XITHE OLD TOWN HOUSE
Ona certain damp October evening in Dublin, not very long ago, a tall girl of two and twenty stood by Nelson’s pillar, obviously awaiting the arrival of a tram; her threadbare waterproof, and rusty felt hat, hinted at a low exchequer, and were but a mean accompaniment to a pair of splendid grey eyes and a brilliant complexion; in fact, such an attractive and arresting face was not often to be encountered even in a city justly celebrated for its pretty women. Tram after tram arrived, discharged passengers, and departed crammed to the doors, but still the girl’s friend came not.
At last “Patience at the foot of a monument” hadits reward. An active, curly-headed young man sprang from a still-moving Donnybrook car, and hastened to join her with outstretched hands.
“I am most frightfully sorry, Bridge,” he began; “could not get off till now—such a heavy day at the Bank. I got your note.”
“Oh, it’s all right,” she answered cheerfully, “I just wanted to have a little talk with you about Granny.”
“Yes, so you said,” he assented, as they turned out of the crowd, and walked away at a brisk pace in the direction of Rutland Square.
Denis D’Arcy and Bridget Doyne had known one another all their lives; their people came from the same county, and were distantly connected. The D’Arcys were a military race, and had gained more glory than gold; the Doynes of Castle Doyne, on the contrary, owned a vast estate, and were once renowned for keeping hounds and racehorses, and dispensing the almost princely hospitality of old times. Both the D’Arcys and Doynes had come down in the world by many and painful degrees; their names were almost forgotten, and their places knew them no more. These two were the last representatives of the D’Arcy and Doyne families; one was a bank clerk at a salary of a hundred and twenty pounds a year; the other lived with her grandmother, an old lady of eighty, whose exquisite needlework brought them a little bread and tea, whilst the girl herself gave sixpenny music-lessons in their humble neighbourhood, and read the daily papers to a blind old gentleman, and for her services received three shillings a week.
In spite of their poor circumstances and shabby clothes, the young couple presented a surprisingly contented appearance, as they hurried along through the soft autumn mist. The pair were engaged, and deeply in love with one another; the mere fact ofbeing together stood for complete, if transitory, happiness.
“You say that Granny wishes to see me most particularly,” said D’Arcy; “have you any idea what it’s about?—has anything extra happened?”
“Yes, Denis, to both your questions. We have come to an acute financial crisis—that is not new—and Mr. Eale, the solicitor, has been to call on Gran, and made himself most odious, and disagreeable. He threatens all sorts of things.”
“Eale is a ‘shark lawyer’—a rich rascal who gets his living by money-lending, taking up shady cases, and grinding the faces of the poor. Granny should not have anything to do with such a rotter—or let him inside her doors.”
“I know, and I cannot bear the sight of him,” replied Bridget. “As to Granny’s door, there is no real door in a tenement house; and he stalks down our passage, raps with his stick, and drops in about once a week. He brought Gran a basket of grapes the other day—wesoldthem!”
“Granny should have flung them at his head, and she would—if she knew as much about him as I do.”
“I’m pretty sure she knows something of him now; he came yesterday, and stayed over an hour. I kept away all the time, and after he had gone I found Gran crying. Denis,” and she hesitated for a moment, “it’s terrible to see an old person cry! Oh, look—here is Mr. Eale coming out of Mountjoy Square!”
“Talk of the devil—so he is! Ah, he funks meeting us. See, he has crossed the road, and is going into one of those houses.”
Mr. Eale was a short, thick-set individual of about fifty, with heavy brows and a square jaw; he looked well dressed and prosperous, and walked with a sort of swaggering strut. He glanced over his shoulder ashe waited on the doorstep, and threw the young couple a baleful glare.
Old Mrs. Doyne had known a grave change of fortune; from mistress of a fine country place she had sunk by gradual but irresistible forces to two bare rooms, in what had once been the town house of the Doynes, and here she eked out a precarious livelihood with her wonderfully clever fingers. The slow descent had taken fifty years to accomplish; gradual and almost imperceptible at first; the latter phase a breathless rush. Sophia Doyne was a proud woman, and had taken extraordinary pains to hide her troubles and whereabouts from her few surviving friends, who had a vague impression that “Sophy Doyne and her granddaughter lived somewhere in England,” or even that the old lady was already dead!
The family mansion, which was situated in the neighbourhood of Mountjoy Square, had once upon a time been one of the finest houses on the north side. Who would think so, to behold it now! The rusty area railings were bent and broken, the areas littered with old hampers, tin cans, and broken crockery; the hall door stood wide, and half a dozen noisy children were playing hop-scotch in the great flagged vestibule. Beyond this, a pair of double doors had once opened into a smaller hall, but the doors of handsome mahogany were now in America. A great winding staircase with shallow stone steps led up to the drawing-rooms—from which now descended an overpowering odour of bad tobacco, and fried herrings. The walls of both halls and staircase were of stucco, very dirty and discoloured, but an exquisite frieze still survived, and gave an impression of processions ofbeautifully modelled classical figures—mostly in a condition of unassuming nudity!
Miss Doyne and her companion did not ascend to the first floor, but turned into a long flagged passage—papered with a hideous stone-grey pattern—out of which opened several rooms. In the first of these, Mrs. Doyne was discovered seated at a large mahogany table which was strewn with skeins of silks and ragged paper patterns. By the light of an old-fashioned lamp, she was busily engaged in embroidering an exquisite tea-cloth in various shades of blue.
As she raised her eyes, when the door opened, it was pitiful to see their faded colour, and red-rimmed lids—the toll of work and tears. A cap of real lace crowned her white hair, and a little knitted shawl was closely drawn round her bent shoulders. The old lady was woefully small and shrunken, but she had delicate features, and, for all her squalid surroundings, a certain air of distinction.
“Oh, Denis,” she exclaimed, “I’m mighty glad to see you. Take off your coat and warm yourself.” Then, looking over her shoulder, “Faith, I forgot; there’s no fire! We are a bit short of coal, and I can’t stand the smell of that oil stove—though it boils a kettle. Biddy, my heart, will you go and get tea, and make us a bit of toast at the end of the passage? That is, as you know,” to D’Arcy, “our kitchen.”
“Shall I lend a hand?”
“No, no, you stay with me, Denis; you’ll only hinder her. Biddy’s a grand maid-of-all-work, since poor Peggy died.”
“Poor Peggy!—she must have been a great age—though she always looked the same, as long as I can remember.”
“That’s only six and twenty years, and Peggy was over ninety; she was active to the last, but her mindwas gone—she could not remember anything, except what happened fifty years ago.”
“Yes,” agreed Bridget, “and she was always telling us that somewhere or other there was what was called ‘a power of money’ in this house!”
“A house as bare as a picked bone,” said Mrs. Doyne; “but Bridgie, my dear, why are you not getting the tea?”
As soon as she had left the room, the old lady put down her work, and, looking at Denis over her spectacles, said:
“That Eale man has been coming here pretty often lately with one excuse or other.”
“So I’ve heard. What does he want?”
“He wants to marry Bridget.”
“What!” shouted D’Arcy.
“Yes, he made me a regular formal offer, sitting there in the same chair just where you are now. He said he could give his wife a fine house out on Lansdowne Road, and a motor—and make me a liberal allowance.” She paused.
“And what didyousay?”
“Nothing. It takes a good deal now to make me laugh, but I laughed till I nearly choked, and couldn’t speak; at last I said, ‘So this is the reason of your visits, and the presents of grapes.’ He nodded quite at his ease. ‘Do you know who my granddaughter is?’ I asked, and he said:
“‘Oh yes, a girl without a second gown to her back, who gives the greengrocer’s children lessons for sixpence an hour.’
“‘That’s true,’ I agreed, ‘but she is a Doyne of Castle Doyne; her grandfather was High Sheriff of the county.’
“‘And her grandmother does her own washing,’ he put in, as rude as could be.
“‘She does,’ I replied, ‘and your grandmotherwasherkitchenmaid; but this sort of talk is foolish. My granddaughter is engaged to Mr. D’Arcy—one of her own class.’
“‘Then she’s a mad fool!’ he roared. He was furious, and, indeed, so was I. There was not a pin to choose between us; he said so many hateful things that at last I told him to go, and never again darken my doors.
“‘These doors are mine,’ he said, ‘and it is you who will go—not me. I’ve, as you know, a mortgage on this old barrack. I’ve not had a penny interest for two years; it’s a case of five hundred pounds, and interest, cash down, within a month, or I turn you into the street, you and your stuck-up lunatic of a granddaughter.’
“‘Well,’ I answered, ‘it’s the street foryouto-day,’ and I got up and curtsied him out.”
“That was all right.”
“He will pay me back. I saw it in his face. Within four weeks I’ll have no home, for where am I to get five hundred pounds?” and she cast her eyes round the room, which was not large, but lofty, well-proportioned, and furnished with a few chairs, a decrepit sideboard, and black horsehair sofa.
“I stripped the house soon after we came here six years ago. I sold every mortal thing I could sell, to a dealer, I was so hard-set for ready money. The mahogany doors in the hall, dining-room, and upstairs, the two beautiful marble chimney-pieces in the drawing-room, the door-plates, and the French mirrors let into the walls between the windows; the whole place was terribly hacked and knocked about. Now there is nothing left; I’ve come to the end of everything, my dear boy. You know our circumstances just as well as I do myself—how my husband’s grandfather lived like a king, and got his wine and his furniture from France, and drove four horses. Hewas an attaché in Paris as a young man, and spoke French like a native. The next Doyne fell on worse times, and his mother Madame lived here in shameless extravagance and debt. After she died, the furniture was sold and the house let, till the north side went down, and this, and many another fine mansion, were left to rats and ruin.”
“Yes, that’s true, and more’s the pity.”
“When I was a bride at Castle Doyne I had my carriage, and a houseful of servants, but we found debts, and mortgages, and heavy jointures, small rents, and bad times; it was all we could do to educate Bridget’s father, and get him into the Army. He went to India, and then he married a girl without a penny, and they died and left me the child—and here I am, an old blind pauper.”
“For goodness’ sake stop your eternal needle,” said the young man suddenly. “Do give your poor eyes a rest. I can’t bear to see you sewing so hard, and always sewing.”
“There will soon be an end,” she replied, spreading out the embroidered border. “This is my last piece; and here is what I’m coming to, and why I want to talk to you privately. You told me you had a good chance of a post, as cashier in an Indian bank; they would pay your passage out, and give a much better salary?”
He nodded.
“Well, Denis, you must accept, and marry Bridget, and take her away with you. She’s a clever manager, and will make one rupee go as far as two. You are both young, and have, I hope, many happy years before you.”
“And what about you?”
The old lady suddenly laid down her work, and, leaning over the table, whispered:
“Don’t be horrified—I shall go into the North Dublin Union.”
“Never! never! never!” he rejoined, with emphasis.
“Hush—yes, I shall! What does it matter? Who will know? If old Peg was alive it would be different. I dared not have taken her there—she’d feel it. Nowmyfeelings are dead. I’m old; my race is run. I’ve outlived my contemporaries, and the only thing I really and truly care for is Bridget’s future—and yours.”
“You don’t suppose we should be happy out in India, knowing we had deserted you, and left you in a poor-house! Come, now—do you?”
“I won’t be a clog——”
Whatever she was about to add was interrupted by the sound of a muffled kick on the door. D’Arcy sprang to open it, and admitted Bridget looking rather flushed, and carrying the tea-things on a battered black tray.
“Oh, such a job to make the kettle boil!” she announced, setting it down. “What have you two been plotting?” and she looked from one to the other.
“Your Granny’s plans,” replied the young man mendaciously. “If she is turned out from here, there are two rooms to let in my diggings in Lower Gardiner Street—cheap, too, and a fine old wreck of a house, next a pawnbroker’s—if you won’t mind that?”
“Not at all—it would be mighty convenient,” rejoined the old lady, with a shrill laugh. “But rooms cost money. Here I’ve been rent free; so have my tenants upstairs; they tell me they cannot pay anything, and are just keeping soul and body together like ourselves—and I have not the heart to evict them.”
“Who are they? They seem a pretty big crowd.”
“Well, there’s a car-driver in the drawing-rooms; he has six children; above that, there’s a charwoman and her paralysed daughter. In the back rooms there’s an old sweep.—Eale will make a grand clearance.”
“I’m not sure that he can move either you or them,” said D’Arcy; “the mortgage must be looked into. I have a friend, a clever young solicitor, and he will examine the whole business; if the worst happens, you come to my diggings. The old woman is a good sort, and will make you comfortable; we will scrape along somehow.”
“Oh, Denis, my dear boy, do you think I’d live on you?”
“If only I was not so suspiciously shabby,” broke in Bridget, “I’d get a situation as governess. Where I am is all right, as my poor old man is stone-blind. If I had even three or four pounds I’d invest it in a sort of personal advertisement, but Granny and I are owed what, to us, is quite a lot of money, and we dare not dun for fear of losing our customers. There’s a shop in London that owes me money since last June—I suppose they imagine we work for pleasure?”
“Pleasure!” repeated D’Arcy, and he rose, and, with gentle decision, took the piece of linen out of the old lady’s hand.
“Yes, to see your Granny you would think so; she won’t leave it—even to have a cup of tea.”
“Well, Denis, as you are behind the scenes, I may tell you that I’ve only three and sixpence in the wide world. I’ve sold the teaspoons, and my mother-in-law’s miniature—she was a beauty, I’ll say that for her!—I got three pounds for it in Frederick Street.”
“And no doubt it was worth fifty.”
“My dear boy, buying is one thing, selling another. The dealer said miniatures were out offashion, and a glut in the market—but he took it to oblige me. He was the same fellow who bought the white marble mantlepieces—they came from Florence, and had beautifully sculptured figures—he gave me ten pounds for the pair.”
“My blind old gentleman takes a surprising interest in this house,” said Bridget; “he remembers hearing of old Madame Doyne, and her extravagance, burning wax candles, even in the kitchen, and keeping three men-servants, and her china and silver a wonder; also herdebts.”
“Which she staved off with sales of the Doyne heirlooms,” said her daughter-in-law, “though she was always more for buying than selling. She put the finishing stroke to the ruin of the family—for she was a gambler, and loved cards.”
A cup of tea and buttered toast had revived the old lady, and when Bridget carried out the tray she whispered to D’Arcy that she would putthat—meaning the union—at the back of her mind for a week or two, till she saw how things were shaping; something might turn up.
For the next few days there were further anxious conferences between D’Arcy and hisfiancée; the mortgage had been examined, and, unfortunately, proved to be in order. This was the news he brought to Bridget, as they stood together in the flagged passage after he had taken leave of her grandmother.
“When I think of the hundreds of pounds’ worth that have been sold out of this house for a mere song, I feel nearly crazy. I was telling Lynch of those fine marble chimney-pieces; he wishes he had seen them. He knows a good deal about such things, and is mad after old furniture.”
“There’s nothing left but the house itself,” said Bridget, “only the bare walls.”
“And what thickness!” said D’Arcy, striking thepapered passage with his open hand; “as solid as the rock of Cashel! By Jove—no! the wall is hollow. I say, Biddy!”
“What do you say?”
“That I believe there’s a door or something here,” passing his fingers up and down, “Just feel!”
“There can’t be a door,” she objected, “for there is no room at the other side.”
“Well, there is something. I’ll scrape off a bit of the paper and see,” and, as he spoke, he produced a pen-knife, and began to make an incision.
“Wood!” he exclaimed. “Bridgie, there’s more in this than meets the eye,” and he looked at her eagerly; “a door papered up.”
“But that’s nothing—it’s a common thing.”
“Maybe so, but I have an idea. I cannot do anything now, it’s too late, and the light is bad, but I’ll be here to-morrow at eight, and I’ll strip this door, if you don’t mind?”
“Mind!” she repeated, “as if we did notselldoors! But I’m awfully afraid you will have your trouble for nothing. However, I’ll make you a cup of tea, and be here to help you.”
“Not a word to Granny—yet.”
“Oh no, she never gets up till ten o’clock. She can work in bed as well as anywhere—and it saves a fire. Oh, if I could only put an end to her stitch, stitch, stitch; but shewilldo it, and, in spite of her old eyes, her work is exquisite; mine is nothing like so fine—or so saleable!”
By eight o’clock the next morning D’Arcy was hard at work. Bridget damped the paper, which was gradually peeled off, and revealed a door—a locked door.
D’Arcy shook it gently, then violently; the result was a rattling and jingling within, and he exclaimed:
“A cupboard—not a door. I’ll run out and borrow a bunch of old keys.”
After much humouring and buttering—oil not being obtainable—a key yielded, and a door, which had been closed for eighty years, opened with a reluctant creak.
The first discovery was a thin layer of grey dust, the next a vast collection of silver, glass, and china; the shelves were crowded. Bridget gave a stifled scream, and Denis recognised that they had come upon a wonderful treasure-trove.
“Why, it must be Madame’s green Sèvres, that Granny talks about—Louis the Sixteenth gave it to great grandfather Doyne, when he was in Paris; it’s worth thousands.” And Bridget took Denis by the arm and shook him. “Think of it—thousands!”
“Easy, easy, Bridge, or I’ll drop a thousand! There seems to be no end of stuff here; that crafty old Madame hid all these valuables before her death, and left no sign.”
“Not as far as we know. Now I’ll fetch the tray, and we will carry everything into the parlour, and set them out, and then call Granny; she won’t believe her poor dear old eyes!”
It took a considerable time to empty the precious cupboard, but at last the whole of its contents were arranged on the round table, the sideboard, and the lesser objects in imposing rows along the floor.
When Mrs. Doyne caught sight of this surpassing display, she stood for some moments stunned and speechless.
“Well, this splendid find of yours, Denis, has come in the nick of time; instead of beggars, we shall all be well-to-do—if not rich!”
“And you shall never take a needle in your hand again, Gran,” said the girl, seizing her round thewaist, “and shall have a sable coat, and a motor-car.”
“Let us see what there is, before you talk of motorcars,” she said, peering about among the silver and china. “Yes—this is the green Sèvres set; that alone will support us; and here is the old Nankin china, very rare, and a lot of square-marked Worcester,” turning it over. There were also half a dozen fine Jacobean wine-glasses, with appropriate mottoes, a quantity of Queen Anne and Georgian silver, a Charles I. goblet, and other articles too numerous to specify—in short, the heirlooms of the Doynes.
For more than an hour the happy trio could do nothing but exclaim, handle, wonder, and admire; several of the treasures had a history which had reached their present owner, and on these she expatiated with eloquence and gesture.
“Now let us be practical,” said D’Arcy at last; “I must go to the bank—I’m hours late as it is. I’ll get hold of Lynch, and bring him up this afternoon, for I’ll ask for a day off; he will tell us what to do, find a valuer, and put most of these valuables on the London market. Meanwhile, leave them just as they are, and let no one see them, or put a foot in this room!”
Capable Mr. Lynch soon put matters in train, and proved an invaluable adviser; he was a long-headed man of business, with a critical and cultivated taste. Ultimately, the contents of the wonderful cupboard brought in a substantial fortune; the Doyne heirlooms were sold, and scattered far afield. Most of the chief prizes, including the Sèvres service, followed the mahogany doors across the Atlantic; the mortgage on the old house was promptly settled; it has been altered into a mansion of flats, for Mrs. Doyne and her family have deserted the north side, and live in a pretty country place, within easy reach of Dublin.