IN WHICH MR. DANGERFIELD VISITS THE CHURCH OF CHAPELIZOD, AND ZEKIEL
IRONS GOES A FISHING.
Early next morning Lord Castlemallard, Dangerfield, and Nutter, rode
into Chapelizod, plaguy dusty, having already made the circuit of that
portion of his property which lay west of the town. They had poked into
the new mills and the old mills, and contemplated the quarries, and
lime-kilns, and talked with Doyle about his holding, and walked over the
two vacant farms, and I know not all besides. And away trotted his
lordship to his breakfast in town. And Dangerfield seeing the church
door open, dismounted and walked in, and Nutter did likewise.
Bob Martin was up in the gallery, I suppose, doing some good, and making
a considerable knocking here and there in the pews, and walking slowly
with creaking shoes. Zekiel Irons, the clerk, was down below about his
business, at the communion table at the far end, lean, blue-chinned,
thin-lipped, stooping over his quarto prayer books, and gliding about
without noise, reverent and sinister. When they came in, Nutter led the
way to Lord Castlemallard's pew, which brought them up pretty near to
the spot where grave Mr. Irons was prowling serenely. The pew would soon
want new flooring, Mr. Dangerfield thought, and the Castlemallard arms
and supporters, a rather dingy piece of vainglory, overhanging the main
seat on the wall, would be nothing the worse of a little fresh gilding
and paint.
'There was a claim--eh--to one foot nine inches off the eastern end of
the pew, on the part of--of the family--at Inchicore, I think they call
it,' said Dangerfield, laying his riding-whip like a rule along the top
to help his imagination--'Hey--that would spoil the pew.'
'The claim's settled, and Mr. Langley goes to the other side of the
aisle,' said Nutter, nodding to Irons, who came up, and laid his long
clay-coloured fingers on the top of the pew door, and one long, thin
foot on the first step, and with half-closed eyes, and a half bow, he
awaited their pleasure.
'The Langley family had _this_ pew,' said Dangerfield, with a side nod
to that next his lordship's.
'Yes, Sir,' said Irons, with the same immutable semblance of a smile,
and raising neither his head nor his eyes.
'And who's got it now?'
'His reverence, Dr. Walsingham.'
And so it came out, that having purchased Salmonfalls, the rector had
compromised the territorial war that was on the point of breaking out
among his parishioners, by exchanging with that old coxcomb Langley, the
great square pew over the way, that belonged to that house, for the
queer little crib in which the tenant of Inchicore had hitherto sat in
state; and so there was peace, if not good will, in the church.
'Hey--let's see it,' said Dangerfield, crossing the aisle, with Irons at
his heels, for he was a man that saw everything for himself, that ever
so remotely concerned him or his business.
'We buried Lord ----' (and the title he spoke very low) 'in the vault
here, just under where you stand, on Monday last, by night,' said Irons,
very gently and grimly, as he stood behind Dangerfield.
A faint galvanic thrill shot up through the flagging and his firmly
planted foot to his brain, as though something said, 'Ay, here I am!'
'Oh! indeed?' said Dangerfield, dryly, making a little nod, and raising
his eyebrows, and just moving a little a one side--''Twas a nasty
affair.'
He looked up, with his hands in his breeches' pockets, and read a mural
tablet, whistling scarce audibly the while. It was not reverent, but he
was a gentleman; and the clerk standing behind him, retained his quiet
posture, and that smile, that yet was not a smile, but a sort of
reflected light--was it patience, or was it secret ridicule?--you could
not tell: and it never changed, and somehow it was provoking.
'And some persons, I believe, had an unpleasant duty to do there,' said
Dangerfield, abruptly, in the middle of his tune, and turning his
spectacles fully and sternly on Mr. Irons.
The clerk's head bent lower, and he shook it; and his eyes, but for a
little glitter through the eyelashes, seemed to close.
''Tis a pretty church, this--a pretty town, and some good families in
the neighbourhood,' said Dangerfield, briskly; 'and I dare say some
trout in the river--hey?--the stream looks lively.'
'Middling, only--poor gray troutlings, Sir--not a soul cares to fish it
but myself,' he answered.
'You're the clerk--eh?'
'At your service, Sir.'
'_Dublin_ man?--or--'
'Born and bred in Dublin, your honour.'
'Ay--well! Irons--you've heard of Mr. Dangerfield--Lord Castlemallard's
agent--I am he. Good-morning, Irons;' and he gave him half-a-crown, and
he took another look round; and then he and Nutter went out of the
church, and took a hasty leave of one another, and away went Nutter on
his nag, to the mills. And Dangerfield, just before mounting, popped
into Cleary's shop, and in his grim, laconic way, asked the proprietor,
among his meal-bags and bacon, about fifty questions in less than five
minutes. 'That was one of Lord Castlemallard's houses--eh--with the bad
roof, and manure-heap round the corner?'--and, 'Where's the pot-house
they call the Salmon House?--doing a good business--eh?' and at
last--'I'm told there's some trout in the stream. Is there anyone in the
town who knows the river, and could show me the fishing?--Oh, the clerk!
and what sort of fish is _he_--hey?--Oh! an honest, worthy man, is he?
Very good, Sir. Then, perhaps, Mr. a--perhaps, Sir, you'll do me the
favour to let one of your people run down to his house, and say Mr.
Dangerfield, Lord Castlemallard's agent, who is staying, you know, at
the Brass Castle, would be much obliged if he would bring his rod and
tackle, and take a walk with him up the river, for a little angling, at
ten o'clock!'
Jolly Phil Cleary was deferential, and almost nervous in his presence.
The silver-haired, grim man, with his mysterious reputation for money,
and that short decisive way of his, and sudden cynical chuckle, inspired
a sort of awe, which made his wishes, where expressed with that intent,
very generally obeyed; and, sure enough, Irons appeared, with his rod,
at the appointed hour, and the interesting anglers--Piscator and his
'honest scholar,' as Isaac Walton hath it--set out side by side on their
ramble, in the true fraternity of the gentle craft.
The clerk had, I'm afraid, a shrew of a wife--shrill, vehement, and
fluent. 'Rogue,' 'old miser,' 'old sneak,' and a great many worse names,
she called him. Good Mrs. Irons was old, fat, and ugly, and she knew it;
and that knowledge made her natural jealousy the fiercer. He had
learned, by long experience, the best tactique under fire: he became
actually taciturn; or, if he spoke, his speech was laconic and
enigmatical; sometimes throwing out a proverb, and sometimes a text; and
sometimes when provoked past endurance, spouting mildly a little bit of
meek and venomous irony.
He loved his trout-rod and the devious banks of the Liffey, where,
saturnine and alone, he filled his basket. It was his helpmate's rule,
whenever she did not know to a certainty precisely what Irons was doing,
to take it for granted that he was about some mischief. Her lodger,
Captain Devereux, was her great resource on these occasions, and few
things pleased him better than a stormy visit from his hostess in this
temper. The young scapegrace would close his novel, and set down his
glass of sherry and water (it sometimes smelt very like brandy, I'm
afraid). To hear her rant, one would have supposed, who had not seen
him, that her lank-haired, grimly partner, was the prettiest youth in
the county of Dublin, and that all the comely lasses in Chapelizod and
the country round were sighing and setting caps at him; and Devereux,
who had a vein of satire, and loved even farce, enjoyed the heroics of
the fat old slut.
'Oh! what am I to do, captain, jewel?' she bounced into the room, with
flaming face and eyes swelled, and the end of her apron, with which she
had been swobbing them, in her hand, while she gesticulated, with her
right; 'there, he's off again to Island Bridge,--the owdacious sneak!
It's all that dirty hussy's doing. I'm not such a fool, but I know how
to put this and that together, though he thinks I don't know of his
doings; but I'll be even with you, Meg Partlet, yet--you trollop;' and
all this was delivered in renewed floods of tears, and stentorian
hysterics, while she shook her fat red fist in the air, at the presumed
level of Meg's beautiful features.
'Nay, Madam,' said the gay captain; 'I prithee, weep not; the like
discoveries, as you have read, have been made in Rome, Salamanca,
Ballyporeen, Babylon, Venice, and fifty other famous cities.' He always
felt in these interviews, as if she and he were extemporising a
burlesque--she the Queen of Crim Tartary, and he an Archbishop in her
court--and would have spoken blank verse, only he feared she might
perceive it, and break up the conference.
'And what's that to the purpose?--don't I know they're the same all over
the world--nothing but brutes and barbarians.'
'But suppose, Madam, he has only gone up the river, and just taken his
rod----'
'Oh! rod, indeed. I know where he wants a rod, the rascal!'
'I tell you, Madam,' urged the chaplain, 'you're quite in the wrong.
You've discovered after twenty years' wedlock that your husband's--a
man! and you're vexed: would you have him anything else?'
'You're all in a story,' she blubbered maniacally; 'there's no justice,
nor feeling, nor succour for a poor abused woman; but I'll do it--I
will. I'll go to his reverence--don't try to persuade me--the Rev. Hugh
Walsingham, Doctor of Divinity, and Rector of Chapelizod (she used to
give him at full length whenever she threatened Zekiel with a visitation
from that quarter, by way of adding ponderosity to the menace)--I'll go
to him straight--don't think to stop me--and we'll see what he'll say;'
and so she addressed herself to go.
'And when you see him, Madam, ask the learned doctor--don't ask
me--believe the rector of the parish--he'll tell you, that it hath
prevailed from the period at which Madam Sarah quarrelled with saucy
Miss Hagar; that it hath prevailed among all the principal nations of
antiquity, according to Pliny, Strabo, and the chief writers of
antiquity; that Juno, Dido, Eleanor Queen of England, and Mrs.
Partridge, whom I read of here (and he pointed to the open volume of Tom
Jones), each made, or thought she made, a like discovery.' And the
captain delivered this slowly, with knitted brow and thoughtful face,
after the manner of the erudite and simple doctor.
'Pretty Partridges, indeed! and nice game for a parish clerk!' cried the
lady, returning. 'I wonder, so I do, when I look at him, and think of
his goings on, how he can have the assurance to sit under the minister,
and look the congregation in the face, and tune his throat, and sing the
blessed psalms.'
'You are not to wonder, Madam; believe the sage, who says, _omnibus hoc
vitium est cantoribus_.'
Devereux knew of old that the effect of Latin on Mrs. Irons was to
heighten the inflammation, and so the matron burst into whole chapters
of crimination, enlivened with a sprinkling of strong words, as the
sages of the law love to pepper their indictments and informations with
hot adverbs and well-spiced parentheses, 'falsely,' 'scandalously,'
'maliciously,' and _suadente diabolo_, to make them sit warm on the
stomachs of a loyal judge and jury, and digest easily.
The neighbours were so accustomed to Mrs. Irons' griefs, that when her
voice was audible, as upon such occasions it was, upon the high road and
in the back gardens, it produced next to no sensation; everybody had
heard from that loud oracle every sort of story touching Irons which
could well be imagined, and it was all so thoroughly published by the
good lady, that curiosity on the subject was pretty well dead and gone,
and her distant declamation rattled over their heads and boomed in their
ears, like the distant guns and trumpets on a review day, signifying
nothing.
And all this only shows what every man who has ruralised a little in his
lifetime knows, more than in theory, that the golden age lingers in no
corner of the earth, but is really quite gone and over everywhere, and
that peace and _prisca fides_ have not fled to the nooks and shadows of
deep valleys and bowery brooks, but flown once, and away to heaven
again, and left the round world to its general curse. So it is even in
pretty old villages, embowered in orchards, with hollyhocks and
jessamine in front of the houses, and primeval cocks and hens pecking
and scraping in the street, and the modest river dimpling and simpering
among osiers and apple trees, and old ivied walls close by--you
sometimes hear other things than lowing herds, and small birds singing,
and purling streams; and shrill accents and voluble rhetoric will now
and then trouble the fragrant air, and wake up the dim old river-god
from his nap.
As to Irons, if he was all that his wife gave out, he must have been a
mighty sly dog indeed; for on the whole, he presented a tolerably decent
exterior to society. It is said, indeed, that he liked a grave tumbler
of punch, and was sardonic and silent in his liquor; that his gait was
occasionally a little queer and uncertain, as his lank figure glided
home by moonlight, from the 'Salmon House;' and that his fingers fumbled
longer than need be with the latch, and his tongue, though it tried but
a short and grim 'bar'th door, Marjry,' or 'gi' me can'le, wench,'
sometimes lacked its cunning, and slipped and kept not time. There were,
too, other scandals, such as the prying and profane love to shoot
privily at church celebrities. Perhaps it was his reserve and sanctity
that provoked them. Perhaps he was, in truth, though cautious, sometimes
indiscreet. Perhaps it was fanciful Mrs. Irons' jealous hullabaloos and
hysterics that did it--I don't know--but people have been observed,
_apropos_ of him, to wink at one another, and grin, and shake their
heads, and say: 'the nearer the church, you know'--and 'he so ancient,
too! but 'tis an old rat that won't eat cheese,' and so forth.
Just as Mrs. Irons whisked round for the seventh time to start upon her
long threatened march to Dr. Walsingham's study to lay her pitiful case
before him, Captain Devereux, who was looking toward the 'Phoenix,'
saw the truant clerk and Mr. Dangerfield turn the corner together on
their return.
'Stay, Madam, here comes the traitor,' said he; 'and, on my honour, 'tis
worse than we thought; for he has led my Lord Castlemallard's old agent
into mischief too--and Meg Partlet has had two swains at her feet this
morning; and, see, the hypocrites have got some trout in their basket,
and their rods on their shoulders--and look, for all the world, as if
they had only been fishing--sly rogues!'
'Well, it's all one,' said Mrs. Irons, gaping from the other window, and
sobering rapidly; 'if 'tisn't to-day, 'twill be to-morrow, I suppose;
and at any rate 'tis a sin and shame to leave any poor crature in this
miserable taking, not knowing but he might be drownded--or worse--dear
knows it would not be much trouble to tell his wife when the gentleman
wanted him--and sure for any honest matter I'd never say against it.'
Her thoughts were running upon Dangerfield, and what 'compliment' he had
probably made her husband at parting; and a minute or two after this,
Devereux saw her, with her riding-hood on, trudging up to the "Salmon
House" to make inquisition after the same.