ORNAMENTAL CAPITAL 'W'
hen Cluffe sprang out of the boat, he was very near capsizing it and finishing Puddock off-hand, but she righted and shot away swiftly towards the very centre of the weir, over which, in a sheet of white foam, she swept, and continued her route toward Dublin—bottom upward, leaving little Puddock, however, safe and sound, clinging to a post, at top, and standing upon a rough sort of plank, which afforded a very unpleasant footing, by which the nets were visited from time to time.
'Hallo! are you safe, Cluffe?' cried the little lieutenant, quite firm, though a little dizzy, on his narrow stand, with the sheets of foam whizzing under his feet; what had become of his musical companion he had not the faintest notion, and when he saw the boat hurled over near the sluice, and drive along the stream upside down, he nearly despaired.
But when the captain's military cloak, which he took for Cluffe himself, followed in the track of the boat, whisking, sprawling, and tumbling, in what Puddock supposed to be the agonies of drowning, and went over the weir and disappeared from view, returning no answer to his screams of 'Strike out, Cluffe! to your right, Cluffe. Hollo! to your right,' he quite gave the captain over.
'Surrendhur, you thievin' villain, or I'll put the contints iv this gun into yir carcass,' shouted an awful voice from the right bank,and Puddock saw the outline of a gigantic marksman, preparing to fire into his corresponding flank.
'What do you mean, Sir?' shouted Puddock, in extreme wrath and discomfort.
'Robbin' the nets, you spalpeen; if you throw them salmon you're hidin' undher your coat into the wather, be the tare-o-war—'
'What salmon, Sir?' interrupted the lieutenant. 'Why, salmon's not in season, Sir.'
'None iv yer flummery, you schamin' scoundrel; but jest come here and give yourself up, for so sure as you don't, or dar to stir an inch from that spot, I'll blow you to smithereens!'
'Captain Cluffe is drowned, Sir; and I'm Lieutenant Puddock,' rejoined the officer.
'Tare-an-ouns, an' is it yerself, Captain Puddock, that's in it?' cried the man. 'I ax yer pardon; but I tuk you for one of thim vagabonds that's always plundherin' the fish. And who in the wide world, captain jewel, id expeck to see you there, meditatin' in the middle of the river, this time o' night; an' I dunna how in the world you got there, at all, at all, for the planking is carried away behind you since yistherday.'
'Give an alarm, if you please, Sir, this moment,' urged Puddock. 'Captain Cluffe has gone over this horrid weir, not a minute since, and is I fear drowned.'
'Dhrownded! och! bloody wars.'
'Yes, Sir, send some one this moment down the stream with a rope—'
'Hollo, Jemmy?' cried the man, and whistled through his crooked finger.
'Jemmy,' said he to the boy who presented himself, 'run down to Tom Garret, at the Millbridge, and tell him Captain Cluffe's dhrownded over the weir, and to take the boat-hook and rope—he's past the bridge by this time—ay is he at the King's House—an' if he brings home the corpse alive or dead, before an hour, Captain Puddock here will give him twenty guineas reward.' So away went the boy.
''Tis an unaisy way you're situated yourself, I'm afeard,' observed the man.
'Have the goodness to say, Sir, by what meanth, if any, I can reach either bank of the river,' lisped Puddock, with dignity.
''Tis thrue for you, captain,that'sthe chat—how the divil to get you alive out o' the position you're in. Can you swim?'
'No, Thir.'
'An' how the dickens did you get there?'
'I'd rather hear, Sir, how I'm to get away, if you please,' replied Puddock, loftily.
'Are you bare-legged?' shouted the man.
'No, Sir,' answered the little officer, rather shocked.
'An' you're there wid shoes on your feet.
'Of course, Sir,' answered Puddock.
'Chuck them into the water this instant minute,' roared the man.
'Why, there are valuable buckles, Sir,' remonstrated Puddock.
'Do you mane to say you'd rather be dhrownded in yer buckles than alive in yer stockin' feet?' he replied.
There were some cross expostulations, but eventually the fellow came out to Puddock. Perhaps the feat was not quite so perilous as he represented; but it certainly was not a pleasant one. Puddock had a rude and crazy sort of banister to cling to, and a rugged and slippery footing; but slowly and painfully, from one post to another, he made his way, and at last jumped on the solid, though not dry land, his life and his buckles safe.
'I'll give you a guinea in the morning, if you come to my quarterth, Mr. ---- Thir,' and, without waiting a second, away he ran by the footpath, and across the bridge, right into the Phœnix, and burst into the club-room. There were assembled old Arthur Slowe, Tom Trimmer, from Lucan, old Trumble, Jack Collop, Colonel Stafford, and half-a-dozen more members, including some of the officers—O'Flaherty among the number, a little 'flashy with liquor' as the phrase then was.
Puddock stood in the wide opened door, with the handle in his hand. He was dishevelled, soused with water, bespattered with mud, his round face very pale, and he fixed a wild stare on the company. The clatter of old Trimmer's backgammon, Slowe's disputations over the draftboard with Colonel Stafford, Collop's dissertation on the points of that screw of a horse he wanted to sell, and the general buzz of talk, were all almost instantaneously suspended on the appearance of this phantom, and Puddock exclaimed—
'Gentlemen, I'm thorry to tell you, Captain Cluffe ith, I fear, drowned!'
'Cluffe?' 'Drowned?' 'By Jupiter!' 'You don't say so? and a round of such ejaculations followed this announcement.
Allow me here to mention that I permit my people to swear by all the persons of the Roman mythology. There was a horrible profanity in the matter of oaths in those days, and I found that without changing the form of sentences, and sacrificing idioms, at times, I could not manage the matter satisfactorily otherwise.
'He went over the salmon weir—I saw him—Coyle's—weir—headlong, poor fellow! I shouted after him, but he could not anthwer, so pray let's be off, and—'
Here he recognised the colonel with a low bow and paused. The commanding officer instantaneously despatched Lieutenant Brady, who was there, to order out Sergeant Blakeney and his guard, and any six good swimmers in the regiment who might volunteer, with a reward of twenty guineas for whoever should bring in Cluffe alive, or ten guineas for his body; and the fat fellow all the time in his bed sipping sack posset!
So away ran Brady and a couple more of the young fellows at their best pace—no one spared himself on this errand—and little Puddock and another down to the bridge. It was preposterous.
By this time Lillyman was running like mad from Cluffe's lodgings along Martin's Row to the rescue of Puddock, who, at that moment with his friends and the aid of a long pole, was poking into a little floating tanglement of withered leaves, turf, and rubbish, under the near arch of the bridge, in the belief that he was dealing with the mortal remains of Cluffe.
Lillyman overtook Toole at the corner of the street just in time to hear the scamper of the men, at double-quick, running down the sweep of the road to the bridge, and to hear the shouting that arose from the parade-ground by the river bank, from the men within the barrack precincts.
Toole joined Lillyman running.
'What the plague's this hubbub and hullo?' he cried.
'Puddock's drowned,' panted Lillyman.
'Puddock! bless us! where?' puffed Toole.
'Hollo! you, Sir—have they heard it—is hedrowned?' cried Lillyman to the sentry outside the gate.
'Dhrownded? yes, Sir,' replied the man saluting.
'Is help gone?'
'Yes, Sir, Lieutenant Brady, and Sergeant Blakeney, and nine men.'
'Come along,' cried Lillyman to Toole, and they started afresh. They heard the shouting by the river bank, and followed it by the path round the King's House, passing the Phœnix; and old Colonel Stafford, who was gouty, and no runner, standing with a stern and anxious visage at the door, along with old Trumble, Slowe, and Trimmer, and some of the maids and drawers in the rear, all in consternation.
'Bring me the news,' screamed the colonel, as they passed.
Lillyman was the better runner. Toole a good deal blown, but full of pluck, was labouring in the rear; Lillyman jumped over the stile, at the river path; and Toole saw an officer who resembled 'poor Puddock,' he thought, a good deal, cross the road, and follow in Lillyman's wake. The doctor crossed the stile next, and made his best gallop in rear of the plump officer, excited by the distant shouting, and full of horrible curiosity and good-nature.
Nearly opposite Inchicore they fished up an immense dead pig; and Toole said, to his amazement, he found Puddock crying over it, and calling it 'my brother!' And this little scene added another very popular novelty to the doctor's stock of convivial monologues.
Toole, who loved Puddock, hugged him heartily, and when he could get breath, shouted triumphantly after the more advanced party, 'He's found, he's found!'
'Oh, thank Heaven!' cried little Puddock, with upturned eyes; 'but is he really found?'
The doctor almost thought that his perils had affected his intellect.
'Is he found—areyoufound?' cried the doctor, resuming that great shake by both hands, which in his momentary puzzle he had suspended.
'I—a—oh, dear!—I don't quite understand—is he lost? for mercy's sake is Cluffe lost?' implored Puddock.
'Lost in his bed clothes, maybe,' cried Lillyman, who had joined them.
'But he's not—he'snotdrowned?'
'Pish! drowned, indeed! unless he's drowned in the crock of hot water he's clapt his legs into.'
'Where is he—where's Cluffe?'
'Hang it!—he's in bed, in his lodging, drinking hot punch this half-hour.'
'But are you certain?'
'Why, I saw him there myself,' answered Lillyman, with an oath.
Poor little Puddock actually clasped his hands, looked up, and poured forth a hearty, almost hysterical, thanksgiving; for he had charged Cluffe's death altogether upon his own soul, and his relief was beyond expression.
In the meantime, the old gentlemen of the club were in a thrilling suspense, and that not altogether disagreeable state of horror in which men chew the cud of bitter fancy over other men's catastrophes. After about ten minutes in came young Spaight.
'Well,' said the colonel, 'is Cluffe safe or—eh?'
'Cluffe's safe—only half drowned; but poor Puddock's lost.'
'What!'
'Drowned, I'm afraid.'
'Drowned! who says so?' repeated the colonel.
'Cluffe—everybody.'
'Why, there it is!' replied the colonel, with a great oath, breaking through all his customary reserve and stiffness, and flinging his cocked-hat on the middle of the table, piteously, 'A fellow that can't swim a yardwillgo by way of saving a great—a large gentleman, like Captain Cluffe, from drowning, and he's pulled in himself; and so—bless my soul! what's to be done?'
So the colonel broke into a lamentation, and a fury, and a wonder. 'Cluffe and Puddock, the two steadiest officers in the corps! He had a devilish good mind to put Cluffe under arrest—the idiots—Puddock—he was devilish sorry. There wasn't a more honourable'—et cetera. In fact, a very angry and pathetic funeral oration, during which, accompanied by Doctor Toole, Lieutenant Puddock, in person, entered; and the colonelstopped short with his eyes and mouth very wide open, and said the colonel very sternly.
'I—I'm glad to see, Sir, you're safe: and—and—I suppose, I shall hear now thatCluffe'sdrowned?' and he stamped the emphasis on the floor.
While all this was going on, some of the soldiers had actually got into Dublin. The tide was in, and the water very high at 'Bloody Bridge.' A hat, near the corner, was whisking round and round, always trying to get under the arch, and always, when on the point, twirled round again into the corner—an image of the 'Flying Dutchman' and hope deferred. A watchman's crozier hooked the giddy thing. It was not a military hat; but they brought it back, and the captive was laid in the guard-room—mentioned by me because we've seen that identical hat before.
ORNAMENTAL CAPITAL 'M'
rs. Nutter and Mrs. Sturk, the wives of the two men who most hated one another within the vicinage of Chapelizod—natural enemies, holding aloof one from another, and each regarding the other in a puzzled way, with a sort of apprehension and horror, as the familiar of that worst and most formidable of men—her husband—were this night stricken with a common fear and sorrow.
Darkness descended on the Mills and the river—a darkness deepened by the umbrageous trees that grouped about the old gray house in which poor Mrs. Nutter lay so ill at ease. Moggy carried the jingling tray of tea-things into Nutter's little study, and lighted his candles, and set the silver snuffers in the dish, and thought she heard him coming, and ran back again, and returned with the singing 'tea-kitchen,' and then away again, for the thin buttered toast under its china cover, which our ancestors loved.
Then she listened—but 'twas a mistake—it was the Widow Macan's step, who carried the ten pailfuls of water up from the river to fill the butt in the backyard every Tuesday and Friday, for a shilling a week, and 'a cup o' tay with the girls in the kitchen.'
Then Moggy lighted the fire with the stump of a candle, for the night was a little chill, and she set the small round table beside it, and laid her master's pipe and tobacco-box on it, and listened, and began to wonder what detained him.
So she went out into the sharp still air, and stood on the hall-door step, and listened again. Presently she heard the Widow Macan walking up from the garden with the last pail on her head, who stopped when she saw her, and set down the vessel upon the corner of the clumsy little balustrade by the door-step. So Moggy declared her uneasiness, which waxed greater when Mrs. Macan told her that 'the masther, God bless him, wasn't in the garden.'
She had seen him standing at the river's edge, while she passed and repassed. He did not move a finger, or seem to notice her, and was looking down into the water. When she came back the third or fourth time, he was gone.
At Moggy's command she went back into the garden, though she assured her, solemnly—''twas nansince lookin' there'—and called Mr. Nutter, at first in a deferential and hesitating way; but, emboldened and excited by the silence, for she began to feel unaccountably queer, in a louder and louder a key, till she was certain that he was neither in the garden nor in the orchard, nor anywhere near the house. And when she stopped, the silence seemed awful, and the darkness under the trees closed round her with a supernatural darkness, and the river at the foot of the walk seemed snorting some inarticulate story of horror. So she locked the garden door quickly, looking over her shoulder for she knew not what, and ran faster than she often did along the sombre walk up to the hall door, and told her tale to Moggy, and begged to carry the pail in by the hall-door.
In they came, and Moggy shut the hall-door, and turned the key in it. Perhaps 'twas the state in which the poor lady lay up stairs that helped to make them excited and frightened. Betty was sitting by her bedside, and Toole had been there, and given her some opiate, I suppose, for she had dropped into a flushed snoring sleep, a horrid counterfeit of repose. But she had first had two or three frightful fits, and all sorts of wild, screaming talk between. Perhaps it was the apparition of Mary Matchwell, whose evil influence was so horribly attested by the dismal spectacle she had left behind her, that predisposed them to panic; but assuredly each anticipated no good from the master's absence, and had a foreboding of something bad, of which they did not speak; but only disclosed it by looks, and listening, and long silences. The lights burning in Nutter's study invited them, and there the ladies seated themselves, and made their tea in the kitchen tea-pot, and clapped it on the hob, and listened for sounds from Mrs. Nutter's chamber, and for the step of her husband crossing the little court-yard; and they grew only more nervous from listening, and there came every now and then a little tapping on the window-pane. It was only, I think, a little sprig of the climbing-rose that was nailed by thewall, nodding at every breath, and rapping like unseen finger-tops, on the glass. But, as small things will, with such folk, under such circumstances, it frightened them confoundedly.
Then, on a sudden, there came a great yell from poor Mrs. Nutter's chamber, and they both stood up very pale. The Widow Macan, with the cup in her hand that she was 'tossing' at the moment, and Moggy, all aghast, invoked a blessing under her breath, and they heard loud cries and sudden volleys of talk, and Biddy's voice, soothing the patient.
Poor Mrs. Nutter had started up, all on a sudden, from her narcotic doze, with a hideous scream that had frightened the women down stairs. Then she cried—
'Where am I?' and 'Oh, the witch—the witch!'
'Oh! no, Ma'am, dear,' replied Betty; 'now, aisy, Ma'am, darling.'
'I'm going mad.'
'No, Ma'am, dear?—there now—sure 'tis poor Betty that's in it—don't be afear'd, Ma'am.'
'Oh, Betty, hold me—don't go—I'm mad—am I mad?'
Then in the midst of Betty's consolations, she broke into a flood of tears, and seemed in some sort relieved; and Betty gave her her drops again, and she began to mumble to herself, and so to doze.
At the end of another ten minutes, with a scream, she started up again.
'That's her step—where are you, Betty?' she shrieked, and when Betty ran to the bedside, she held her so hard that the maid was ready to cry out, leering all the time over her shoulder—'Where's Charles Nutter?—I saw him speaking to you.'
Then the poor little woman grew quieter, and by her looks and moans, and the clasping of her hands, and her upturned eyes, seemed to be praying; and when Betty stealthily opened the press to take out another candle, her poor mistress uttered another terrible scream, crying—
'You wretch! her head won't fit—you can't hide her;' and the poor woman jumped out of her bed, shrieking 'Charles, Charles, Charles!'
Betty grew so nervous and frightened, that she fairly bawled to her colleague, Moggy, and told her she would not stay in the room unless she sat up all night with her. So, together they kept watch and ward, and as the night wore on, Mrs. Nutter's slumbers grew more natural and less brief, and her paroxysms of waking terror less maniacal. Still she would waken, with a cry that thrilled them, from some frightful vision, and seem to hear or see nothing aright for a good while after, and muttering to the frightened maids—
'Listen to the knocking—oh!—breathing outside the door—bolt it, Betty—girls, say your prayers—'tis he,' or sometimes, ''tis she.'
And thus this heavy night wore over; and the wind, which began to rise as the hours passed, made sounds full of sad untranslatable meaning in the ears of the watchers.
Poor Mrs. Sturk meanwhile, in the House by the Church-yard, sat listening and wondering, and plying her knitting-needles in the drawing-room. When the hour of her Barney's expected return had passed some time, she sent down to the barrack, and then to the club, and then on to the King's House, with her service to Mrs. Stafford, to enquire, after her spouse. But her first and her second round of enquiries, despatched at the latest minute at which she was likely to find any body out of bed to answer them, were altogether fruitless. And the lights went out in one house after another, and the Phœnix shut its doors, and her own servants were for hours gone to bed; and the little town of Chapelizod was buried in the silence of universal slumber. And poor Mrs. Sturk still sat in her drawing-room, more and more agitated and frightened.
But her missing soldier did not turn up, and Leonora sat and listened hour after hour. No sound of return, not even the solemn clank and fiery snort of the fiend-horse under her window, or the 'ho-lo, ho-la—my life, my love!' of the phantom rider, cheated her with a momentary hope.
Poor Mrs. Sturk! She raised the window a few inches, that she might the better hear the first distant ring of his coming on the road. She forgot he had not his horse that night, and was but a pedestrian. But somehow the night-breeze through the aperture made a wolfish howling and sobbing, that sounded faint and far away, and had a hateful character of mingled despair and banter in it.
She said every now and then aloud, to reassure herself—'What a noise the wind makes to be sure!' and after a while she opened the window wider. But her candle flared, and the flame tossed wildly about, and the perplexed lady feared it might go out absolutely. So she shut down the window altogether; for she could not bear the ill-omened baying any longer.
So it grew to be past two o'clock, and she was afraid that Barney would be very angry with her for sitting up, should he return.
She went to bed, therefore, where she lay only more feverish—conjecturing, and painting frightful pictures, till she heard the crow of the early village cock, and the caw of the jackdaw wheeling close to the eaves as he took wing in the gray of the morning to show her that the business of a new day had commenced; and yet Barney had not returned.
Not long after seven o'clock, Dr. Toole, with Juno, Cæsar, Dido, and Sneak at his heels, paid his half-friendly, half-professional visit at the Mills.
Poor little Mrs. Nutter was much better—quiet for her was everything, packed up, of course, with a little physic; andhaving comforted her, as well as he was able, he had a talk with Moggy in the hall, and all about Nutter's disappearance, and how Mrs. Macan saw him standing by the river's brink, and that was the last anyone near the house had seen of him; and a thought flashed upon Toole, and he was very near coming out with it, but checked himself, and only said—
'What hat had he on?'
So she told him.
'And was his name writ in it, or how was it marked?'
'Two big letters—a C and an N.'
'I see; and do you remember any other mark you'd know it by?'
'Well, yes; I stitched the lining only last month, with red silk, and that's how I remember the letters.'
'I know; and are you sure it was that hat he had on?'
'Certain sure—why, there's all the rest;' and she conned them over, as they hung on their pegs on the rack before them.
'Now, don't let the mistress be downhearted—keep her up, Moggy, do you mind. I told her the master was with Lord Castlemallard since yesterday evening, on business, and don't you say anything else; keep her quiet, do ye mind, and humour her.'
And away went Toole, at a swift pace, to the town again, and entered the barrack, and asked to see the adjutant, and then to look at the hat the corporal had fished up by 'Bloody Bridge;' and, by Jupiter! his heart gave a couple of great bounces, and he felt himself grow pale—they were the identical capitals, C N, and the clumsy red silk stitching in the lining.
Toole was off forthwith, and had a fellow dragging the river before three-quarters of an hour.
Dr. Walsingham, returning from an early ride to Island Bridge, saw this artist at work, with his ropes and great hooks, at the other side of the river; and being a man of enquiring mind, and never having witnessed the process before, he cried out to him, after some moments lost in conjecture—
'My good man, what are you fishing for?'
'A land-agent,' answered Isaac Walton.
'A land-agent?' repeated the rector, misdoubting his ears.
The saturnine angler made no answer.
'And has a gentleman been drowned here?' he persisted.
The man only looked at him across the stream, and nodded.
'Eh! and his name, pray?'
'Old Nutter, of the Mills,' he replied.
The rector made a woeful ejaculation, and stared at the careless operator, who had a pipe in his mouth the while, which made him averse from conversation. He would have liked to ask him more questions, but he was near the village, and refrained himself; and he met Toole at the corner of the bridge who, leaning on the shoulder of the rector's horse, gave him the sad story in full.
ORNAMENTAL CAPITAL 'D'
angerfield went up the river that morning with his rod and net, and his piscatory fidus Achates, Irons, at his elbow. It was a nice gray sky, but the clerk was unusually silent even for him; and the sardonic piscator appeared inscrutably amused as he looked steadily upon the running waters. Once or twice the spectacles turned full upon the clerk, over Dangerfield's shoulder, with a cynical light, as if he were on the point of making one of his ironical jokes; but he turned back again with a little whisk, the jest untold, whatever it was, to the ripple and the fly, and the coy gray troutlings.
At last, Dangerfield said over his shoulder, with the same amused look, 'Do you remember Charles Archer?'
Irons turned pale, and looked down embarrassed as it seemed, and began plucking at a tangled piece of tackle, without making any answer.
'Hey? Irons,' persisted Dangerfield, who was not going to let him off.
'Yes, I do,' answered the man surlily; 'I remember him right well; but I'd rather not,andI won't speak of him, that's all.'
'Well, Charles Archer'shere, we've seen him, haven't we? and just the devil he always was,' said Dangerfield with a deliberate chuckle of infinite relish, and evidently enjoying the clerk's embarrassment as he eyed him through his spectacles obliquely.
'He has seenyou, too, he says; and thinksyouhave seenhim, hey?' and Dangerfield chuckled more and more knowingly, and watched his shiftings and sulkings with a pleasant grin, as he teased and quizzed him in his own enigmatical way.
'Well, supposing Ididsee him,' said Irons, looking up, returning Dangerfield's comic glance with a bold and lowering stare; 'and supposinghesawme, so long as we've no business one of another, and never talks like, nor seems to remember—I think 'tisnt, no ways, no one's business—that's what I say.'
'True, Irons, very true; you, I, and Sturk—the doctor I mean—are cool fellows, and don't want for nerve; but I think, don't you? we're afraid of Charles Archer, for all that.'
'Fear or no fear, I don't want to talktohim norofhim, no ways,' replied the clerk, grimly, and looking as black as a thunder-cloud.
'Nor I neither, but you know he's here, and what a devil he is; and we can't help it,' replied Dangerfield, very much tickled.
The clerk only looked through his nearly closed eyes, and with the same pale and surly aspect toward the point to which Dangerfield's casting line had floated, and observed—
'You'll lose them flies, Sir.'
'Hey?' said Dangerfield, and made another cast further into the stream.
'Whatever he may seem, and I think I know him pretty well,' he continued in the same sprightly way, 'Charles Archer would dispose of each of us—you understand—without a scruple, precisely when and how best suited his convenience. Now doctor Sturk has sent him a message which I know will provoke him, for it sounds like a threat. If he reads it so, rely on't, he'll lay Sturk on his back, one way or another, and I'm sorry for him, for I wished him well; but if he will play at brag with thedevil Ican't help him.'
'I'm a man that holds his tongue; I never talks none, even in my liquor. I'm a peaceable man, and no bully, and only wants to live quiet,' said Irons in a hurry.
'A disciple ofmyschool, you're right, Irons, that's my way;InevernameCharles except to the two or three who meet him, and then only when I can't help it, just as you do; fellows of that kidney I always take quietly, and I've prospered. Sturk would do well to reconsider his message. WereIin his shoes, I would not eat an egg or a gooseberry, or drink a glass of fair water from that stream, while he was in the country, for fear ofpoison! curse him! and to think of Sturk expecting to meet him, and walk with him, after such a message, together, as you and I do here. Do you see that tree?'
It was a stout poplar, just a yard away from Irons's shoulder; and as Dangerfield pronounced the word 'tree,' his hand rose, and the sharp report of a pocket-pistol half-deafened Irons's ear.
'I say,' said Dangerfield, with a startling laugh, observing Irons wince, and speaking as the puff of smoke crossed his face, 'he'd lodge a bullet in the cur's heart, as suddenly as I've shot that tree;' the bullet had hit the stem right in the centre, 'and swear he was going to rob him.'
Irons eyed him with a livid squint, but answered nothing. I think he acquiesced in Dangerfield's dreadful estimate of Charles Archer's character.
'But we must give the devil his due; Charles can do a handsome thing sometimes. You shall judge. It seems he saw you, and you him—here, in this town, some months ago, and each knew the other, and you've seen him since, and done likewise; but you said nothing, and he liked your philosophy, and hopes you'll accept of this, which from its weight I take to be a little rouleau of guineas.'
During this speech Irons seemed both angry and frightened,and looked darkly enough before him on the water; and his lips were moving, as if in a running commentary upon it all the while.
When Dangerfield put the little roll in his hand, Irons looked suspicious and frightened, and balanced it in his palm, as if he had thoughts of chucking it from him, as though it were literally a satanic douceur. But it is hard to part with money, and Irons, though he still looked cowed and unhappy, put the money into his breeches' pocket, and he made a queer bow, and he said—
'You know, Sir, I never asked a farthing.'
'Ay, so he says,' answered Dangerfield.
'And,' with an imprecation, Irons added, 'I never expected to be a shilling the better of him.'
'He knows it; and now you have the reason why I mentioned Charles Archer; and having placed that gold in your hand, I've done with him, and we sha'n't have occasion, I hope, to name his name for a good while to come,' said Dangerfield.
Then came a long refreshing silence, while Dangerfield whipt the stream with his flies. He was not successful; but he did not change his flies. It did not seem to trouble him; indeed, mayhap he did not perceive it. And after fully twenty minutes thus unprofitably employed, he suddenly said, as if in continuation of his last sentence—
'And, respecting that money you'll use caution; a hundred guineas is not always so honestly come by. Your wife drinks—suppose a relative in England had left you that gold, by will, 'twould be best not to letherknow; but give it to Dr. Walsingham, secretly, to keep for you, telling him the reason. He'll undertake the trust and tell no one—that'syour plan—mind ye.'
Then came another long silence, and Dangerfield applied himself in earnest to catch some trout, and when he had accomplished half-a-dozen, he tired altogether of the sport, and followed by Irons, he sauntered homewards, where astounding news awaited him.
ORNAMENTAL CAPITAL 'A'
s Dangerfield, having parted company with Irons at the corner of the bridge, was walking through the town, with his rod over his shoulder and his basket of troutlings by his side, his attention was arrested by a little knot of persons in close and earnest talk at the barrack-gate, nearly opposite Sturk's house.
He distinguished at a glance the tall grim figure of Oliver Lowe, of Lucan, the sternest and shrewdest magistrate who held the commission for the county of Dublin in those days, mounted on his iron-gray hunter, and holding the crupper with his right hand, as he leaned toward a ragged, shaggy little urchin, with naked shins, whom he was questioning, as it seemed closely. Half-a-dozen gaping villagers stood round.
There was an indescribable something about the group which indicated horror and excitement. Dangerfield quickened his pace, and arrived just as the adjutant rode out.
Saluting both as he advanced, Dangerfield asked—
'Nothing amiss, I hope, gentlemen?'
'The surgeon here's been found murdered in the park!' answered Lowe.
'Hey—Sturk?' said Dangerfield.
'Yes,' said the adjutant: 'this boy here says he's found him in the Butcher's Wood.'
'The Butcher's Wood!—why, what the plague brought himthere?' exclaimed Dangerfield.
''Tis his straight road from Dublin across the park,' observed the magistrate.
'Oh!—I thought 'twas the wood by Lord Mountjoy's,' said Dangerfield; 'and when did it happen?'
'Pooh!—some time between yesterday afternoon and half an hour ago,' answered Mr. Lowe.
'Nothing known?' said Dangerfield. ''Twill be a sad hearing over the way;' and he glared grimly with a little side-nod at the doctor's house.
Then he fell, like the others, to questioning the boy. He could tell them but little—only the same story over and over. Coming out of town, with tea and tobacco, a pair of shoes, and a bottle of whisky, for old Mrs. Tresham—in the thick of the wood, among brambles, all at once he lighted on the body. He could not mistake Dr. Sturk; he wore his regimentals; there was blood about him; he did not touch him, nor go nearer than a musket's length to him, and being frightened at the sight in thatlonely place he ran away and right down to the barrack, where he made his report.
Just then out came Sergeant Bligh, with his men—two of them carrying a bier with a mattress and cloaks thereupon. They formed, and accompanied by the adjutant, at quick step marched through the town for the park. Mr. Lowe accompanied them, and in the park-lane they picked up the ubiquitous Doctor Toole, who joined the party.
Dangerfield walked a while beside the adjutant's horse; and, said he—
'I've had as much walking as I can well manage this morning, and you don't want for hands, so I'll turn back when I've said just a word in your ear. You know, Sir, funerals are expensive, and I happen to know that poor Sturk was rather pressed for money—in fact, 'twas only the day before yesterday I myself lent him a trifle. So will you, through whatever channel you think best, let poor Mrs. Sturk know that she may draw upon me for a hundred pounds, if she requires it?'
'Thank you, Mr. Dangerfield; I certainly shall.'
And so Dangerfield lifted his hat to the party and fell behind, and came to a stand still, watching them till they disappeared over the brow of the hill.
When he reached his little parlour in the Brass Castle, luncheon was upon the table. But he had not much of an appetite, and stood at the window, looking upon the river with his hands in his pockets, and a strange pallid smile over his face, mingling with the light of the silver spectacles.
'When Irons hears of this,' he said, 'he'll come to my estimate of Charles Archer, and conclude he has had a finger in that pretty pie; 'twill frighten him.'
And somehow Dangerfield looked a little bit queer himself, and he drank off two small glasses, such as folks then used in Ireland—of Nantz; and setting down the glass, he mused—
'A queer battle life is; ha, ha! Sturk laid low—the wretched fool! Widow—yes; children—ay. Charles! Charles! if there be a reckoning after death, your score's an ugly one. I'm tired of playing my part in this weary game of defence. Irons and I remain with the secret between us. Glasscock had his fourth of it, and tasted death. Then we three had it; and Sturk goes next; and now I and Irons—Irons and I—which goes first?' And he fell to whistling slowly and dismally, with his hands in his breeches' pockets, looking vacantly through his spectacles on the ever-running water, an emblem of the eternal change and monotony of life.
In the meantime the party, with Tim Brian, the bare-shanked urchin, still in a pale perspiration, for guide, marched on, all looking ahead, in suspense, and talking little.
On they marched, till they got into the bosky shadow of the close old whitethorn and brambles, and there, in a lonely nook,the small birds hopping on the twigs above, sure enough, on his back, in his regimentals, lay the clay-coloured image of Sturk, some blood, nearly black now, at the corners of his mouth, and under his stern brows a streak of white eye-ball turned up to the sky.
There was a pool of blood under his pomatumed, powdered, and curled head, more under his right arm, which was slightly extended, with the open hand thrown palm upwards, as if appealing to heaven.
Toole examined him.
'No pulse, by Jove! Quiet there! don't stir!' Then he clapped his ear on Sturk's white Marseilles vest.
'Hush!' and a long pause. Then Toole rose erect, but still on his knees, 'Willyou be quiet there? I think there's some little action still; only don't talk, or shift your feet; and just—just, do be quiet!'
Then Toole rose to his knees again, with a side glance fixed on the face of Sturk, with a puzzled and alarmed look. He evidently did not well know what to make of it. Then he slipped his hand within his vest, and between his shirt and his skin.
'If he's dead, he's not long so. There's warmth here. And see, get me a pinch or two of that thistle-down, d'ye see?'
And with the help of this improvised test he proceeded to try whether he was still breathing. But there was a little air stirring, and they could not manage it.
'Well!' said Toole, standing this time quite erect, 'I—I think there's life there still. And now, boys, d'ye see? lift him very carefully, d'ye mind? Gently, very gently, for I tell you, if this hæmorrhage begins again, he'll not last twenty seconds.'
So on a cloak they lifted him softly and deftly to the bier, and laid covering over him; and having received Toole's last injunctions, and especially a direction to Mrs. Sturk to place him in a well-warmed bed, and introduce a few spoonfuls of warm port wine negus into his mouth, and if he swallowed, to continue to administer it from time to time, Sergeant Bligh and his men commenced their funereal march toward Sturk's house.
'And now, Mr. Adjutant,' said Lowe, 'had not we best examine the ground, and make a search for anything that may lead to a conviction?'
Well, a ticket was found trod into the bloody mud, scarcely legible, and Sturk's cocked hat, the leaf and crown cut through with a blow of some blunt instrument. His sword they had found by his side not drawn.
'See! here's a foot-print, too,' said Lowe; 'don't move!'
It was remarkable. They pinned together the backs of two letters, and Toole, with his surgical scissors, cut the pattern to fit exactly into the impression; and he and Lowe, with great care, pencilled in the well-defined marks of the great hob-nails, and a sort of seam or scar across the heel.
FOOTPRINT
'Twas pretty much after this fashion. It was in a slight dip in the ground where the soil continued soft. They found it in two other places coming up to the fatal spot, from the direction of the Magazine. And it was traceable on for some twenty yards more faintly; then, again, very distinctly, where—a sort of ditch interposing—a jump had been made, and here it turned down towards the park wall and the Chapelizod road, still, however, slanting in the Dublin direction.
In the hollow by the park wall it appeared again, distinctly; and here it was plain the transit of the wall had been made, for the traces of the mud were evident enough upon its surface, and the mortar at top was displaced, and a little tuft of grass in the mud, left by the clodded shoesole. Here the fellow had got over.
They followed, and, despairing of finding it upon the road, they diverged into the narrow slip of ground by the river bank, and just within the park-gate, in a slight hollow, the clay of which was still impressible, they found the track again. It led close up to the river bank, and there the villain seemed to have come to a stand still; for the sod just for so much as a good sized sheet of letter-paper might cover, was trod and broken, as if at the water's edge he had stood for a while, and turned about and shifted his feet, like a fellow that is uneasy while he is stationary.
From this stand-point they failed to discover any receding foot-print; but close by it came a little horse track, covered with shingle, by which, in those days, the troops used to ride their horses to water. He might have stepped upon this, and following it, taken to the streets; or he might—and this was Lowe's theory—have swam the river at this point, and got into some of those ruffian haunts in the rear of Watling and St. James's streets. So Lowe, who, with a thief or a murderer in the wind, had the soul of a Nimrod, rode round to the opposite bank, first telling Toole, who did not care to press his services at Sturk's house, uninvited, that he would send out the great Doctor Pell to examine the patient, or the body, as the case might turn out.
By this time they were carrying Doctor Sturk—that gaudy and dismal image—up his own staircase—his pale wife sobbing and shivering on the landing, among whispered ejaculations from the maids, and the speechless wonder of the awe-stricken children, staring through the banisters—to lay him in the bed where at last he is to lie without dreaming.