ORNAMENTAL CAPITAL 'W'
hen Magnolia and the major had gone out, each on their several devices, poor Mrs. Macnamara called Biddy, their maid, and told her, in a vehement, wheezy, confidential whisper in her ear, though there was nobody by but themselves, and the door was shut.
'Biddy, now mind—d'ye see—the lady that came to me in the end of July—do you remember?—in the black satin—you know?—she'll be here to-day, and we're going down together in her coach to Mrs. Nutter's; but that does not signify. As soon as she comes, bring her in here, into this room—d'ye mind?—and go across that instant minute—d'ye see now?—straight to Dr. Toole, and ask him to send me the peppermint drops he promised me.'
Then she cross-questioned Biddy, to ascertain that she perfectly understood and clearly remembered; and, finally, she promised her half-a-crown if she peformed this very simple commission to her mistress's satisfaction and held her tongue religiously on the subject. She had apprised Toole the evening before, and now poor 'Mrs. Mack's sufferings, she hoped, were about to be brought to a happy termination by the doctor's ingenuity. She was, however, very nervous indeed, as the crisis approached; for such a beast as Mary Matchwell at bay was a spectacle to excite a little tremor even in a person of more nerve than fat Mrs. Macnamara.
And what could Mary Matchwell want of a conjuring conference, of all persons in the world, with poor little Mrs. Nutter? Mrs. Mack had done in this respect simply as she was bid. She had indeed no difficulty to persuade Mrs. Nutter to grant the interview. That harmless little giggling creature could not resist the mere mention of a fortune-teller. Only for Nutter, who set his face against this sort of sham witchcraft, she would certainly have asked him to treat her with a glimpse into futurity at that famous-sibyl's house; and now that she had an opportunity of having the enchantresstête-à-têtein her own snug parlour at the Mills, she was in a delightful fuss of mystery and delight.
Mrs. Mack, indeed, from her own sad experience, felt a misgiving and a pang in introducing the formidable prophetess. But what could she do? She dared not refuse; all she could risk was an anxious hint to poor little Mrs. Nutter, 'not to be telling heranything, good, bad, or indifferent, but just to ask her what questions she liked, and no more.' Indeed, poor Mrs.Mack was low and feverish about this assignation, and would have been more so but for the hope that her Polonius, behind the arras, would bring the woman of Endor to her knees.
All on a sudden she heard the rumble and jingle of a hackney coach, and the clang of the horses' hoofs pulled up close under her window; her heart bounded and fluttered up to her mouth, and then dropped down like a lump of lead, and she heard a well-known voice talk a few sentences to the coachman, and then in the hall, as she supposed, to Biddy; and so she came into the room, dressed as usual in black, tall, thin, and erect, with a black hood shading her pale face and the mist and chill of night seemed to enter along with her.
It was a great relief to poor Mrs. Mack, that she actually saw Biddy at that moment run across the street toward Toole's hall-door, and she quickly averted her conscious glance from the light-heeled handmaid.
'Pray take a chair, Ma'am,' said Mrs. Mack, with a pallid face and a low courtesy.
Mistress Matchwell made a faint courtesy in return, and, without saying anything, sat down, and peered sharply round the room.
'I'm glad, Ma'am, you had no dust to-day; the rain, Ma'am, laid it beautiful.'
The grim woman in black threw back her hood a little, and showed her pale face and thin lips, and prominent black eyes, altogether a grisly and intimidating countenance, with something wild and suspicious in it, suiting by no means ill with her supernatural and malign pretensions.
Mrs. Mack's ear was strained to catch the sound of Toole's approach, and a pause ensued, during which she got up and poured out a glass of port for the lady, and she presented it to her deferentially. She took it with a nod, and sipped it, thinking, as it seemed, uneasily. There was plainly something more than usual upon her mind. Mrs. Mack thought—indeed, she was quite sure—she heard a little fussing about the bed-room door, and concluded that the doctor was getting under cover.
When Mrs. Matchwell had set her empty glass upon the table, she glided to the window, and Mrs. Mack's guilty conscience smote her, as she saw her look towards Toole's house. It was only, however, for the coach; and having satisfied herself it was at hand, she said—
'We'll have some minutes quite private, if you please—'tisn't my affair, you know, but yours,' said the weird woman.
There had been ample time for the arrangement of Toole's ambuscade. Now was the moment. The crisis was upon her. But poor Mrs. Mack, just as she was about to say her little say about the front windows and opposite neighbours, and the privacy of the back bed-room, and to propose their retiring thither, felt a sinking of the heart—a deadly faintness, and an instinctiveconviction that she was altogether overmatched, and that she could not hope to play successfully any sort of devil's game with that all-seeing sorceress. She had always thought she was a plucky woman till she met Mistress Mary. Beforeherher spirit died within her—her blood flowed hurriedly back to her heart, leaving her body cold, pale, and damp, and her soul quailing under her gaze.
She cleared her voice twice, and faltered an enquiry, but broke down in panic; and at that moment Biddy popped in her head—
'The doctor, Ma'am, was sent for to Lucan, an' he won't be back till six o'clock, an' he left no peppermint drops for you, Ma'am, an' do you want me, if you plase, Ma'am?'
'Go down, Biddy, that'll do,' said Mrs. Mack, growing first pale, and then very red.
Mary Matchwell scented death afar off; for her the air was always tainted with ominous perfumes. Every unusual look or dubious word thrilled her with a sense of danger. Suspicion is the baleful instinct of self-preservation with which the devil gifts his children; and hers never slept.
'Whatdoctor?' said Mrs. Matchwell, turning her large, dismal, wicked gaze full on Mrs. Mack.
'Doctor Toole, Ma'am.' She dared not tell a literal lie to that piercing, prominent pair of black eyes.
'And why did you send for Doctor O'Toole, Ma'am?'
'I did not send for the doctor,' answered the fat lady, looking down, for she could not stand that glance that seemed to light up all the caverns of her poor soul, and make her lies stand forth self-confessed. 'I did not send for him, Ma'am, only for some drops he promised me. I've been very sick—I—I—I'm so miserable.'
And poor Mrs. Mack's nether lip quivered, and she burst into tears.
'You're enough to provoke a saint, Mrs. Macnamara,' said the woman in black, rather savagely, though coldly enough. 'Why you're on the point of fortune, as it seems to me.' Here poor Mrs. Mack's inarticulate lamentations waxed more vehement. 'You don't believe it—very well—but where's the use of crying over your little difficulties, Ma'am, like a great baby, instead of exerting yourself and thanking your best friend?'
And the two ladies sat down to a murmuringtête-à-têteat the far end of the room; you could have heard little more than an inarticulate cooing, and poor Mrs. Mack's sobs, and the stern—
'And is that all? I've had more trouble with you than with fifty reasonable clients—you can hardly be serious—I tell you plainly, you must manage matters better, my good Madam; for, frankly, Ma'am,thiswon't do.'
With which that part of the conference closed, and Mary Matchwell looked out of the window. The coach stood at thedoor, the horses dozing patiently, with their heads together, and the coachman, with a black eye, mellowing into the yellow stage, and a cut across his nose—both doing well—was marching across from the public-house over the way, wiping his mouth in the cuff of his coat.
'Put on your riding-hood, if you please, Madam, and come down with me in the coach to introduce me to Mrs. Nutter,' said Mrs. Matchwell, at the same time tapping with her long bony fingers to the driver.
'There's no need of that, Madam. I said what you desired, and I sent a note to her last night, and she expects you just now; and, indeed, I'd rather not go, Madam, if you please.'
''Tis past that now—just do as I tell you, for come you must,' answered Mrs. Matchwell.
As the old woman of Berkley obeyed, and got up and went quietly away with her visitor, though her dead flesh quivered with fear, so poor Mrs. Mack, though loath enough, submitted in silence.
'Now, you look like a body going to be hanged—you do; what's the matter with you, Madam? I tell you, you mustn't look that way. Here, take a sup o' this;' and she presented the muzzle of a small bottle like a pistol at her mouth as she spoke—
'There's a glass on the table, if you let me, Ma'am,' said Mrs. Mack.
'Glass be——; here, take a mouthful.'
And she popped it between her lips; and Mrs. Mack was refreshed and her spirit revived within her.
ORNAMENTAL CAPITAL 'P'
oor Mrs. Nutter, I have an honest regard for her memory. If she was scant of brains, she was also devoid of guile—giggle and raspberry-jam were the leading traits of her character. And though she was slow to believe ill-natured stories, and made, in general, a horrid jumble when she essayed to relate news, except of the most elementary sort; and used to forget genealogies, and to confuse lawsuits and other family feuds, and would have made a most unsatisfactory witness upon any topic on earth, yet she was a ready sympathiser, and a restless but purblind matchmaker—always suggesting or suspecting little romances, and always amazed when the eclaircissement came off. Excellent for condoling—better still for rejoicing—she would, on hearing of a surprising good match, or an unexpected son and heir, or a pleasantly-timed legacy, go off like a mild little peal of joy-bells, and keep ringing up and down and zig-zag, and to and again, in all sorts of irregular roulades, without stopping, the whole day long, with 'Well, to be sure.' 'Upon my conscience, now, I scarce can believe it.' 'An' isn't it pleasant, though.' 'Oh! the creatures—but it was badly wanted!' 'Dear knows—but I'm glad—ha, ha, ha,' and so on. A train of reflection and rejoicing not easily exhausted, and readily, by simple transposition, maintainable for an indefinite period. And people, when good news came, used to say, 'Sally Nutter will be glad to hear that;' and though she had not a great deal of sense, and her conversation was made up principally of interjections, assisted by little gestures, and wonderful expressions of face; and though, when analysed it was not much, yet she made a cheerful noise, and her company was liked; and her friendly little gesticulation, and her turning up of the eyes, and her smiles and sighs, and her 'whisht a bit,' and her 'faith and troth now,' and 'whisper,' and all the rest of her little budget of idiomatic expletives, made the people somehow, along with her sterling qualities, fonder of her than perhaps, having her always at hand, they were quite aware.
So they both entered the vehicle, which jingled and rattled so incessantly and so loud that connected talk was quite out of the question, and Mrs. Macnamara was glad 'twas so; and she could not help observing there was something more than the ordinary pale cast of devilment in Mary Matchwell's face—something, she thought, almost frightful, and which tempted her to believe in her necromantic faculty.
So they reached Nutter's house, at the mills, a sober, gray-fronted mansion, darkened with tall trees, and in went Mrs. Mack. Little Mrs. Nutter received her in a sort of transport of eagerness, giggle, and curiosity.
'And is she really in the coach now? and, my dear, does she really tell the wonders they say? Mrs. Molly told me—well, now, the most surprising things; and do you actually believe she's a conjuror? But mind you, Nutter must not know I had her here. He can't abide a fortune-teller. And what shall I ask her? I think about the pearl cross—don't you? For Iwouldlike to know, and then whether Nutter or his enemies—you know who I mean—will carry the day—don't you know? Doctor Sturk, my dear, and—and—but that's the chief question.'
Poor Mrs. Mack glanced over her shoulder to see she wasn't watched, and whispered her in haste—
'For mercy's sake, my dear, take my advice, and that is, listen to all she tells you, but tell her nothing.'
'To be sure, my dear, that's only common sense,' said Mrs. Nutter.
And Mary Matchwell, who thought they had been quite long enough together, descended from the carriage, and was in the hall before Mrs. Nutter was aware; and the silent apparition overawed the poor little lady, who faltered a 'Good-evening, Madam—you're very welcome—pray step in.' So in they all trooped to Nutter's parlour.
So soon as little Mrs. Nutter got fairly under the chill and shadow of this inauspicious presence, her giggle subsided, and she began to think of the dreadful story she had heard of her having showed Mrs. Flemming through a glass of fair water, the apparition of her husband with his face half masked with blood, the day before his murder by the watchmen in John's-lane. When, therefore, this woman of Endor called for water and glasses, and told Mrs. Mack that she must leave them alone together, poor little empty Mrs. Nutter lost heart, and began to feel very queer, and to wish herself well out of the affair; and, indeed, was almost ready to take to her heels and leave the two ladies in possession of the house, but she had not decision for this.
'And mayn't Mrs. Mack stay in the room with us?' she asked, following that good lady's retreating figure with an imploring look.
'By no means.'
This was addressed sternly to Mrs. Mack herself, who, followed by poor Mrs. Nutter's eyes, moved fatly and meekly out of the room.
She was not without her fair share of curiosity, but on the whole, was relieved, and very willing to go. She had only seen Mary Matchwell take from her pocket and uncase a small, oval-shaped steel mirror, which seemed to have the property of magnifying objects; for she saw her cadaverous fingers reflected init to fully double their natural size, and she had half filled a glass with water, and peered through it askew, holding it toward the light.
Well, the door was shut, and an interval of five minutes elapsed; and all of a sudden two horrible screams in quick succession rang through the house.
Betty, the maid, and Mrs. Mack were in the small room on the other side of the hall, and stared in terror on one another. The old lady, holding Betty by the wrist, whispered a benediction; and Betty crying—'Oh! my dear, what's happened the poor misthress?' crossed the hall in a second, followed by Mrs. Mack, and they heard the door unlocked on the inside as they reached it.
In they came, scarce knowing how, and found poor little Mrs. Nutter flat upon the floor, in a swoon, her white face and the front of her dress drenched with water.
'You've a scent bottle, Mrs. Macnamara—let her smell to it,' said the grim woman in black, coldly, but with a scarcely perceptible gleam of triumph, as she glanced on the horrified faces of the women.
Well, it was a long fainting-fit; but she did come out of it. And when her bewildered gaze at last settled upon Mrs. Matchwell, who was standing darkly and motionless between the windows, she uttered another loud and horrible cry, and clung with her arms round Mrs. Mack's neck, and screamed—
'Oh! Mrs. Mack,thereshe is—thereshe is—thereshe is.'
And she screamed so fearfully and seemed in such an extremity of terror, that Mary Matchwell, in her sables, glided, with a strange sneer on her pale face, out of the room across the hall, and into the little parlour on the other side, like an evil spirit whose mission was half accomplished, and who departed from her for a season.
'She's here—she's here!' screamed poor little Mrs. Nutter.
'No, dear, no—she's not—she's gone, my dear, indeed she's gone,' replied Mrs. Mack, herself very much appalled.
'Oh! is she gone—is she—isshe gone?' cried Mrs. Nutter, staring all round the room, like a child after a frightful dream.
'She's gone, Ma'am, dear—she isn't here—by this crass, she's gone!' said Betty, assisting Mrs. Mack, and equally frightened and incensed.
'Oh! oh! Betty, where is he gone? Oh! Mrs. Mack—oh! no—no—never! It can't be—it couldn't. Itisnot he—he never did it.'
'I declare to you, Ma'am, she's not right in her head!' cried poor Betty, at her wits' ends.
'There—therenow, Sally, darling—there,' said frightened Mrs. Mack, patting her on the back.
'There—there—there—I see him,' she cried again. 'Oh! Charley,—Charley, sure—sure I didn't see it aright—it was not real.'
'There now, don't be frettin' yourself, Ma'am dear,' said Betty.
But Mrs. Mack glanced over her shoulder in the direction in which Mrs. Nutter was looking, and with a sort of shock, not knowing whether it was a bodily presence or a simulacrum raised by the incantations of Mary Matchwell, she beheld the dark features and white eye-balls of Nutter himself looking full on them from the open door.
'Sally—what ails you, sweetheart?' said he, coming close up to her with two swift steps.
'Oh! Charley—'twas a dream—nothing else—a bad dream, Charley. Oh! say it's a dream,' cried the poor terrified little woman. 'Oh! she's coming—she's coming!' she cried again, with an appalling scream.
'Who—what's the matter?' cried Nutter, looking in the direction of his poor wife's gaze in black wrath and bewilderment, and beholding the weird woman who had followed him into the room. As he gazed on that pale, wicked face and sable shape, the same sort of spell which she exercised upon Mrs. Mack, and poor Mrs. Nutter, seemed in a few seconds to steal over Nutter himself, and fix him in the place where he stood. His mahogany face bleached to sickly boxwood, and his eyes looked like pale balls of stone about to leap from their sockets.
After a few seconds, however, with a sort of gasp, like a man awaking from a frightful sleep, he said—
'Betty, take the mistress to her room;' and to his wife, 'go, sweetheart. Mrs. Macnamara, this must be explained,' he added; and taking her by the hand, he led her in silence to the hall-door, and signed to the driver.
'Oh! thank you, Mr. Nutter,' she stammered; 'but the coach is not mine; it came with that lady who's with Mrs. Nutter.'
He had up to this moved with her like a somnambulist.
'Ay, that lady; and who the devil is she?' and he seized her arm with a sudden grasp that made her wince.
'Oh! that lady!' faltered Mrs. Mack—'she's, I believe—she's Mrs. Matchwell—the—the lady that advertises her abilities.'
'Hey! I know—the fortune-teller, and go-between,—her!'
She was glad he asked her no more questions, but let her go, and stood in a livid meditation, forgetting to bid her good evening. She did not wait, however, for his courteous dismissal, but hurried away towards Chapelizod. The only thing connected with the last half-hour's events that seemed quite clear and real to the scared lady was the danger of being overtaken by that terrible woman, and a dreadful sense of her own share as an accessory in the untold mischief that had befallen poor Mrs. Nutter.
In the midst of her horrors and agitation Mrs. Mack's curiosity was not altogether stunned. She wondered vaguely, as she pattered along, with what dreadful exhibition of her infernal skillMary Matchwell had disordered the senses of poor little Mrs. Nutter—had she called up a red-eyed, sooty-raven to her shoulder—as old Miss Alice Lee (when she last had a dish of tea with her) told her she had once done before—and made the ominous bird speak the doom of poor Mrs. Nutter from that perch? or had she raised the foul fiend in bodily shape, or showed her Nutter's dead face through the water?
With these images flitting before her brain, she hurried on at her best pace, fancying every moment that she heard the rumble of the accursed coach behind her, and longing to see the friendly uniform of the Royal Irish Artillery, and the familiar house fronts of the cheery little street, and above all, to hide herself securely among her own household gods.
When Nutter returned to the parlour his wife had not yet left it.
'I'll attend here, go you up stairs,' said Nutter. He spoke strangely, and looked odd, and altogether seemed strung up to a high pitch.
Out went Betty, seeing it was no good dawdling; for her master was resolute and formidable. The room, like others in old-fashioned houses with thick walls, had a double door. He shut the one with a stern slam, and then the other; and though the honest maid loitered in the hall, and, indeed, placed her ear very near the door, she was not much the wiser.
There was some imperfectly heard talk in the parlour, and cries, and sobs, and more talking. Then before Betty was aware, the door suddenly opened, and out came Mary Matchwell, with gleaming eyes, and a pale laugh of spite and victory and threw a look, as she passed, upon the maid that frightened her, and so vanished into her coach.
Nutter disengaged himself from poor Mrs. Nutter's arms, in which he was nearly throttled, while she sobbed and shrieked—
'Oh! Charley, dear—dearest Charley—Charley, darling—isn't it frightful?' and so on.
'Betty, take care of her,' was all he said, and that sternly, like a man quietly desperate, but with a dismal fury in his face.
He went into the little room on the other side of the now darkening hall, and shut the door, and locked it inside. It was partly because he did not choose to talk just now any more with his blubbering and shrieking wife. He was a very kind husband, in his way, but a most incapable nurse, especially in a case of hysterics.
He came out with a desk in his hands.
'Moggy,' he said, in a low tone, seeing his other servant-woman in the dusk crossing at the foot of the stairs, 'here, take this desk, leave it in our bed-room—'tis for the mistress; tell her so by-and-by.'
The wench carried it up; but poor Mrs. Nutter was in no condition to comprehend anything, and was talking quite wildly, and seemed to be growing worse rather than better.
Nutter stood alone in the hall, with his back to the door from which he had just emerged, his hands in his pockets, and the same dreary and wicked shadow over his face.
'So that——Sturk will carry his point after all,' he muttered.
On the hall wainscot just opposite hung his horse-pistols; and when he saw them, and that wasn't for a while—for though he was looking straight at them, he was staring, really, quite through the dingy wooden panel at quite other objects three hundred miles away—when hedidsee them, I say, he growled in the same tone—
'I wish one of those bullets was through my head, so t'other was through his.'
And he cursed him with laconic intensity. Then Nutter slapped his pockets, like a man feeling if his keys and other portable chattels are all right before he leaves his home. But his countenance was that of one whose mind is absent and wandering. And he looked down on the ground, as it seemed in profound and troubled abstraction; and, after a while, he looked up again, and again glared on the cold pistols that hung before him—ready for anything. And he took down one with a snatch and weighed it in his hand, and fell to thinking again; and, as he did, kept opening and shutting the pan with a snap, and so for a long time, and thinking deeply to the tune of that castanet, and at last he roused himself, who knows from what dreams, and hung up the weapon again by its fellow, and looked about him.
The hall-door lay open, as Mary Matchwell had left it. Nutter stood on the door-step, where he could hear faintly, from above stairs, the cries and wails of poor, hysterical Mrs. Nutter. He remained there a good while, during which, unperceived by him, Dr. Toole's pestle-and-mortar-boy, who had entered by the back-way, had taken a seat in the hall. He was waiting for an empty draught-bottle, in exchange for a replenished flask of the same agreeable beverage, which he had just delivered; for physic was one of poor Mrs. Nutter's weaknesses, though, happily, she did not swallow half what came home for her.
When Nutter turned round, the boy—a sharp, tattling vagabond, he knew him well—was reading a printed card he had picked up from the floor, with the impress of Nutter's hob-nailed tread upon it. It was endorsed upon the back, 'For Mrs. Macnamara, with the humble duty of her obedient servant, M. M.'
'What's that, Sirrah?' shouted Nutter.
'For Mrs. Nutter, I think, Sir,' said the urchin, jumping up with a start.
'Mrs. Nutter,' repeated he—'No—Mrs. Mac—Macnamara,' and he thrust it into his surtout pocket. 'And what brings you here, Sirrah?' he added savagely; for he thought everybody was spying after him now, and, as I said, he knew him for a tattling young dog—he had taken the infection from his master, who had trained him.
'Here, woman,' he cried to Moggy, who was passing again, 'give that pimping rascal his —— answer; and see, Sirrah, if I find you sneaking about the place again, I'll lay that whip across your back.'
Nutter went into the small room again.
'An' how are ye, Jemmie—how's every inch iv you?' enquired Moggy of the boy, when his agitation was a little blown over.
'I'm elegant, thank ye,' he answered; 'an' what's the matther wid ye all? I cum through the kitchen, and seen no one.'
'Och! didn't you hear? The poor mistress—she's as bad as bad can be.' And then began a whispered confidence, broken short by Nutter's again emerging, with the leather belt he wore at night on, and a short back-sword, called acoutteau de chasse, therein, and a heavy walking-cane in his hand.
'Get tea for me, wench, in half an hour,' said he, this time quite quietly, though still sternly, and without seeming to observe the quaking boy, who, at first sight, referred these martial preparations to a resolution to do execution upon him forthwith; 'you'll find me in the garden when it's ready.'
And he strode out, and pushing open the wicket door in the thick garden hedge, and, with his cane shouldered, walked with a quick, resolute step down towards the pretty walk by the river, with the thick privet hedge and the row of old pear trees by it. And that was the last that was heard or seen of Mr. Nutter for some time.
ORNAMENTAL CAPITAL 'A'
t about half-past six that evening, Puddock arrived at Captain Cluffe's lodgings, and for the last time the minstrels rehearsed their lovelorn and passionate ditties. They were drest 'all in their best,' under that outer covering, which partly for mystery and partly for bodily comfort—the wind, after the heavy rains of the last week, having come round to the east—these prudent troubadours wore.
Though they hardly glanced at the topic to one another, each had his delightful anticipations of the chances of the meeting. Puddock did not value Dangerfield a rush, and Cluffe's mind was pretty easy upon that point from the moment his proposal for Gertrude Chattesworth had taken wind.
Only for that cursed shower the other night, that made it incumbent on Cluffe, who had had two or three sharp little visits of his patrimonial gout, and no notion of dying for love, to get to his quarters as quickly as might be—he had no doubt that the last stave of their first duet rising from the meadow of Belmont, with that charming roulade—devised by Puddock, and the pathetic twang-twang of his romantic instrument, would have been answered by the opening of the drawing-room window, and Aunt Becky's imperious summons to the serenaders to declare themselves, and come in and partake of supper!
The only thing that at all puzzled him, unpleasantly connected with that unsuccessful little freak of musical love-making, was the fellow they saw getting away from under the open window—the very same at which Lilias Walsingham had unintentionally surprised her friend Gertrude. He had a surtout on, with the cape cut exactly after the fashion of Dangerfield, and a three-cocked hat with very pinched corners, in the French style, which identical hat Cluffe was ready to swear he saw upon Dangerfield's head very early one morning, as he accidentally espied him viewing his peas and tulips in the little garden of the Brass Castle by the river side.
'Twas fixed, in fact, in Cluffe's mind that Dangerfield was the man; and what the plague need had a declared lover of any such clandestine manœuvres. Was it possible that the old scoundrel was, after all, directing his night visits differently, and keeping the aunt in play, as a reserve, in the event of the failure of his suit to the niece? Plans as gross, he knew, had succeeded; old women were so devilish easily won, and loved money too, so well sometimes.
These sly fellows agreed that they must not go to Belmont byChapelizod-bridge, which would lead them through the town, in front of the barrack, and under the very sign-board of the Phœnix. No, they would go by the Knockmaroon-road, cross the river by the ferry, and unperceived, and unsuspected, enter the grounds of Belmont on the further side.
So away went the amorous musicians, favoured by the darkness, and talking in an undertone, and thinking more than they talked, while little Puddock, from under his cloak, scratched a faint little arpeggio and a chord, ever and anon, upon 'the inthrument.'
When they reached the ferry, the boat was tied at the near side, but deuce a ferryman could they see. So they began to shout and hallo, singly, and together, until Cluffe, in much ire and disgust, exclaimed—
'Curse the sot—drunk in some whiskey-shop—the blackguard! That is the way such scoundrels throw away their chances, and help to fill the high roads with beggars and thieves; curse him, I sha'n't have a note left if we go on bawling this way. I suppose we must go home again.'
'Fiddle-thtick!' exclaimed the magnanimous Puddock. 'I pulled myself across little more than a year ago, and 'twas as easy as—as—anything. Get in, an' loose her when I tell you.'
This boat was managed by means of a rope stretched across the stream from bank to bank; seizing which, in both hands, the boatman, as he stood in his skiff, hauled it, as it seemed, with very moderate exertion across the river.
Cluffe chuckled as he thought how sold the rascally boatman would be, on returning, to find his bark gone over to the other side.
'Don't be uneathy about the poor fellow,' said Puddock; 'we'll come down in the morning and make him a present, and explain how it occurred.'
'Explainyourself—poor fellow, be hanged!' muttered Cluffe, as he took his seat, for he did not part with his silver lightly. 'I say, Puddock, tell me when I'm to slip the rope.'
The signal given, Cluffe let go, entertaining himself with a little jingle of Puddock's guitar, of which he had charge, and a verse or two of their last song; while the plump little lieutenant, standing upright, midships in the boat, hauled away, though not quite so deftly as was desirable. Some two or three minutes had passed before they reached the middle of the stream, which was, as Puddock afterwards remarked, 'gigantically thwollen;' and at this point they came to something very like a stand-still.
'I say, Puddock, keep her head a little more up the stream, will you?' said Cluffe, thinking no evil, and only to show his nautical knowledge.
'It's easy to say keep her head up the stream,' gasped Puddock who was now labouring fearfully, and quite crimson in the face,tugging his words up with a desperate lisp, and too much out of breath to say more.
The shades of the night and the roar of the waters prevented Cluffe observing these omens aright.
'What the plague are you doingnow? cried Cluffe, arresting a decorative passage in the middle, and for the first time seriously uncomfortable, as the boat slowly spun round, bringing what Cluffe called her head—though head and tail were pretty much alike—toward the bank they had quitted.
'Curse you, Puddock, why—what are you going back for? you can't do it.'
'Lend a hand,' bawled Puddock, in extremity. 'I say, help, seize the rope; I say, Cluffe, quick, Sir, my arms are breaking.'
There was no exaggeration in this—there seldom was in any thing Puddock said; and the turn of the boat had twisted his arms like the strands of a rope.
'Hold on, Puddock, curse you, I'm comin',' roared Cluffe, quite alive to the situation. 'If you let go, I'mdiddledbut I'll shoot you.'
'Catch the rope, I thay, Thir, or 'tith all over!'
Cluffe, who had only known that he was slowly spinning round, and that Puddock was going to commit him to the waves, made a vehement exertion to catch the rope, but it was out of reach, and the boat rocked so suddenly from his rising, that he sat down by mistake again, with a violent plump that made his teeth gnash, in his own place; and the shock and his alarm stimulated his anger.
'Hold on, Sir; hold on, you little devil, I say, one minute, here—hold—hollo!'
While Cluffe was shouting these words, and scrambling forward, Puddock was crying—
'Curth it, Cluffe, quick—oh! hang it, I can't thtand it—bleth mythoul!
And Puddock let go, and the boat and its precious freightage, with a horrid whisk and a sweep, commenced its seaward career in the dark.
'Take the oars, Sir, hang you!' cried Cluffe.
'There are no oarth,' replied Puddock, solemnly.
'Or the helm.'
'There'th no helm.'
'And what the devil, Sir?' and a splash of cold water soused the silken calves of Cluffe at this moment.
'Heugh! heugh!—and what the devilwillyou do, Sir? you don't want to drown me, I suppose?' roared Cluffe, holding hard by the gunwale.
'Youcan thwim, Cluffe; jump in, and don't mind me,' said little Puddock, sublimely.
Cluffe, who was a bit of a boaster, had bragged, one eveningat mess, of his swimming, which he said was famous in his school days; 'twas a lie, but Puddock believed it implicitly.
'Thank you!' roared Cluffe. 'Swim, indeed!—buttoned up this way—and—and the gout too.'
'I say, Cluffe, save the guitar, if you can,' said Puddock.
In reply, Cluffe cursed that instrument through his teeth, with positive fury, and its owner; and, indeed, he was so incensed at this unfeeling request, that if he had known where it was, I think he would have gone nigh to smash it on Puddock's head, or at least, like the 'Minstrel Boy,' to tear its chords asunder; for Cluffe was hot, especially when he was frightened. But he forgot—though it was hanging at that moment by a pretty scarlet and gold ribbon about his neck.
'Guitar bediddled!' cried he; ''tis gone—wherewe'regoing—to the bottom. What devil possessed you, Sir, to drown us this way?'
Puddock sighed. They were passing at this moment the quiet banks of the pleasant meadow of Belmont, and the lights twinkled from the bow-window in the drawing-room. I don't know whether Puddock saw them—Cluffe certainly did not.
'Hallo! hallo!—a rope!' cried Cluffe, who had hit upon this desperate expedient for raising the neighbourhood. 'A rope—a rope! hallo! hallo!—a ro-o-o-ope!'
And Aunt Becky, who heard the wild whooping, mistook it for drunken fellows at their diversions, and delivered her sentiments in the drawing-room accordingly.
ORNAMENTAL CAPITAL 'W'
e're coming to something—what's that?' said Puddock, as a long row of black stakes presented themselves at some distance ahead, in the dusky moonlight, slanting across the stream.
''Tis the salmon-weir!' roared Cluffe with an oath that subsided into something like a sickening prayer.
It was only a fortnight before that a tipsy fellow had been found drowned in the net. Cluffe had lost his head much more than Puddock, though Cluffe had fought duels. But then, he really could not swim a bit, and he was so confoundedly buckled up.
'Sit to the right. Trim the boat, Sir!' said little Puddock.
'Trim the devil!' bawled Cluffe, to whom this order of Puddock's, it must be owned a useless piece of marinetism in their situation, was especially disgusting; and he added, looking furiously ahead—''Tisn't the boat I'd trim, I promise you: you—you ridiculous murderer!'
Just then Puddock's end of the boat touched a stone, or a post, or something in the current, and that in which Cluffe sat came wheeling swiftly round across the stream, and brought the gallant captain so near the bank that, with a sudden jerk, he caught the end of a branch that stretched far over the water, and, spite of the confounded tightness of his toilet, with the energy of sheer terror, climbed a good way; but, reaching a point where the branch forked, he could get no further, though he tugged like a brick. But what was a fat fellow of fifty, laced, and buckled, and buttoned up, like poor Cluffe—with his legs higher up among the foliage than his head and body—to do, and with his right calf caught in the fork of a branch, so as to arrest all progress, and especially as the captain was plainly too much for the branch, which was drooping toward the water, and emitting sounds premonitory of a smash.
With a long, screaking crash the branch stooped down to the water, and, so soon as the old element made itself acquainted with those parts that reached it first, the gallant captain, with a sort of sob, redoubled his efforts, and down came the faithless bough, more and more perpendicularly, until his nicely got-up cue and bag, then his powdered head, and finally Captain Cluffe's handsome features, went under the surface. When this occurred, he instantaneously disengaged his legs with a vague feeling that his last struggle above water was over.
His feet immediately touched the bottom; he stood erect, littleabove his middle, and quite out of the main current, within half-a-dozen steps of the bank, and he found himself—he scarcely knew how—on terra firma, impounded in a little flower-garden, with lilacs and laburnums, and sweet-briars, and, through a window close at hand, whom should he see but Dangerfield, who was drying his hands in a towel; and, as Cluffe stood for a moment, letting the water pour down through his sleeves, he further saw him make some queer little arrangements, and eventually pour out and swallow a glass of brandy, and was tempted to invoke his aid on the spot; but some small incivilities which he had bestowed upon Dangerfield, when he thought he cherished designs upon Aunt Rebecca, forbade; and at that moment he spied the little wicket that opened upon the road, and Dangerfield stept close up to the window, and cried sternly, 'Who's there?' with his grim spectacles close to the window.
The boyish instinct of 'hide and seek' took possession of Cluffe, and he glided forth from the precincts of the Brass Castle upon the high road, just as the little hall-door was pushed open, and he heard the harsh tones of Dangerfield challenging the gooseberry bushes and hollyhocks, and thrashing the evergreens with his cane.
Cluffe hied straight to his lodgings, and ordered a sack posset. Worthy Mrs. Mason eyed him in silent consternation, drenched and dishevelled, wild, and discharging water from every part of his clothing and decorations, as he presented himself without a hat, before her dim dipt candle in the hall.
'I'll take that—that vessel, if you please, Sir, that's hanging about your neck,' said the mild and affrighted lady, meaning Puddock's guitar, through the circular orifice of which, under the chords, the water with which it was filled occasionally splashed.
'Oh—eh?—the instrument?—confound it!' and rather sheepishly he got the gray red and gold ribbon over his dripping head, and placing it in her hand without explanation, he said—'A warming-pan as quickly as may be, I beg, Mrs. Mason—and the posset, I do earnestly request. You see—I—I've been nearly drowned—and—and I can't answer for consequences if there be one minute's delay.
And up he went streaming, with Mrs. Mason's candle, to his bed-room, and dragged off his clinging garments, and dried his fat body, like a man coming out of a bath, and roared for hot water for his feet, and bellowed for the posset and warming-pan, and rolled into his bed, and kept the whole house in motion.
And so soon as he had swallowed his cordial, and toasted his sheets, and with the aid of his man rolled himself in a great blanket, and clapped his feet in a tub of hot water, and tumbled back again into his bed, he bethought him of Puddock, and ordered his man to take his compliments to Captain Burgh and Lieutenant Lillyman, the tenants of the nearest lodging-house,and to request either to come to him forthwith on a matter of life or death.
Lillyman was at home, and came.
'Puddock's drowned, my dear Lillyman, and I'm little better. The ferry boat broke away with us. Do go down to the adjutant—they ought to raise the salmon nets—I'm very ill myself—very ill, indeed—else I'd have assisted; but you knowme, Lillyman. Poor Puddock—'tis a sad business—but lose no time.'
'And can't he swim?' asked Lillyman, aghast.
'Swim?—ay, like a stone, poor fellow! If he had only thrown himself out, and held by me, hang it, I'd have brought him to shore; but poor Puddock, he lost his head. And I—you see me here—don't forget to tell them the condition you found me in, and—and—now don't lose a moment.'
So off went Lillyman to give the alarm at the barrack.