him.'

'Oh!--ho!--certainly--very good, Sir. I beg pardon--and--and--he's just done his breakfast--a late dog, Sir--ha! ha! Your servant, Doctor Walsingham.'

Devereux puzzled his comrade Puddock more than ever. Sometimes he would descend with his blue devils into the abyss, and sit there all the evening in a dismal sulk. Sometimes he was gayer even than his old gay self; and sometimes in a bitter vein, talking enigmatical ironies, with his strange smile; and sometimes he was dangerous and furious, just as the weather changes, without rhyme or reason. Maybe he was angry with himself, and thought it was with others; and was proud, sorry, and defiant, and let his moods, one after another, possess him as they came.

They were his young days--beautiful and wicked--days of clear, rich tints, and sanguine throbbings, and gloria mundi--when we fancy the spirit perfect, and the body needs no redemption--when, fresh from the fountains of life, death is but a dream, and we walk the earth like heathen gods and goddesses, in celestial egotism and beauty. Oh, fair youth!--gone for ever. The parting from thee was a sadness and a violence--sadder, I think, than death itself. We look behind us, and sigh after thee, as on the pensive glories of a sunset, and our march is toward the darkness. It is twilight with us now, and will soon be starlight, and the hour and place of slumber, till the reveille sounds, and the day of wonder opens. Oh, grant us a good hour, and take us to Thy mercy! But to the last those young days will be remembered and worth remembering; for be we what else we may, young mortals we shall never be again.

Of course Dick Devereux was now no visitor at the Elms. All that for the present was over. Neither did he see Lilias; for little Lily was now a close prisoner with doctors, in full uniform, with shouldered canes, mounting guard at the doors. 'Twas a hard winter, and she needed care and nursing. And Devereux chafed and fretted; and, in truth, 'twas hard to bear this spite of fortune--to be so near, and yet so far--quite out of sight and hearing.

A word or two from General Chattesworth in Doctor Walsingham's ear, as they walked to and fro before the white front of Belmont, had decided the rector on making this little call; for he had now mounted the stair of Devereux's lodging, and standing on the carpet outside, knocked, with a grave, sad face on his door panel, glancing absently through the lobby window, and whistling inaudibly the while.

The doctor was gentle and modest, and entirely kindly. He held good Master Feltham's doctrine about reproofs. 'A man,' says he, 'had better be convinced in private than be made guilty by a proclamation. Open rebukes are for Magistrates, and Courts of Justice! for Stelled Chambers and for Scarlets, in the thronged Hall Private are for friends; where all the witnesses of the offender's blushes are blinde and deaf and dumb. We should do by them as Joseph thought to have done by Mary, seeke to cover blemishes with secrecy. Public reproofe is like striking of a Deere in the Herd; it not only wounds him to the loss of enabling blood, but betrays him to the Hound, his Enemy, and makes him by his fellows be pusht out of company.'

So on due invitation from within, the good parson entered, and the handsome captain in all his splendours--when you saw him after a little absence 'twas always with a sort of admiring surprise--you had forgot how very handsome he was--this handsome slender fellow, with his dark face and large, unfathomable violet eyes, so wild and wicked, and yet so soft, stood up surprised, with a look of welcome quickly clouded and crossed by a gleam of defiance.

They bowed, and shook hands, however, and bowed again, and each was the other's 'servant;' and being seated, they talked de generalibus; for the good parson would not come like an executioner and take his prisoner by the throat, but altogether in the spirit of the shepherd, content to walk a long way about, and wait till he came up with the truant, and entreating him kindly, not dragging or beating him back to the flock, but leading and carrying by turns, and so awaiting his opportunity. But Devereux was in one of his moods. He thought the doctor no friend to his suit, and was bitter, and formal, and violent.

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Chapter LXVI

OF A CERTAIN TEMPEST THAT AROSE AND SHOOK THE CAPTAIN'S SPOONS AND TEA-CUPS; AND HOW THE WIND SUDDENLY WENT DOWN.

'I'm very glad, Sir, to have a few quiet minutes with you,' said the doctor, making then a little pause; and Devereux thought he was going to re-open the matter of his suit. 'For I've had no answer to my last letter, and I want to know all you can tell me of that most promising young man, Daniel Loftus, and his most curious works.'

'Dan Loftus is dead and--' (I'm sorry to say he added something else); 'and his works have followed him, Sir,' said the strange captain, savagely; for he could not conceive what business the doctor had to think about him, when Captain Devereux's concerns were properly to be discussed. So though he had reason to believe he was quite well, and in Malaga with his 'honourable' and sickly cousin, he killed him off-hand, and disposed summarily of his works.

There was an absolute silence of some seconds after this scandalous explosion; and Devereux said--'In truth, Sir, I don't know. They hold him capable of taking charge of my wise cousin--hang him!--so I dare say he can take care of himself; and I don't see what the plague ill's to happen him.'

The doctor's honest eyes opened, and his face flushed a little. But reading makes a full man, not a quick one; and so while he was fashioning his answer, the iron cooled. Indeed he never spoke in anger. When on sudden provocation he carried his head higher and flushed a little, they supposed he was angry; but if he was, this was all he showed of the old Adam, and he held his peace.

So now the doctor looked down upon the table-cloth, for Devereux's breakfast china and silver were still upon the table, and he marshalled some crumbs he found there, sadly, with his finger, in a row first, and then in a circle, and then, goodness knows how; and he sighed profoundly over his work.

Devereux was in his mood. He was proud--he had no notion of apologising. But looking another way, and with his head rather high, he hoped Miss Lilias was better.

Well, well, the spring was coming; and Parson Walsingham knew the spring restored little Lily. 'She's like a bird--she's like a flower, and the winter is nearly past,' (and the beautiful words of the 'Song of Songs,' which little Lily so loved to read, mingled like a reverie in his discourse, and he said), 'the flowers will soon appear in the earth, the time of the singing birds will come, and the voice of the turtle be heard in our land.'

'Sir,' said Dick Devereux, in a voice that sounded strangely, 'I have a request; may I make it?--a favour to beg. 'Tisn't, all things remembered, very much. If I write a letter, and place it open in your hand--a letter, Sir--to Miss Lily--will you read it to her, or else let her read it? Or even a message--a spoken message--will you give it?'

'Captain Devereux,' said the doctor, in a reserved but very sad sort of way, 'I must tell you that my dear child is by no means well. She has had a cold, and it has not gone away so soon as usual--something I think of her dear mother's delicacy--and so she requires care, my little Lily, a great deal of care. But, thank God, the spring is before us. Yes, yes; the soft air and sunshine, and then she'll be out again. You know the garden, and her visits, and her little walks. So I don't fret or despair. Oh, no.' He spoke very gently, in a reverie, after his wont, and he sighed heavily. 'You know 'tis growing late in life with me, Captain Devereux,' he resumed, 'and I would fain see her united to a kind and tender partner, for I think she's a fragile little flower. Poor little Lily! Something, I often think, of her dear mother's delicacy, and I have always nursed her, you know. She has been a great pet;' and he stopped suddenly, and walked to the window. 'A great pet. Indeed, if she could have been spoiled, I should have spoiled her long ago, but she could not. Ah, no! Sweet little Lily!'

Then quite firmly but gently Parson Walsingham went on:--

'Now, the doctors say she mustn't be agitated, and I can't allow it, Captain Devereux. I gave her your message--let me see--why 'tis four, ay, five months ago. I gave it with a good will, for I thought well of you.'

'And you don't any longer--there, 'tis all out,' broke in Devereux, fiercely.

'Well, you know her answer; it was not lightly given, nor in haste, and first and last 'twas quite decided, and I sent it to you under my own hand.'

'I thought you were a friend to me, Dr. Walsingham, and now I'm sure you're none,' said the young fellow, in the same bitter tone.

'Ah, Captain Devereux, he can be no friend to you who is a friend to your faults; and you no friend to yourself if you be an enemy to him that would tell you of them. Will you like him the worse that would have you better?'

'We've all faults, Sir; mine are not the worst, and I'll have neither shrift nor absolution. There's some reason here you won't disclose.'

He was proud, fierce, pale, and looked damnably handsome and wicked.

'She gave no reason, Sir;' answered Dr. Walsingham. No, she gave none; but, as I understood, she did not love you, and she prayed me to mention it no more.'

'She gave no reason; but you know the reason,' glared out Devereux.

'Indeed, Sir, I do not know the reason,' answered the rector.

'But you know--you must--you meant--you, at least had heard some ill of me, and you no longer wish my suit to prosper.'

'I have, indeed, of late, heard much ill of you, Captain Devereux,' answered Dr. Walsingham, in a very deliberate but melancholy way, 'enough to make me hold you no meet husband for any wife who cared for a faithful partner, or an honourable and a quiet home.'

'You mean--I know you do--that Palmerstown girl, who has belied me?' cried Devereux.

'That unhappy young woman, Captain Devereux, her name is Glynn, whom you have betrayed under a promise of marriage.'

That moment Devereux was on his feet. It was the apparition of Devereux; a blue fire gleaming in his eyes, not a word from his white lips, while three seconds might have ticked from Mrs. Irons's prosy old clock on the stair-head; his slender hand was outstretched in appeal and defiance, and something half-celestial, half-infernal--the fallen angelic--in his whole face and bearing.

'May my merciful Creator strike me dead, here at your feet, Doctor Walsingham, but 'tis a lie,' cried he. 'I never promised--she'll tell you. I thought she told you long ago. 'Twas that devil incarnate, her mother, who forged the lie, why or where-fore, except for her fiendish love of mischief, I know not.'

'I cannot tell, Sir, about your promise,' said the doctor gravely; 'with or without it, the crime is heinous, the cruelty immeasurable.'

'Dr. Walsingham,' cried Dick Devereux, a strange scorn ringing in his accents, 'with all your learning you don't know the world; you don't know human nature; you don't see what's passing in this very village before your eyes every day you live. I'm not worse than others; I'm not half so bad as fifty older fellows who ought to know better; but I'm sorry, and 'tisn't easy to say that, for I'm as proud, proud as the devil, proud as you; and if it were to my Maker, what more can I say? I'm sorry, and if Heaven forgives us when we repent, I think our wretched fellow-mortals may.'

'Captain Devereux, I've nothing to forgive,' said the parson, kindly.

'But I tell you, Sir, this cruel, unmeaning separation will be my eternal ruin,' cried Devereux. 'Listen to me--by Heaven, you shall. I've fought a hard battle, Sir! I've tried to forget her--to hate her--it won't do. I tell you, Dr. Walsingham, 'tis not in your nature to comprehend the intensity of my love--you can't. I don't blame you. But I think, Sir--I think I might make her like me, Sir. They come at last, sometimes, to like those that love them so--so desperately: that may not be for me, 'tis true. I only ask to plead my own sad cause. I only want to see her--gracious Heaven--but to see her--to show her how I was wronged--to tell her she can make me what she will--an honourable, pure, self-denying, devoted man, or leave me in the dark, alone, with nothing for it but to wrap my cloak about my head, and leap over the precipice.'

'Captain Devereux, why will you doubt me? I've spoken the truth. I have already said I must not give your message; and you are not to suppose I dislike you, because I would fain have your faults mended.'

'Faults! have I? To be sure I have. So have you, more, Sir, and worse than I, maybe,' cried Devereux, wild again; 'and you come here in your spiritual pride to admonish and to lecture, and to insult a miserable man, who's better, perhaps, than yourself. You've heard ill of me? you hear I sometimes drink maybe a glass too much--who does not? you can drink a glass yourself, Sir; drink more, and show it less than I maybe; and you listen to every damned slander that any villain, to whose vices and idleness you pander with what you call your alms, may be pleased to invent, and you deem yourself charitable; save us from such charity! Charitable, and you refuse to deliver my miserable message: hard-hearted Pharisee!'

It is plain poor Captain Devereux was not quite himself--bitter, fierce, half-mad, and by no means so polite as he ought to have been. Alas! as Job says, 'ye imagine to reprove words; and the speeches of one that is desperate, which are as wind.'

'Yes, hard-hearted, unrelenting Pharisee.' The torrent roared on, and the wind was up; it was night and storm with poor Devereux. 'You who pray every day--oh--damnable hypocrisy--lead us not into temptation--you neither care nor ask to what courses your pride and obstinacy are driving me--your fellow-creature.'

'Ah, Captain Devereux, you are angry with me, and yet it's not my doing; the man that is at variance with himself will hardly be at one with others. You have said much to me that is unjust, and, perhaps, unseemly; but I won't reproach you; your anger and trouble make wild work with your words. When one of my people falls into sin, I ever find it is so through lack of prayer. Ah! Captain Devereux, have you not of late been remiss in the duty of private prayer?'

The captain laughed, not pleasantly, into the ashes in the grate. But the doctor did not mind, and only said, looking upward--.

'Lord, if thou hadst been here, my brother had not died.'

There was kindness, and even tenderness, in the tone in which simple Dr. Walsingham spoke the appellative, brother; and it smote Devereux now, as sometimes happens with wayward fellows, and his better nature was suddenly moved.

'I'm sorry, Sir--I am. You're too patient--I'm very sorry; 'tis like an angel--you're noble, Sir, and I such an outcast. I--I wish you'd strike me, Sir--you're too kind and patient, Sir, and so pure--and how have I spoken to you? A trial, Sir, if you can forgive me--one trial--my vice--you shall see me changed, a new man. Oh, Sir, let me swear it. I am, Sir--I'm reformed; don't believe me till you see it. Oh! good Samaritan,--don't forsake me--I'm all one wound.'

Well! they talked some time longer, and parted kindly.

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LXVII. IN WHICH A CERTAIN TROUBLED SPIRIT WALKS

Mr. Dangerfield was at the club that night, and was rather in spirits than otherwise, except, indeed, when poor Charles Nutter was talked of. Then he looked grave, and shrugged, and shook his head, and said--

'A bad business, Sir; and where's his poor wife?'

'Spending the night with us, poor soul,' said Major O'Neill, mildly, 'and hasn't an idaya, poor thing; and indeed, I hope, she mayn't hear it.'

'Pooh! Sir, she must hear it; but you know she might have heard worse, Sir, eh?' rejoined Dangerfield.

'True for you, Sir,' said the major, suspending the filling of his pipe to direct a quiet glance of significance at Dangerfield, and then closing his eyes with a nod.

And just at this point in came Spaight.

'Well, Spaight!'

'Well, Sir.'

'You saw the body, eh?' and a dozen other interrogatories followed, as, cold and wet with melting snow, dishevelled, and storm-beaten--for it was a plaguy rough night--the young fellow, with a general greeting to the company, made his way to the fire.

''Tis a tremendous night, gentlemen, so by your leave I'll stir the fire--and, yes, I seen him, poor Nutter--and, paugh, an ugly sight he is, I can tell you; here Larry, bring me a rummer-glass of punch--his right ear's gone, and a'most all his right hand--and screeching hot, do you mind--an', phiew--altogether 'tis sickening--them fishes, you know--I'm a'most sorry I went in--you remember Dogherty's whiskey shop in Ringsend--he lies in the back parlour, and wondherful little changed in appearance.'

And so Mr. Spaight, with a little round table at his elbow, and his heels over the fender, sipped his steaming punch, and thawed inwardly and outwardly, as he answered their questions and mixed in their speculations.

Up at the Mills, which had heard the awful news, first from the Widow Macan, and afterwards from Pat Moran, the maids sat over their tea in the kitchen in high excitement and thrilling chat--'The poor master!' 'Oh, the poor man!' 'Oh, la, what's that?' with a start and a peep over the shoulders. 'And oh, dear, and how in the world will the poor little misthress ever live over the news?' And so forth, made a principal part of their talk. There was a good accompaniment of wind outside, and a soft pelting of snow on the window panes, 'and oh, my dear life, but wasn't it dark!'

Up went Moggy, with her thick-wicked kitchen candle, to seek repose; and Betty, resolving not to be long behind, waited only 'to wash up her plates' and slack down the fire, having made up her mind, for she grew more nervous in solitude, to share Moggy's bed for that night.

Moggy had not been twenty minutes gone, and her task was nearly ended, when--'Oh, blessed saints!' murmured Betty, with staring eyes, and dropping the sweeping-brush on the flags, she heard, or thought she heard, her master's step, which was peculiar, crossing the floor overhead.

She listened, herself as pale as a corpse, and nearly as breathless; but there was nothing now but the muffled gusts of the storm, and the close soft beat of the snow, so she listened and listened, but nothing came of it.

''Tis only the vapours,' said Betty, drawing a long breath, and doing her best to be cheerful; and so she finished her labours, stopping every now and then to listen, and humming tunes very loud, in fits and starts. Then it came to her turn to take her candle and go up stairs; she was a good half-hour later than Moggy--all was quiet within the house--only the sound of the storm--the creak and rattle of its strain, and the hurly-burly of the gusts over the roof and chimneys.

Over her shoulder she peered jealously this way and that, as with flaring candle she climbed the stairs. How black the window looked on the lobby, with its white patterns of snow flakes in perpetual succession sliding down the panes. Who could tell what horrid face might be looking in close to her as she passed, secure in the darkness and that drifting white lace veil of snow? So nimbly and lightly up the stairs climbed Betty, the cook.

If listeners seldom hear good of themselves, it is also true that peepers sometimes see more than they like; and Betty, the cook, as she reached the landing, glancing askance with ominous curiosity, beheld a spectacle, the sight of which nearly bereft her of her senses.

Crouching in the deep doorway on the right of the lobby, the cook, I say, saw something--a figure--or a deep shadow--only a deep shadow--or maybe a dog. She lifted the candle--she peeped under the candlestick: 'twas no shadow, as I live, 'twas a well-defined figure!

He was draped in black, cowering low, with the face turned up. It was Charles Nutter's face, fixed and stealthy. It was only while the fascination lasted--while you might count one, two, three, deliberately--that the horrid gaze met mutually. But there was no mistake there. She saw the stern dark picture as plainly as ever she did. The light glimmered on his white eye-balls.

Starting up, he struck at the candle with his hat. She uttered a loud scream, and flinging stick and all at the figure, with a great clang against the door behind, all was swallowed in instantaneous darkness; she whirled into the opposite bed-room she knew not how, and locked the door within, and plunged head-foremost under the bed-clothes, half mad with terror.

The squall was heard of course. Moggy heard it, but she heeded not; for Betty was known to scream at mice, and even moths. And as her door was heard to slam, as was usual in panics of the sort, and as she returned no answer, Moggy was quite sure there was nothing in it.

But Moggy's turn was to come. When spirits 'walk,' I've heard they make the most of their time, and sometimes pay a little round of visits on the same evening.

This is certain; Moggy was by no means so great a fool as Betty in respect of hobgoblins, witches, banshees, pookas, and the world of spirits in general. She eat heartily, and slept soundly, and as yet had never seen the devil. Therefore such terrors as she that night experienced were new to her, and I can't reasonably doubt the truth of her narrative. Awaking suddenly in the night, she saw a light in the room, and heard a quiet rustling going on in the corner, where the old white-painted press showed its front from the wall. So Moggy popped her head through her thin curtains at the side, and--blessed hour!--there she saw the shape of a man looking into the press, the doors being wide open, and the appearance of a key in the lock.

The shape was very like her master. The saints between us and harm! The glow was reflected back from the interior of the press, and showed the front part of the figure in profile with a sharp line of light. She said he had some sort of thick slippers over his boots, a dark coat, with the cape buttoned, and a hat flapping over his face; coat and hat and all, sprinkled over with snow.

As if he heard the rustle of the curtain, he turned toward the bed, and with an awful ejaculation she cried, ''Tis you, Sir!'

'Don't stir, and you'll meet no harm,' he said, and over he posts to the bedside, and he laid his cold hand on her wrist, and told her again to be quiet, and for her life to tell no one what she had seen, and with that she supposed she swooned away; for the next thing she remembered was listening in mortal fear, the room being all dark, and she heard a sound at the press again, and then steps crossing the floor, and she gave herself up for lost; but he did not come to the bedside any more, and the tread passed out at the door, and so, as she thought, went down stairs.

In the morning the press was locked and the door shut, and the hall-door and back-door locked, and the keys on the hall-table, where they had left them the night before.

You may be sure these two ladies were thankful to behold the gray light, and hear the cheerful sounds of returning day; and it would be no easy matter to describe which of the two looked most pallid, scared, and jaded that morning, as they drank a hysterical dish of tea together in the kitchen, close up to the window, and with the door shut, discoursing, and crying, and praying over their tea-pot in miserable companionship.

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Chapter LXVIII

HOW AN EVENING PASSES AT THE ELMS, AND DR. TOOLE MAKES A LITTLE EXCURSION; AND TWO CHOICE SPIRITS DISCOURSE, AND HEBE TRIPS IN WITH THE NECTAR.

Up at the Elms, little Lily that night was sitting in the snug, old-fashioned room, with the good old rector. She was no better; still in doctors' hands and weak, but always happy with him, and he more than ever gentle and tender with her; for though he never would give place to despondency, and was naturally of a trusting, cheery spirit, he could not but remember his young wife, lost so early; and once or twice there was a look--an outline--a light--something, in little Lily's fair, girlish face, that, with a strange momentary agony, brought back the remembrance of her mother's stricken beauty, and plaintive smile. But then his darling's gay talk and pleasant ways would reassure him, and she smiled away the momentary shadow.

And he would tell her all sorts of wonders, old-world gaieties, long before she was born; and how finely the great Mr. Handel played upon the harpsichord in the Music Hall, and how his talk was in German, Latin, French, English, Italian, and half-a-dozen languages besides, sentence about; and how he remembered his own dear mother's dress when she went to Lord Wharton's great ball at the castle--dear, oh! dear, how long ago that was! And then he would relate stories of banshees, and robberies, and ghosts, and hair-breadth escapes, and 'rapparees,' and adventures in the wars of King James, which he heard told in his nonage by the old folk, long vanished, who remembered those troubles.

'And now, darling,' said little Lily, nestling close to him, with a smile, 'you must tell me all about that strange, handsome Mr. Mervyn; who he is, and what his story.'

'Tut, tut! little rogue----'

'Yes, indeed, you must, and you will; you've kept your little Lily waiting long enough for it, and she'll promise to tell nobody.'

'Handsome he is, and strange, no doubt--it was a strange fancy that funeral. Strange, indeed,' said the rector.

'What funeral, darling?'

'Why, yes, a funeral--the bringing his father's body to be laid here in the vault, in my church; it is their family vault. 'Twas a folly; but what folly will not young men do?'

And the good parson poked the fire a little impatiently.

'Mr. Mervyn--not Mervyn--that was his mother's name; but--see, you must not mention it, Lily, if I tell you--not Mr. Mervyn, I say, but my Lord Dunoran, the only son of that disgraced and blood-stained nobleman, who, lying in gaol, under sentence of death for a foul and cowardly murder, swallowed poison, and so closed his guilty life with a tremendous crime, in its nature inexpiable. There, that's all, and too much, darling.'

'And was it very long ago?'

'Why, 'twas before little Lily was born; and long before that I knew him--only just a little. He used the Tiled House for a hunting-lodge, and kept his dogs and horses there--a fine gentleman, but vicious, always, I fear, and a gamester; an overbearing man, with a dangerous cast of pride in his eye. You don't remember Lady Dunoran?--pooh, pooh, what am I thinking of? No, to be sure! you could not. 'Tis from her, chiefly, poor lady, he has his good looks. Her eyes were large, and very peculiar, like his--his, you know, are very fine. She, poor lady, did not live long after the public ruin of the family.'

'And has he been recognised here? The townspeople are so curious.'

'Why, dear child, not one of them ever saw him before. He's been lost sight of by all but a few, a very few friends. My Lord Castlemallard, who was his guardian, of course, knows; and to me he disclosed himself by letter; and we keep his secret; though it matters little who knows it, for it seems to me he's as unhappy as aught could ever make him. The townspeople take him for his cousin, who squandered his fortune in Paris; and how is he the better of their mistake, and how were he the worse if they knew him for whom he is? 'Tis an unhappy family--a curse haunts it. Young in years, old in vice, the wretched nobleman who lies in the vault, by the coffin of that old aunt, scarcely better than himself, whose guineas supplied his early profligacy--alas! he ruined his ill-fated, beautiful cousin, and she died heart-broken, and her little child, both there--in that melancholy and contaminated house.'

So he rambled on, and from one tale to another, till little Lily's early bed-hour came.

I don't know whether it was Doctor Walsingham's visit in the morning, and the chance of hearing something about it, that prompted the unquiet Tom Toole to roll his cloak about him, and buffet his way through storm and snow, to Devereux's lodgings. It was only a stone's-throw; but even that, on such a night, was no trifle.

However, up he went to Devereux's drawing-room, and found its handsome proprietor altogether in the dumps. The little doctor threw off his sleety cloak and hat in the lobby, and stood before the officer fresh and puffing, and a little flustered and dazzled after his romp with the wind.

Devereux got up and received him with a slight bow and no smile, and a 'Pray take a chair, Doctor Toole.'

'Well, this is a bright fit of the dismals,' said little Toole, nothing overawed. 'May I sit near the fire?'

'Upon it,' said Devereux, sadly.

'Thank'ee,' said Toole, clapping his feet on the fender, with a grin, and making himself comfortable. 'May I poke it?'

'Eat it--do as you please--anything--everything; play that fiddle (pointing to the ruin of Puddock's guitar, which the lieutenant had left on the table), or undress and go to bed, or get up and dance a minuet, or take that pistol, with all my heart, and shoot me through the head.'

'Thank'ee, again. A fine choice of amusements, I vow,' cried the jolly doctor.

'There, don't mind me, nor all I say, Toole. I'm, I suppose, in the vapours; but, truly, I'm glad to see you, and I thank you, indeed I do, heartily, for your obliging visit; 'tis very neighbourly. But, hang it, I'm weary of the time--the world is a dull place. I'm tired of this planet, and should not mind cutting my throat and trying a new star. Suppose we make the journey together, Toole; there is a brace of pistols over the chimney, and a fair wind for some of them.'

'Rather too much of a gale for my taste, thanking you again,' answered Toole with a cosy chuckle; 'but, if you're bent on the trip, and can't wait, why, at least, let's have a glass together before parting.'

'With all my heart, what you will. Shall it be punch?'

'Punch be it. Come, hang saving; get us up a ha'porth of whiskey,' said little Toole, gaily.

'Hallo, Mrs. Irons, Madam, will you do us the favour to make a bowl of punch as soon as may be?' cried Devereux, over the banister.

'Come, Toole,' said Devereux, 'I'm very dismal. Losses and crosses, and deuce knows what. Whistle or talk, what you please, I'll listen; tell me anything; stories of horses, dogs, dice, snuff, women, cocks, parsons, wine--what you will. Come, how's Sturk? He's beaten poor Nutter, and won the race; though the stakes, after all, were scarce worth taking--and what's life without a guinea?--he's grown, I'm told, so confoundedly poor, "quis pauper? avarus." A worthy man was Sturk, and, in some respects, resembled the prophet, Shylock; but you know nothing of him--why the plague don't you read your Bible, Toole?'

'Well,' said Toole, candidly, 'I don't know the Old Testament as well as the New; but certainly, whoever he's like, he's held out wonderfully. 'Tis nine weeks since he met that accident, and there he's still, above ground; but that's all--just above ground, you see.'

'And how's Cluffe?'

'Pooh, Cluffe indeed! Nothing ever wrong with him but occasional over-eating. Sir, you'd a laughed to-day had you seen him. I gave him a bolus, twice the size of a gooseberry. "What's this?" said he. "A bolus," says I. "The devil," says he; "dia-bolus, then," says I--"hey?" said I, "well?" ha! ha! and by Jove, Sir, it actually half stuck in his oesophagus, and I shoved it down like a bullet, with a probang; you'd a died a laughing, yet 'twasn't a bit too big. Why, I tell you, upon my honour, Mrs. Rebecca Chattesworth's black boy, only t'other day, swallowed a musket bullet twice the size, ha! ha!--he did--and I set him to rights in no time with a little powder.'

'Gunpowder?' said Devereux. 'And what of O'Flaherty? I'm told he was going to shoot poor Miles O'More.'

'Ha, ha! hey? Well, I don't think either remembered in the morning what they quarrelled about,' replied Toole; 'so it went off in smoke, Sir.'

'Well, and how is Miles?'

'Why, ha, ha! he's back again, with a bill, as usual, and a horse to sell--a good one--the black one, don't you remember? He wants five and thirty guineas; 'tisn't worth two pounds ten. "Do you know anyone who wants him? I would not mind taking a bill, with a couple of good names upon it," says he. Upon my credit I believe he thought I'd buy him myself. "Well," says I, "I think I do know a fellow that would give you his value, and pay you cash besides," says I. 'Twas as good as a play to see his face. "Who is he?" says he, taking me close by the arm. "The knacker," says I. 'Twas a bite for Miles; hey? ha, ha, ha!'

'And is it true old Tresham's going to join our club at last?'

'He! hang him! he's like a brute beast, and never drinks but when he's dry, and then small beer. But, I forgot to tell you, by all that's lovely, they do say the charming Magnolia--a fine bouncing girl that--is all but betrothed to Lieutenant O'Flaherty.'

Devereux laughed, and thus encouraged, Toole went on, with a wink and a whisper.

'Why, the night of the ball, you know, he saw her home, and they say he kissed her--by Bacchus, on both sides of the face,--at the door there, under the porch; and you know, if he had not a right, she'd a-knocked him down.'

'Psha! the girl's a Christian, and when she's smacked on one cheek she turns the other. And what says the major to it?'

'Why, as it happened, he opened the door precisely as the thing occurred; and he wished Lieutenant O'Flaherty good-night, and paid him a visit in the morning. And they say 'tis all satisfactory; and--by Jove! 'tis good punch.' And Mrs. Irons entered with a china bowl on a tray.

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Chapter LXIX

CONCERNING A SECOND HURRICANE THAT RAGED IN CAPTAIN DEVEREUX'S DRAWING-ROOM, AND RELATING HOW MRS. IRONS WAS ATTACKED WITH A SORT OF CHOKING IN HER BED.

And the china bowl, with its silver ladle, and fine fragrance of lemon and old malt whiskey, and a social pair of glasses, were placed on the table by fair Mistress Irons; and Devereux filled his glass, and Toole did likewise; and the little doctor rattled on; and Devereux threw in his word, and finally sang a song. 'Twas a ballad, with little in the words; but the air was sweet and plaintive, and so was the singer's voice:--

'A star so High, In my sad sky, I've early loved and late: A clear lone star, Serene and far, Doth rule my wayward fate.

'Tho' dark and chill The night be still, A light comes up for me: In eastern skies My star doth rise, And fortune dawns for me.

'And proud and bold, My way I hold; For o'er me high I see, In night's deep blue, My star shine true, And fortune beams on me.

'Now onward still, Thro' dark and chill, My lonely way must be; In vain regret, My star will set, And fortune's dark for me.

'And whether glad, Or proud, or sad, Or howsoe'er I be; In dawn or noon, Or setting soon, My star, I'll follow thee.'

And so there was a pause and a silence. In the silvery notes of the singer there was the ring of a prophecy; and Toole half read its meaning. And himself loving a song, and being soft over his music, he remained fixed for a few seconds, and then sighed, smiling, and dried his light blue eyes covertly; and he praised the song and singer briskly; and sighed again, with his fingers on the stem of his glass. And by this time Devereux had drawn the window-curtain, and was looking across the river, through the darkness, towards the Elms, perhaps for that solitary distant light--his star--now blurred and lost in the storm. Whatever his contemplations, it was plain, when he turned about, that the dark spirit was upon him again.

'Curse that punch,' said he, in language still more emphatic. 'You're like Mephistopheles in the play--you come in upon my quiet to draw me to my ruin. 'Twas the devil sent you here, to kill my soul, I believe; but you sha'n't. Drink, will you?--ay--I'll give you a draught--a draught of air will cool you. Drink to your heart's content.'

And to Toole's consternation up went the window, and a hideous rush of eddying storm and snow whirled into the room. Out went the candles--the curtains flapped high in air, and lashed the ceiling--the door banged with a hideous crash--papers, and who knows what beside, went spinning, hurry-scurry round the room; and Toole's wig was very near taking wing from his head.

'Hey--hey--hey! holloo!' cried the doctor, out of breath, and with his artificial ringlets frisking about his chops and eyes.

'Out, sorcerer--temptation, begone--avaunt, Mephistopheles--cauldron, away!' thundered the captain; and sure enough, from the open window, through the icy sleet, whirled the jovial bowl; and the jingle of the china was heard faint through the tempest.

Toole was swearing, in the whirlwind and darkness, like a trooper.

'Thank Heaven! 'tis gone,' continued Devereux; 'I'm safe--no thanks to you, though; and, hark ye, doctor, I'm best alone; leave me--leave me, pray--and pray forgive me.'

The doctor groped and stumbled out of the room, growling all the while, and the door slammed behind him with a crash like a cannon.

'The fellow's brain's disordered--delirium tremens, and jump out of that cursed window, I wouldn't wonder,' muttered the doctor, adjusting his wig on the lobby, and then calling rather mildly over the banisters, he brought up Mrs. Irons with a candle, and found his cloak, hat, and cane; and with a mysterious look beckoned that matron to follow him, and in the hall, winking up towards the ceiling at the spot where Devereux might at the moment be presumed to be standing--

'I say, has he been feverish or queer, or--eh?--any way humorsome or out of the way?' And then--'See now, you may as well have an eye after him, and if you remark anything strange, don't fail to let me know--d'ye see? and for the present you had better get him to shut his window and light his candles.'

And so the doctor, wrapped in his mantle, plunged into the hurricane and darkness; and was sensible, with a throb of angry regret, of a whiff of punch rising from the footpath, as he turned the corner of the steps.

An hour later, Devereux being alone, called to Mrs. Irons, and receiving her with a courteous gravity, he said--

'Madam, will you be so good as to lend me your Bible?'

Devereux was prosecuting his reformation, which, as the reader sees, had set in rather tempestuously, but was now settling in serenity and calm.

Mrs. Irons only said--

'My----?' and then paused, doubting her ears.

'Your Bible, if you please, Madam.'

'Oh?--oh! my Bible? I--to be sure, captain, jewel,' and she peeped at his face, and loitered for a while at the door, for she had unpleasant misgivings about him, and did not know what to make of his request, so utterly without parallel. She'd have fiddled at the door some time longer, speculating about his sanity, but that Devereux turned full upon her with a proud stare, and rising, he made her a slight bow, and said: 'I thank you, Madam,' with a sharp courtesy, that said: 'avaunt, and quit my sight!' so sternly, though politely, that she vanished on the instant; and down stairs she marvelled with Juggy Byrne, 'what the puck the captain could want of a Bible! Upon my conscience it sounds well. It's what he's not right in his head, I'm afeared. A Bible!'--and an aërial voice seemed to say, 'a pistol,' and another, 'a coffin,'--'An' I'm sure I wish that quare little Lieutenant Puddock id come up and keep him company. I dunno' what's come over him.'

And they tumbled about the rattletraps under the cupboard, and rummaged the drawers in search of the sacred volume. For though Juggy said there was no such thing, and never had been in her time, Mrs. Irons put her down with asperity. It was not to be found, however, and the matron thought she remembered that old Mrs. Legge's cook had borrowed it some time ago for a charm. So she explained the accident to Captain Devereux, who said--

'I thank you, Madam; 'tis no matter. I wish you a good-night, Madam;' and the door closed.

'No Bible!' said Devereux, 'the old witch!'

Mrs. Irons, as you remember, never spared her rhetoric, which was fierce, shrill, and fluent, when the exercise of that gift was called for. The parish clerk bore it with a cynical and taciturn patience, not, perhaps, so common as it should be in his sex; and this night, when she awoke, and her eyes rested on the form of her husband at her bedside, with a candle lighted, and buckling on his shoes, with his foot on the chair, she sat up straight in her bed, wide awake in an instant, for it was wonderful how the sight of that meek man roused the wife in her bosom, especially after an absence, and she had not seen him since four o'clock that evening; so you may suppose his reception was warm, and her expressions every way worthy of her feelings.

Meek Irons finished buckling that shoe, and then lifted the other to the edge of the chair, and proceeded to do the like for it, serenely, after his wont, and seeming to hear nothing. So Mrs. Irons proceeded, as was her custom when that patient person refused to be roused--she grasped his collar near his cheek, meaning to shake him into attention.

But instantly, as the operation commenced, the clerk griped her with his long, horny fingers by the throat, with a snap so sure and energetic that not a cry, not a gasp even, or a wheeze, could escape through 'the trachea,' as medical men have it; and her face and forehead purpled up, and her eyes goggled and glared in her head; and her husband looked so insanely wicked, that, as the pale picture darkened before her, and she heard curse after curse, and one foul name after another hiss off his tongue, like water off a hot iron, in her singing ears, she gave herself up for lost. He closed this exercise by chucking her head viciously against the board of the bed half-a-dozen times, and leaving her thereafter a good deal more confused even than on the eventful evening when he had first declared his love.

So soon as she came a little to herself, and saw him coolly buttoning his leggings at the bedside, his buckles being adjusted by this time, her fear subsided, or rather her just indignation rose above it, and drowned it; and she was on the point of breaking out afresh, only in a way commensurate with her wrongs, and proportionately more formidable; when, on the first symptom of attack, he clutched her, if possible, tighter, the gaping, goggling, purpling, the darkening of vision and humming in ears, all recommenced; likewise the knocking of her head with improved good-will, and, spite of her struggles and scratching, the bewildered lady, unused to even a show of insurrection, underwent the same horrid series of sensations at the hands of her rebellious lord.

When they had both had enough of it, Mr. Irons went on with his buttoning, and his lady gradually came to. This time, however, she was effectually frightened--too much so even to resort to hysterics, for she was not quite sure that when he had buttoned the last button of his left legging he might not resume operations, and terminate their conjugal relations.

Therefore, being all of a tremble, with her hands clasped, and too much terrified to cry, she besought Irons, whose bodily strength surprised her, for her life, and his pale, malign glance, askew over his shoulder, held her with a sort of a spell that was quite new to her--in fact, she had never respected Irons so before.

When he had adjusted his leggings, he stood lithe and erect at the bedside, and with his fist at her face, delivered a short charge, the point of which was, that unless she lay like a mouse till morning he'd have her life, though he hanged for it. And with that he drew the curtain, and was hidden from her sight for some time.

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Chapter LXX

IN WHICH AN UNEXPECTED VISITOR IS SEEN. IN THE CEDAR-PARLOUR OF THE TILED HOUSE, AND THE STORY OF MR. BEAUCLERC AND THE 'FLOWER DE LUCE' BEGINS TO BE UNFOLDED.

It was an awful night, indeed, on which all this occurred, and that apparition had shown itself up at the Mills. And truly it would seem the devil had business on his hands, for in the cedar-parlour of the Tiled House another unexpected manifestation occurred just about the same hour.

What gentleman is there of broken fortunes, undefined rights, and in search of evidence, without a legal adviser of some sort? Mr. Mervyn, of course, had his, and paid for the luxury according to custom. And every now and then off went a despatch from the Tiled House to the oracular London attorney; sometimes it was a budget of evidence, and sometimes only a string of queries. To-night, to the awful diapason of the storm--he was penning one of these--the fruit of a tedious study of many papers and letters, tied up in bundles by his desk, all of them redolent of ominous or fearful associations.

I don't know why it is the hours fly with such a strange celerity in the monotony and solitude of such nightwork. But Mervyn was surprised, as many a one similarly occupied has been, on looking at his watch, to find that it was now long past midnight; so he threw himself back in his chair with a sigh, and thought how vainly his life was speeding away, and heard, with a sort of wonder, how mad was the roar of the storm without, while he had quietly penned his long rescript undisturbed.

The wild bursts of supernatural fury and agony which swell and mingle in a hurricane, I dare say, led his imagination a strange aërial journey through the dark. Now it was the baying of hell hounds, and the long shriek of the spirit that flies before them. Anon it was the bellowing thunder of an ocean, and the myriad voices of shipwreck. And the old house quivering from base to cornice under the strain; and then there would come a pause, like a gasp, and the tempest once more rolled up, and the same mad hubbub shook and clamoured at the windows.

So he let his Pegasus spread his pinions on the blast, and mingled with the wild rout that peopled the darkness; or, in plainer words, he abandoned his fancy to the haunted associations of the hour, the storm, and the house, with a not unpleasant horror. In one of these momentary lulls of the wind, there came a sharp, distinct knocking on the window-pane. He remembered with a thrill the old story of the supernatural hand which had troubled that house, and began its pranks at this very window.

Ay, ay, 'twas the impatient rapping of a knuckle on the glass quite indisputably.

It is all very well weaving the sort of dream or poem with which Mervyn was half amusing and half awing himself, but the sensation is quite different when a questionable sound or sight comes uninvited to take the matter out of the province of our fancy and the control of our will. Mervyn found himself on his legs, and listening in a less comfortable sort of horror, with his gaze fixed in the direction of that small sharp knocking. But the storm was up again, and drowning every other sound in its fury.

If Mr. Mervyn had been sufficiently frightened, he would have forthwith made good his retreat to his bed-room, or, if he had not been frightened at all, he would have kept his seat, and allowed his fancies to return to their old channel. But, in fact, he took a light in his hand, and opened a bit of the window-shutter. The snow, however, was spread over the panes in a white, sliding curtain, that returned the light of his candle, and hid all without. 'Twas idle trying to peer through it, but as he did, the palm of a hand was suddenly applied to the glass on the outside, and began briskly to rub off the snow, as if to open a peep-hole for distinct inspection.

It was to be more this time than the apparition of a hand--a human face was immediately presented close to the glass--not that of Nutter either--no--it was the face of Irons--pale, with glittering eyes and blue chin, and wet hair quivering against the glass in the storm.

He nodded wildly to Mervyn, brushing away the snow, beckoning towards the back-door, as he supported himself on one knee on the window-stone, and, with his lips close to the glass, cried, 'let me in;' but, in the uproar of the storm, it was by his gestures, imperfectly as they were seen, rather than by his words, that Mervyn comprehended his meaning.

Down went Mr. Mervyn, without a moment's hesitation, leaving the candle standing on the passage table, drew the bolts, opened the door, and in rushed Irons, in a furious gust, his cloak whirling about his head amidst a bitter eddying of snow, and a distant clapping of doors throughout the house.

The door secured again, Mr. Irons stood in his beflaked and dripping mantle, storm-tossed, dishevelled, and alone once again in the shelter of the Tiled House, to explain the motive of his visit.

'Irons! I could hardly believe it,' and Mervyn made a pause, and then, filled with the one idea, he vehemently demanded, 'In Heaven's name, have you come to tell me all you know?'

'Well, maybe--no,' answered the clerk: 'I don't know; I'll tell you something. I'm going, you see, and I came here on my way; and I'll tell you more than last time, but not all--not all yet.'

'Going? and where?--what are your plans?'

'Plans?--I've no plans. Where am I going!--nowhere--anywhere. I'm going away, that's all.'

'You're leaving this place--eh, to return no more?'

'I'm leaving it to-night; I've the doctor's leave, Parson Walsingham. What d'ye look at, Sir? d'ye think it's what I murdered any one? not but if I stayed here I might though,' and Mr. Irons laughed a frightened, half maniacal sort of laugh. 'I'm going for a bit, a fortnight, or so, maybe, till things get quiet--(lead us not into temptation!)--to Mullingar, or anywhere; only I won't stay longer at hell's door, within stretch of that devil's long arm.'

'Come to the parlour,' said Mervyn, perceiving that Irons was chilled and shivering.

There, with the door and window-shutters closed, a pair of candles on the table, and a couple of faggots of that pleasant bog-wood, which blazes so readily and fragrantly on the hearth, Irons shook off his cloak, and stood, lank and grim, and, as it seemed to Mervyn, horribly scared, but well in view, and trying, sullenly, to collect his thoughts.

'I'm going away, I tell you, for a little while; but I'm come to see you, Sir, to think what I may tell you now, and above all, to warn you again' saying to any living soul one word of what passed between us when I last was here; you've kept your word honourable as yet; if you break it I'll not return,' and he clenched it with an oath, 'I daren't return.'

'I'll tell you the way it happened,' he resumed. ''Tis a good while now, ay twenty-two years; your noble father's dead these twenty-two years and upwards. 'Twas a bad murdher, Sir: they wor both bad murdhers. I look on it, he's a murdhered man.'

'He--who?' demanded the young man.

'Your father, Sir.'

'My father murdered?' said Mervyn.

'Well, I see no great differ; I see none at all. I'll tell you how it was.'

And he looked over his shoulder again, and into the corners of the room, and then Mr. Irons began--

'I believe, Sir, there's no devil like a vicious young man, with a hard heart and cool courage, in want of money. Of all the men I ever met with, or heard tell of, Charles Archer was the most dreadful. I used sometimes to think he was the devil. It wasn't long-headed or cunning he was, but he knew your thoughts before you half knew them yourself. He knew what every one was thinking of. He made up his mind at a glance, and struck like a thunderbolt. As for pity or fear, he did not know what they were, and his cunning was so deep and sure there was no catching him.

'He came down to the Pied Horse Inn, where I was a drawer, at Newmarket, twice.'

Mervyn looked in his face, quickly, with a ghastly kind of a start.

'Ay, Sir, av coorse you know it; you read the trial; av coorse you did. Well, he came down there twice. 'Twas a good old house, Sir, lots of room, and a well-accustomed inn. An' I think there was but two bad men among all the servants of the house--myself and Glascock. He was an under hostler, and a bad boy. He chose us two out of the whole lot, with a look. He never made a mistake. He knew us some way like a crow knows carrion, and he used us cleverly.'

And Irons cursed him.

'He's a hard master, like his own,' said Irons; 'his wages come to nothing, and his services is hell itself. He could sing, and talk, and drink, and keep things stirring, and the gentlemen liked him; and he was, 'twas said, a wonderful fine player at whist, and piquet, and ombre, and all sorts of card-playing. So you see he could afford to play fair. The first time he came down, he fought three duels about a tipsy quarrel over a pool of Pope Joan. There was no slur on his credit, though; 'twas just a bit of temper. He wounded all three; two but trifling; but one of them--Chapley, or Capley, I think, was his name--through the lungs, and he died, I heard, abroad. I saw him killed--'twasn't the last; it was done while you'd count ten. Mr. Archer came up with a sort of a sneer, pale and angry, and 'twas a clash of the small swords--one, two, three, and a spring like a tiger--and all over. He was frightful strong; ten times as strong as he looked--all a deception.'

'Well, Sir, there was a Jew came down, offering wagers, not, you see, to gentlemen, Sir, but to poor fellows. And Mr. Archer put me and Glascock up to bite him, as he said; and he told us to back Strawberry, and we did. We had that opinion of his judgment and his knowledge--you see, we thought he had ways of finding out these things--that we had no doubt of winning, so we made a wager of twelve pounds. But we had no money--not a crown between us--and we must stake gold with the host of the "Plume of Feathers;" and the long and the short of it was, I never could tell how he put it into our heads, to pledge some of the silver spoons and a gold chain of the master's, intending to take them out when we won the money. Well, Strawberry lost, and we were left in the lurch. So we told Mr. Archer how it was; for he was an off-handed man when he had anything in view, and he told us, as we thought, he'd help us if we lost. "Help you," says he, with a sort of laugh he had, "I want help myself; I haven't a guinea, and I'm afraid you'll be hanged: and then," says he, "stay a bit, and I'll find a way."

'I think he was in a bad plight just then himself; he was awful expensive with horses and--and--other things; and I think there was a writ, or maybe more, out against him, from other places, and he wanted a lump of money in his hand to levant with, and go abroad. Well, listen, and don't be starting, or making a row, Sir,' and a sulky, lowering, hang-dog shadow, came over Irons. 'Your father, Lord Dunoran, played cards; his partner was Mr. Charles Archer. Whist it was--with a gentleman of the name of Beauclerc, and I forget the other--he wore a chocolate suit, and a black wig. 'Twas I carried them their wine. Well, Mr. Beauclerc won, and Mr. Archer stopped playing, for he had lost enough; and the gentleman in the chocolate--what was his name?--Edwards, I think--ay, 'twas--yes, Edwards, it was--was tired, and turned himself about to the fire, and took a pipe of tobacco; and my lord, your father, played piquet with Mr. Beauclerc; and he lost a power of money to him, Sir; and, by bad luck, he paid a great part of it, as they played, in rouleaus of gold, for he had won at the dice down stairs. Well, Mr. Beauclerc was a little hearty, and he grew tired, and was for going to bed. But my lord was angry, and being disguised with liquor too, he would not let him go till they played more; and play they did, and the luck still went the same way; and my lord grew fierce over it, and cursed and drank, and that did not mend his luck you may be sure; and at last Mr. Beauclerc swears he'd play no more; and both kept talking together, and neither heard well what t'other said; but there was some talk about settling the dispute in the morning.

'Well, Sir, in goes Mr. Beauclerc, staggering--his room was the Flower de luce--and down he throws himself, clothes an' all, on his bed; and then my lord turned on Mr. Edwards, I'm sure that was his name, and persuades him to play at piquet; and to it they went.

'As I was coming in with more wine, I meets Mr. Archer coming out, "Give them their wine," says he, in a whisper, "and follow me." An' so I did. "You know something of Glascock, and have a fast hold of him," says he, "and tell him quietly to bring up Mr. Beauclerc's boots, and come back along with him; and bring me a small glass of rum." And back he goes into the room where the two were stuck in their cards, and talking and thinking of nothing else.'

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LXXI. IN WHICH MR. IRONS'S NARRATIVE REACHES MERTON MOOR

'Well, I did as he bid me, and set the glass of rum before him, and in place of drinking it, he follows me out. "I told you," says he, "I'd find a way, and I'm going to give you fifty guineas apiece. Stand you at the stair-head," says he to Glascock, "and listen; and if you hear anyone coming, step into Mr. Beauclerc's room with his boots, do you see, for I'm going to rob him." I thought I'd a fainted, and Glascock, that was a tougher lad than me, was staggered; but Mr. Archer had a way of taking you by surprise, and getting you into a business before you knew where you were going. "I see, Sir," says Glascock. "And come you in, and I'll do it," says Mr. Archer, and in we went, and Mr. Beauclerc was fast asleep.

'I don't like talking about it,' said Irons, suddenly and savagely, and he got up and walked, with a sort of a shrug of the shoulders, to and fro half-a-dozen times, like a man who has a chill, and tries to make his blood circulate.

Mervyn commanded himself, for he knew the man would return to his tale, and probably all the sooner for being left to work off his transient horror how he might.

'Well, he did rob him, and I often thought how cunningly, for he took no more than about half his gold, well knowing, I'm now sure, neither he nor my lord, your father, kept any count; and there was a bundle of notes in his pocket-book, which Mr. Archer was thinning swiftly, when all of a sudden, like a ghost rising, up sits Mr. Beauclerc, an unlucky rising it was for him, and taking him by the collar--he was a powerful strong man--"You've robbed me, Archer," says he. I was behind Mr. Archer, and I could not see what happened, but Mr. Beauclerc made a sort of a start and a kick out with his foot, and seemed taken with a tremble all over, for while you count three, and he fell back in the bed with his eyes open, and Mr. Archer drew a thin long dagger out of the dead man's breast, for dead he was.

"What are you afraid of, you ---- fool?" says he, shaking me up; "I know what I'm about; I'll carry you through; your life's in my hands, mine in yours, only be cool." He was that himself, if ever man was, and quick as light he closed the dead man's eyes, saying, "in for a penny in for a pound," and he threw a bit of the coverlet over his breast, and his mouth and chin, just as a man might draw it rolling round in the bed, for I suppose he thought it best to hide the mouth that was open, and told its tale too plainly, and out he was on the lobby the next instant. "Don't tell Glascock what's happened, 'twill make him look queer; let him put in the boots, and if he's asked, say Mr. Beauclerc made a turn in the bed, and a grumbling, like a man turning over in his sleep, while he was doing so, d'ye see, and divide this, 'twill settle your little trouble, you know." 'Twas a little paper roll of a hundred guineas. An' that's the way Mr. Beauclerc came by his death.'

This to Mervyn was the sort of shock that might have killed an older man. The dreadful calamity that had stigmatised and beggared his family--the horror and shame of which he well remembered, when first revealed to him, had held him trembling and tongue-tied for more than an hour before tears came to his relief, and which had ever since blackened his sky, with a monotony of storm and thunder, was in a moment shown to be a chimera. No wonder that he was for a while silent, stunned, and bewildered. At last he was able--pale and cold--to lift up his clasped hands, his eyes, and his heart, in awful gratitude, to the Author of Mercy, the Revealer of Secrets, the Lord of Life and Truth.

'And where is this Charles Archer--is he dead or living?' urged Mervyn with an awful adjuration.

'Ay, where to catch him, and how--Dead? Well, he's dead to some, you see, and living to others; and living or dead, I'll put you on his track some fine day, if you're true to me; but not yet awhile, and if you turn a stag, or name my name to living soul (and here Mr. Irons swore an oath such as I hope parish clerks don't often swear, and which would have opened good Dr. Walsingham's eyes with wonder and horror), you'll never hear word more from me, and I think, Sir, you'll lose your life beside.'

'Your threats of violence are lost on me, I can take care of myself,' said Mervyn, haughtily.

The clerk smiled a strange sort of smile.

'But I've already pledged my sacred honour not to mention your name or betray your secret.'

'Well, just have patience, and maybe I'll not keep you long; but 'tis no trifle for a man to make up his mind to what's before me, maybe.'

After a pause, Irons resumed--

'Well, Sir, you see, Mr. Archer sat down by the fire and smoked a pipe, and was as easy and pleased, you'd say, to look on him, as a man need be; and he called for cards when my lord wanted them, and whatever else he needed, making himself busy and bustling--as I afterwards thought to make them both remember well that he was in the room with them.

'In and out of the chamber I went with one thing or another, and every time I passed Mr. Beauclerc's room I grew more and more frightened; and, truth to say, I was a scared man, and I don't know how I got through my business; every minute expecting to hear the outcry from the dead man's room.

'Mr. Edwards had an appointment, he said--nothing good, you may be sure--they were a rake-helly set--saving your presence. Neither he nor my lord had lost, I believe, anything to signify to one another; and my lord, your father, made no difficulty about his going away, but began to call again for Mr. Beauclerc, and to curse him--as a half-drunk man will, making a power of noise; and, "Where's he gone to?" and, "Where's his room?" and, "---- him, he shall play, or fight me." You see, Sir, he had lost right and left that time, and was an angry man, and the liquor made him half mad; and I don't think he knew rightly what he was doing. And out on the lobby with him swearing he should give him his revenge, or he'd know the reason why.

"Where's Mr. Beauclerc's room?" he shouts to me, as if he'd strike me; I did not care a rush about that, but I was afraid to say--it stuck in my throat like--and I stared at Mr. Archer; and he calls to the chamber-maid, that was going up stairs, "Where does Mr. Beauclerc lie?" and she, knowing him, says at once, "The Flower de luce," and pointed to the room; and with that, my lord staggered up to the door, with his drawn sword in hand, bawling on him to come out, and fumbling with the pin; he could not open it; so he knocked it open with a kick, and in with him, and Mr. Archer at his elbow, soothing him like; and I, I don't know how--behind him.

'By this time he had worked himself into a mad passion, and says he, "Curse your foxing--if you won't play like a man, you may die like a dog." I think 'twas them words ruined him; the chamber-maid heard them outside; and he struck Mr. Beauclerc half-a-dozen blows with the side of the small-sword across the body, here and there, quite unsteady; and "Hold, my lord, you've hurt him," cries Mr. Archer, as loud as he could cry. "Put up your sword for Heaven's sake," and he makes a sort of scuffle with my lord, in a friendly way, to disarm him, and push him away, and "Throw down the coverlet and see where he's wounded," says he to me; and so I did, and there was a great pool of blood--we knew all about that--and my lord looked shocked when he seen it. "I did not mean that," says my lord; "but," says he, with a sulky curse, "he's well served."

'I don't know whether Glascock was in the room or not all this while, maybe he was; at any rate, he swore to it afterwards; but you've read the trial, I warrant. The room was soon full of people. The dead man was still warm--'twas well for us. So they raised him up; and one was for trying one thing, and another; and my lord was sitting stupid-like all this time by the wall; and up he gets, and says he, "I hope he's not dead, but if he be, upon my honour, 'tis an accident--no more. I call Heaven to witness, and the persons who are now present; and pledge my sacred honour, as a peer, I meant no more than a blow or two."

"You hear, gentlemen, what my lord says, he meant only a blow or two, and not to take his life," cries Mr. Archer.

'So my lord repeats it again, cursing and swearing, like St. Peter in the judgment hall.

'So, as nobody was meddling with my lord, out he goes, intending, I suppose, to get away altogether, if he could. But Mr. Underwood missed him, and he says, "Gentlemen, where's my Lord Dunoran? we must not suffer him to depart;" and he followed him--two or three others going along with him, and they met him with his hat and cloak on, in the lobby, and he says, stepping between him and the stairs,--

'"My lord, you must not go, until we see how this matter ends."

'"Twill end well enough," says he, and without more ado he walks back again.

'So you know the rest--how that business ended, at least for him.'

'And you are that very Zekiel Irons who was a witness on the trial?' said Mervyn, with a peculiar look of fear and loathing fixed on him.

'The same,' said Irons, doggedly; and after a pause, 'but I swore to very little; and all I said was true--though it wasn't the whole truth. Look to the trial, Sir, and you'll see 'twas Mr. Archer and Glascock that swore home against my lord--not I. And I don't think myself, Glascock was in the room at all when it happened--so I don't.'

'And where is that wretch, Glascock, and that double murderer Archer; where is he?'

'Well, Glascock's making clay.'

'What do you mean?'

'Under ground, this many a day. Listen: Mr. Archer went up to London, and he was staying at the Hummums, and Glascock agreed with me to leave the "Pied Horse." We were both uneasy, and planned to go up to London together; and what does he do--nothing less would serve him--but he writes a sort of letter, asking money of Mr. Archer under a threat. This, you know, was after the trial. Well, there came no answer; but after a while--all on a sudden--Mr. Archer arrives himself at the "Pied Horse;" I did not know then that Glascock had writ to him--for he meant to keep whatever he might get to himself. "So," says Mr. Archer to me, meeting me by the pump in the stable-yard, "that was a clever letter you and Glascock wrote to me in town."

'So I told him 'twas the first I heard of it.

'"Why," says he, "do you mean to tell me you don't want money?"

'I don't know why it was, but a sort of a turn came over me and I said, "No."

'"Well," says he, "I'm going to sell a horse, and I expect to be paid to-morrow; you and Glascock must wait for me outside"--I think the name of the village was Merton--I'm not sure, for I never seen it before or since--"and I'll give you some money then."

'"I'll have none," says I.

'"What, no money?" says he. "Come, come."

'"I tell you, Sir, I'll have none," says I. Something, you see, came over me, and I was more determined than ever. I was always afeard of him, but I feared him like Beelzebub now. "I've had enough of your money, Sir; and I tell you what, Mr. Archer, I think 'tis best to end our dealings, and I'd rather, if you please, Sir, never trouble you more."

'"You're a queer dog," says he, with his eye fast on me, and musing for a while--as if he could see into my brain, and was diverted by what he found there;--"you're a queer dog, Irons. Glascock knows the world better, you see; and as you and he are going up to London together, and I must give the poor devil a lift, I'll meet you at the other side of Merton, beyond the quarry--you know the moor--on Friday evening, after dark--say seven o'clock--we must be quiet, you know, or people will be talking."

'Well, Sir, we met him, sure enough, at the time and place.'

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Chapter LXXII

IN WHICH THE APPARITION OF MR. IRONS IS SWALLOWED IN DARKNESS.

''Twas a darkish night--very little moon--and he made us turn off the road, into the moor--black and ugly it looked, stretching away four or five miles, all heath and black peat, stretches of little broken hillocks, and a pool or tarn every now and again. An' he kept looking back towards the road, and not a word out of him. Well, I did not like meeting him at all if I could help it, but I was in dread of him; and I thought he might suppose I was plotting mischief if I refused. So I made up my mind to do as he bid me for the nonce, and then have done with him.

'By this time we were in or about a mile from the road, and we got over a low rising ground, and back nor forward, nor no way could we see anything but the moor; and I stopped all of a sudden, and says I, "We're far enough, I'll go no further."

'"Good," says Mr. Archer; "but let's go yonder, where the stones are--we can sit as we talk--for I'm tired."

'There was half-a-dozen white stones there by the side of one of these black tarns. We none of us talked much on that walk over the moor. We had enough to think of, each of us, I dare say.

'"This will do," says Mr. Archer, stopping beside the pool; but he did not sit, though the stones were there. "Now, Glascock, here I am, with the price of my horse in my pocket; what do you want?"

'Well, when it came to the point so sudden, Glascock looked a bit shy, and hung his head, and rowled his shoulders, and shuffled his feet a bit, thinking what he'd say.

'"Hang it, man; what are you afraid of? we're friends," says Mr. Archer, cheerfully.

'"Surely, Sir," says Glascock, "I did not mean aught else."

'And with that Mr. Archer laughed, and says he--

'"Come--you beat about the bush--let's hear your mind."

'"Well, Sir, 'tis in my letter," says he.

'"Ah, Glascock," says he, "that's a threatening letter. I did not think you'd serve me so. Well, needs must when the devil drives." And he laughed again, and shrugs up his shoulders, and says he, putting his hand in his pocket, "there's sixty pounds left; 'tis all I have; come, be modest--what do you say?"

'"You got a lot of gold off Mr. Beauclerc," says Glascock.

'"Not a doit more than I wanted," says he, laughing again. "And who, pray, had a better right--did not I murder him?"

'His talk and his laughing frightened me more and more.

'"Well, I stood to you then, Sir; didn't I?" says Glascock.

'"Heart of oak, Sir--true as steel; and now, how much do you want? Remember, 'tis all I have--and I out at elbows; and here's my friend Irons, too--eh?"

'"I want nothing, and I'll take nothing," says I; "not a shilling--not a half-penny." You see there was something told me no good would come of it, and I was frightened besides.

'"What! you won't go in for a share, Irons?" says he.

'"No; 'tis your money, Sir--I've no right to a sixpence--and I won't have it," says I; "and there's an end."

'"Well, Glascock, what say you?--you hear Irons."

'"Let Irons speak for himself--he's nothing to me. You should have considered me when all that money was took from Mr. Beauclerc--one done as much as another--and if 'twas no more than holding my tongue, still 'tis worth a deal to you."

'"I don't deny--a deal--everything. Come--there's sixty pounds here--but, mark, 'tis all I have--how much?"

'"I'll have thirty, and I'll take no less," says Glascock, surly enough.

'"Thirty! 'tis a good deal--but all considered--perhaps not too much," says Mr. Archer.

'And with that he took his right hand from his breeches' pocket, and shot him through the heart with a pistol.

'Neither word, nor stir, nor groan, did Glascock make; but with a sort of a jerk, flat on his back he fell, with his head on the verge of the tarn.

'I believe I said something--I don't know--I was almost as dead as himself--for I did not think anything that bad was near at all.

'"Come, Irons--what ails you--steady, Sir--lend me a hand, and you'll take no harm."

'He had the pistol he discharged in his left hand by this time, and a loaded one in his right.

'"'Tis his own act, Irons. I did not want it; but I'll protect myself, and won't hold my life on ransom, at the hands of a Jew or a Judas," said he, smiling through his black hair, as white as a tombstone.

'"I am neither," says I.

'"I know it," says he; "and so you're here, and he there."

'"Well, 'tis over now, I suppose," says I. I was thinking of making off.

'"Don't go yet," says he, like a man asking a favour; but he lifted the pistol an inch or two, with a jerk of his wrist, "you must help me to hide away this dead fool."

'Well, Sir, we had three or four hours cold work of it--we tied stones in his clothes, and sunk him close under the bank, and walled him over with more. 'Twas no light job, I can tell you the water was near four feet deep, though 'twas a dry season; and then we slipped out a handsome slice of the bank over him; and, making him all smooth, we left him to take his chance; and I never heard any talk of a body being found there; and I suppose he's now where we left him.'

And Irons groaned.

'So we returned silent and tired enough, and I in mortal fear of him. But he designed me no hurt. There's luckily some risk in making away with a fellow, and 'tisn't done by any but a fool without good cause; and when we got on the road again, I took the London road, and he turned his back on me, and I don't know where he went; but no doubt his plans were well shaped.

''Twas an ugly walk for me, all alone, over that heath, I can tell you. 'Twas mortal dark; and there was places on the road where my footsteps echoed back, and I could not tell but 'twas Mr. Archer following me, having changed his mind, maybe, or something as bad, if that could be; and many's the time I turned short round, expecting to see him, or may be that other lad, behind, for you see I got a start like when he shot Glascock; and there was a trembling over me for a long time after.

'Now, you see, Glascock's dead, and can't tell tales no more nor Mr. Beauclerc, and Dr. Sturk's a dead man too, you may say; and I think he knew--that is--brought to mind somewhat. He lay, you see, on the night Mr. Beauclerc lost his life, in a sort of a dressing-room, off his chamber, and the door was open; but he was bad with a fall he had, and his arm in splints, and he under laudanum--in a trance like--and on the inquest he could tell nothing; but I think he remembered something more or less concerning it after.' And Mr. Irons took a turn, and came back very close to Mervyn, and said very gently, 'and I think Charles Archer murdered him.'

'Then Charles Archer has been in Dublin, perhaps in Chapelizod, within the last few months,' exclaimed Mervyn, in a sort of agony.

'I didn't say so,' answered Irons. 'I've told you the truth--'tis the truth--but there's no catching a ghost--and who'd believe my story? and them things is so long ago. And suppose I make a clean breast of it, and that I could bring you face to face with him, the world would not believe my tale, and I'd then be a lost man, one way or another--no one, mayhap, could tell how--I'd lose my life before a year, and all the world could not save me.'

'Perhaps--perhaps Charles Nutter's the man; and Mr. Dangerfield knows something of him,' cried Mervyn.

Irons made no answer, but sat quite silent for some seconds, by the fire, the living image of apathy.

'If you name me, or blab one word I told you, I hold my peace for ever,' said he, slowly, with a quiet oath, but very pale, and how blue his chin looked--how grim his smile, with his face so shiny, and his eyelids closed. You're to suppose, Sir, 'tis possible Mr. Dangerfield has a guess at him. Well, he's a clever man, and knows how to put this and that together; and has been kind to Dr. Sturk and his family. He's a good man, you know; and he's a long-headed gentleman, they say; and if he takes a thing in hand, he'll be as like as another to bring it about. But sink or swim my mind's made up. Charles Archer, wherever he is, will not like my going--he'll sniff danger in the wind, Sir. I could not stay--he'd have had me--you see, body and soul. 'Twas time for me to go--and go or stay, I see nothing but bad before me. 'Twas an evil day I ever saw his face; and 'twould be better for me to have a cast for my life at any rate, and that I'm nigh-hand resolved on; only you see my heart misgives me--and that's how it is. I can't quite make up my mind.'

For a little while Mervyn stood in an agony of irresolution. I'm sure I cannot understand all he felt, having never been, thank Heaven! in a like situation. I only know how much depended on it, and I don't wonder that for some seconds he thought of arresting that lank, pale, sinister figure by the fire, and denouncing him as, by his own confession, an accessory to the murder of Beauclerc. The thought that he would slip through his fingers, and the clue to vindication, fortune, and happiness, be for ever lost, was altogether so dreadful that we must excuse his forgetting for a moment his promise, and dismissing patience, and even policy, from his thoughts.

But 'twas a transitory temptation only, and common sense seconded honour. For he was persuaded that whatever likelihood there was of leading Irons to the critical point, there was none of driving him thither; and that Irons, once restive and impracticable, all his hopes would fall to the ground.

'I am going,' said Irons, with quiet abruptness; 'and right glad the storm's up still,' he added, in a haggard rumination, and with a strange smile of suffering. 'In dark an' storm--curse him!--I see his face everywhere. I don't know how he's got this hold over me,' and he cursed him again and groaned dismally. 'A night like this is my chance--and so here goes.'

'Remember, for Heaven's sake, remember,' said Mervyn, with agonised urgency, as he followed him with a light along the passage to the back-door.

Irons made no answer; and walking straight on, without turning his head, only lifted his hand with a movement backward, like a man who silently warns another from danger.

So Irons went forth into the night and the roaring storm, dark and alone, like an evil spirit into desert places; and Mervyn barred the door after him, and returned to the cedar parlour, and remained there alone and long in profound and not unnatural agitation.

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Chapter LXXIII

CONCERNING A CERTAIN GENTLEMAN, WITH A BLACK PATCH OVER HIS EYE, WHO MADE SOME VISITS WITH A LADY, IN CHAPELIZOD AND ITS NEIGHBOURHOOD.

In the morning, though the wind had somewhat gone down, 'twas still dismal and wild enough; and to the consternation of poor Mrs. Macnamara, as she sat alone in her window after breakfast, Miss Mag and the major being both abroad, a hackney coach drew up at the door, which stood open. The maid was on the step, cheapening fish with a virulent lady who had a sieve-full to dispose of.

A gentleman, with a large, unwholesome face, and a patch over one eye, popped his unpleasant countenance, black wig, and three-cocked hat, out of the window, and called to the coachman to let him out.

Forth he came, somewhat slovenly, his coat not over-well brushed, having in his hand a small trunk, covered with gilt crimson leather, very dingy, and somewhat ceremoniously assisted a lady to alight. This dame, as she stepped with a long leg, in a black silk stocking, to the ground, swept the front windows of the house from under her velvet hood with a sharp and evil glance; and in fact she was Mistress Mary Matchwell.

As she beheld her, poor Mrs. Mack's heart fluttered up to her mouth, and then dropped with a dreadful plump, into the pit of her stomach. The dingy, dismal gentleman, swinging the red trunk in his hand, swaggered lazily back and forward, to stretch his legs over the pavement, and air his large cadaverous countenance, and sniff the village breezes.

Mistress Matchwell in the meantime, exchanging a passing word with the servant, who darkened and drew back as if a ghost had crossed her, gathered her rustling silks about her, and with a few long steps noiselessly mounted the narrow stairs, and stood, sallow and terrible in her sables, before the poor gentlewoman.

With two efforts Mrs. Mack got up and made a little, and then a great courtesy, and then a little one again, and tried to speak, and felt very near fainting.

'See,' says Mary Matchwell, 'I must have twenty pounds--but don't take on. You must make an effort, my dear--'tis the last. Come, don't be cast down. I'll pay you when I come to my property, in three weeks' time; but law expenses must be paid, and the money I must have.'

Hereupon Mrs. Mack clasped her hands together in an agony, and 'set up the pipes.'

M. M. was like to lose patience, and when she did she looked most feloniously, and in a way that made poor soft Mrs. Mack quiver.

''Tis but twenty pounds, woman,' she said, sternly. 'Hub-bub-bub-boo-hoo-hoo,' blubbered the fat and miserable Mrs. Macnamara. 'It will be all about--I may as well tell it myself. I'm ruined! My Venetian lace--my watch--the brocade not made up. It won't do. I must tell my brother; I'd rather go out for a charwoman and starve myself to a skeleton, than try to borrow more money.'

Mrs. Matchwell advanced her face towards the widow's tearful countenance, and held her in the spell of her dreadful gaze as a cat does a bird.

'Why, curse you, woman, do you think 'tis to rob you I mean?--'tisn't a present even--only a loan. Stop that blubbering, you great old mouth! or I'll have you posted all over the town in five minutes. A loan, Madam; and you need not pay it for three months--three whole months--there!'

Well, this time it ended as heretofore--poor Mrs. Mack gave way. She had not a crown-piece, indeed, that she could call her own; but M. M. was obliging, and let her off for a bill of exchange, the nature of which, to her dying day, the unhappy widow could never comprehend, although it caused her considerable affliction some short time subsequently.

Away went Mary Matchwell with her prize, leaving an odour of brandy behind her. Her dingy and sinister squire performed his clumsy courtesies, and without looking to the right or left, climbed into the coach after her, with his red trunk in his hand; and the vehicle was again in motion, and jingling on at a fair pace in the direction of Nutter's house, The Mills, where her last visit had ended so tragically.

Now, it so happened that just as this coach, with its sombre occupants, drew up at The Mills, Doctor Toole was standing on the steps, giving Moggy a parting injunction, after his wont; for poor little Mrs. Nutter had been thrown into a new paroxysm by the dreadful tidings of her Charlie's death, and was now lying on her bed, and bathing the pillow in her tears.

'Is this the tenement called the Mills, formerly in the occupation of the late Charles Nutter--eh?' demanded the gentleman, thrusting his face from the window, before the coachman had got to the door.

'It is, Sir,' replied Toole, putting Moggy aside, and suspecting, he could not tell what amiss, and determined to show front, and not averse from hearing what the visit was about. 'But Mrs. Nutter is very far from well, Sir; in fact, in her bed-chamber, Sir, and laid upon her bed.'

'Mrs. Nutter's here, Sir,' said the man phlegmatically. He had just got out on the ground before the door, and extended his hand toward Mary Matchwell, whom he assisted to alight.

'This is Mrs. Nutter, relict of the late Charles Nutter, of The Mills, Knockmaroon, in the parish of Chapelizod.'

'At your service, Sir,' said Mary Matchwell, dropping a demure courtesy, and preparing to sail by him.

'Not so fast, Ma'am, if you please,' said Toole, astonished, but still sternly and promptly enough. 'In with you, Moggy, and bar the kitchen door.'

And shoving the maid back, he swung the door to, with a slam. He was barely in time, and Mary Matchwell, baffled and pale, confronted the doctor, with the devil gleaming from her face.

'Who are you, man, that dare shut my own door in my face?' said the beldame.

'Toole's my name, Madam,' said the little doctor, with a lofty look and a bow. 'I have the honour to attend here in a professional capacity.'

'Ho! a village attorney,' cried the fortune-teller, plainly without having consulted the cards or the planets. 'Well, Sir, you'd better stand aside, for I am the Widow Nutter, and this is my house; and burn me, but one way or another, in I'll get.'

'You'd do well to avoid a trespass, Ma'am, and better to abstain from house breaking; and you may hammer at the knocker till you're tired, but they'll not let you in,' rejoined Toole. 'And as to you being the Widow Nutter, Ma'am, that is widow of poor Charles Nutter, lately found drowned, I'll be glad to know, Ma'am, how you make that out.'

'Stay, Madam, by your leave,' said the cadaverous, large-faced man, interposing. 'We are here, Sir, to claim possession of this tenement and the appurtenances, as also of all the money, furniture, and other chattels whatsoever of the late Charles Nutter; and being denied admission, we shall then serve certain cautionary and other notices, in such a manner as the court will, under the circumstances, and in your presence, being, by your admission, the attorney of Sarah Hearty, calling herself Nutter--'

'I did not say I was,' said Toole, with a little toss of his chin.

The gentleman's large face here assumed a cunning leer.

'Well, we have our thoughts about that, Sir,' he said. 'But by your leave, we'll knock at the hall-door.'

'I tell you what, Sir,' said Toole, who had no reliance upon the wisdom of the female garrison, and had serious misgivings lest at the first stout summons the maids should open the door, and the ill-favoured pair establish themselves in occupation of poor Mrs. Nutter's domicile, 'I'll not object to the notices being received. There's the servant up at the window there--but you must not make a noise; Mrs. Nutter, poor woman, is sick and hypochondriac, and can't bear a noise; but I'll permit the service of the notices, because, you see, we can afford to snap our fingers at you. I say, Moggy, open a bit of that window, and take in the papers that this gentleman will hand you. There, Sir, on the end of your cane, if you please--very good.'

''Twill do, she has them. Thank you, Miss,' said the legal practitioner, with a grin. 'Now, Ma'am, we'd best go to the Prerogative Court.'

Mary Matchwell laughed one of her pale malevolent laughs up at the maid in the window, who stood there, with the papers in her hand, in a sort of horror.

'Never mind,' said Mary Matchwell, to herself, and, getting swiftly into the coach, she gleamed another ugly smile up at the window of The Mills, as she adjusted her black attire.

'To the Prerogative Court,' said the attorney to the coachman.

'In that house I'll lie to-night,' said Mary Matchwell, with a terrible mildness, as they drove away, still glancing back upon it, with her peculiar smile; and then she leaned back, with a sneer of superiority on her pallid features, and the dismal fatigue of the spirit that rests not, looked savagely out from the deep, haggard windows of her eyes.

When Toole saw the vehicle fairly off, you may be sure he did not lose time in getting into the house, and there conning over the papers, which puzzled him unspeakably.

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Chapter LXXIV

IN WHICH DOCTOR TOOLE, IN HIS BOOTS, VISITS MR. GAMBLE, AND SEES AN UGLY CLIENT OF THAT GENTLEMAN'S; AND SOMETHING CROSSES AN EMPTY ROOM.

'Here's a conspiracy with a vengeance!' muttered Toole, 'if a body could only make head or tail of it. Widow!--Eh!--We'll see: why, she's like no woman ever I saw. Mrs. Nutter, forsooth!' and he could not forbear laughing at the conceit. 'Poor Charles! 'tis ridiculous--though upon my life, I don't like it. It's just possible it may be all as true as gospel--they're the most devilish looking pair I've seen out of the dock--curse them--for many a day. I would not wonder if they were robbers. The widow looks consumedly like a man in petticoats--hey!--devilish like. I think I'll send Moran and Brien up to sleep to-night in the house. But, hang it! if they were, they would not come out in the daytime to give an alarm. Hollo! Moggy, throw me out one of them papers till I see what it's about.'

So he conned over the notice which provoked him, for he could not half understand it, and he was very curious.

'Well, keep it safe, Moggy,' said he. 'H'm--it does look like law business, after all, and I believe it is. No--they're not housebreakers, but robbers of another stamp--and a worse, I'll take my davy.'

'See,' said he, as a thought struck him, 'throw me down both of them papers again--there's a good girl. They ought to be looked after, I dare say, and I'll see the poor master's attorney to-day, d'ye mind? and we'll put our heads together--and, that's right--relict indeed!'

And, with a solemn injunction to keep doors locked and windows fast, and a nod and a wave of his hand to Mistress Moggy, and muttering half a sentence or an oath to himself, and wearying his imagination in search of a clue to this new perplexity, he buttoned his pocket over the legal documents, and strutted down to the village, where his nag awaited him saddled, and Jimmey walking him up and down before the doctor's hall-door.

Toole was bound upon a melancholy mission that morning. But though properly a minister of life, a doctor is also conversant with death, and inured to the sight of familiar faces in that remarkable disguise. So he spurred away with more coolness, though not less regret than another man, to throw what light he could upon the subject of the inquest which was to sit upon the body of poor Charles Nutter.

The little doctor, on his way to Ringsend, without the necessity of diverging to the right or left, drew bridle at the door of Mr. Luke Gamble, on the Blind Quay, attorney to the late Charles Nutter, and jumping to the ground, delivered a rattling summons thereupon.

It was a dusty, dreary, wainscoted old house--indeed, two old houses intermarried--with doors broken through the partition walls--the floors not all of a level--joined by steps up and down--and having three great staircases, that made it confusing. Through the windows it was not easy to see, such a fantastic mapping of thick dust and dirt coated the glass.

Luke Gamble, like the house, had seen better days. It was not his fault; but an absconding partner had well nigh been his ruin: and, though he paid their liabilities, it was with a strain, and left him a poor man, shattered his connexion, and made the house too large by a great deal for his business.

Doctor Toole came into the clerk's room, and was ushered by one of these gentlemen through an empty chamber into the attorney's sanctum. Up two steps stumbled the physician, cursing the house for a place where a gentleman was so much more likely to break his neck than his fast, and found old Gamble in his velvet cap and dressing-gown, in conference with a hard-faced, pale, and pock-marked elderly man, squinting unpleasantly under a black wig, who was narrating something slowly, and with effort, like a man whose memory is labouring to give up its dead, while the attorney, with his spectacles on his nose, was making notes. The speaker ceased abruptly, and turned his pallid visage and jealous, oblique eyes on the intruder.

Luke Gamble looked embarrassed, and shot one devilish angry glance at his clerk, and then made Doctor Toole very welcome.

When Toole had ended his narrative, and the attorney read the notices through, Mr. Gamble's countenance brightened, and darkened and brightened again, and with a very significant look, he said to the pale, unpleasant face, pitted with small-pox--

'M. M.,' and nodded.

His companion extended his hand toward the papers.

'Never mind,' said the attorney; 'there's that here will fix M. M. in a mighty tight vice.'

'And who's M. M., pray?' enquired Toole.

'When were these notices served, doctor?' asked Mr. Gamble.

'Not an hour ago; but, I say, who the plague's M. M.?' answered Toole.

'M. M.,' repeated the attorney, smiling grimly on the backs of the notices which lay on the table; 'why there's many queer things to be heard of M. M.; and the town, and the country, too, for that matter, is like to know a good deal more of her before long; and who served them--a process-server, or who?'

'Why, a fat, broad, bull-necked rascal, with a double chin, and a great round face, the colour of a bad suet-dumplin', and a black patch over his eye,' answered Toole.

'Very like--was he alone?' said Gamble.

'No--a long, sly she-devil in black, that looked as if she'd cut your windpipe, like a cat in the dark, as pale as paper, and mighty large, black, hollow eyes.'

'Ay--that's it,' said Gamble, who, during this dialogue, had thrown his morning-gown over the back of the chair, and got on his coat, and opened a little press in the wall, from which he took his wig, and so completed his toilet.

'That's it?' repeated Toole: 'what's it?--what's what?'

'Why, 'tis David O'Regan--Dirty Davy, as we call him. I never knew him yet in an honest case; and the woman's M. M.'

'Hey! to be sure--a woman--I know--I remember; and he was on the point of breaking out with poor Mrs. Macnamara's secret, but recovered in time. 'That's the she fortune-teller, the witch, M. M., Mary Matchwell; 'twas one of her printed cards, you know, was found lying in Sturk's blood. Dr. Sturk, you remember, that they issued a warrant for, against our poor friend, you know.'

'Ay, ay--poor Charles--poor Nutter. Are you going to the inquest?' said Gamble; and, on a sudden, stopped short, with a look of great fear, and a little beckon of his hand forward, as if he had seen something.

There was that in Gamble's change of countenance which startled Toole, who, seeing that his glance was directed through an open door at the other end of the room, skipped from his chair and peeped through it. There was nothing, however, visible but a tenebrose and empty passage.

'What did you see--eh? What frightens you?' said Toole. 'One would think you saw Nutter--like--like.'

Gamble looked horribly perturbed at these words.

'Shut it,' said he, nearing the door, on which Toole's hand rested. Toole took another peep, and did so.

'Why, there's nothing there--like--like the women down at the Mills there,' continued the doctor.

'What about the women?' enquired Gamble, not seeming to know very well what he was saying, agitated still--perhaps, intending to keep Toole talking.

'Why, the women--the maids, you know--poor Nutter's servants, down at the Mills. They swear he walks the house, and they'll have it they saw him last night.'

'Pish! Sir--'tis all conceit and vapours--women's fancies--a plague o' them all. And where's poor Mrs. Nutter?' said Gamble, clapping on his cocked-hat, and taking his cane, and stuffing two or three bundles of law papers into his coat pockets.

'At home--at the Mills. She slept at the village and so missed the ghost. The Macnamaras have been mighty kind. But when the news was told her this morning, poor thing, she would not stay, and went home; and there she is, poor little soul, breaking her heart.'

Mr. Gamble was not ceremonious; so he just threw a cursory and anxious glance round the room, clapped his hands on his coat pockets, making a bunch of keys ring somewhere deep in their caverns. And all being right--

'Come along, gentlemen,' says he, 'I'm going to lock the door;' and without looking behind him, he bolted forth abstractedly into his dusty ante-room.

'Get your cloak about you, Sir--remember your cough, you know--the air of the streets is sharp,' said he with a sly wink, to his ugly client, who hastily took the hint.

'Is that coach at the door?' bawled Gamble to his clerks in the next room, while he locked the door of his own snuggery behind him; and being satisfied it was so, he conducted the party out by a side door, avoiding the clerks' room, and so down stairs.

'Drive to the courts,' said the attorney to the coachman; and that was all Toole learned about it that day. So he mounted his nag, and resumed his journey to Ringsend at a brisk trot.

I suppose, when he turned the key in his door, and dropped it into his breeches' pocket, the gentleman attorney assumed that he had made everything perfectly safe in his private chamber, though Toole thought he had not looked quite the same again after that sudden change of countenance he had remarked.

Now, it was a darksome day, and the windows of Mr. Gamble's room were so obscured with cobwebs, dust, and dirt, that even on a sunny day they boasted no more than a dim religious light. But on this day a cheerful man would have asked for a pair of candles, to dissipate the twilight and sustain his spirits.

He had not been gone, and the room empty ten minutes, when the door through which he had seemed to look on that unknown something that dismayed him, opened softly--at first a little--then a little more--then came a knock at it--then it opened more, and the dark shape of Charles Nutter, with rigid features and white eye-balls, glided stealthily and crouching into the chamber, and halted at the table, and seemed to read the endorsements of the notices that lay there.

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Chapter LXXV

HOW A GENTLEMAN PAID A VISIT AT THE BRASS CASTLE, AND THERE READ A PARAGRAPH IN AN OLD NEWSPAPER.

Dangerfield was, after his wont, seated at his desk, writing letters, after his early breakfast, with his neatly-labelled accounts at his elbow. There was a pleasant frosty sun glittering through the twigs of the leafless shrubs, and flashing on the ripples and undulations of the Liffey, and the redbreasts and sparrows were picking up the crumbs which the housekeeper had thrown for them outside. He had just sealed the last of half-a-dozen letters, when the maid opened his parlour-door, and told him that a gentleman was at the hall-step, who wished to see him.

Dangerfield looked up with a quick glance--

'Eh?--to be sure. Show him in.'

And in a few seconds more, Mr. Mervyn, his countenance more than usually pale and sad, entered the room. He bowed low and gravely, as the servant announced him.

Dangerfield rose with a prompt smile, bowing also, and advanced with his hand extended, which, as a matter of form rather than of cordiality, his visitor took, coldly enough, in his.

'Happy to see you here, Mr. Mervyn--pray, take a chair--a charming morning for a turn by the river, Sir.'

'I have taken the liberty of visiting you, Mr. Dangerfield--'

'Your visit, Sir, I esteem an honour,' interposed the lord of the Brass Castle.

A slight and ceremonious bow from Mervyn, who continued--'For the purpose of asking you directly and plainly for some light upon a matter in which it is in the highest degree important I should be informed.'

'You may command me, Mr. Mervyn,' said Dangerfield, crossing his legs, throwing himself back, and adjusting himself to attention.

Mervyn fixed his dark eyes full and sternly upon that white and enigmatical face, with its round glass eyes and silver setting, and those delicate lines of scorn he had never observed before, traced about the mouth and nostril.

'Then, Sir, I venture to ask you for all you can disclose or relate about one Charles Archer.'

Dangerfield cocked his head on one side, quizzically, and smiled the faintest imaginable cynical smile.

'I can't disclose anything, for the gentleman never told me his secrets; but all I can relate is heartily at your service.'

'Can you point him out, Sir?' asked Mervyn, a little less sternly, for he saw no traces of a guilty knowledge in the severe countenance and prompt, unembarrassed manner of the gentleman who leaned back in his chair, with the clear bright light full on him, and his leg crossed so carelessly.

Dangerfield smiled, shook his head gently, and shrugged his shoulders the least thing in the world.

'Don't you know him, Sir?' demanded Mervyn.

'Why,' said Dangerfield, with his chin a little elevated, and the tips of his fingers all brought together, and his elbows resting easily upon the arms of his chair, and altogether an involuntary air of hauteur, 'Charles Archer, perhaps you're not aware, was not exactly the most reputable acquaintance in the world; and my knowledge of him was very slight indeed--wholly accidental--and of very short duration.'

'May I ask you, if, without leaving this town, you can lay your finger on him, Sir?'

'Why, not conveniently,' answered Dangerfield, with the same air of cynical amusement. ''Twould reach in that case all the way to Florence, and even then we should gain little by the discovery.'

'But you do know him?' pursued Mervyn.

'I did, Sir, though very slightly,' answered Dangerfield.

'And I'm given to understand, Sir, he's to be found occasionally in this town?' continued his visitor.

'There's just one man who sees him, and that's the parish clerk--what's his name?--Zekiel Irons--he sees him. Suppose we send down to his house, and fetch him here, and learn all about it?' said Dangerfield, who seemed mightily tickled by the whole thing.

'He left the town, Sir, last night; and I've reason to suspect, with a resolution of returning no more. And I must speak plainly, Mr. Dangerfield, 'tis no subject for trifling--the fame and fortune of a noble family depend on searching out the truth; and I'll lose my life, Sir, or I'll discover it.'

Still the old cynical, quizzical smile on Dangerfield's white face, who said encouragingly--

'Nobly resolved, Sir, upon my honour!'

'And Mr. Dangerfield, if you'll only lay yourself out to help me, with your great knowledge and subtlety--disclosing everything you know or conjecture, and putting me in train to discover the rest--so that I may fully clear this dreadful mystery up--there is no sacrifice of fortune I will not cheerfully make to recompense such immense services, and you may name with confidence your own terms, and think nothing exorbitant.'

For the first time Dangerfield's countenance actually darkened and grew stern, but Mervyn could not discern whether it was with anger or deep thought, and the round spectacles returned his intense gaze with a white reflected sheen, sightless as death.

But the stern mouth opened, and Dangerfield, in his harsh, brief tones, said--

'You speak without reflection, Sir, and had nigh made me lose my temper; but I pardon you; you're young, Sir, and besides, know probably little or nothing of me. Who are you, Sir, who thus think fit to address me, who am by blood and education as good a gentleman as any alive? The inducements you are pleased to offer--you may address elsewhere--they are not for me. I shall forget your imprudence, and answer frankly any questions, within my knowledge, you please to ask.'

Mervyn bowed apologetically, and a silence ensued; after which he thus availed himself of his host's permission to question him--

'You mentioned Irons, the clerk, Mr. Dangerfield, and said that he sees Charles Archer. Do you mean it?'

'Why, thus I mean it. He thinks he sees him; but, if he does, upon my honour, he sees a ghost,' and Dangerfield chuckled merrily.

'Pray, Mr. Dangerfield, consider me, and be serious, and in Heaven's name explain,' said Mervyn, speaking evidently in suppressed anguish.

'Why, you know--don't you? the poor fellow's not quite right here,' and he tapped the centre of his own towering forehead with the delicate tip of his white middle finger. 'I've seen a little of him; he's an angler, so am I; and he showed me the fishing of the river, here, last summer, and often amused me prodigiously. He's got some such very odd maggots! I don't say, mind ye, he's mad, there are many degrees, and he's quite a competent parish clerk. He's only wrong on a point or two, and one of them is Charles Archer. I believe for a while he thought you were he; and Dangerfield laughed his dry, hard chuckle.

'Where, Sir, do you suppose Charles Archer is now to be found?' urged Mervyn.

'Why, what remains of him, in Florence,' answered Dangerfield.

'You speak, Sir, as if you thought him dead.'

'Think? I know he's dead. I knew him but three weeks, and visited him in his sickness--was in his room half an hour before he died, and attended his funeral,' said Dangerfield.

'I implore of you, Sir, as you hope for mercy, don't trifle in this matter,' cried Mervyn, whose face was white, like that of a man about to swoon under an operation.

'Trifle! What d'ye mean, Sir?' barked out Dangerfield, rabidly.

'I mean, Sir, this--I've information he's positively living, and can relieve my father's memory from the horrible imputation that rests upon it. You know who I am!'

'Ay, Sir, Lord Castlemallard told me.'

'And my life I cheerfully devote to the task of seizing and tracing out the bloody clue of the labyrinth in which I'm lost.'

'Good--'tis a pious as well as a prudent resolve,' said Dangerfield, with a quiet sneer. 'And now, Sir, give me leave to say a word. Your information that Charles Archer is living, is not worth the breath of the madman that spoke it, as I'll presently show you. By an odd chance, Sir, I required this file of newspapers, last week, to help me in ascertaining the date of Sir Harry Wyatt's marriage. Well, only last night, what should I hit on but this. Will you please to read?'

He had turned over the pages rapidly, and then he stopped at this little piece of news packed up in a small paragraph at the bottom of a column, and, pointing his finger to it, he slid the volume of newspapers over to Mervyn, who read--

'Died on the 4th of August, of a lingering disease, at his lodgings in Florence, whither he had gone for the improvement of his health, Charles Archer, Esq., a gentleman who some three years since gave an exceeding clear evidence against Lord Dunoran, for the murder of Mr. Beauclerc, and was well known at Newmarket. His funeral, which was private, was attended by several English gentlemen, who were then at Florence.'

Mervyn, deadly pale, with gleaming eyes, and hand laid along his forehead, as if to screen off an insupportable light and concentrate his gaze upon the words, read and re-read these sentences with an agony of scrutiny such as no critic ever yet directed upon a disputed passage in his favourite classic. But there was no possibility of fastening any consolatory interpretation upon the paragraph. It was all too plain and outspoken.

''Tis possible this may be true--thus much. A Charles Archer is dead, and yet another Charles Archer, the object of my search, still living,' said Mervyn.

'Hey! that didn't strike me,' said Dangerfield, as much amused as was consistent with moderately good breeding. 'But I can quite account, Mr. Mervyn,' he continued, with a sudden change of tone and manner, to something almost of kindness, 'for your readiness to entertain any theory not quite destructive of hopes, which, notwithstanding, I fear, rest simply on the visions of that poor hypochondriac, Irons. But, for all that, 'tis just possible that something may strike either you or me in the matter not quite so romantic--hey? But still something.--You've not told me how the plague Charles Archer could possibly have served you. But on that point, perhaps, we can talk another time. I simply desire to say, that any experience or ability I may possess are heartily at your service whenever you please to task them, as my good wishes are already.'

So, stunned, and like a man walking in a dream--all his hopes shivered about his feet--Mervyn walked through the door of the little parlour in the Brass Castle, and Dangerfield, accompanying him to the little gate which gave admission from the high-road to that tenement, dismissed him there, with a bow and a pleasant smile; and, standing, for a while, wiry and erect, with his hands in his pockets, he followed him, as he paced dejectedly away, with the same peculiar smile.

When he was out of sight, Dangerfield returned to his parlour, smiling all the way, and stood on the hearthrug, with his back to the fire. When he was alone, a shadow came over his face, and he looked down on the fringe with a thoughtful scowl--his hands behind his back--and began adjusting and smoothing it with the toe of his shoe.

'Sot, fool, and poltroon--triple qualification for mischief--I don't know why he still lives. Irons--a new vista opens, and this d----d young man!' All this was not, as we sometimes read, 'mentally ejaculated,' but quite literally muttered, as I believe every one at times mutters to himself. 'Charles Archer living--Charles Archer dead--or, as I sometimes think, neither one nor t'other quite--half man, half corpse--a vampire--there is no rest for thee: no sabbath in the days of thy week. Blood, blood--blood--'tis tiresome. Why should I be a slave to these d----d secrets. I don't think 'tis my judgment, so much as the devil, holds me here. Irons has more brains than I--instinct--calculation--which is oftener right? Miss Gertrude Chattesworth, a mere whim, I think understood her game too. I'll deal with that to-morrow. I'll send Daxon the account, vouchers, and cheque for Lord Castlemallard--tell Smith to sell my horses, and, by the next packet--hey?' and he kissed his hand, with an odd smirk, like a gentleman making his adieux, 'and so leave those who court the acquaintance of Charles Archer, to find him out, and catch their Tartar how they may.'

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Chapter LXXVI

RELATING HOW THE CASTLE WAS TAKEN, AND HOW MISTRESS MOGGY TOOK HEART OF GRACE.

That evening there came to the door of the Mills, a damsel, with a wide basket on her arm, the covering of which being removed, a goodly show of laces, caps, fans, wash-balls, buckles, and other attractions, came out like a parterre of flowers, with such a glow as dazzled the eyes of Moggy, at the study window.

'Would you plaze to want any, my lady?' enquired the pedlar.

Moggy thought they were, perhaps, a little bit too fine for her purse, but she could not forbear longing and looking, and asking the prices of this bit of finery and that, at the window; and she called Betty, and the two maids conned over the whole contents of the basket.

At last she made an offer for an irresistible stay-hook of pinchbeck, set with half-a-dozen resplendent jewels of cut glass, and after considerable chaffering, and a keen encounter of their wits, they came at last to terms, and Moggy ran out to the kitchen for her money, which lay in a brass snuff-box, in a pewter goblet, on the dresser.

As she was counting her coin, and putting back what she did not want, the latch of the kitchen door was lifted from without, and the door itself pushed and shaken. Though the last red gleam of a stormy sunset was glittering among the ivy leaves round the kitchen window, the terrors of last night's apparition were revived in a moment, and, with a blanched face, she gazed on the door, expecting, breathlessly, what would come.

The door was bolted and locked on the inside, in accordance with Doctor Toole's solemn injunction; and there was no attempt to use violence. But a brisk knocking began thereat and Moggy, encouraged by hearing the voices of Betty and the vender of splendours at the little parlour window, and also by the amber sunlight on the rustling ivy leaves, and the loud evening gossip of the sparrows, took heart of grace, and demanded shrilly--

'Who's there?'

A whining beggar's voice asked admission.

'But you can't come in, for the house is shut up for the night, replied the cook.

''Tis a quare hour you lock your doors at,' said the besieger.

'Mighty quare, but so it is,' she answered.

'But 'tis a message for the misthress I have,' answered the applicant.

'Who from?' demanded the porteress.

''Tis a present o' some wine, acushla.'

'Who from?' repeated she, growing more uneasy.

'Auch! woman, are you going to take it in, or no?'

'Come in the morning, my good man,' said she, 'for sorrow a foot you'll put inside the house to-night.'

'An' that's what I'm to tell them that sent me.'

'Neither more nor less,' replied she.

And so she heard a heavy foot clank along the pavement, and she tried to catch a glimpse of the returning figure, but she could not, though she laid her cheek against the window-pane. However, she heard him whistling as he went, which gave her a better opinion of him, and she thought she heard the road gate shut after him.

So feeling relieved, and with a great sigh, she counted her money over; and answering Betty's shrill summons to the study, as the woman was in haste, with a 'Coming, coming this minute,' she replaced her treasure, and got swiftly into poor Charles Nutter's little chamber. There was his pipe over the chimney, and his green, and gold-laced Sunday waistcoat folded on the little walnut table by the fire, and his small folio, 'Maison Rustique, the Country Farme,' with his old green worsted purse set for a marker in it where he had left off reading the night before all their troubles began; and his silk dressing-gown was hanging by the window-frame, and his velvet morning-cap on the same peg--the dust had settled on them now. And after her fright in the kitchen, all these mementoes smote her with a grim sort of reproach and menace, and she wished the window barred, and the door of the ominous little chamber locked for the night.

''Tis growing late,' said the dealer from without, 'and I daren't be on the road after dark. Gi' me my money, good girl; and here, take your stay-hook.'

And so saying, she looked a little puzzled up and down, as not well knowing how they were to make their exchange.

'Here,' says Moggy, 'give it in here.' And removing the fastening, she shoved the window up a little bit. 'Hould it, Betty; hould it up,' said she. And in came the woman's hard, brown hand, palm open, for her money, and the other containing the jewel, after which the vain soul of Moggy lusted.

'That'll do,' said she; and crying shrilly, 'Give us a lift, sweetheart,' in a twinkling she shoved the window up, at the same time kneeling, with a spring, upon the sill, and getting her long leg into the room, with her shoulder under the window-sash, her foot firmly planted on the floor, and her face and head in the apartment. Almost at the same instant she was followed by an ill-looking fellow, buttoned up in a surtout, whose stature seemed enormous, and at sight of whom the two women shrieked as if soul and body were parting.

The lady was now quite in the room, and standing upright showed the tall shape and stern lineaments of Mary Matchwell. And as she stood she laughed a sort of shuddering laugh, like a person who had just had a plunge in cold water.

'Stop that noise,' said she, recognising Betty, who saw her with unspeakable terror. 'I'm the lady that came here, you know, some months ago, with Mrs. Macnamara; and I'm Mrs. Nutter, which the woman up stairs is not. I'm Mrs. Nutter, and you're my servants, do ye mind? and I'll act a fair mistress by you, if you do me honest service. Open the hall-door,' she said to the man, who was by this time also in the room. And forth he went to do her bidding, and a gentleman, who turned out to be that respectable pillar of the law whom Mr. Gamble in the morning had referred to as 'Dirty Davy,' entered. He was followed by Mrs. Mary Matchwell's maid, a giggling, cat-like gipsy, with a lot of gaudy finery about her, and a withered, devilment leering in her face; and a hackney-coach drove up to the door, which had conveyed the party from town; and the driver railing in loud tones, after the manner of his kind in old times, at all things, reeking of whiskey and stale tobacco, and cursing freely, pitched in several trunks, one after the other; and, in fact, it became perfectly clear that M. M. was taking possession. And Betty and Moggy, at their wits' end between terror and bewilderment, were altogether powerless to resist, and could only whimper a protest against the monstrous invasion, while poor little Sally Nutter up stairs, roused by the wild chorus of strange voices from the lethargy of her grief, and even spurred into active alarm, locked her door, and then hammered with a chair upon the floor, under a maniacal hallucination that she was calling I know not what or whom to the rescue.

Then Dirty Davy read aloud, with due emphasis, to the maids, copies, as he stated, of the affidavits sworn to that day by Mistress Mary Matchwell, or as he called her, Mrs. Nutter, relict of the late Charles Nutter, gentleman, of the Mills, in the parish of Chapelizod, barony of Castleknock, and county of Dublin, deposing to her marriage with the said Charles Nutter having been celebrated in the Church of St. Clement Danes, in London, on the 7th of April, 1750. And then came a copy of the marriage certificate, and then a statement how, believing that deceased had left no 'will' making any disposition of his property, or naming an executor, she applied to the Court of Prerogative for letters of administration to the deceased, which letters would be granted in a few days; and in the meantime the bereaved lady would remain in possession of the house and chattels of her late husband.

All this, of course, was so much 'Hebrew-Greek,' as honest Father Roach was wont to phrase it, to the scared women. But M. M.--[Greek: nykti eoikôst]--fixing them both with her cold and terrible gaze, said quite intelligibly--

'What's your name?'

'Moggy Sullivan, if you please, Ma'am.'

'And what's yours?'

'Lizabet--Betty they call me--Madam; Lizabet Burke, if you please, Madam.'

'Well, then, Moggy Sullivan and Elizabeth Burke, harkee both, while I tell you a thing. I'm mistress here by law, as you've just heard, and you're my servants; and if you so much as wind the jack or move a tea-cup, except as I tell you, I'll find a way to punish you; and if I miss to the value of a pin's head, I'll indict you for a felony, and have you whipped and burnt in the hand--you know what that means. And now, where's Mistress Sarah Harty? for she must pack and away.'

'Oh! Ma'am, jewel, the poor misthress.'

'I'm the mistress, slut.'

'Ma'am, dear, she's very bad.'

'Where is she?'

'In her room, Ma'am,' answered Betty, with blubbered cheeks.

'Where are you going, minx?' cried M. M., with a terrible voice and look, and striding toward the door, from which Moggy was about to escape.

Now, Moggy was a sort of heroine, not in the vain matter of beauty, for she had high cheek bones, a snub nose, and her figure had no more waist, or other feminine undulations, than the clock in the hall; but like that useful piece of furniture, presented an oblong parallelogram, unassisted by art; for, except on gala days, these homely maidens never sported hoops. But she was, nevertheless, a heroine of the Amazonian species. She tripped up Pat Morgan, and laid that athlete suddenly on his back, upon the grass plot before the hall door, to his eternal disgrace, when he 'offered' to kiss her, while the fiddler and tambourine-man were playing. She used to wring big boys by the ears; overawe fishwives with her voluble invective; put dangerous dogs to rout with sticks and stones, and evince, in all emergencies, an adventurous spirit and an alacrity for battle.

For her, indeed, as for others, the spell of 'M. M.'s' evil eye and witchlike presence was at first too much; but Moggy rallied, and, thus challenged, she turned about at the door and stoutly confronted the intruder.

'Minx, yourself, you black baste; I'm goin' just wherever it plases me best, and I'd like to know who'll stop me; and first, Ma'am, be your lave, I'll tell the mistress to lock her door, and keep you and your rake-helly squad at the wrong side of it, and then, Ma'am, wherever the fancy takes me next--and that's how it is, and my sarvice to your ladyship.'

Off went Moggy, with a leer of defiance and a snap of her fingers, cutting a clumsy caper, and rushed like a mad cow up the stairs, shouting all the way, 'Lock your door, Ma'am--lock your door.'

Growing two or three degrees whiter, M. M., so soon as she recovered herself, glided in pursuit, like the embodiment of an evil spirit, as perhaps she was, and with a gleam of insanity, or murder, in her eye, which always supervened when her wrath was moved.

The sullen face of the bailiff half lighted up with a cynical grin of expectation, for he saw that both ladies were game, and looked for a spirited encounter. But Dirty Davy spoiled all by interposing his person, and arresting the pursuit of his client, and delivering a wheezy expostulation close in her ear.

''Tis a strange thing if I can't do what I will with my own--fine laws, i'faith!'

'I only tell you, Madam, and if you do, it may embarrass us mightily by-and-by.'

'I'd wring her neck across the banister,' murmured M. M.

'An' now, plase your ladyship, will I bring your sarvice to the ladies and gentlemen down in the town, for 'tis there I'm going next,' said Moggy, popping in at the door, with a mock courtesy, and a pugnacious cock in her eye, and a look altogether so provoking and warlike as almost tempted the bailiff at the door to clap her on the back, and cry, had he spoken Latin, macte virtute puer!

'Catch the slut. You sha'n't budge--not a foot--hold her,' cried M. M. to the bailiff.

'Baugh!' was his answer.

'See, now,' said Davy, 'Madam Nutter's not serious--you're not, Ma'am? We don't detain you, mind. The door's open. There's no false imprisonment or duress, mind ye, thanking you all the same, Miss, for your offer. We won't detain you, ah, ah. No, I thank you. Chalk the road for the young lady, Mr. Redmond.'

And Davy fell to whisper energetically again in M. M.'s ear.

And Moggy disappeared. Straight down to the town she went, and to the friendly Dr. Toole's house, but he was not expected home from Dublin till morning. Then she had thoughts of going to the barrack, and applying for a company of soldiers, with a cannon, if necessary, to retake the Mills. Then she bethought her o' good Dr. Walsingham, but he was too simple to cope with such seasoned rogues. General Chattesworth was too far away, and not quite the man either, no more than Colonel Stafford; and the young beaux, 'them captains, and the like, 'id only be funnin' me, and knows nothing of law business.' So she pitched upon Father Roach.

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LXXVII. IN WHICH IRISH MELODY PREVAILS

Now, Father Roach's domicile was the first house in the Chapel-lane, which consisted altogether of two, not being very long. It showed a hall-door, painted green--the national hue--which enclosed, I'm happy to say, not a few of the national virtues, chief among which reigned hospitality. As Moggy turned the corner, and got out of the cold wind under its friendly shelter, she heard a stentorian voice, accompanied by the mellifluous drone of a bagpipe, concluding in a highly decorative style the last verse of the 'Colleen Rue.'

Respect for this celestial melody, and a desire to hear a little more of what might follow, held Moggy on the steps, with the knocker between her finger and thumb, unwilling to disturb by an unseasonable summons the harmonies from which she was, in fact, separated only by the thickness of the window and its shutter. And when the vocal and instrumental music came to an end together with a prolonged and indescribable groan and a grunt from the songster and the instrument, there broke forth a shrilly chorus of female cackle, some in admiration and some in laughter; and the voice of Father Roach was heard lustily and melodiously ejaculating 'More power to you, Pat Mahony!'

As this pleasant party all talked together, and Moggy could not clearly unravel a single sentence, she made up her mind to wait no longer, and knocked with good emphasis, under cover of the uproar.

The maid, who had evidently been in the hall, almost instantaneously opened the door; and with a hasty welcome full of giggle and excitement, pulled in Moggy by the arm, shutting the door after her; and each damsel asked the other, 'An' how are you, and are you elegant?' and shaking her neighbour by both hands. The clerical handmaid, in a galloping whisper in Moggy's ear, told her,' 'Twas a weddin' party, and such tarin' fun she never see--sich dancin' and singin', and laughin' and funnin'; and she must wait a bit, and see the quality,' a portion of whom, indeed, were visible as well as over-poweringly audible, through the half-open door of the front parlour; 'and there was to be a thunderin' fine supper--a round of beef and two geese, and a tubful of oysters,' &c, &c.

Now I must mention that this feast was, in fact, in its own way, more romantically wonderful than that of the celebrated wedding of Camacho the Rich, and one of the many hundred proofs I've met with in the course of my long pilgrimage that the honest prose of everyday life is often ten times more surprising than the unsubstantial fictions of even the best epic poets.

The valiant Sir Jaufry, it is true, was ordered to a dungeon by the fair Brunissende, who so soon as she beheld him, nevertheless became enamoured of the knight, and gave him finally her hand in wedlock. But if the fair Brunissende had been five and forty, or by'r lady, fifty, the widow of a tailor, herself wondrous keen after money, and stung very nigh to madness by the preposterous balance due (as per ledger), and the inexhaustible and ingenious dodges executed by the insolvent Sir Jaufry, the composer of that chivalric romance might have shrunk from the happy winding-up as bordering too nearly upon the incredible.

Yet good Father Roach understood human nature better. Man and woman have a tendency to fuse. And given a good-looking fellow and a woman, no matter of what age, who but deserves the name, and bring them together, and let the hero but have proper opportunities, and deuce is in it if nothing comes of the matter. Animosity is no impediment. On the contrary 'tis a more advantageous opening than indifference. The Cid began his courtship by shooting his lady-love's pigeons, and putting her into a pet and a frenzy. The Cid knew what he was about. Stir no matter what passions, provided they be passions, and get your image well into your lady's head, and you may repeat, with like success, the wooing (which superficial people pronounce so unnatural) of crook-backed Richard and the Lady Anne. Of course, there are limits. I would not advise, for instance, a fat elderly gentleman, bald, carbuncled, dull of wit, and slow of speech, to hazard that particular method, lest he should find himself the worse of his experiment. My counsel is for the young, the tolerably good-looking, for murmuring orators of the silver-tongue family, and romantic athletes with coaxing ways.

Worthy Father Roach constituted himself internuncio between Mahony, whom we remember first in his pride of place doing the honours of that feast of Mars in which his 'friend' Nutter was to have carved up the great O'Flaherty on the Fifteen Acres, and next, quantum, mutatus ab illo! a helpless but manly captive in the hands of the Dublin bailiffs, and that very Mrs. Elizabeth Woolly, relict and sole executrix of the late Timotheus Woolly, of High-street, tailor, &c., &c., who was the cruel cause of his incarceration.

Good Father Roach, though a paragon of celibacy, was of a gallant temperament, and a wheedling tongue, and unfolded before the offended eye of the insulted and vindictive executrix so interesting a picture of 'his noble young friend, the victim of circumstance, breaking his manly heart over his follies and misfortunes;' and looking upon her, Mrs. Woolly, afar off, with an eye full of melancholy and awe, tempered with, mayhap, somewhat of romantic gallantry, like Sir Walter Raleigh from the Tower window on Queen Elizabeth, that he at length persuaded the tremendous 'relict' to visit her captive in his dungeon. This she did, in a severe mood, with her attorney, and good Father Roach; and though Mahony's statement was declamatory rather than precise, and dealt more with his feelings than his resources, and was carried on more in the way of an appeal to the 'leedy' than as an exposition to the man of law, leaving matters at the end in certainly no clearer state than before he began, yet the executrix consented to see the imprisoned youth once more, this time dispensing with her attorney's attendance, and content with the protection of the priest, and even upon that, on some subsequent visits, she did not insist.

And so the affair, like one of those medleys of our Irish melodies arranged by poor M. Jullien, starting with a martial air, breathing turf and thunder, fire and sword, went off imperceptibly into a pathetic and amorous strain. Father Roach, still officiating as internuncio, found the dowager less and less impracticable, and at length a treaty was happily concluded. The captive came forth to wear thenceforward those lighter chains only, which are forged by Hymen and wreathed with roses; and the lady applied to his old promissory notes the torch of love, which in a moment reduced them to ashes. And here, at the hermitage of our jolly Chapelizod priest--for bride and bridegroom were alike of the 'ancient faith'--the treaty was ratified, and the bagpipe and the bridegroom, in tremendous unison, splitting the rafters with 'Hymen, Hymen, O Hymenoee!'

In the midst of this festive celebration, his reverence was summoned to the hall, already perfumed with the incense of the geese, the onions, the bacon browned at the kitchen-fire, and various other delicacies, toned and enriched by the vapours that exhaled from the little bottle of punch which, in consideration of his fatigues, stood by the elbow of the piper.

When the holy man had heard Moggy's tale, he scratched his tonsure and looked, I must say, confoundedly bored.

'Now, Moggy, my child, don't you see, acushla, 'tisn't to me you should ha' come; I'm here, my dear, engaged,' and he dried his moist and rubicund countenance, 'in one of the sacred offices iv the Church, the sacrament, my dear, iv'--here Mahony and the piper struck up again in so loud a key in the parlour, that as Moggy afterwards observed, 'they could not hear their own ears,' and the conclusion of the sentence was overwhelmed in, 'Many's the bottle I cracked in my time.' So his reverence impatiently beckoned to the hall-door, which he opened, and on the steps, where he was able to make himself audible, he explained the nature of his present engagement, and referred her to Doctor Toole. Assured, however, that he was in Dublin, he scratched his tonsure once more.

'The divil burn the lot o' them, my dear, an' purty evenin' they chose for their vagaries--an' law papers too, you say, an' an attorney into the bargain--there's no influence you can bring to bear on them fellows. If 'twas another man, an' a couple more at his back, myself an' Pat Moran 'id wallop them out of the house, an' into the river, be gannies; as aisy as say an ave.'

The illustration, it occurred to him, might possibly strike Moggy as irreverent, and the worthy father paused, and, with upturned eyes, murmured a Latin ejaculation, crossing himself; and having thus reasserted his clerical character, he proceeded to demonstrate the uselessness of his going.

But Father Roach, though sometimes a little bit testy, and, on the whole, not without faults, was as good-natured an anchorite as ever said mass or brewed a contemplative bowl of punch. If he refused to go down to the Mills, he would not have been comfortable again that night, nor indeed for a week to come. So, with a sigh, he made up his mind, got quietly into his surtout and mufflers which hung on the peg behind the hall-door, clapped on his hat, grasped his stout oak stick, and telling his housekeeper to let them know, in case his guests should miss him, that he was obliged to go out for ten minutes or so on parish business, forth sallied the stout priest, with no great appetite for knight-errantry, but still anxious to rescue, if so it might be, the distressed princess, begirt with giants and enchanters, at the Mills.

At the Salmon House he enlisted the stalworth Paddy Moran, with the information conveyed to that surprised reveller, that he was to sleep at 'Mrs. Nutter's house' that night; and so, at a brisk pace, the clerical knight, his squire, and demoiselle-errant, proceeded to the Mills.

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Chapter LXXVIII

IN WHICH, WHILE THE HARMONY CONTINUES IN FATHER ROACH'S FRONT PARLOUR, A FEW DISCORDS ARE INTRODUCED ELSEWHERE; AND DOCTOR TOOLE ARRIVES IN THE MORNING WITH A MARVELLOUS BUDGET OF NEWS.

The good people who had established themselves in poor Nutter's domicile did not appear at all disconcerted by the priest's summons. His knock at the hall-door was attended to with the most consummate assurance by M. M.'s maid, just as if the premises had belonged to her mistress all her days.

Between this hussy and his reverence, who was in no mood to be trifled with, there occurred in the hall some very pretty sparring, which ended by his being ushered into the parlour, where sat Mistress Matchwell and Dirty Davy, the 'tea-things' on the table, and an odour more potent than that of the Chinese aroma circulating agreeably through the chamber.

I need not report the dialogue of the parties, showing how the honest priest maintained, under sore trial, his character for politeness while addressing a lady, and how he indemnified himself in the style in which he 'discoorsed' the attorney; how his language fluctuated between the persuasively religious and the horribly profane; and how, at one crisis in the conversation, although he had self-command enough to bow to the matron, he was on the point of cracking the lawyer's crown with the fine specimen of Irish oak which he carried in his hand, and, in fact, nothing but his prudent respect for that gentleman's cloth prevented his doing so.

'But supposin', Ma'am,' said his reverence, referring to the astounding allegation of her marriage with Nutter; 'for the sake of argumint, it should turn out to be so, in coorse you would not like to turn the poor woman out iv doors, without a penny in her pocket, to beg her bread?'

'Your friend up stairs, Sir, intended playing the lady for the rest of her days,' answered M. M., with a cat-like demureness, sly and cruel, 'at my cost and to my sorrow. For twenty long years, or nigh hand it, she has lived with my husband, consuming my substance, and keeping me in penury. What did she allow me all that time?--not so much as that crust--ha! ha!--no, not even allowed my husband to write me a line, or send me a shilling. I suppose she owes me for her maintenance here--in my house, out of my property--fully two thousand pounds. Make money of that, Sir;--and my lawyer advises me to make her pay it.'

'Or rather to make her account, Ma'am; or you will, if she's disposed to act fairly, take anything you may be advised, to be reasonable and equitable, Ma'am,' interposed Dirty Davy.

'That's it,' resumed Madam Mary. 'I don't want her four bones. Let her make up one thousand pounds--that's reason, Sir--and I'll forgive her the remainder. But if she won't, then to gaol I'll send her, and there she may rot for me.'

'You persave, Sir,' continued the attorney; 'your client--I mane your friend--has fixed herself in the character of an agent--all the late gintleman's money, you see, went through her hands--an agent or a steward to Charles Nutther, desased--an' a coort iv equity'll hould her liable to account, ye see; an' we know well enough what money's past through her hands annually--an' whatever she can prove to have been honestly applied, we'll be quite willin' to allow; but, you see, we must have the balance!'

'Balance!' said the priest, incensed beyond endurance; 'if you stay balancin' here, my joker, much longer, you'll run a raysonable risk of balancin' by the neck out iv one of them trees before the doore.'

'So you're threatenin' my life, Sir!' said the attorney, with a sly defiance.

'You lie like the divil, Sir--savin' your presence, Ma'am. Don't you know the differ, Sir, between a threat an' a warnin', you bosthoon?' thundered his reverence.

'You're sthrivin' to provoke me to a brache iv the pace, as the company can testify,' said Dirty Davy.

'Ye lie again, you--you fat crature--'tis thryin' to provoke you to keep the pace I am. Listen to me, the both o' yez--the leedy up stairs, the misthress iv this house, and widow of poor Charles Nutter--Mrs. Sally Nutther, I say--is well liked in the parish; an' if they get the wind o' the word, all I say 's this--so sure as you're found here houldin' wrongful possession of her house an' goods, the boys iv Palmerstown, Castleknock, and Chapelizod will pay yez a visit you won't like, and duck yez in the river, or hang yez together, like a pair of common robbers, as you unquestionably are--not,' he added, with a sudden sense of legal liability.

'Who's that?' demanded the lynx-eyed lady, who saw Pat Moran cross the door in the shadow of the lobby.

'That's Mr. Moran, a most respectable and muscular man, come here to keep possession, Madam, for Mrs. Sally Nutther, our good friend and neighbour, Ma'am,' replied the priest.

'As you plase, Sir,' replied the attorney; 'you're tumblin' yourself and your friend into a nice predicament--as good a consthructive ousther, vi et armis, as my client could possibly desire. Av coorse, Sir, we'll seek compensation in the regular way for this violent threspass; and we have you criminally, you'll obsarve, no less than civilly.'

'Now, look--onderstand me--don't affect to misteek, av you plase,' said the priest, not very clear or comfortable, for he had before had one or two brushes with the law, and the recollection was disagreeable: 'I--Mr. Moran--we're here, Sir--the both iv us, as you see--pacibly--and--and--all to that--and at the request of Mrs. Sally Nutther--mind that, too--at her special desire--an' I tell you what's more--if you make any row here--do you mind--I'll come down with the magisthrate an' the soldiers, an' lave it to them to dale with you accordin'--mind ye--to law an' equity, civil, human, criminal, an' divine--an' make money o' that, ye--ye--mountain in labour--savin' your presence, Ma'am.'

'I thank you--that'll do, Sir,' said the lawyer, with a lazy chuckle.

'I'll now do myself the honour to make my compliments to Mrs. Sally Nutther,' said Father Roach, making a solemn bow to Mrs. Matchwell, who, with a shrill sneer, pursued him as he disappeared with--

'The lady in the bed-room, your reverence?'

Whereat Dirty Davy renewed his wheezy chuckle.

Nothing daunted, the indignant divine stumped resolutely up stairs, and found poor Sally Nutter, to whose room he was joyfully admitted by honest Betty, who knew his soft honest brogue in a panic, the violence of which had almost superseded her grief. So he consoled and fortified the poor lady as well as he could, and when she urged him to remain in the house all night.

'My dear Ma'am,' says he, lifting his hand and shaking his head, with closed eyes, 'you forget my ca_rac_ter. Why, the house is full iv faymales. My darlin' Mrs. Nutther, I--I couldn't enthertain sich an idaya; and, besides,' said he, with sudden energy, recollecting that the goose might be overdone, 'there's a religious duty, my dear Ma'am--the holy sacrament waitin'--a pair to be married; but Pat Moran will keep them quiet till mornin,' and I'll be down myself to see you then. So my sarvice to you, Mrs. Nutther, and God bless you, my dear Ma'am.'

And with this valediction the priest departed, and from the road he looked back at the familiar outline of the Mills, and its thick clumps of chimneys, and two twinkling lights, and thought of the horrible and sudden change that had passed over the place and the inmates, and how a dreadful curse had scathed them: making it, till lately the scene of comfort and tranquillity, to become the hold of every foul spirit, and the cage of every unclean and hateful bird.

Doctor Toole arrived at ten o'clock next morning, with news that shook the village. The inquest was postponed to the evening, to secure the attendance of some witnesses, who could throw a light, it was thought, on the enquiry. Then Doctor Toole was examined, and identified the body at first, confidently.

'But,' said he, in the great parlour of the Phoenix, where he held forth, 'though the features were as like as two eggs, it struck me the forehead was a thought broader. So, said I, I can set the matter at rest in five minutes. Charles Nutter's left upper arm was broken midway, and I set it; there would be the usual deposit where the bone knit, and he had a sword thrust through his right shoulder, cicatrised, and very well defined; and he had lost two under-teeth. Well, the teeth were gone, but three instead of two, and on laying the arm-bone bare, 'twas plain it had never been broken, and, in like manner, nothing wrong with the right shoulder, and there was nothing like so much deltoid and biceps as Nutter had. So says I, at once, be that body whose it may, 'tis none of Charles Nutter's, and to that I swear, gentlemen; and I had hardly made an end when 'twas identified for the corpse of the French hair-dresser, newly arrived from Paris, who was crossing the Liffey, on Tuesday night, you remember, at the old ferry-boat slip, and fell in and was drowned. So that part of the story's ended.

'But, gentlemen,' continued Toole, with the important and resolute bearing of a man who has a startling announcement to make, 'I am sorry to have to tell you that poor Charles Nutter's in gaol.'

In gaol! was echoed in all sorts of tones from his auditory, with an abundance of profane ejaculations of wonderment, concern, and horror.

'Ay, gentlemen, in the body of the gaol.'

Then it came out that Nutter had been arrested that very morning, in a sedan-chair, at the end of Cook Street, and was now in the county prison awaiting his trial; and that, no doubt, bail would be refused, which, indeed, turned out truly.

So, when all these amazing events had been thoroughly discussed, the little gathering dispersed to blaze them abroad, and Toole wrote to Mr. Gamble, to tell him that the person, Mary Matchwell, claiming to be the wife of Charles Nutter, has established herself at the Mills, and is disposed to be troublesome, and terrifies poor Mrs. Sally Nutter, who is ill; it would be a charity to come out, and direct measures. I know not what ought to be done, though confident her claim is a bag of moonshine and lies, and, if not stopped, she'll make away with the goods and furniture, which is mighty hard upon this unfortunate lady,' etc., etc.

'That Mary Matchwell, as I think, ought to be in gaol for the assault on Sturk; her card, you know, was found in the mud beside him, and she's fit for any devil's work.'

This was addressed by Toole to his good wife.

'That card? said Jimmey, who happened to be triturating a powder in the corner for little Master Barney Sturk, and who suspended operations, and spoke with the pestle in his fingers, and a very cunning leer on his sharp features: 'I know all about that card.'

'You do--do you? and why didn't you spake out long ago, you vagabond?' said Toole. 'Well, then! come now!--what's in your knowledge-box?--out with it.'

'Why, I had that card in my hand the night Mr. Nutter went off.'

'Well?--go on.'

''Twas in the hall at the Mills, Sir; I knew it again at the Barracks the minute I seen it.'

'Why, 'tis a printed card--there's hundreds of them--how d'ye know one from t'other, wisehead?'

'Why, Sir, 'twas how this one was walked on, and the letter M. in Mary was tore across, an' on the back was writ, in red ink, for Mrs. Macnamara, and they could not read it down at the Barracks, because the wet had got at it, and the end was mostly washed away, and they thought it was MacNally, or MacIntire; but I knew it the minute I seen it.'

'Well, my tight little fellow, and what the dickens has all that to do with the matter?' asked Toole, growing uneasy.

'The dickens a much, I believe, Sir; only as Mr. Nutter was goin' out he snatched it out o' my hand--in the hall there--and stuffed it into his pocket.'

'You did not tell that lying story, did you, about the town, you mischievous young spalpeen?' demanded the doctor, shaking his disciple rather roughly by the arm.

'No--I--I didn't--I did not tell, Sir--what is it to me?' answered the boy, frightened.

'You didn't tell--not you, truly. I lay you a tenpenny-bit there isn't a tattler in the town but has the story by rote--a pretty kettle o' fish you'll make of it, with your meddling and lying. If 'twas true, 'twould be another matter, but--hold your tongue;--how the plague are you to know one card from another when they're all alike, and Mrs. Macnamara, Mrs. Macfiddle. I suppose you can read better than the adjutant, ha, ha! Well, mind my words, you've got yourself into a pretty predicament; I'd walk twice from this to the county court-house and back again, only to look at it; a pleasant cross-hackling the counsellors will give you, and if you prevaricate--you know what that is, my boy--the judge will make short work with you, and you may cool your heels in gaol as long as he pleases, for me.'

'And, look'ee,' said Toole, returning, for he was going out, as he generally did, whenever he was profoundly ruffled; 'you remember the affidavit-man that was whipped and pilloried this time two years for perjury, eh? Look to it, my fine fellow. There's more than me knows how Mr. Nutter threatened to cane you that night--and a good turn 'twould have been--and 'twouldn't take much to persuade an honest jury that you wanted to pay him off for that by putting a nail in his coffin, you young miscreant! Go on--do--and I promise you'll get an airing yet you'll not like--you will.'

And so Toole, with a wag of his head, and a grin over his shoulder, strutted out into the village street, where he was seen, with a pursed mouth, and a flushed visage, to make a vicious cut or two with his cane in the air as he walked along. And it must be allowed that Master Jimmey's reflections were a little confused and uncomfortable, as he pondered over the past and the future with the pestle in his fingers and the doctor's awful words ringing in his ears.

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