THE PRESS IN THE WALL.
Larry Toole, having visited in vain all his master's usual haunts,
returned in the evening of that day on which we last beheld him, to the
"Cock and Anchor," in a state of extreme depression and desolateness.
"By the holy man," said Larry, in reply to the inquiries of the groom,
who encountered him at the yard gate, "he's gone as clane as a whistle.
It's dacent thratement, so it is--gone, and laves me behind to rummage
the town for him, and divil a sign of him, good or bad. I'm fairly
burstin' with emotions. Why did he make off with himself? Why the devil
did he desart me? There's no apology for sich minewvers, nor no excuse
in the wide world, anless, indeed, he happened to be dhrounded or
dhrunk. I'm fairly dry with the frettin'. Come in with me, and we'll
have a sorrowful pot iv strong ale together by the kitchen fire; for,
bedad, I want something badly."
Accordingly the two worthies entered the great old kitchen, and by the
genial blaze of its cheering hearth, they discussed at length the
probabilities of recovering Larry's lost master.
"Usedn't he to take a run out now and again to Morley Court?" inquired
the groom; "you told me so."
"By the hokey," exclaimed Larry, with sudden alacrity, "there is some
sinse in what you say--bedad, there is. I don't know how in the world I
didn't think iv going out there to-day. But no matter, I'll do it
to-morrow."
And in accordance with this resolution, upon the next day, early in the
forenoon, Mr. Toole pursued his route toward the old manor-house. As he
approached the domain, however, he slackened his pace, and, with
extreme hesitation and caution, began to loiter toward the mansion,
screening his approach as much as possible among the thick brushwood
which skirted the rich old timber that clothed the slopes and hollows
of the manor in irregular and stately masses. Sheltered in his post of
observation, Larry lounged about until he beheld Sir Henry emerge from
the hall door and join Nicholas Blarden in the _tête-à-tête_ which we
have in our last chapter described. Our romantic friend no sooner
beheld this occurrence, than he felt all his uneasiness at once
dispelled. He marched rapidly to the hall door, which remained open,
and forthwith entered the house. He had hardly reached the interior of
the hall, when he was encountered by no less a person than the fair
object of his soul's idolatry, the beauteous Mistress Betsy Carey.
"La, Mr. Laurence," cried she, with an affected start, "you're always
turning up like a ghost, when you're least expected."
"By the powers of Moll Kelly!" rejoined Larry, with fervour, "it's more
and more beautiful, the Lord be merciful to us, you're growin' every
day you live. What the divil will you come to at last?"
"Well, Mr. Toole," rejoined she, relaxing into a gracious smile, "but
you do talk more nonsense than any ten beside. I wonder at you, so I
do, Mr. Toole. Why don't you have a discreeterer way of conversation
and discourse?"
"Och! murdher!--heigho! beautiful Betsy," sighed Larry, rapturously.
"Did you walk, Mr. Toole?" inquired the maiden.
"I did so," rejoined Larry.
"Young master's just gone out," continued the maid.
"So I seen, jewel," replied Mr. Toole.
"An' you may as well come into the parlour, an' have some drink and
victuals," added she, with an encouraging smile.
"Is there no fear of his coming in on me?" inquired Larry, cautiously.
"Tilly vally, man, who are you afraid of?" exclaimed the handmaiden,
cheerily. "Come, Mr. Toole, you used not to be so easily frightened."
"I'll never be afraid to folly your lead, most beautiful and
bewildhering iv famales," ejaculated Mr. Toole, gallantly. "So here
goes; folly on, and I'll attind you behind."
Accordingly, they both entered the great parlour, where the table bore
abundant relics of a plenteous meal, and Mistress Betsy Carey, with her
own fair hands, placed a chair for him at the table, and heaping a
plate with cold beef and bread, laid it before her grateful swain,
along with a foaming tankard of humming ale. The maid was gracious, and
the beef delicious; his ears drank in her accents, and his throat her
ale, and his heart and mouth were equally full. Thus, in a condition as
nearly as human happiness can approach to unalloyed felicity, realizing
the substantial bliss of Mahomet's paradise, Mr. Toole ogled and ate,
and glanced and guzzled in soft rapture, until the force of nature
could no further go on, and laying down his knife and fork, he took one
long last draught of ale, measuring, it is supposed, about three
half-pints, and then, with an easy negligence, wiping the froth from
his mouth with the cuff of his coat, he addressed himself to the fair
dame once more,--
"They may say what they like, by the hokey! all the world over; but
divil bellows me, if ever I seen sich another beautiful, fascinating,
flusthrating famale, since I was the size iv that musthard pot--may the
divil bile me if I did," ejaculated Mr. Toole, rapturously throwing
himself into the chair with something between a sigh and a grunt, and
ready to burst with love and repletion.
The fair maiden endeavoured to look contemptuous; but she smiled in
spite of herself.
"Well, well, Mr. Toole," she exclaimed, "I see there is no use in
talking; a fool's a fool to the end of his days, and some people's past
cure. But tell me, how's Mr. O'Connor?"
"Bedad, it's time for me to think iv it," exclaimed Larry, briskly. "Do
you know what brought me here?"
"How should _I_ know?" responded she, with a careless toss of her head,
and a very conscious look.
"Well," replied Mr. Toole, "I'll tell you at once. I lost the masther
as clane as a new shilling, an' I'm fairly braking my heart lookin' for
him; an' here I come, trying would I get the chance iv hearing some
soart iv a sketch iv him."
"Is that all?" inquired the damsel, drily.
"All!" ejaculated Larry; "begorra. I think it's enough, an' something
to spare. _All!_ why, I tell you the masther's lost, an' anless I get
some news of him here, it's twenty to one the two of us 'ill never meet
in this disappinting world again. _All!_ I think that something."
"An' pray, what should _I_ know about Mr. O'Connor?" inquired the girl,
tartly.
"Did you see him, or hear of him, or was he out here at all?" asked he.
"No, he wasn't. What would bring him?" replied she.
"Then he _is_ gone in airnest," exclaimed Larry, passionately; "he's
gone entirely! I half guessed it from the first minute. By jabers, my
bitther curse attind that bloody little public. He's lost, an' tin to
one he's _in glory_, for he was always unfortunate. Och! divil fly away
with the liquor."
"Well, to be sure," ejaculated the lady's maid, with contemptuous
severity, "but it is surprising what fools some people is. Don't you
think your master can go anywhere for a day or two, but he must bring
_you_ along with him, or ask _your_ leave and licence to go where he
pleases forsooth? Marry, come up, it's enough to make a pig laugh only
to listen to you."
Just at this moment, and when Larry was meditating his reply, steps
were heard in the hall, and voices in debate. They were those of
Nicholas Blarden and of Sir Henry Ashwoode. Larry instantly recognized
the latter, and his companion both of them.
"They're coming this way," gasped Larry, with agonized alarm. "Tare an'
ouns, evangelical girl, we're done for. Put me somewhere quick, or
begorra it's all over with us."
"What's to be done, merciful Moses? Where can you go?" ejaculated the
terrified girl, surveying the room with frantic haste. "The press. Oh!
thank God, the press. Come along, quick, quick, Mr. Toole, for gracious
goodness sake."
So saying, she rushed headlong at a kind of cupboard or press, whose
doors opened in the panelling of the wall, and fumbling with frightful
agitation among her keys, she succeeded at length in unlocking it, and
throwing open its door, exhibited a small orifice of about four feet
and a half by three in the wall.
"Now, Mr. Toole, into it, as you vally your precious life--quick,
quick, for the love of heaven," ejaculated the maiden.
Larry was firmly persuaded that the feat was a downright physical
impossibility; yet with a devotion and desperation which love and
terror combined alone could inspire, he mounted a chair, and, supported
by all the muscular strength of his soul's idol, scrambled into the
aperture. A projecting shelf about half way up threw his figure so much
out of equilibrium, that the task of keeping him in his place was no
light one. By main strength, however, the girl succeeded in closing the
door and locking her visitor fairly in, and before her master entered
the chamber, Mr. Toole became a close prisoner, and the key which
confined him was safely deposited in the charming Betsy's pocket.
Blarden roared lustily to the servants, and with sundry impressive
imprecations, commanded them to remove every vestige of the breakfast
of which the prisoner had just clandestinely partaken. Meanwhile he
continued to walk up and down the room, whistling a lively ditty, and
here and there, at particularly sprightly parts, drumming with his foot
in time upon the floor.
"Well, that job's done at last," said he. "The room's clean and quiet,
and we can't do better than take a twist at the cards. So let's have a
pack, and play your best, d'ye mind."
This was addressed to Ashwoode, who, of course, acquiesced.
"Oh, bloody wars, I'm in for it," murmured Larry, "they'll be playin'
here to no end, and I smothering fast, as it is; I'll never come out iv
this pisition with my life."
Few situations could indeed be conceived physically more uncomfortable.
A shelf projecting about midway pressed him forward, exerting anything
but a soothing influence upon the backbone, so that his whole weight
rested against the door of his narrow prison, and was chiefly sustained
by his breast-bone and chin. In this very constrained attitude, and
afraid to relieve his fatigue by moving even in the very slightest
degree, lest some accidental noise should excite suspicion and betray
his presence, the ill-starred squire remained; his discomforts still
further enhanced by the pouring of some pickles, which had been
overturned upon an upper shelf, in cool streams of vinegar down his
back.
"I could not have betther luck," murmured he. "I never discoorsed a
famale yet, but I paid through the nose for it. Didn't I get enough iv
romance, bad luck to it, an' isn't it a plisint pisition I'm in at
last--locked up in an ould cupboard in the wall, an' fairly swimming in
vinegar. Oh, the women, the women. I'd rather than every stitch of
cloth on my back, I walked out clever an' clane to meet the young
masther, and not let myself be boxed up this way, almost dying with the
cramps and the snuffication. Oh, them women, them women!"
Thus mourned our helpless friend in inarticulate murmurings. Meanwhile
young Ashwoode opened two or three drawers in search of a pack of
cards.
"There are several, I know, in that locker," said Ashwoode. "I laid
some of them there myself."
"This one?" inquired Blarden, making the interrogatory by a sharp
application of the head of his cane to the very panel against which
Larry's chin was resting. The shock, the pain, and the exaggerated
loudness of the application caused the inmate of the press, in spite of
himself, to ejaculate,--
"Oh, holy Pether!"
"Did you hear anything queer?" inquired Blarden, with some
consternation. "Anyone calling out?"
"No," said Ashwoode.
"Well, see what the nerves is," cried Blarden, "by ----, I'd have bet
ten to one I heard a voice in the wall the minute I hit that locker
door--this ---- weather don't agree with me."
This sentence he wound up by administering a second knock where he had
given the first; and Larry, with set teeth and a grin, which in a
horse-collar would have won whole pyramids of gingerbread, nevertheless
bore it this time with the silent stoicism of a tortured Indian.
"The nerves is a ---- quare piece of business," observed Mr. Blarden--a
philosophical remark in which Larry heartily concurred--"but get the
cards, will you--what the ---- is all the delay about?"
In obedience to Ashwoode's summons, Mistress Betsy Carey entered the
room.
"Carey," said he, "open that press and take out two or three packs of
cards."
"I can't open the locker," replied she, readily, "for the young
mistress put the key astray, sir--I'll run and look for it, if you
please, sir."
"God bless you," murmured Larry, with fervent gratitude.
"Hand me that bunch of keys from under your apron," said Blarden, "ten
to one we'll find some one among them that'll open it."
"There's no use in trying, sir," replied the girl, very much alarmed,
"it's a pitiklar soart of a lock, and has a pitiklar key--you'll
ruinate it, sir, if you go for to think to open it with a key that
don't fit it, so you will--I'll run and look for it if you please,
sir."
"Give me that bunch of keys, young woman; give them, I tell you,"
exclaimed Blarden.
Thus constrained, she reluctantly gave the keys, and among them the
identical one to whose kind offices Mr. O'Toole owed his present
dignified privacy.
"Come in here, Chancey," said Mr. Blarden, addressing that gentleman,
who happened at that moment to be crossing the hall--"take these keys
here and try if any of them will pick that lock."
Chancey accordingly took the keys, and mounting languidly upon a chair,
began his operations.
It were not easy to describe Mr. Toole's emotions as these proceedings
were going forward--some of the keys would not go in at all--others
went in with great difficulty, and came out with as much--some entered
easily, but refused to turn, and during the whole of these various
attempts upon his "dungeon keep," his mental agonies grew momentarily
more and more intense, so much so that he was repeatedly prompted to
precipitate the _dénouement_, by shouting his confession from within.
His heart failed him, however, and his resolution grew momentarily
feebler and more feeble--he would have given worlds at that moment that
he could have shrunk into the pickle-pot, whose contents were then
streaming down his back--gladly would he have compounded for escape at
the price of being metamorphosed for ever into a gherkin. His prayers
were, however, unanswered, and he felt his inevitable fate momentarily
approaching.
"This one will do it--I declare to God I have it at last," drawled
Chancey, looking lazily at a key which he held in his hand; and then
applying it, it found its way freely into the key-hole.
"Bravo, Gordy, by ----," cried Blarden, "I never knew you fail
yet--you're as cute as a pet fox, you are."
Mr. Blarden had hardly finished this flattering eulogium, when Chancey
turned the key in the lock: with astonishing violence the doors burst
open, and Larry Toole, Mr. Chancey, and the chair on which he was
mounted, descended with the force of a thunderbolt on the floor. In
sheer terror, Chancey clutched the interesting stranger by the throat,
and Larry, in self-defence, bit the lawyer's thumb, which had by a
trifling inaccuracy entered his mouth, and at the same time, with both
his hands, dragged his nose in a lateral direction until it had
attained an extraordinary length and breadth. In equal terror and
torment the two combatants rolled breathless along the floor; the
charming Betsy Carey screamed murder, robbery, and fire--while Ashwoode
and Blarden both started to their feet in the extremest amazement.
"How the devil did you get into that press?" exclaimed Ashwoode, as
soon as the rival athletes had been separated and placed upon their
feet, addressing Larry Toole.
"Oh! the robbing villain," ejaculated Mistress Betsy Carey--"don't
suffer nor allow him to speak--bring him to the pump, gentlemen--oh!
the lying villain--kick him out, Mr. Chancey--thump him, Sir
Henry--don't spare him, Mr. Blarden--turn him out, gentlemen all--he's
quite aperiently a robber--oh! blessed hour, but it's I that ought to
be thankful--what in the world wide would I do if he came powdering
down on me, the overbearing savage!"
"Och! murder--the cruelty iv women!" ejaculated Larry,
reproachfully--"oh! murdher, beautiful Betsy."
"Don't be talking to me, you sneaking, skulking villain," cried
Mistress Carey, vehemently, "you must have stole the key, so you must,
and locked yourself up, you frightful baste. For goodness gracious
sake, gentlemen, don't keep him talking here--he's dangerous--the
Turk."
"Oh! the villainy iv women!" repeated Larry, with deep pathos.
A brief cross-examination of Mistress Carey and of Larry Toole sufficed
to convict the fair maiden of her share in concealing the prisoner.
"Now, Mr. Toole," said Ashwoode, addressing that personage, "you have
been once before turned out of this house for misconduct--I tell you,
that if you do not make good use of your time, and run as fast as your
best exertions will enable you, you shall have abundant reason to
repent it, for in five minutes more I will set the dogs after you; and
if ever I find you here again, I will have you ducked in the horse-pond
for a full hour--depart, sirrah--away--run."
Larry did not require any more urgent remonstrances to induce him to
expedite his retreat--he made a contrite bow to Sir Henry--cast a look
of melancholy reproach at the beautiful Betsy, who, with a heightened
colour, was withdrawing from the scene, and then with sudden
nimbleness, effected his retreat.
"The fellow," said Ashwoode, "is a servant of that O'Connor, whom I
mentioned to you. I do not think we shall ever have the pleasure of his
company again. I am glad the thing has happened, for it proves that we
cannot trust Carey."
"That it does," echoed Blarden, with an oath.
"Well, then, she shall take her departure hence before a week,"
rejoined Ashwoode. "We shall see about her successor without loss of
time. So much for Mistress Carey."