On Saturday night I called the lads to my room and gave them their
final instructions.
"Now, you rogues," said I to them, "let there be no drinking this
night, and no trapesing of the streets, getting your heads broke just
at the critical moment; for, as my father used to say, although a
broken head is merrily come by, a clear head's worth two of it when
business is to be transacted. So go to your beds at once, the two of
you, if there's any drinking to be done, troth it's myself that'll
attend to it."
With that I drove them out and sat down to an exhilarating bottle,
without ever a thought of where the money was to come from to pay for
it. It is one of the advantages of a public house frequented by the
nobility that if you come to it with a bold front, and one or two
servants behind your back, you have at least a clear week ahead before
they flutter the show of a bill at you and ask to see the colour of
your gold in exchange for their ink and paper.
My father used to say that a gentleman with money in his pocket might
economize and no disgrace to him; but when stomach and purse are both
empty, go to the best house in the town, where they will feed you, and
lodge you, and drink you, before asking questions. Indeed I never shed
many salt tears over the losses of a publican, for he shears so
closely those sheep that have plenty of wool that he may well take
care of an innocent lamb like myself, on which the crop is not yet
grown.
I was drinking quietly and thinking deeply on the wisdom of my father,
who knew the world better than ever his son will know it, when there
was an unexpected knock at the door, and in walked Doctor Chord. I was
not too pleased to see the little man, for I had feared he had changed
his mind and wanted to come with us in the morning, and his company
was something I had no desire for. He was a coward in a pinch, and a
distrustful man in peace, ever casting doubt on the affection I was
sure sometimes that Lady Mary held for me; and if he wasn't talking
about that, sure he went rambling on,--great discourses on science
which held little interest for a young man so deeply in love as I was.
The proper study of mankind is womankind, said a philosopher that my
father used to quote with approval, but whose name I'm forgetting at
this moment. Nevertheless I welcomed the little Doctor and said to
him:
"Draw you up a chair, and I'll draw out a cork."
The little man sat him down, and I placed an open bottle nice and
convenient to his elbow.
Whether it was the prospect of good wine, or the delight of better
company, or the thought of what was going to happen on the morrow, I
could not tell; but it seemed to me the little Doctor laboured under a
great deal of excitement, and I became more and more afraid that he
would insist on bearing us company while the Earl and the Countess
were away at church. Now it was enough to have on my hands two such
models of stupidity as Paddy and Jem without having to look after
Doctor Chord as well, and him glancing his eyes this way and that in
apprehension of a blunderbuss.
"Have you made all your plans, O'Ruddy?" he inquired, setting down his
cup a good deal emptier than when he lifted it.
"I have," said I.
"Are you entirely satisfied with them?" he continued.
"My plans are always perfect plans," I replied to him, "and trouble
only comes in the working of them. When you have to work with such raw
material as I have to put up with, the best of plans have the unlucky
habit of turning round and hitting you in the eye."
"Do you expect to be hit in the eye to-morrow?" asked the Doctor, very
excited, which was shown by the rattle of the bottle against the lip
of his cup.
"I'm only sure of one thing for to-morrow," said I, "and that is the
certainty that if there's blunder to be made one or other of my
following will make it. Still, I'm not complaining, for it's good to
be certain of something."
"What's to be your mode of procedure?" said the Doctor, giving me a
touch of his fine language.
"We wait in the lane till the church bells have stopped ringing, then
Paddy and Jem go up to the little door in the wall, and Paddy knocks
nice and quietly, in the expectation that the door will be opened as
quietly by Strammers, and thereupon Jem and Paddy will be let in."
"But won't ye go in with them?" inquired the little Doctor very
hurriedly.
"Doctor Chord," said I, lifting up my cup, "I have the honour to drink
wine with you, and to inform you that it's myself that's outlining the
plan."
"I beg your pardon for interrupting," said the Doctor; then he nodded
to me as he drank.
"My two villains will go in alone with Strammers, and when the door is
bolted, and they have passed the time of day with each other, Paddy
will look around the garden and exclaim how it excels all the gardens
that ever was, including that of Eden; and then Jem will say what a
pity it was they couldn't have their young friend outside to see the
beauty of it. It is my expectation that Strammers will rise to this,
and request the pleasure of their young friend's company; but if he
hesitates Paddy will say that the young friend outside is a
free-handed Irishman who would no more mind a shilling going from his
pocket into that of another man than he would the crooking of an elbow
when a good drink is to be had. But be that as it may, they're to work
me in through the little door by the united diplomacy of England and
Ireland, and, once inside of the walls, it is my hope that I can slip
away from them and see something of the inside of the house as well."
"And you have the hope that you'll find Lady Mary in the
withdrawing-room," said the Doctor.
"I'll find her," says I, "if she's in the house; for I'm going from
room to room on a tour of inspection to see whether I'll buy the
mansion or not."
"It's a very good plan," said the Doctor, drawing the back of his hand
across his lips. "It's a very good plan," he repeated, nodding his
head several times.
"Now, by the Old Head of Kinsale, little man," said I, "what do you
mean by that remark and that motion of the head? What's wrong with the
plan?"
"The plan's a good one, as I have said," reiterated the Doctor. But I
saw there was something on his mind, and told him so, urging him to be
out with it.
"Do you think," said I, "that Lady Mary will be in church with her
father and mother?"
"I do not," muttered the Doctor, cautiously bringing his voice down to
a whisper; "but I want to warn you that there's danger here in this
room while you're lurking around my Earl's palace."
"How can danger harm me here when I am somewhere else?" I asked.
A very mysterious manner fell upon the little man, and he glanced, one
after the other, at the four corners of the room, as if he heard a
mouse moving and wanted to detect it. Then he looked sternly at the
door, and I thought he was going to peer up the chimney, but instead
he leaned across the table and said huskily,--
"The papers!"
"What papers?" I asked, astonished.
"Your thoughts are so intent on the young lady that you forget
everything else. Have you no recollection of the papers the Earl of
Westport is so anxious to put himself in possession of?"
I leaned back in my chair and gazed steadily at Chord; but his eyes
would not bring themselves to meet mine, and so he made some pother
about filling up his cup again, with the neck of the bottle trembling
on the edge, as if its teeth were chattering.
Now my father used to say when a man is afraid to meet your eye, be
prepared to have him meet your fist. I disremembered saying anything
to the Doctor about these same papers, which, truth to tell, I had
given but little thought to recently, with other things of more
importance to crowd them out of mind.
"How come you to know anything about the papers?" I said at last.
"Oh, your memory is clean leaving you!" cried the little Doctor, as if
the cup of wine he drank had brought back his courage to him. "You
told me all about the papers when we were in Kensington Gardens."
"If I did," says I, "then I must have further informed you that I gave
them as a present to Lady Mary herself. Surely I told you that?"
"You told me that, of course; but I thought you said they had come
back into your possession again. If I'm wrong, it's no matter at all,
and there's nothing to be said about them. I'm merely speaking to you
by way of a friend, and I thought if you had the papers here in your
room it was very unsafe to leave them unprotected by yourself or some
one you can trust. I was just speaking as your well-wisher, for I
don't want to hear you crying you are robbed, and us at our wit's end
not getting either the thief or the booty."
He spoke with great candour and good humour, and the only thing that
made me suspicious at first was that for the life of me I could not
ever remember mentioning the papers to him, yet it was very likely
that I did; for, as my father used to say, an Irishman talks more than
the recording angel can set down in his busiest day, and therefore it
is lucky that everything he says is not held against him. It seemed to
me that we talked more of scandal than of papers in the park, but
still I might be mistaken.
"Very good, Doctor," I cried, genially. "The papers it is, and, true
for you, the Earl would like to get his old claws on them. Have you
any suggestions to make?"
"Well, it seems to me, O'Ruddy, that if the Earl got wind of them it
would be the easiest thing in the world to have your apartment rifled
during your absence."
"That is true enough," I agreed, "so what would you do about the
papers if you were in my boots?"
"If I had a friend I could trust," said Doctor Chord slowly, "I would
give the papers to him and tell him to take good care of them."
"But why not carry them about in my own pocket?" I asked.
"It seemed to me they were not any too safe last time they were
there," said the Doctor, pleasantly enough. "You see, O'Ruddy, you're
a marked man if once the Earl gets wind of your being in town. To
carry the papers about on your own person would be the unsafest thing
you could do, ensuring you a stab in the back, so that little use
you'd have for the papers ever after. I have no desire to be mixed
further in your affairs than I am at the present moment, but
nevertheless I could easily take charge of the packet for you; then
you would know where it was."
"But would I be sure to know where _you_ were?" said I, my first
suspicion of him returning to me.
The little Doctor laughed.
"I am always very easily found," he said; "but when I offered to take
the papers it was merely in case a stranger like yourself should not
have a faster friend beside him than I am. If you have any such, then
I advise you to give custody of the papers to him."
"I have no real friend in London that I know of," said I, "but Paddy."
"The very thing," cried the Doctor, joyously, at once putting to rest
all my doubts concerning him. "The very thing. I would give the papers
to Paddy and tell him to protect them with his life. I'm sure he'll do
it, and you'll know where to find both them and him when you want
them. But to go away from the 'Pig and Turnip' right across to the
other end of the town, taking your two servants with you, leaving
nobody to guard papers that are of importance to you, strikes me as
the height of folly. I'll just fill up another cup, and so bid you
good-night, and good luck for the morrow."
And with that the little man drained the bottle, taking his leave with
great effusion, and begging my pardon for even so much as mentioning
the papers, saying they had been on his mind for the last day or two,
and, feeling friendly toward me, he wished to warn me not to leave
them carelessly about.
After he left I thought a good deal about what the Doctor had said,
and I wondered at myself that I had ever misdoubted him; for, although
he was a man given greatly to talk, yet he had been exceedingly
friendly with me from the very first night I had met him, and I
thought shame of myself that I was losing trust in my fellow man here
in this great city of London, because in Ireland we trust each other
entirely; and indeed we are under some compulsion in that same matter,
for there is so little money about that if you do not take a man's
word now and then there's nothing else for you to take.