ORNAMENTAL CAPITAL 'P'
oor 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 theHue-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 didthat 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 itwere, 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 asthere? Doso. 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; andyoumay 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 youmust 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. Ican'tmark 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.
ORNAMENTAL CAPITAL 'I'
n 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?Whatogling, 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 impetuoushaste, 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,odiousperson!'
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 herbonnet 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—tellme, 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 youdone? 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, ''tistoobad. Truly, Madam, itis vastlyvexatious 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.
ORNAMENTAL CAPITAL 'A'
nd 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.'
'Whatwas it—whatisit?'
'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, andgloria 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. Allthatfor 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 howveryhandsome 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 talkedde 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.
ORNAMENTAL CAPITAL '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 abouthim, 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 flowerswill 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'veallfaults, 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 gavenoreason, 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 youknowthe reason,' glared out Devereux.
'Indeed, Sir, I donotknow the reason,' answered the rector.
'But you know—youmust—youmeant—you, at least had heard some ill of me, and you no longer wish my suit to prosper.'
'I have, indeed, of late, heardmuchill 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'msorry, 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—tohateher—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 Imightmake her like me, Sir. They come at last, sometimes, to like those that love them so—sodesperately: thatmay 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 haveyou, more,Sir, andworsethan I, maybe,' cried Devereux, wild again; 'and you come here in your spiritual pride to admonish and to lecture, and toinsulta 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 itsmote Devereux now, as sometimes happens with wayward fellows, and his better nature was suddenly moved.
'I'msorry, Sir—I am. You're too patient—I'mverysorry; '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? Atrial, Sir, if youcanforgive me—one trial—my vice—you shall see me changed, a new man. Oh, Sir, let me swear it. Iam, 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.