THE DEAD SECRET, SHOWING HOW THE FIREWORKER PROVED TO PUDDOCK THAT
NUTTER HAD SPIED OUT THE NAKEDNESS OF THE LAND.
When Puddock, having taken a short turn or two in the air, by way of
tranquillising his mind, mounted his lodging stairs, he found Lieutenant
O'Flaherty, not at all more sober than he had last seen him, in the
front drawing-room, which apartment was richly perfumed with powerful
exhalations of rum punch.
'Dhrink this, Puddock--dhrink it,' said O'Flaherty, filling a large
glass in equal quantities with rum and water; 'dhrink it, my sinsare
friend; it will studdy you, it will, upon my honour, Puddock!'
'But--a--thank you, Sir, I am anxious to understand exactly'--said
Puddock. Here he was interrupted by a frightful grin and a '_ha!_' from
O'Flaherty, who darted to the door, and seizing his little withered
French servant, who was entering, swung him about the room by his coat
collar.
'So, Sorr, you've been prating again, have you, you desateful, idle old
dhrunken miscreant; you did it on purpose, you blundherin' old hyena;
it's the third jewel you got your masther into; and if I lose my life,
divil a penny iv your wages ye'll ever get--that's one comfort. Yes,
Sorr! this is the third time you have caused me to brew my hands in
human blood; I dono' if it's malice, or only blundherin'. Oh!' he cried,
with a still fiercer shake, 'it's I that wishes I could be sure 'twas
malice, I'd skiver you, heels and elbows, on my sword, and roast you
alive on that fire. Is not it a hard thing, my darlin' Puddock, I can't
find out.' He was still holding the little valet by the collar, and
stretching out his right hand to Puddock. 'But I am always the sport of
misfortunes--small and great. If there was an ould woman to be handed in
to supper--or a man to be murthered by mistake--or an ugly girl to be
danced with, whose turn was it, ever and always to do the business, but
poor Hyacinth O'Flaherty's--(tears). I could tell you, Puddock,' he
continued, forgetting his wrath, and letting his prisoner go, in his
eager pathos--the Frenchman made his escape in a twinkling--'I was the
only man in our regiment that tuck the mazles in Cork, when it was goin'
among the children, bad luck to them--I that was near dyin' of it when I
was an infant; and I was the only officer in the regiment, when we were
at Athlone, that was prevented going to the race ball--and I would not
for a hundred pounds. I was to dance the first minuet, and the first
country dance, with that beautiful creature, Miss Rose Cox. I was makin'
a glass of brandy punch--not feelin' quite myself--and I dhressed and
all, in our room, when Ensign Higgins, a most thoughtless young man,
said something disrespectful about a beautiful mole she had on her chin;
bedad, Sir, he called it a wart, if you plase! and feelin' it sthrongly,
I let the jug of scaldin' wather drop on my knees; I wish you felt it,
my darlin' Puddock. I was scalded in half a crack from a fut above my
knees down to the last joint of my two big toes; and I raly thought my
sinses were leving me. I lost the ball by it. Oh, ho, wirresthrue! poor
Hyacinth O'Flaherty!' and thereupon he wept.
'You thee, Lieutenant O'Flaherty,' lisped Puddock, growing impatient,
'we can't say how soon Mr. Nutter's friend may apply for an interview,
and--a--I must confeth I don't yet quite understand the point of
difference between you and him, and therefore--'
'A where the devil's that blackguard little French wazel gone to?'
exclaimed O'Flaherty, for the first time perceiving that his captive had
escaped. 'Kokang Modate! Do you hear me, Kokang Modate!' he shouted.
'But really, Sir, you must be so good as to place before me, before me,
Sir, clearly, the--the cause of this unhappy dispute, the exact offenth,
Thir, for otherwithe--'
'Cause, to be sure! and plenty iv cause. I never fought a jewel yet,
Puddock, my friend--and this will be the ninth--without cause. They
said, I'm tould, in Cork, I was quarrelsome; they lied; I'm not
quarrelsome; I only want pace, and quiet, and justice; I hate a
quarrelsome man. I tell you, Puddock, if I only knew where to find a
quarrelsome man, be the powers I'd go fifty miles out of my way to pull
him be the nose. They lied, Puddock, my dear boy, an' I'd give twenty
pounds this minute I had them on this flure, to tell them how _damnably_
they lied!'
'No doubt, Thir,' said Puddock, 'but if you pleathe I really mutht have
a dithtinct answer to my--'
'Get out o' that, Sorr,' thundered O'Flaherty, with an awful stamp on
the floor, as the 'coquin maudit,' O'Flaherty's only bit of French, such
as it was, in obedience to that form of invocation, appeared nervously
at the threshold, 'or I'll fling the contints of the r-r-oo-oo-oom at
your head, (exit Monsieur, again). Be gannies! if I thought it was he
that done it, I'd jirk his old bones through the top of the window. Will
I call him back and give him his desarts, will I, Puddock! Oh, ho, hone!
my darlin' Puddock, everything turns agin me; what'll I do, Puddock,
jewel, or what's to become o' me?' and he shed some more tears, and
drank off the greater part of the beverage which he had prepared for
Puddock.
'I believe, Sir, that this is the sixth time I've ventured to ask a
distinct statement from your lips, of the cauthe of your dithagreement
with Mr. Nutter, which I plainly tell you, Thir, I don't at prethent
underthtand, said Puddock, loftily and firmly enough.
'To be sure, my darlin' Puddock,' replied O'Flaherty, 'it was that
cursed little French whipper-snapper, with his monkeyfied
intherruptions; be the powers, Puddock, if you knew half the mischief
that same little baste has got me into, you would not wondher if I
murthered him. It was he was the cause of my jewel with my cousin, Art
Considine, and I wanting to be the very pink of politeness to him. I
wrote him a note when he came to Athlone, afther two years in France,
and jist out o' compliment to him, I unluckily put in a word of French:
come an' dine, says I, and we'll have a dish of chat. I knew u-n p-l-a-t
(spelling it), was a dish, an' says I to Jerome, that pigimy (so he
pronounced it) you seen here at the door, that's his damnable name,
what's _chat_ in French--c-h-a-t--spelling it to him; "sha," says he;
"sha?" says I, "spell it, if you plase," says I; "c-h-a-t," says he, the
stupid old viper. Well, I took the trouble to write it out, "un plat de
chat;" "is that right?" says I, showing it to him. "It is, my lord,"
says he, looking at me as if I had two heads. I never knew the manin' of
it for more than a month afther I shot poor Art through the two calves.
An' he that fought two jewels before, all about cats, one of them with a
Scotch gentleman that he gave the lie to, for saying that French cooks
had a way of stewing cats you could not tell them from hares; and the
other immadiately afther, with Lieutenant Rugge, of the Royal Navy, that
got one stewed for fun, and afther my Cousin Art dined off it, like a
man, showed him the tail and the claws. It's well he did not die of it,
and no wondher he resented my invitation, though upon my honour, as a
soldier and a gentleman, may I be stewed alive myself in a pot, Puddock
my dear, if I had the laste notion of offering him the smallest
affront!'
'I begin to despair, Sir,' exclaimed Puddock, 'of receiving the
information without which 'tis vain for me to try to be useful to you;
once more, may I entreat to know what _is_ the affront of which you
complain?'
'You don't know; raly and truly now, you don't know?' said O'Flaherty,
fixing a solemn tipsy leer on him.
'I tell you _no_, Thir,' rejoined Puddock.
'And do you mean to tell me you did not hear that vulgar dog Nutter's
unmanly jokes?'
'Jokes!' repeated Puddock, in large perplexity, 'why I've been here in
this town for more than five years, and I never heard in all that time
that Nutter once made a joke--and upon my life, I don't think he could
make a joke, Sir, if he tried--I don't, indeed, Lieutenant O'Flaherty,
upon my honour!'
And rat it, Sir, how can I help it?' cried O'Flaherty, relapsing into
pathos.
'Help what?' demanded Puddock.
O'Flaherty took him by the hand, and gazing on his face with a maudlin,
lacklustre tenderness, said:--
'Absalom was caught by the hair of his head--he was, Puddock--long hair
or short hair, or (a hiccough) no hair at all, isn't it nature's doing,
I ask you my darlin' Puddock, _isn't_ it?' He was shedding tears again
very fast. 'There was Cicero and Julius Cæsar, wor both as bald as
that,' and he thrust a shining sugar basin, bottom upward, into
Puddock's face. '_I'm_ not bald; I tell you I'm _not_--no, my darlin'
Puddock, I'm not--poor Hyacinth O'Flaherty is _not bald_,' shaking
Puddock by both hands.
'That's very plain, Sir, but I don't see your drift,' he replied.
'I want to tell you, Puddock, dear, if you'll only have a minute's
patience. The door can't fasten, divil bother it; come into the next
room;' and toppling a little in his walk, he led him solemnly into his
bed-room--the door of which he locked--somewhat to Puddock's
disquietude, who began to think him insane. Here having informed Puddock
that Nutter was driving at the one point the whole evening, as any one
that knew the secret would have seen; and having solemnly imposed the
seal of secrecy upon his second, and essayed a wild and broken discourse
upon the difference between total baldness and partial loss of hair, he
disclosed to him the grand mystery of his existence, by lifting from the
summit of his head a circular piece of wig, which in those days they
called I believe, a 'topping,' leaving a bare shining disc exposed,
about the size of a large pat of butter.
'Upon my life, Thir, it'th a very fine piethe of work,' says Puddock,
who viewed the wiglet with the eye of a stage-property man, and held it
by a top lock near the candle. 'The very finetht piethe of work of the
kind I ever thaw. 'Tith thertainly French. Oh, yeth--we can't do such
thingth here. By Jove, Thir, what a wig that man would make for Cato!'
'An' he must be a mane crature--I say, a mane crature,' pursued
O'Flaherty, 'for there was not a soul in the town but Jerome, the--the
treacherous ape, that knew it. It's he that dhresses my head every
morning behind the bed-curtain there, with the door locked. And Nutter
could never have found it out--_who_ was to tell him, unless that ojus
French damon, that's never done talkin' about it;' and O'Flaherty strode
heavily up and down the room with his hands in his breeches' pockets,
muttering savage invectives, pitching his head from side to side, and
whisking round at the turns in a way to show how strongly he was wrought
upon.
'Come in, Sorr!' thundered O'Flaherty, unlocking the door, in reply to a
knock, and expecting to see his 'ojus French damon.' But it was a tall
fattish stranger, rather flashily dressed, but a little soiled, with a
black wig, and a rollicking red face, showing a good deal of chin and
jaw.
O'Flaherty made his grandest bow, quite forgetting the exposure at the
top of his head; and Puddock stood rather shocked, with the candle in
one hand and O'Flaherty's scalp in the other.
'You come, Sir, I presume, from Mr. Nutter,' said O'Flaherty, with lofty
courtesy. This, Sir, is my friend, Lieutenant Puddock of the Royal Irish
Artillery, who does me the honour to support me with his advice and--'
As he moved his hand towards Puddock, he saw his scalp dangling between
that gentleman's finger and thumb, and became suddenly mute. He clapped
his hand upon his bare skull, and made an agitated pluck at that
article, but missed, and disappeared, with an imprecation in Irish,
behind the bed curtains.
'If you will be so obliging, Sir, as to precede me into that room,'
lisped Puddock, with grave dignity, and waving O'Flaherty's scalp
slightly towards the door--for Puddock never stooped to hide anything,
and being a gentleman, pure and simple, was not ashamed or afraid to
avow his deeds, words, and situations; 'I shall do myself the honour to
follow.'
'Gi' me _that_,' was heard in a vehement whisper from behind the
curtains. Puddock understood it, and restored the treasure.
The secret conference in the drawing-room was not tedious, nor indeed
very secret, for anyone acquainted with the diplomatic slang in which
such affairs were conducted might have learned in the lobby, or indeed
in the hall, so mighty was the voice of the stranger, that there was no
chance of any settlement without a meeting which was fixed to take place
at twelve o'clock next day on the Fifteen Acres.