RELATING AMONG OTHER THINGS HOW DOCTOR TOOLE WALKED UP TO THE TILED
HOUSE; AND OF HIS PLEASANT DISCOURSE WITH MR. MERVYN.
Dr. Sturk's spirits and temper had not become more pleasant lately. In
fact he brooded more, and was more savage at home than was at all
agreeable. He used to go into town oftener, and to stay there later; and
his language about Toole and Nutter, when there was none but submissive
little Mrs. Sturk by, was more fierce and coarse than ever. To hear him,
then, one would have supposed that they were actually plotting to make
away with him, and that in self-defence he must smite them hip and
thigh. Then, beside their moral offensiveness, they were such 'idiots,'
and: 'noodles,' and botching and blundering right and left, so palpably
to the danger and ruin of their employers, that no man of conscience
could sit easy and see it going on; and all this simply because he had
fixed his affections upon the practice of the one, and the agency of the
other. For Sturk had, in his own belief, a genius for business of every
sort. Everybody on whom his insolent glance fell, who had any sort of
business to do, did it wrong, and was a 'precious disciple,' or a
'goose,' or a 'born jackass,' and excited his scoffing chuckle. And
little Mrs. Sturk, frightened and admiring, used to say, while he
grinned and muttered, and tittered into the fire, with his great
shoulders buried in his balloon-backed chair, his heels over the fender
and his hands in his breeches' pockets--'But, Barney, you know, you're
so clever--there's no one like you!' And he was fond of just nibbling at
speculations in a small safe way, and used to pull out a roll of
bank-notes, when he was lucky, and show his winnings to his wife, and
chuckle and swear over them, and boast and rail, and tell her, if it was
not for the cursed way his time was cut up with hospital, and field
days, and such trumpery regimental duties, he could make a fortune while
other men were thinking of it; and he very nearly believed it. And he
was, doubtless, clear-headed, though wrong-headed, too, at times, and
very energetic; but his genius was for pushing men out of their places
to make way for himself.
But with all that he had the good brute instincts too, and catered
diligently for his brood, and their 'dam'--and took a gruff
unacknowledged pride in seeing his wife well dressed--and had a strong
liking for her--and thanked her in his soul for looking after things so
well; and thought often about his boys, and looked sharply after their
education; and was an efficient and decisive head of a household; and
had no vices nor expensive indulgences; and was a hard but tolerably
just man to deal with.
All this time his uneasiness and puzzle about Dangerfield continued,
and, along with other things, kept him awake often to unseasonable hours
at night. He did not tell Mrs. Sturk. In fact, he was a man, who, though
on most occasions he gave the wife of his bosom what he called 'his
mind' freely enough, yet did not see fit to give her a great deal of his
confidence.
Dangerfield had his plans too. Who has not? Nothing could be more
compact and modest than his household. He had just a housekeeper and two
maids, who looked nearly as old, and a valet, and a groom, who slept at
the 'Phoenix,' and two very pretty horses at livery in the same place.
All his appointments were natty and complete, and his servants, every
one, stood in awe of him; for no lip or eye-service would go down with
that severe, prompt, and lynx-eyed gentleman. And his groom, among the
coachmen and other experts of the 'Salmon House,' used to brag of his
hunters in England; and his man, of his riches, and his influence with
Lord Castlemallard.
In England, Dangerfield, indeed, spent little more money than he did in
Chapelizod, except in his stable; and Lord Castlemallard, who admired
his stinginess, as he did everything else about him, used to say: 'He's
a wonder of the world! How he retains his influence over all the people
he knows without ever giving one among them so much as a mutton-chop or
a glass of sherry in his house, I can't conceive. _I_ couldn't do it, I
know.' But he had ultimate plans, if not of splendour, at least of
luxury. His tastes, and perhaps some deeper feelings, pointed to the
continent, and he had purchased a little paradise on the Lake of Geneva,
where was an Eden of fruits and flowers, and wealth of marbles and
coloured canvas, and wonderful wines maturing in his cellars, and
aquaria for his fish, and ice-houses and baths, and I know not what
refinements of old Roman Villa-luxury beside--among which he meant to
pass the honoured evening of his days; with just a few more thousands,
and, as he sometimes thought, perhaps a wife. He had not quite made up
his mind; but he had come to the time when a man must forthwith accept
matrimony frankly, or, if he be wise, shake hands with bleak celibacy,
and content himself for his earthly future with monastic jollity and
solitude.
It is a maxim with charitable persons--and no more than a recognition of
a great constitutional axiom--to assume, in the absence of proof to the
contrary, that every British subject is an honest man. Now, if we had
gone to Lord Castlemallard for his character--and who more competent to
give him one--we know very well what we should have heard about
Dangerfield; and, on the other hand, we have never found him out--have
we, kind reader?--in a shabby action or unworthy thought; and,
therefore, it leaves upon our mind an unpleasant impression about that
Mr. Mervyn, who arrived in the dark, attending upon a coffin as
mysterious as himself, and now lives solitarily in the haunted house
near Ballyfermot, that the omniscient Dangerfield should follow him,
when they pass upon the road, with that peculiar stern glance of
surprise which seemed to say,--'Was ever such audacity conceived? Is the
man mad?'
But Dangerfield did not choose to talk about him--if indeed he had
anything to disclose--though the gentlemen at the club pressed him often
with questions, which however, he quietly parried, to the signal
vexation of active little Dr. Toole, who took up and dropped, in turn,
all sorts of curious theories about the young stranger. Lord
Castlemallard knew all about him, too, but his lordship was high and
huffy, and hardly ever in Chapelizod, except on horseback, and two or
three times in the year at a grand dinner at the Artillery mess. And
when Mervyn was mentioned he always talked of something else, rather
imperiously, as though he said, 'You'll please to observe that upon that
subject I don't choose to speak.' And as for Dr. Walsingham, when he
thought it right to hold his tongue upon a given matter, thumb-screws
could not squeeze it from him.
In short, our friend Toole grew so feverish under his disappointment
that he made an excuse of old Tim Molloy's toothache to go up in person
to the 'Tiled House,' in the hope of meeting the young gentleman, and
hearing something from him (the servants, he already knew, were as much
in the dark as he) to alleviate his distress. And, sure enough, his luck
stood him in stead; for, as he was going away, having pulled out old
Molloy's grinder to give a colour to his visit, who should he find upon
the steps of the hall-door but the pale, handsome young gentleman
himself.
Dr. Toole bowed low, and grinned with real satisfaction, reminded him of
their interview at the 'Phoenix,' and made by way of apology for his
appearance at the 'Tiled House,' a light and kind allusion to poor old
Tim, of whose toothache he spoke affectionately, and with water in his
eyes--for he half believed for the moment what he was saying--declared
how he remembered him when he did not come up to Tim's knee-buckle, and
would walk that far any day, and a bit further too, he hoped, to relieve
the poor old boy in a less matter. And finding that Mr. Mervyn was going
toward Chapelizod, he begged him not to delay on his account, and
accompanied him down the Ballyfermot road, entertaining him by the way
with an inexhaustible affluence of Chapelizod anecdote and scandal, at
which the young man stared a good deal, and sometimes even appeared
impatient: but the doctor did not perceive it, and rattled on; and told
him moreover, everything about himself and his belongings with a minute
and voluble frankness, intended to shame the suspicious reserve of the
stranger. But nothing came; and being by this time grown bolder, he
began a more direct assault, and told him, with a proper scorn of the
village curiosity, all the theories which the Chapelizod gossips had
spun about him.
'And they say, among other things, that you're not--a--in fact--there's
a mystery--a something--about your birth, you know,' said Toole, in a
tone implying pity and contempt for his idle townsfolk.
'They lie, then!' cried the young man, stopping short, more fiercely
than was pleasant, and fixing his great lurid eyes upon the cunning face
of the doctor; and, after a pause, 'Why can't they let me and my
concerns alone, Sir?'
'But there's no use in saying so, _I_ can tell you,' exclaimed little
Toole, recovering his feet in an instant. 'Why, I suppose there isn't so
tattling, prying, lying, scandalous a little colony of Christians on
earth; eyes, ears, and mouths all open, Sir; heads busy, tongues
wagging; lots of old maids, by Jove; ladies' women, and gentlemen's
gentlemen, and drawers and footmen; club talk, Sir, and mess-table talk,
and talk on band days, talk over cards, talk at home, Sir--talk in the
streets--talk--talk; by Jupiter Tonans! 'tis enough to bother one's
ears, and make a man envy Robinson Crusoe!'
'So I do, Sir, if we were rid of his parrot,' answered Mervyn: and with
a dry 'I wish you a good-morning, doctor--doctor--a--_Sir_'--turned
sharply from him up the Palmerstown-road.
'Going to Belmont,' murmured little Toole, with his face a little redder
than usual, and stopping in an undignified way for a moment at the
corner to look after him. 'He's close--plaguy close; and Miss Rebecca
Chattesworth knows nothing about him neither--I wander does she
though--and doesn't seem to care even. He's not there for nothing
though. _Some_ one makes him welcome, depend on't,' and he winked to
himself. 'A plaguy high stomach, too, by Jove. I bet you fifty, if he
stays here three months, he'll be at swords or pistols with some of our
hot bloods. And whatever his secret is--and I dare say 'tisn't worth
knowing--the people here will ferret it out at last, I warrant you.
There's small good in making all the fuss he does about it; if he knew
but all, there's no such thing as a secret here--hang the one have _I_,
I know, just because there's no use in trying. The whole town knows when
I've tripe for dinner, and where I have a patch or a darn. And when I
got the fourteen pigeons at Darkey's-bridge, the birds were not ten
minutes on my kitchen table when old Widow Foote sends her maid and her
compliments, as she knew my pie-dish only held a dozen, to beg the two
odd birds. Secret, indeed!' and he whistled a bar or two contemptuously,
which subsided into dejected silence, and he muttered, 'I wish I knew
it,' and walked over the bridge gloomily; and he roared more fiercely on
smaller occasions than usual at his dogs on the way home, and they
squalled oftener and louder.
Now, for some reason or other, Dangerfield had watched the growing
intimacy between Mervyn and Miss Gertrude Chattesworth with an evil eye.
He certainly did know something about this Mr. Mervyn, with his
beautiful sketches, and his talk about Italy, and his fine music. And
his own spectacles had carefully surveyed Miss Chattesworth, and she had
passed the ordeal satisfactorily. And Dangerfield thought, 'These people
can't possibly suspect the actual state of the case, and who and what
this gentleman is _to my certain knowledge_; and 'tis a pity so fine a
young lady should be sacrificed for want of a word spoken in season.'
And when he had decided upon a point, it was not easy to make him stop
or swerve.