THE DARK ROOM--CONTAINING PLENTY OF SCARS AND BRUISES AND PLANS OF
VENGEANCE.
On the same day a very different scene was passing in another quarter,
whither for a few moments we must transport the reader. In a large and
aristocratic-looking brick house, situated near the then fashionable
suburb of Glasnevin, surrounded by stately trees, and within furnished
with the most prodigal splendour, combined with the strictest and most
minute attention to comfort and luxury, and in a large and lofty
chamber, carefully darkened, screened round by the rich and voluminous
folds of the silken curtains, with spider-tables laden with fruits and
wines and phials of medicine, crowded around him, and rather buried
than supported among a luxurious pile of pillows, lay, in sore bodily
torment, with fevered pulse, and heart and brain busy with a thousand
projects of revenge, the identical Nicholas Blarden, whose signal
misadventure in the theatre, upon the preceding evening, we have
already recorded. A decent-looking matron sate in a capacious chair,
near the bed, in the capacity of nurse-tender, while her constrained
and restless manner, as well as the frightened expression with which,
from time to time, she stole a glance at the bloated mass of scars and
bruises, of which she had the care, pretty plainly argued the sweet and
patient resignation with which her charge endured his sufferings. In
the recess of the curtained window sate a little black boy, arrayed
according to the prevailing fashion, in a fancy suit, and with a turban
on his head, and carrying in his awe-struck countenance, as well as in
the immobility of his attitude, a woeful contradiction to the gaiety of
his attire.
"Drink--drink--where's that d----d hag?--give me drink, I say!" howled
the prostrate gambler.
The woman started to her feet, and with a step which fell noiselessly
upon the deep-piled carpets which covered the floor, she hastened to
supply him.
He had hardly swallowed the draught, when a low knock at the door
announced a visitor.
"Come in, can't you?" shouted Blarden.
"How do you feel now, Nicky dear?" inquired a female voice--and a
handsome face, with rather a bold expression, and crowned by a small
mob-cap, overlaid with a profusion of the richest lace, peeped into the
room through the half-open door--"how do you feel?"
"In _hell_--that's all," shouted he.
"Doctor Mallarde is below, love," added she, without evincing either
surprise or emotion of any kind at the concise announcement which the
patient had just delivered.
"Let him come up then," was the reply.
"And a Mr. M'Quirk--a messenger from Mr. Chancey."
"Let _him_ come up too. But why the hell did not Chancey come
himself?--That will do--pack--be off."
The lady tossed her head, like one having authority, looked half
inclined to say something sharp, but thought better of it, and
contented herself with shutting the door with more emphasis than Dr.
Mallarde would have recommended.
The physician of those days was a solemn personage: he would as readily
have appeared without his head, as without his full-bottomed wig; and
his ponderous gold-headed cane was a sort of fifth limb, the
supposition of whose absence involved a contradiction to the laws of
anatomy; his dress was rich and funereal; his step was slow and
pompous; his words very long and very few; his look was mysterious; his
nod awful; and the shake of his head unfathomable: in short, he was in
no respect very much better than a modern charlatan. The science which
he professed was then overgrown with absurdities and mystification. The
temper of the times was superstitious and credulous, the physician,
being wise in his generation, framed his outward man (including his air
and language) accordingly, and the populace swallowed his long words
and his electuaries with equal faith.
Doctor Mallarde was a doctor-like person, and, in theatrical
phraseology, looked the part well. He was tall and stately, saturnine
and sallow in aspect, had bushy, grizzled brows, and a severe and
prominent dark eye, a thin, hooked nose, and a pair of lips just as
thin as it. Along with these advantages he had a habit of pressing the
gold head of his professional cane against one corner of his mouth, in
a way which produced a sinister and mysterious distortion of that
organ; and by exhibiting the medical baton, the outward and visible
sign of doctorship, in immediate juxtaposition with the fountain of
language, added enormously to the gravity and authority of the words
which from time to time proceeded therefrom.
In the presence of such a spectre as this--intimately associated with
all that was nauseous and deadly on earth--it is hardly to be wondered
at that even Nicholas Blarden felt himself somewhat uneasy and abashed.
The physician felt his pulse, gazing the while upon the ceiling, and
pressing the gold head of his cane, as usual, to the corner of his
mouth; made him put out his tongue, asked him innumerable questions,
which we forbear to publish, and ended by forbidding his patient the
use of every comfort in which he had hitherto found relief, and by
writing a prescription which might have furnished a country dispensary
with good things for a twelvemonth. He then took his leave and his fee,
with the grisly announcement, that unless the drugs were all swallowed,
and the other matters attended to in a spirit of absolute submission,
he would not answer for the life of the patient.
"I am d----d glad he's gone at last," exclaimed Blarden, with a kind of
gasp, as if a weight had been removed from his breast. "Curse me, if I
did not feel all the time as if my coffin was in the room. Are you
there, M'Quirk?"
"Here I am, Mr. Blarden," rejoined the person addressed, whom we may as
well describe, as we shall have more to say about him by-and-by.
Mr. M'Quirk was a small, wiry man, of fifty years and upwards, arrayed
in that style which is usually described as "shabby genteel." He was
gifted with one of those mean and commonplace countenances which seem
expressly made for the effectual concealment of the thoughts and
feelings of the possessor--an advantage which he further secured by
habitually keeping his eyes as nearly closed as might be, so that, for
any indication afforded by them of the movements of the inward man,
they might as well have been shut up altogether. The peculiarity, if
not the grace, of his appearance, was heightened by a contraction of
the muscles at the nape of the neck, which drew his head backward, and
produced a corresponding elevation of the chin, which, along with a
certain habitual toss of the head, gave to his appearance a kind of
caricatured affectation of superciliousness and _hauteur_, very
impressive to behold. Along with the swing of the head, which we have
before noticed, there was, whenever he spoke, a sort of careless
libration of the whole body, which, together with a certain way of
jerking or twitching the right shoulder from time to time, were the
only approaches to gesticulation in which he indulged.
"Well, what does your master say?" inquired Blarden--"out with it,
can't you."
"Master--master--indeed! Cock _him_ up with _master_," echoed the man,
with lofty disdain.
"Ay! what does he say?" reiterated Blarden, in no very musical tones.
"D---- you, are you choking, or moonstruck? Out with it, can't you?"
"_Chancey_ says that you had better think the matter over--and that's
his opinion," replied M'Quirk.
"And a fine opinion it is," rejoined Blarden, furiously. "Why, in
hell's name, what's the matter with him--the--drivelling idiot? What's
law for--what's the courts for? Am I to be trounced and cudgelled in
the face of hundreds, and--and half _murdered_, and nothing for it? I
tell you, I'll be beggared before the scoundrel shall escape. If every
penny I'm worth in the world can buy it, I'll have justice. Tell that
sleepy sot Chancey that I'll _make_ him work. Ho--o--o--oh!" bawled the
wretch, as his anguish all returned a hundredfold in the fruitless
attempt to raise himself in bed.
"Drink, here--_drink_--I'm choking! Hock and water. D---- you, don't
look so stupid and frightened. I'll not be bamboozled by an old
'pothecary. Quick with it, you fumbling witch."
He finished the draught, and lay silently for a time.
"See--mind me, M'Quirk," he said, after a pause, "tell Chancey to come
out himself--tell him to be here before evening, or I'll make him sorry
for it, do you mind; I want to give him directions. Tell him to come at
once, or I'll make him _smoke_ for it, that's all."
"I understand--all right--very well; and so, as you seem settling for a
snooze, I wish you good-evening, Mr. Blarden, and all sorts of pleasure
and happiness," rejoined the messenger.
The patient answered by a grin and a stifled howl, and Mr. M'Quirk,
having his head within the curtains, which screened him effectually
from the observation of the two attendants, and observing that Mr.
Blarden's eyes were closely shut in the rigid compression of pain, put
out his tongue, and indulged for a few seconds in an exceedingly ugly
grimace, after which, repeating his farewell in a tone of respectful
sympathy, he took his departure, chuckling inwardly all the way
downstairs, for the little gentleman had a playful turn for mischief.
When Gordon Chancey, Esquire, barrister-at-law, in obedience to this
summons, arrived at Cherry Hill, for so the residence of the sick
voluptuary was called, he found his loving friend and patron, Nicholas
Blarden, babbling not of green fields, but of green curtains, theatres,
dice-boxes, bright eyes, small-swords, and the shades infernal--in a
word, in a high state of delirium. On calling next day, however, he
beheld him much recovered; and after an extremely animated discussion,
these two well-assorted confederates at length, by their united
ingenuity, succeeded in roughly sketching the outlines of a plan of
terrific vengeance, in all respects worthy of the diabolical council in
which it originated, and of whose progress and development this history
very fully treats.