IN WHICH A LIBERTY IS TAKEN WITH MR. NUTTER'S NAME, AND MR. DANGERFIELD
STANDS AT THE ALTAR.
Poor Mrs. Nutter continued in a state of distracted and flighty
tribulation, not knowing what to make of it, nor, indeed, knowing the
worst; for the neighbours did not tell her half they might, nor drop a
hint of the dreadful suspicion that dogged her absent helpmate.
She was sometimes up rummaging among the drawers, and fidgeting about
the house, without any clear purpose, but oftener lying on her bed, with
her clothes on, crying. When she got hold of a friend, she disburthened
her soul, and called on him or her for endless consolations and
assurances, which, for the most part, she herself prescribed. There
were, of course, fits of despair as well as starts of hope; and bright
ideas, accounting for everything, and then clouds of blackness, and
tornadoes of lamentation.
Father Roach, a good-natured apostle, whose digestion suffered when
anyone he liked was in trouble, paid her a visit; and being somehow
confounded with Dr. Toole, was shown up to her bed-room, where the poor
little woman lay crying under the coverlet. On discovering where he was,
the good father was disposed to flinch, and get down stairs, in
tenderness to his 'character,' and thinking what a story 'them villians
o' the world'id make iv it down at the club there.' But on second
thoughts, poor little Sally being neither young nor comely, he ventured,
and sat down by the bed, veiled behind a strip of curtain, and poured
his mellifluous consolations into her open ears.
And poor Sally became eloquent in return. And Father Roach dried his
eyes, although she could not see him behind the curtain, and called her
'my daughter,' and 'dear lady,' and tendered such comforts as his
housekeeping afforded. 'Had she bacon in the house?' or 'maybe she'd
like a fat fowl?' 'She could not eat?' 'Why then she could make elegant
broth of it, and dhrink it, an' he'd keep another fattenin' until Nutter
himself come back.'
'And then, my honey, you an' himself'll come down and dine wid ould
Father Austin; an' we'll have a grand evenin' of it entirely, laughin'
over the remimbrance iv these blackguard troubles, acuishla! Or maybe
you'd accept iv a couple o' bottles of claret or canaries? I see--you
don't want for wine.'
So there was just one more offer the honest fellow had to make, and he
opened with assurances 'twas only between himself an' her--an' not a
sowl on airth 'id ever hear a word about it--and he asked her pardon,
but he thought she might chance to want a guinea or two, just till
Nutter came back, and he brought a couple in his waistcoat pocket.
Poor Father Roach was hard-up just then. Indeed, the being hard-up was a
chronic affection with him. Two horses were not to be kept for nothing.
Nor for the same moderate figure was it possible to maintain an asylum
for unfortunates and outlaws--pleasant fellows enough, but endowed with
great appetites and an unquenchable taste for consolation in fluid
forms.
A clerical provision in Father Roach's day, and church, was not by any
means what we have seen it since. At all events he was not often
troubled with the possession of money, and when half-a-dozen good
weddings brought him in fifty or a hundred pounds, the holy man was
constrained forthwith to make distribution of his assets among a score
of sour, and sometimes dangerous tradespeople. I mention this in no
disparagement of Father Roach, quite the contrary. In making the tender
of his two guineas--which, however, Sally declined--the worthy cleric
was offering the widow's mite; not like some lucky dogs who might throw
away a thousand or two and be nothing the worse; and you may be sure the
poor fellow was very glad to find she did not want it.
'Rather hard measure, it strikes me,' said Dangerfield, in the club, 'to
put him in the _Hue-and-Cry_.'
But there he was, sure enough, 'Charles Nutter, Esq., formerly of the
Mills, near Knockmaroon, in the county of Dublin;' and a full
description of the dress he wore, as well as of his height, complexion,
features--and all this his poor little wife, still inhabiting the Mills,
and quite unconscious that any man, woman, or child, who could prosecute
him to conviction, for a murderous assault on Dr. Sturk, should have £50
reward.
'News in to-day, by Jove,' said Toole, bustling solemnly into the club;
'by the packet that arrived at one o'clock, a man taken, answering
Nutter's description exactly, just going aboard of a Jamaica brig at
Gravesend, and giving no account of himself. He's to be sent over to
Dublin for identification.'
And when that was thoroughly discussed two or three times over, they
fell to talking of other subjects, and among the rest of Devereux, and
wondered what his plans were; and, there being no brother officers by,
whether he meant to keep his commission, and various speculations as to
the exact cause of the coldness shown him by General Chattesworth. Dick
Spaight thought it might be that he had not asked Miss Gertrude in
marriage.
But this was pooh-poohed. 'Besides, they knew at Belmont,' said Toole,
who was an authority upon the domestic politics of that family, and
rather proud of being so, 'just as well as I did that Gipsy Dick was in
love with Miss Lilias; and I lay you fifty he'd marry her to-morrow if
she'd have him.'
Toole was always a little bit more intimate with people behind their
backs, so he called Devereux 'Gipsy Dick.'
'She's ailing, I hear,' said old Slowe.
'She is, indeed, Sir,' answered the doctor, with a grave shake of the
head.
'Nothing of moment, I hope?' he asked.
'Why, you see it may be; she had a bad cough last winter, and this year
she took it earlier, and it has fallen very much on her lungs; and you
see, we can't say, Sir, what turn it may take, and I'm very sorry she
should be so sick and ailing--she's the prettiest creature, and the best
little soul; and I don't know, on my conscience, what the poor old
parson would do if anything happened her, you know. But I trust, Sir,
with care, you know, 'twill turn out well.'
The season for trout-fishing was long past and gone, and there were no
more pleasant rambles for Dangerfield and Irons along the flowery banks
of the devious Liffey. Their rods and nets hung up, awaiting the return
of genial spring; and the churlish stream, abandoned to its wintry mood,
darkled and roared savagely under the windows of the Brass Castle.
One dismal morning, as Dangerfield's energetic step carried him briskly
through the town, the iron gate of the church-yard, and the door of the
church itself standing open, he turned in, glancing upward as he passed
at Sturk's bed-room windows, as all the neighbours did, to see whether
General Death's white banners were floating there, and his tedious siege
ended--as end it must--and the garrison borne silently away in his
custody to the prison house.
Up the aisle marched Dangerfield, not abating his pace, but with a swift
and bracing clatter, like a man taking a frosty constitutional walk.
Irons was moping softly about in the neighbourhood of the reading-desk,
and about to mark the places of psalms and chapters in the great church
Bible and Prayer-book, and sidelong he beheld his crony of the angle
marching, with a grim confidence and swiftness, up the aisle.
'I say, where's Martin?' said Dangerfield, cheerfully.
'He's gone away, Sir.'
'Hey! then you've no one with you?'
'No, Sir.'
Dangerfield walked straight on, up the step of the communion-table, and
shoving open the little balustraded door, he made a gay stride or two
across the holy precinct, and with a quick right-about face, came to a
halt, the white, scoffing face, for exercise never flushed it, and the
cold, broad sheen of the spectacles, looked odd in the clerk's eyes,
facing the church-door, from beside the table of the sacrament,
displayed, as it were, in the very frame--foreground, background, and
all--in which he was wont to behold the thoughtful, simple, holy face of
the rector.
'Alone among the dead; and not afraid?' croaked the white face
pleasantly.
The clerk seemed always to writhe and sweat silently under the banter of
his comrade of the landing-net, and he answered, without lifting his
head, in a constrained and dogged sort of way, like a man who expects
something unpleasant--
'Alone? yes, Sir, there's none here but ourselves.'
And his face flushed, and the veins on his forehead stood out, as will
happen with a man who tugs at a weight that is too much for him.
'I saw you steal a glance at Charles when he came into the church here,
and it strikes me I was at the moment thinking of the same thing as you,
to wit, will he require any special service at our hands? Well, he does!
and you or I must do it. He'll give a thousand pounds, mind ye; and
that's something in the way of fellows like you and me; and whatever
else he may have done, Charles has never broke his word in a money
matter. And, hark'ee, can't you thumb over that Bible and Prayer-book on
the table here as well as _there? Do_ so. Well--'
And he went on in a lower key, still looking full front at the
church-door, and a quick glance now and then upon Irons, across the
communion-table.
''Tis nothing at all--don't you see--what are you afraid of? It can't
change events--'tis only a question of to-day or to-morrow--a whim--a
maggot--hey? You can manage it this way, mark ye.'
He had his pocket-handkerchief by the two corners before him, like an
apron, and he folded it neatly and quickly into four.
'Don't you see--and a little water. You're a neat hand, you know; and if
you're interrupted, 'tis only to blow your nose in't--ha, ha, ha!--and
clap it in your pocket; and _you_ may as well have the money--hey?
Good-morning.'
And when he had got half-way down the aisle, he called back to Irons, in
a loud, frank voice--
'And Martin's not here--could you say where he is?'
But he did not await the answer, and glided with quick steps from the
porch, with a side leer over the wavy green mounds and tombstones. He
had not been three minutes in the church, and across the street he went,
to the shop over the way, and asked briskly where Martin, the sexton,
was. Well, they did not know.
'Ho! Martin,' he cried across the street, seeing that functionary just
about to turn the corner by Sturk's hall-door steps; 'a word with you.
I've been looking for you. See, you must take a foot-rule, and make all
the measurements of that pew, you know; don't mistake a hair's breadth,
d'ye mind, for you must be ready to swear to it; and bring a note of it
to me, at home, to-day, at one o'clock, and you shall have a
crown-piece.'
From which the reader will perceive--as all the world might, if they had
happened to see him enter the church just now--that his object in the
visit was to see and speak with Martin; and that the little bit of
banter with Irons, the clerk, was all by-play, and parenthesis, and
beside the main business, and, of course, of no sort of consequence.
Mr. Irons, like most men of his rank in life, was not much in the habit
of exact thinking. His ruminations, therefore, were rather confused,
but, perhaps, they might be translated in substance, into something like
this--
'Why the ---- can't he let them alone that's willing to let him alone? I
wish he was in his own fiery home, and better people at rest. I _can't_
mark them places--I don't know whether I'm on my head or heels.'
And he smacked the quarto Prayer-book down upon the folio Bible with a
sonorous bang, and glided out, furious, frightened, and taciturn, to the
Salmon House.
He came upon Dangerfield again only half-a-dozen steps from the turn
into the street. He had just dismissed Martin, and was looking into a
note in his pocket-book, and either did not see, or pretended not to
see, the clerk. But some one else saw and recognised Mr. Irons; and, as
he passed, directed upon him a quick, searching glance. It was Mr.
Mervyn, who happened to pass that way. Irons and Dangerfield, and the
church-yard--there was a flash of association in the group and the
background which accorded with an old suspicion. Dangerfield, indeed,
was innocently reading a leaf in his red and gilt leather pocket-book,
as I have said. But Irons's eyes met the glance of Mervyn, and
contracted oddly, and altogether there gleamed out something indefinable
in his look. It was only for a second--a glance and an intuition; and
from that moment it was one of Mervyn's immovable convictions, that Mr.
Dangerfield knew something of Irons's secret. It was a sort of
intermittent suspicion before--now it was a monstrous, but fixed belief.
So Mr. Irons glided swiftly on to the Salmon House, where, in a dark
corner, he drank something comfortable; and stalked back again to the
holy pile, with his head aching, and the world round him like a wild and
evil dream.