RELATING HOW THE GENTLEMEN SAT OVER THEIR CLARET, AND HOW DR. STURK SAW
A FACE.
Puddock drove up the avenue of gentlemanlike old poplars, and over the
little bridge, and under the high-arched bowers of elms, walled up at
either side with evergreens, and so into the court-yard of Belmont.
Three sides of a parellelogram, the white old house being the largest,
and offices white and in keeping, but overgrown with ivy, and opening to
yards of their own on the other sides, facing one another at the flanks,
and in front a straight Dutch-like moat, with a stone balustrade running
all along from the garden to the bridge, with great stone flower pots
set at intervals, the shrubs and flowers of which associated themselves
in his thoughts with beautiful Gertrude Chattesworth, and so were
wonderfully bright and fragrant. And there were two swans upon the
water, and several peacocks marching dandily in the court-yard; and a
grand old Irish dog, with a great collar, and a Celtic inscription,
dreaming on the steps in the evening sun.
It was always pleasant to dine at Belmont. Old General Chattesworth was
so genuinely hospitable and so really glad to see you, and so hilarious
himself, and so enjoying. A sage or a scholar, perhaps, might not have
found a great deal in him. Most of his stories had been heard before.
Some of them, I am led to believe, had even been printed. But they were
not very long, and he had a good natured word and a cordial smile for
everybody; and he had a good cook, and explained his dishes to those
beside him, and used sometimes to toddle out himself to the cellar in
search of a curious bon-bouche; and of nearly every bin in it he had a
little anecdote or a pedigree to relate. And his laugh was frequent and
hearty, and somehow the room and all in it felt the influence of his
presence like the glow, and cheer, and crackle of a bright Christmas
fire.
Miss Becky Chattesworth, very stately in a fine brocade, and a great
deal of point lace, received Puddock very loftily, and only touched his
hand with the tips of her fingers. It was plain he was not yet taken
into favour. When he entered the drawing-room, that handsome stranger,
with the large eyes, so wonderfully elegant and easy in the
puce-coloured cut velvet--Mr. Mervyn--was leaning upon the high back of
a chair, and talking agreeably, as it seemed, to Miss Gertrude. He had a
shake of the hand and a fashionable greeting from stout, dandified
Captain Cluffe, who was by no means so young as he would be supposed,
and made up industriously and braced what he called his waist, with
great fortitude, and indeed sometimes looked half-stifled, in spite of
his smile and his swagger. Sturk, leaning at the window with his
shoulders to the wall, beckoned Puddock gruffly, and cross-examined him
in an undertone as to the issue of O'Flaherty's case. Of course he knew
all about the duel, but the corps also knew that Sturk would not attend
on the ground in any affair where the Royal Irish Artillery were
concerned, and therefore they could bring what doctor they pleased to
the field without an affront.
'And see, my buck,' said Sturk, winding up rather savagely with a sneer;
'you've got out of that scrape, you and your _patient_, by a piece of
good luck that's not like to happen twice over; so take my advice, and
cut that leaf out of your--your--grandmother's cookery book, and light
your pipe with it.'
This slight way of treating both his book and his ancestors nettled
little Puddock--who never himself took a liberty, and expected similar
treatment--but he knew Sturk, the nature of the beast, and he only bowed
grandly, and went to pay his respects to cowed, kindly, querulous little
Mrs. Sturk, at the other end of the room. An elderly gentleman, with a
rather white face, a high forehead and grim look, was chatting briskly
with her; and Puddock, the moment his eye lighted on the stranger, felt
that there was something remarkable about him. Taken in detail, indeed,
he was insignificant. He was dressed as quietly as the style of that day
would allow, yet in his toilet, there was entire ease and even a latent
air of fashion. He wore his own hair; and though there was a little
powder upon it and upon his coat collar, it was perfectly white, frizzed
out a little at the sides, and gathered into a bag behind. The stranger
rose and bowed as Puddock approached the lady, and the lieutenant had a
nearer view of his great white forehead--his only good feature--and the
pair of silver spectacles that glimmered under it, and his small hooked
nose and stern mouth.
''Tis a mean countenance,' said the general, talking him over when the
company had dispersed.
'No countenance,' said Miss Becky decisively, '_could_ be mean with such
a forehead.'
The fact is--if they had cared to analyse--the features, taken
separately, with that one exception, were insignificant; but the face
was singular, with its strange pallor, its intellectual mastery, and
sarcastic decision.
The general, who had accidentally omitted the ceremony--in those days
essential--now strutted up to introduce them.
'Mr. Dangerfield, will you permit me to present my good friend and
officer Lieutenant Puddock. Lieutenant Puddock, Mr Dangerfield--Mr.
Dangerfield, Lieutenant Puddock.'
And there was a great deal of pretty bowing, and each was the other's
'most obedient,' and declared himself honoured; and the conventional
parenthesis ended, things returned to their former course.
Puddock only perceived that Mrs. Sturk was giving Dangerfield a rambling
sort of account of the people of Chapelizod. Dangerfield, to do him
justice, listened attentively. In fact, he had led her upon that
particular theme, and as easily and cleverly kept her close to the
subject. For he was not a general to manoeuvre without knowing first
how the ground lay, and had an active, enquiring mind, in which he made
all sorts of little notes.
So Mrs. Sturk prattled on, to her own and Mr. Dangerfield's content, for
she was garrulous when not under the eye of her lord, and always gentle,
though given to lamentation, having commonly many small hardships to
mention. So, quite without malice or retention, she poured out the
gossip of the town, but not its scandal. Indeed, she was a very
harmless, and rather sweet, though dolorous little body, and was very
fond of children, especially her own, who would have been ruined were it
not that they quailed as much as she did before Sturk, on whom she
looked as by far the cleverest and most awful mortal then extant, and
never doubted that the world thought so too. For the rest, she preserved
her dresses, which were not amiss, for an interminable time, her sheets
were always well aired, her maids often saucy, and she often in tears,
but Sturk's lace and fine-linen were always forthcoming in exemplary
order; she rehearsed the catechism with the children, and loved Dr.
Walsingham heartily, and made more raspberry jam than any other woman of
her means in Chapelizod, except, perhaps, Mrs. Nutter, between whom and
herself there were points of resemblance, but something as nearly a feud
as could subsist between their harmless natures. Each believed the other
matched with a bold bad man, who was always scheming something--they
never quite understood what--against her own peerless lord; each on
seeing the other, hoping that Heaven would defend the right and change
the hearts of her enemies, or, at all events confound their politics;
and each, with a sort of awful second-sight, when they viewed one
another across the street, beholding her neighbour draped in a dark film
of thunder-cloud, and with a sheaf of pale lightning, instead of a fan
flickering in her hand.
When they came down to dinner, the gallant Captain Cluffe contrived to
seat himself beside Aunt Becky, to whom the rogue commended himself by
making a corner on his chair, next hers, for that odious greedy little
brute 'Fancy,' and by a hundred other adroit and amiable attentions. And
having a perfect acquaintance with all her weak points--as everybody had
who lived long in Chapelizod--he had no difficulty in finding topics to
interest her, and in conversing acceptably thereupon. And, indeed,
whenever he was mentioned for some time after, she used to remark, that
Captain Cluffe was a very conversable and worthy young (!) man.
In truth, that dinner went swiftly and pleasantly over for many of the
guests. Gertrude Chattesworth was placed between the enamoured Puddock
and the large-eyed, handsome, mysterious Mervyn. Of course, the hour
flew with light and roseate wings for him. Little Puddock was in great
force, and chatted with energy, and his theatrical lore, and his
oddities, made him not unamusing. So she smiled on him more than usual,
to make amends for the frowns of the higher powers, and he was as happy
as a prince and as proud as a peacock, and quite tipsy with his success.
It is not always easy to know what young ladies like best or least, or
quite what they are driving at; and Cluffe, from the other side of the
table, thought, though Puddock _was_ an agreeable fellow, and exerting
himself uncommonly (for Cluffe, like other men not deep in the _literæ
humaniores_, had a sort of veneration for 'book learning,' under which
category he placed Puddock's endless odds and ends of play lore, and
viewed the little lieutenant himself accordingly with some awe as a man
of parts and a scholar, and prodigiously admired his verses, which he
only half understood); he fancied, I say, although Puddock was unusually
entertaining, that Miss Gertrude would have been well content to
exchange him for the wooden lay-figure on which she hung her draperies
when she sketched, which might have worn his uniform and filled his
chair, and spared her his agreeable conversation, and which had eyes and
saw not, and ears and heard not.
In short, the cunning fellow fancied he saw, by many small signs, a very
decided preference on her part for the handsome and melancholy, but
evidently eloquent stranger. Like other cunning fellows, however, Cluffe
was not always right; and right or wrong, in his own illusions, if such
they were, little Puddock was, for the time, substantially blessed.
The plump and happy lieutenant, when the ladies had flown away to the
drawing-room and their small tea-cups, waxed silent and sentimental, but
being a generous rival, and feeling that he could afford it, made a
little effort, and engaged Mervyn in talk, and found him pleasantly
versed in many things of which he knew little, and especially in the
Continental stage and drama, upon which Puddock heard him greedily; and
the general's bustling talk helped to keep the company merry, and he
treated them to a bottle of the identical sack of which his own
father's wedding posset had been compounded! Dangerfield, in a rather
harsh voice, but agreeably and intelligently withal, told some rather
pleasant stories about old wines and curious wine fanciers; and Cluffe
and Puddock, who often sang together, being called on by the general,
chanted a duet rather prettily, though neither, separately, had much of
a voice. And the incorrigible Puddock, apropos of a piece of a whale
once eaten by Dangerfield, after his wont, related a wonderful
receipt--'a weaver surprised.' The weaver turned out to be a fish, and
the 'surprising' was the popping him out of ice into boiling water, with
after details, which made the old general shake and laugh till tears
bedewed his honest cheeks. And Mervyn and Dangerfield, as much surprised
as the weaver, both looked, each in his own way, a little curiously at
the young warrior who possessed this remarkable knowledge.
And the claret, like the general's other wines, was very good, and
Dangerfield said a stern word or two in its praise, and guessed its
vintage, to his host's great elation, who, with Lord Castlemallard,
began to think Dangerfield a very wonderful man.
Dr. Sturk alone sipped his claret silently; looking thoughtfully a good
deal at Dangerfield over the way, and when spoken to, seemed to waken
up, but dropped out of the conversation again; though this was odd, for
he had intended giving Dangerfield a bit of his mind as to what might be
made of the Castlemallard estates, and by implication letting in some
light upon Nutter's mismanagement.
When Dr. Sturk had come into the drawing-room before dinner, Dangerfield
was turning over a portfolio in the shade beyond the window, and the
evening sun was shining strongly in his own face; so that during the
ceremony of introduction he had seen next to nothing of him, and then
sauntered away to the bow window at the other end, where the ladies were
assembled, to make his obeisance.
But at the dinner-table, he was placed directly opposite, with the
advantage of a very distinct view; and the face, relieved against the
dark stamped leather hangings on the wall, stood out like a
sharply-painted portrait, and produced an odd and unpleasant effect upon
Sturk, who could not help puzzling himself then, and for a long time
after, with unavailing speculations about him.
The grim white man opposite did not appear to trouble his head about
Sturk. He eat his dinner energetically, chatted laconically, but rather
pleasantly. Sturk thought he might be eight-and-forty, or perhaps six or
seven-and-fifty--it was a face without a date. He went over all his
points, insignificant features, high forehead, stern countenance,
abruptly silent, abruptly speaking, spectacles, harsh voice, harsher
laugh, something sinister perhaps, and used for the most part when the
joking or the story had a flavour of the sarcastic and the devilish.
The image, as a whole, seemed to Sturk to fill in the outlines of a
recollection, which yet was _not_ a recollection. He could not seize it;
it was a decidedly unpleasant impression of having seen him before, but
where he could not bring to mind. 'He got me into some confounded
trouble some time or other,' thought Sturk, in his uneasy dream; 'the
sight of him is like a thump in my stomach. Was he the sheriff's
deputy at Chester, when that rascally Jew-tailor followed me?
Dangerfield--Dangerfield--Dangerfield--no; or could it be that row at
Taunton? or the custom-house officer--let me see--1751; no, he was a
taller man--yes, I remember him; it is _not_ he. Or was he at Dick
Luscome's duel?' and he lay awake half the night thinking of him; for he
was not only a puzzle, but there was a sort of suspicion of danger and
he knew not what, throbbing in his soul whenever his reverie conjured up
that impenetrable, white scoffing face.