IN WHICH PALE HECATE VISITS THE MILLS, AND CHARLES NUTTER, ESQ., ORDERS
TEA.
Poor Mrs. Nutter, I have an honest regard for her memory. If she was
scant of brains, she was also devoid of guile--giggle and raspberry-jam
were the leading traits of her character. And though she was slow to
believe ill-natured stories, and made, in general, a horrid jumble when
she essayed to relate news, except of the most elementary sort; and used
to forget genealogies, and to confuse lawsuits and other family feuds,
and would have made a most unsatisfactory witness upon any topic on
earth, yet she was a ready sympathiser, and a restless but purblind
matchmaker--always suggesting or suspecting little romances, and always
amazed when the eclaircissement came off. Excellent for
condoling--better still for rejoicing--she would, on hearing of a
surprising good match, or an unexpected son and heir, or a
pleasantly-timed legacy, go off like a mild little peal of joy-bells,
and keep ringing up and down and zig-zag, and to and again, in all sorts
of irregular roulades, without stopping, the whole day long, with 'Well,
to be sure.' 'Upon my conscience, now, I scarce can believe it.' 'An'
isn't it pleasant, though.' 'Oh! the creatures--but it was badly
wanted!' 'Dear knows--but I'm glad--ha, ha, ha,' and so on. A train of
reflection and rejoicing not easily exhausted, and readily, by simple
transposition, maintainable for an indefinite period. And people, when
good news came, used to say, 'Sally Nutter will be glad to hear that;'
and though she had not a great deal of sense, and her conversation was
made up principally of interjections, assisted by little gestures, and
wonderful expressions of face; and though, when analysed it was not
much, yet she made a cheerful noise, and her company was liked; and her
friendly little gesticulation, and her turning up of the eyes, and her
smiles and sighs, and her 'whisht a bit,' and her 'faith and troth now,'
and 'whisper,' and all the rest of her little budget of idiomatic
expletives, made the people somehow, along with her sterling qualities,
fonder of her than perhaps, having her always at hand, they were quite
aware.
So they both entered the vehicle, which jingled and rattled so
incessantly and so loud that connected talk was quite out of the
question, and Mrs. Macnamara was glad 'twas so; and she could not help
observing there was something more than the ordinary pale cast of
devilment in Mary Matchwell's face--something, she thought, almost
frightful, and which tempted her to believe in her necromantic faculty.
So they reached Nutter's house, at the mills, a sober, gray-fronted
mansion, darkened with tall trees, and in went Mrs. Mack. Little Mrs.
Nutter received her in a sort of transport of eagerness, giggle, and
curiosity.
'And is she really in the coach now? and, my dear, does she really tell
the wonders they say? Mrs. Molly told me--well, now, the most surprising
things; and do you actually believe she's a conjuror? But mind you,
Nutter must not know I had her here. He can't abide a fortune-teller.
And what shall I ask her? I think about the pearl cross--don't you? For
I _would_ like to know, and then whether Nutter or his enemies--you know
who I mean--will carry the day--don't you know? Doctor Sturk, my dear,
and--and--but that's the chief question.'
Poor Mrs. Mack glanced over her shoulder to see she wasn't watched, and
whispered her in haste--
'For mercy's sake, my dear, take my advice, and that is, listen to all
she tells you, but tell her nothing.'
'To be sure, my dear, that's only common sense,' said Mrs. Nutter.
And Mary Matchwell, who thought they had been quite long enough
together, descended from the carriage, and was in the hall before Mrs.
Nutter was aware; and the silent apparition overawed the poor little
lady, who faltered a 'Good-evening, Madam--you're very welcome--pray
step in.' So in they all trooped to Nutter's parlour.
So soon as little Mrs. Nutter got fairly under the chill and shadow of
this inauspicious presence, her giggle subsided, and she began to think
of the dreadful story she had heard of her having showed Mrs. Flemming
through a glass of fair water, the apparition of her husband with his
face half masked with blood, the day before his murder by the watchmen
in John's-lane. When, therefore, this woman of Endor called for water
and glasses, and told Mrs. Mack that she must leave them alone together,
poor little empty Mrs. Nutter lost heart, and began to feel very queer,
and to wish herself well out of the affair; and, indeed, was almost
ready to take to her heels and leave the two ladies in possession of the
house, but she had not decision for this.
'And mayn't Mrs. Mack stay in the room with us?' she asked, following
that good lady's retreating figure with an imploring look.
'By no means.'
This was addressed sternly to Mrs. Mack herself, who, followed by poor
Mrs. Nutter's eyes, moved fatly and meekly out of the room.
She was not without her fair share of curiosity, but on the whole, was
relieved, and very willing to go. She had only seen Mary Matchwell take
from her pocket and uncase a small, oval-shaped steel mirror, which
seemed to have the property of magnifying objects; for she saw her
cadaverous fingers reflected in it to fully double their natural size,
and she had half filled a glass with water, and peered through it askew,
holding it toward the light.
Well, the door was shut, and an interval of five minutes elapsed; and
all of a sudden two horrible screams in quick succession rang through
the house.
Betty, the maid, and Mrs. Mack were in the small room on the other side
of the hall, and stared in terror on one another. The old lady, holding
Betty by the wrist, whispered a benediction; and Betty crying--'Oh! my
dear, what's happened the poor misthress?' crossed the hall in a second,
followed by Mrs. Mack, and they heard the door unlocked on the inside as
they reached it.
In they came, scarce knowing how, and found poor little Mrs. Nutter flat
upon the floor, in a swoon, her white face and the front of her dress
drenched with water.
'You've a scent bottle, Mrs. Macnamara--let her smell to it,' said the
grim woman in black, coldly, but with a scarcely perceptible gleam of
triumph, as she glanced on the horrified faces of the women.
Well, it was a long fainting-fit; but she did come out of it. And when
her bewildered gaze at last settled upon Mrs. Matchwell, who was
standing darkly and motionless between the windows, she uttered another
loud and horrible cry, and clung with her arms round Mrs. Mack's neck,
and screamed--
'Oh! Mrs. Mack, _there_ she is--_there_ she is--_there_ she is.'
And she screamed so fearfully and seemed in such an extremity of terror,
that Mary Matchwell, in her sables, glided, with a strange sneer on her
pale face, out of the room across the hall, and into the little parlour
on the other side, like an evil spirit whose mission was half
accomplished, and who departed from her for a season.
'She's here--she's here!' screamed poor little Mrs. Nutter.
'No, dear, no--she's not--she's gone, my dear, indeed she's gone,'
replied Mrs. Mack, herself very much appalled.
'Oh! is she gone--is she--_is_ she gone?' cried Mrs. Nutter, staring all
round the room, like a child after a frightful dream.
'She's gone, Ma'am, dear--she isn't here--by this crass, she's gone!'
said Betty, assisting Mrs. Mack, and equally frightened and incensed.
'Oh! oh! Betty, where is he gone? Oh! Mrs. Mack--oh! no--no--never! It
can't be--it couldn't. It _is_ not he--he never did it.'
'I declare to you, Ma'am, she's not right in her head!' cried poor
Betty, at her wits' ends.
'There--_there_ now, Sally, darling--_there_,' said frightened Mrs.
Mack, patting her on the back.
'There--there--there--I see him,' she cried again. 'Oh!
Charley,--Charley, sure--sure I didn't see it aright--it was not real.'
'There now, don't be frettin' yourself, Ma'am dear,' said Betty.
But Mrs. Mack glanced over her shoulder in the direction in which Mrs.
Nutter was looking, and with a sort of shock, not knowing whether it was
a bodily presence or a simulacrum raised by the incantations of Mary
Matchwell, she beheld the dark features and white eye-balls of Nutter
himself looking full on them from the open door.
'Sally--what ails you, sweetheart?' said he, coming close up to her with
two swift steps.
'Oh! Charley--'twas a dream--nothing else--a bad dream, Charley. Oh! say
it's a dream,' cried the poor terrified little woman. 'Oh! she's
coming--she's coming!' she cried again, with an appalling scream.
'_Who_--what's the matter?' cried Nutter, looking in the direction of
his poor wife's gaze in black wrath and bewilderment, and beholding the
weird woman who had followed him into the room. As he gazed on that
pale, wicked face and sable shape, the same sort of spell which she
exercised upon Mrs. Mack, and poor Mrs. Nutter, seemed in a few seconds
to steal over Nutter himself, and fix him in the place where he stood.
His mahogany face bleached to sickly boxwood, and his eyes looked like
pale balls of stone about to leap from their sockets.
After a few seconds, however, with a sort of gasp, like a man awaking
from a frightful sleep, he said--
'Betty, take the mistress to her room;' and to his wife, 'go,
sweetheart. Mrs. Macnamara, this must be explained,' he added; and
taking her by the hand, he led her in silence to the hall-door, and
signed to the driver.
'Oh! thank you, Mr. Nutter,' she stammered; 'but the coach is not mine;
it came with that lady who's with Mrs. Nutter.'
He had up to this moved with her like a somnambulist.
'Ay, that lady; and who the devil is she?' and he seized her arm with a
sudden grasp that made her wince.
'Oh! that lady!' faltered Mrs. Mack--'she's, I believe--she's Mrs.
Matchwell--the--the lady that advertises her abilities.'
'Hey! I know--the fortune-teller, and go-between,--her!'
She was glad he asked her no more questions, but let her go, and stood
in a livid meditation, forgetting to bid her good evening. She did not
wait, however, for his courteous dismissal, but hurried away towards
Chapelizod. The only thing connected with the last half-hour's events
that seemed quite clear and real to the scared lady was the danger of
being overtaken by that terrible woman, and a dreadful sense of her own
share as an accessory in the untold mischief that had befallen poor Mrs.
Nutter.
In the midst of her horrors and agitation Mrs. Mack's curiosity was not
altogether stunned. She wondered vaguely, as she pattered along, with
what dreadful exhibition of her infernal skill Mary Matchwell had
disordered the senses of poor little Mrs. Nutter--had she called up a
red-eyed, sooty-raven to her shoulder--as old Miss Alice Lee (when she
last had a dish of tea with her) told her she had once done before--and
made the ominous bird speak the doom of poor Mrs. Nutter from that
perch? or had she raised the foul fiend in bodily shape, or showed her
Nutter's dead face through the water?
With these images flitting before her brain, she hurried on at her best
pace, fancying every moment that she heard the rumble of the accursed
coach behind her, and longing to see the friendly uniform of the Royal
Irish Artillery, and the familiar house fronts of the cheery little
street, and above all, to hide herself securely among her own household
gods.
When Nutter returned to the parlour his wife had not yet left it.
'I'll attend here, go you up stairs,' said Nutter. He spoke strangely,
and looked odd, and altogether seemed strung up to a high pitch.
Out went Betty, seeing it was no good dawdling; for her master was
resolute and formidable. The room, like others in old-fashioned houses
with thick walls, had a double door. He shut the one with a stern slam,
and then the other; and though the honest maid loitered in the hall,
and, indeed, placed her ear very near the door, she was not much the
wiser.
There was some imperfectly heard talk in the parlour, and cries, and
sobs, and more talking. Then before Betty was aware, the door suddenly
opened, and out came Mary Matchwell, with gleaming eyes, and a pale
laugh of spite and victory and threw a look, as she passed, upon the
maid that frightened her, and so vanished into her coach.
Nutter disengaged himself from poor Mrs. Nutter's arms, in which he was
nearly throttled, while she sobbed and shrieked--
'Oh! Charley, dear--dearest Charley--Charley, darling--isn't it
frightful?' and so on.
'Betty, take care of her,' was all he said, and that sternly, like a man
quietly desperate, but with a dismal fury in his face.
He went into the little room on the other side of the now darkening
hall, and shut the door, and locked it inside. It was partly because he
did not choose to talk just now any more with his blubbering and
shrieking wife. He was a very kind husband, in his way, but a most
incapable nurse, especially in a case of hysterics.
He came out with a desk in his hands.
'Moggy,' he said, in a low tone, seeing his other servant-woman in the
dusk crossing at the foot of the stairs, 'here, take this desk, leave it
in our bed-room--'tis for the mistress; tell her so by-and-by.'
The wench carried it up; but poor Mrs. Nutter was in no condition to
comprehend anything, and was talking quite wildly, and seemed to be
growing worse rather than better.
Nutter stood alone in the hall, with his back to the door from which he
had just emerged, his hands in his pockets, and the same dreary and
wicked shadow over his face.
'So that----Sturk will carry his point after all,' he muttered.
On the hall wainscot just opposite hung his horse-pistols; and when he
saw them, and that wasn't for a while--for though he was looking
straight at them, he was staring, really, quite through the dingy wooden
panel at quite other objects three hundred miles away--when he _did_ see
them, I say, he growled in the same tone--
'I wish one of those bullets was through my head, so t'other was through
his.'
And he cursed him with laconic intensity. Then Nutter slapped his
pockets, like a man feeling if his keys and other portable chattels are
all right before he leaves his home. But his countenance was that of one
whose mind is absent and wandering. And he looked down on the ground, as
it seemed in profound and troubled abstraction; and, after a while, he
looked up again, and again glared on the cold pistols that hung before
him--ready for anything. And he took down one with a snatch and weighed
it in his hand, and fell to thinking again; and, as he did, kept opening
and shutting the pan with a snap, and so for a long time, and thinking
deeply to the tune of that castanet, and at last he roused himself, who
knows from what dreams, and hung up the weapon again by its fellow, and
looked about him.
The hall-door lay open, as Mary Matchwell had left it. Nutter stood on
the door-step, where he could hear faintly, from above stairs, the cries
and wails of poor, hysterical Mrs. Nutter. He remained there a good
while, during which, unperceived by him, Dr. Toole's pestle-and-mortar-boy,
who had entered by the back-way, had taken a seat in the hall. He was
waiting for an empty draught-bottle, in exchange for a replenished flask
of the same agreeable beverage, which he had just delivered; for physic
was one of poor Mrs. Nutter's weaknesses, though, happily, she did not
swallow half what came home for her.
When Nutter turned round, the boy--a sharp, tattling vagabond, he knew
him well--was reading a printed card he had picked up from the floor,
with the impress of Nutter's hob-nailed tread upon it. It was endorsed
upon the back, 'For Mrs. Macnamara, with the humble duty of her obedient
servant, M. M.'
'What's that, Sirrah?' shouted Nutter.
'For Mrs. Nutter, I think, Sir,' said the urchin, jumping up with a
start.
'Mrs. Nutter,' repeated he--'No--Mrs. Mac--Macnamara,' and he thrust it
into his surtout pocket. 'And what brings you here, Sirrah?' he added
savagely; for he thought everybody was spying after him now, and, as I
said, he knew him for a tattling young dog--he had taken the infection
from his master, who had trained him.
'Here, woman,' he cried to Moggy, who was passing again, 'give that
pimping rascal his ---- answer; and see, Sirrah, if I find you sneaking
about the place again, I'll lay that whip across your back.'
Nutter went into the small room again.
'An' how are ye, Jemmie--how's every inch iv you?' enquired Moggy of the
boy, when his agitation was a little blown over.
'I'm elegant, thank ye,' he answered; 'an' what's the matther wid ye
all? I cum through the kitchen, and seen no one.'
'Och! didn't you hear? The poor mistress--she's as bad as bad can be.'
And then began a whispered confidence, broken short by Nutter's again
emerging, with the leather belt he wore at night on, and a short
back-sword, called a _coutteau de chasse_, therein, and a heavy
walking-cane in his hand.
'Get tea for me, wench, in half an hour,' said he, this time quite
quietly, though still sternly, and without seeming to observe the
quaking boy, who, at first sight, referred these martial preparations to
a resolution to do execution upon him forthwith; 'you'll find me in the
garden when it's ready.'
And he strode out, and pushing open the wicket door in the thick garden
hedge, and, with his cane shouldered, walked with a quick, resolute step
down towards the pretty walk by the river, with the thick privet hedge
and the row of old pear trees by it. And that was the last that was
heard or seen of Mr. Nutter for some time.