AN INTERRUPTED FEAST
At ten o’clock that night Patsy entered his bedroom with a tin
candlestick in his hand. He placed the candlestick on the
dressing-table, and, approaching the bed, began to unload his pockets of
plunder; nuts, and almonds, and raisins, a crystallised apricot and a
piece of green angelica made up the pile which he placed on the coverlet
of the bed, also a huge Tom Smith cracker with a picture of Miss Marie
Studholme stuck on the gelatine cover.
He surveyed the lot with a grin of satisfaction, sat down on the side of
the bed, and was just setting to work when a scratching noise at the
window drew his attention, and, looking up, he saw at the pane the white
face of Con Cogan.
Patsy’s jaw dropped, and the walnut which he was in the act of cracking
dropped also, fell on the floor, and rolled into a corner.
“Oh, musha!” said Patsy, “there he is again!”
He got off the bed and, like a fascinated bird, approached the beckoning
form at the window.
“What is it you want?” asked Patsy, as he raised the sash. “Sure, the
house is all a-bed, and it’s ruined I’ll be if they hear you.”
“What’s all that on the bed?” asked Con; “all them things on the quilt
you was eatin’?”
“Sure, they’re only some nuts and raisins,” replied Patsy, who saw his
prospective feast vanishing before him. “What is it you want? for it’s
ruined I’ll be if they hear us.”
“I’ll come in and help yiz,” said Con, putting one leg over the sill.
“There’s no law in the land can put a man in prizin for comin’ in to
have supper wid his nephew. It’s afraid I am,” said Con, putting the
other leg over, “that it’s indisgestion you’ll be havin’. The idea,”
went on he, sitting down on the edge of the bed and surveying the
feast—“the idea of lettin’ childer stuff thimselves up wid sweets and
nuts! It’s ashamed the ould lady ought to be of herself. Sit down on the
bed beside me, Patsy Rooney, and there’s a walnut for you. I’ll attind
to the sweets.”
He put the crystallised apricot in his mouth, and Patsy, with the walnut
in his hand, sat watching his treasures vanishing.
“You’re not eatin’ your nuts,” said Mr Cogan, as he swallowed the last
of the chocolates and set to on the nuts.
“What is it you’re afther?” said Patsy, whose appetite had completely
disappeared. “What’s made you come to-night at all, at all?”
Mr Cogan cracked a walnut and devoured the contents.
“And what’s this?” said he, taking up the cracker, without replying to
Patsy’s very pertinent question.
“Thims is crackers,” replied Patsy in a half-hearted voice. “Is it Paddy
Murphy’s job you’re afther, or what?”
“And who’s the girl, may I ax?” went on Mr Cogan, examining Miss
Studholme with a critical and approving eye.
“I dunno,” replied Patsy. “Sure, it’s moidhered I am! What is it you’re
afther, Con Cogan?”
“Is it to eat, or what?” asked Mr Cogan, still disregarding Patsy, and
touching the gelatine cover with his tongue.
“Stop, or it’s pizened you’ll be,” said Patsy; “it’s not for eatin’. You
catch hould of it at both ends, same as you have it now, and pull; but
don’t be doin’ it, or——”
Bang!
Next moment Mr Cogan was across the floor and out of the window.
“I told you not,” said Patsy, who had his hand on the sash. “Run, before
the house is up and afther you!”
“Why didn’t yiz tell me there was gunpowdher in it?” asked Con, whose
teeth were chattering. “Stick your ear out of the window, for this is
what I’ve come afther. Paddy Murphy will be here at twelve o’clock
to-morra night; he’ll be here at the window and give two taps—rimimber
what you swore.”
“Con!” said Patsy, leaning out into the darkness; but the valiant Con
had vanished.
Upstairs Mr Fanshawe had slipped on an old shooting jacket, and, quite
forgetful of all Lady Seagrave’s prohibitions about tobacco, was
enjoying a cigar by his bedroom fire.
He was not dissatisfied with his day. He had had a good run with the
hounds, and he had been extraordinarily successful in securing a long
uninterrupted talk with Violet Lestrange, to say nothing of the
Blind-man’s Buff, yet he was disturbed in his mind and anxious.
He knew quite well that if he did not succeed in marrying the girl he
loved by strategy, he would never marry her at all. General Grampound
was not a bad man; he was worse, he was a coldly pig-headed man. He was
also a match-maker. Match-making (I do not refer to Lucifers) is an Army
disease; it is caught from living in warm climates; it attacks colonels
and generals, and they never recover from it.
To be a match-maker you must also be a match-breaker. In other words, if
you mix and meddle in other people’s love affairs you must inevitably do
mischief.
The General was determined that Violet Lestrange should marry Mr Boxall,
M.P., because, from the General’s point of view, Mr Boxall, M.P., was a
“good match.”
Mr Boxall was fat, and rather plain, and had a glass eye; that did not
matter in the least to the General. Had you remonstrated with him, he
would probably have answered you, “Dash, it, sir—the girl’s not going to
marry the fellow’s glass eye! He has seven thousand a year, and a tin
mine; what more do you want? He doesn’t smoke, he doesn’t play cards, he
doesn’t read novels or fritter his time away in rubbish; what more do
you want? He’s strong on army reform, and he’s sound on the tariff
question; what more do you want? I’ve made up my mind she shall marry
him, and marry him she will, if he had a hundred glass eyes—what do you
mean, sir, by shoving your oar in and mixing and meddling in other
people’s businesses?”
Dicky knew his uncle, and that is why he felt it to be impossible to
marry her in the ordinary fashion. The only chance was to make a runaway
match of it, and do it quick. Yet there were great difficulties in the
way. Tullagh station was fifteen miles from Glen Druid. Violet was
watched. To get a moment’s conversation with her alone was a most
difficult business.
If Violet and he were missed for an hour, search would inevitably be
made for them; they would be pursued and captured.
“Mr Fanshawe, sir!”
Mr Fanshawe turned in his chair with a start. The door was open, and
Patsy was standing in the doorway.
Patsy had the appearance of a sleep-walker burthened with a nightmare.
“Hulloo!” said Mr Fanshawe. “What’s the matter—what the deuce——”
“Mr Fanshawe, sir,” said Patsy, then he paused, rubbed his knuckles in
his eyes and broke out, blubbering. “It’s I that am in the thruble and
all—it’s I that am in the thruble and all,” blubbered Patsy,—“thinkin’
of yiz lyin’ murthered in your beds, and the young lady and the childer!
Oh, wirra, wirra! it’s ten fut under the sod I wish I was before I ever
see this day!”
“God bless the boy!” said Mr Fanshawe. “What on earth has happened?
Who’s murdering who, and what’s it all about?”
“I didn’t swear not to tell on thim—bad luck to thim!” said Patsy,
rubbing his nose with the back of his hand and suppressing his sobs.
“It’s the burgulars I tould you of, Mr Fanshawe.”
“What burglars?” asked Mr Fanshawe.
“The ones I tould you I dhramed of,” replied Patsy. “I wasn’t dhramin’
at all——”
“Then what on earth were you doing?” asked Mr Fanshawe, in whose mind
vague suspicious of Patsy’s sanity were beginning to arise.
“I was only pritindin’,” replied Patsy.
“Look here,” said Mr Fanshawe, “just pull yourself together and clear
your mind—what’s all this about burglars and murderers? Out with it, you
young beggar, before I take a hunting crop to you.”
Encouraged like this, Patsy told his tale.
“To-morrow night at twelve, do you say?” asked Mr Fanshawe. “Why, the
matter is simple enough: we must tell the police, that’s all.”
“The p’leece!” said Patsy with fine contempt. “Sure, the p’leece are all
at the other side of the country where the cattle dhrivin’ is goin’ on.
Mr Fanshawe, sir!”
“Yes, Patsy?”
“I was thinkin’ if you was to load wan of thim guns of yours up to the
muzzle wid bu’lets——”
“Yes, Patsy.”
“And stand with it in your fist close to the wall of me room be the
window. I’d open the sash. Paddy Murphy would stick the ugly head of him
into the room——”
“Yes, Patsy?”
“Thin you’d let fly wid the gun and blow it aff him.”
“Why, you murderous young devil,” said Mr Fanshawe, “do you know what
you are proposing—do you know you could be hanged for doing that?”
“For doin’ which, sir?”
“_Which!_—blowing a man’s head off like that.”
“Sure, who’d know?” replied the other. “The p’leece would be so glad to
be shut of him, they’d never ax no questions; and wouldn’t he _desarve_
it?”
“I don’t know anything about Mr Murphy’s deserts,” said Mr Fanshawe; “he
may be bad enough, but I’m not going to assassinate him in cold blood.
Patsy, can you keep a secret?”
“Tight as a drum,” replied Patsy.
“Well, don’t say a word of this to any one, and to-morrow night we may
have some fun with Mr Murphy. Did you ever catch a rabbit in a snare,
Patsy?”
Patsy grinned.
“Well, the idea has just come to me that we may be able to arrange
something of that sort for Mr Murphy. I only want a pulley and some
rope—stay, I have it: you know the flagstaff on the roof?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Well, there must be twenty yards or so of signal-halyard line on it.
You know what I mean—the rope they pull the flag up on.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Well, to-morrow you must get me that rope; it will do in the evening
time after dinner. Is there anything I can fix a pulley to in the
ceiling?”
“Sure, there’s a big oak beam that’d hould an iliphant,” said Patsy,
whose rabbit-snaring instincts told him something of the plan which had
occurred to Mr Fanshawe.
“That will do. Now cut off to bed, and mind you say nothing of this to
any one. It isn’t every day one has the chance of trapping a burglar.
The beagles meet to-morrow at ten, don’t they?”
“Yes, sir, at the park gates,” replied Patsy.
“Right!” said Mr Fanshawe. “Be sure and call me at eight.”
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