DOCTOR WALSINGHAM AND THE CHAPELIZOD CHRISTIANS MEET TO THE SOUND OF THE
HOLY BELL, AND A VAMPIRE SITS IN THE CHURCH.
The next day the Sabbath bell from the ivied tower of Chapelizod Church
called all good church-folk round to their pews and seats. Sturk's place
was empty--already it knew him no more--and Mrs. Sturk was absent; but
the little file of children, on whom the neighbours looked with an awful
and a tender curiosity, was there. Lord Townshend, too, was in the
viceregal seat, with gentlemen of his household behind, splendid in star
and peruke, and eyed over their prayer-books by many inquisitive
Christians. Nutter's little pew, under the gallery, was void like
Sturk's. These sudden blanks were eloquent, and many, as from time to
time the dismal gap opened silent before their eyes, felt their thoughts
wander and lead them away in a strange and dismal dance, among the
nodding hawthorns in the Butcher's Wood, amidst the damps of night,
where Sturk lay in his leggings, and powder and blood, and the beetle
droned by unheeding, and no one saw him save the guilty eyes that
gleamed back as the shadowy shape stole swiftly away among the trees.
Dr. Walsingham's sermon had reference to the two-fold tragedy of the
week, Nutter's supposed death by drowning, and the murder of Sturk. In
his discourses he sometimes came out with a queer bit of erudition. Such
as, while it edified one portion of his congregation, filled the other
with unfeigned amazement.
'We may pray for rain,' said he on one occasion, when the collect had
been read; 'and for other elemental influence with humble confidence.
For if it be true, as the Roman annalists relate, that their augurs
could, by certain rites and imprecations, produce thunder-storms--if it
be certain that thunder and lightning were successfully invoked by King
Porsenna, and as Lucius Piso, whom Pliny calls a very respectable
author, avers that the same thing had frequently been done before his
time by King Numa Pompilius, surely it is not presumption in a Christian
congregation,' and so forth.
On this occasion he warned his parishioners against assuming that sudden
death is a judgment. 'On the contrary, the ancients held it a blessing;
and Pliny declares it to be the greatest happiness of life--how much
more should we? Many of the Roman worthies, as you are aware, perished
thus suddenly, Quintius Æmilius Lepidus, going out of his house, struck
his great toe against the threshold and expired; Cneius Babius
Pamphilus, a man of prætorian rank, died while asking a boy what o'clock
it was; Aulus Manlius Torquatus, a gentleman of consular rank, died in
the act of taking a cheese-cake at dinner; Lucius Tuscius Valla, the
physician, deceased while taking a draught of mulsum; Appius Saufeius,
while swallowing an egg: and Cornelius Gallus, the prætor, and Titus
Haterius, a knight, each died while kissing the hand of his wife. And I
might add many more names with which, no doubt, you are equally
familiar.'
The gentlemen of the household opened their eyes; the officers of the
Royal Irish Artillery, who understood their man, winked pleasantly
behind their cocked hats at one another; and his excellency coughed,
with his perfumed pocket-handkerchief to his nose, a good deal; and
Master Dicky Sturk, a grave boy, who had a side view of his excellency,
told his nurse that the lord lieutenant laughed in church! and was
rebuked for that scandalum magnatum with proper horror.
Then the good doctor told them that the blood of the murdered man cried
to heaven. That they might comfort themselves with the assurance that
the man of blood would come to judgment. He reminded them of St.
Augustan's awful words, 'God hath woollen feet, but iron hands;' and he
told them an edifying story of Mempricius, the son of Madan, the fourth
king of England, then called Britaine, after Brute, who murdered his
brother Manlius, and mark ye this, after twenty years he was devoured by
wild beasts; and another of one Bessus--'tis related by Plutarch--who
having killed his father, was brought to punishment by means of
swallows, which birds, his guilty conscience persuaded him, in their
chattering language did say to one another, that Bessus had killed his
father, whereupon he bewrayed his horrible crime, and was worthily put
to death. 'The great Martin Luther,' he continued, 'reports such another
story of a certain Almaigne, who, when thieves were in the act of
murdering him, espying a flight of crows, cried aloud, "Oh crows, I take
you for witnesses and revengers of my death." And so it fell out, some
days afterwards, as these same thieves were drinking in an inn, a flight
of crows came and lighted on the top of the house; whereupon the
thieves, jesting, said to one another, "See, yonder are those who are to
avenge the death of him we despatched t'other day," which the tapster
overhearing, told forthwith to the magistrate, who arrested them
presently, and thereupon they confessed, and were put to death.' And so
he went on, sustaining his position with strange narratives culled here
and there from the wilderness of his reading.
Among the congregation that heard this sermon, at the eccentricities of
which I have hinted, but which had, beside, much that was striking,
simply pathetic, and even awful in it, there glided--shall I say--a
phantom, with the light of death, and the shadows of hell, and the
taint of the grave upon him, and sat among these respectable persons of
flesh and blood--impenetrable--secure--for he knew there were but two in
the church for whom clever disguises were idle and transparent as the
air. The blue-chinned sly clerk, who read the responses, and quavered
the Psalms so demurely, and the white-headed, silver-spectacled, upright
man, in my Lord Castlemallard's pew, who turned over the leaves of his
prayer-book so diligently, saw him as he was, and knew him to be Charles
Archer, and one of these at least, as this dreadful spirit walked, with
his light burning in the noon-day, dogged by inexorable shadows through
a desolate world, in search of peace, he knew to be the slave of his
lamp.