MR. PAUL DANGERFIELD HAS SOMETHING ON HIS MIND, AND CAPTAIN DEVEREUX
RECEIVES A MESSAGE.
Mr. Dangerfield having parted with Irons, entered the little garden or
shrubbery, which skirted on either side the short gravel walk, which
expanded to a miniature court-yard before the door of the Brass Castle.
He flung the little iron gate to with a bitter clang; so violent that
the latch sprang from its hold, and the screaking iron swung quivering
open again behind him.
Like other men who have little religion, Mr. Paul Dangerfield had a sort
of vague superstition. He was impressible by omens, though he scorned
his own weakness, and sneered at, and quizzed it sometimes in the
monologues of his ugly solitude. The swinging open of the outer gate of
his castle sounded uncomfortably behind him, like an invitation to
shapeless danger to step in after him. The further he left it behind
him, the more in his spirit was the gaping void between his two little
piers associated with the idea of exposure, defencelessness, and
rashness. This feeling grew so strong, that he turned about before he
reached his hall-door, and, with a sensation akin to fury, retraced the
fifteen or twenty steps that intervened, and grasped the cold iron with
the fiercest tension of his sinews, as if it had resented his first
violence by a dogged defiance of his wishes, and spluttering a curse
between his teeth, he dashed it to again--and again, as once more it
sprang open from the shock.
'Who's master _now_?' snarled Mr. Paul Dangerfield, through his clenched
teeth, and smiting the senseless iron with a vindictive swoop of his
cane. I fancy his face at this moment had some of the peculiar lines and
corrugations which we observe in that of Retzsch's Mephistopheles, when
he gripes the arm of Faust to drag him from Margaret's cell. So he stood
behind his iron grating, glaring and grinning defiance into the
darkness, with his fingers clenched hard upon his cane.
Black Dillon's failure was a blow to the progress of his plans. It
incensed him. 'That d----d outcast! That _he_ should presume so to treat
a man who could master him so easily at any game, and buy and sell him
body and soul, and had actually bargained to give him five hundred
guineas--the needy, swinish miscreant! and paid him earnest beside--the
stupid cheat! Drink--dice--women! Why, five hundred guineas made him
free of his filthy paradise for a twelvemonth, and the leprous oaf could
not quit his impurities for an hour, and keep the appointment that was
to have made him master of his heart's desires.'
At his hall-door he paused, listening intently, with his spectacles
glimmering toward Chapelizod, for the sound of a distant step; but there
was no messenger afoot. He heard only the chill sigh of the air through
the leafless branches.
Mr. Dangerfield had not his key with him; and he beat an unnecessarily
loud and long tattoo upon his door, and before it could possibly have
been answered, he thundered a second through the passages.
Mrs. Jukes knew the meaning of that harsh and rabid summons. 'There was
something on the master's mind.' His anxieties never depressed him as
they did other men, but strung up his energies to a point of mental
tension and exasperation which made him terrible to his domestics. It
was not his acts--his conduct was always under control, but chiefly his
looks, and accents, and an influence that seemed to take possession of
him at such times that rendered him undefinably formidable to his
servants.
'Ha!--mighty obleeging (he so pronounced the word)--let in at last--cold
outside, Ma'am. You've let out the fire I suppose?'
His tones were like the bark of a wolf, and there was a devilish smirk
in his white face, as he made her a mock salutation, and glided into his
parlour. The fire was bright enough, however, as Mrs. Jukes was much
relieved to see; and dropping a courtesy she enquired whether he would
like a dish of tea, or anything?
'No, Ma'am!' he snarled.
'Would he like his dressing-gown and slippers?'
'No, Ma'am,' again. So she dropped another courtesy, and sneaked away to
the kitchen, with short, noiseless steps, and heard Mr. Dangerfield shut
the door sharply.
His servants were afraid of him. They could not quite comprehend him.
They knew it was vain trying to deceive him, and had quite given up
lying and prevaricating. Neither would he stand much talking. When they
prattled he brought them to the point sternly; and whenever a real
anxiety rested on his mind he became pretty nearly diabolical. On the
whole, however, they had a strange sort of liking for him. They were
proud of his wealth, and of his influence with great people. And though
he would not allow them to rob, disobey, or deceive him, yet he used
them handsomely, paid like a prince, was a considerate master, and made
them comfortable.
Now Mr. Dangerfield poked up his fire and lighted his candles. Somehow,
the room looked smaller he thought than it had ever seemed before. He
was not nervous--nothing could bring him to that; but his little
altercation with the iron gate, and some uncomfortable thoughts had
excited him. It was an illusion merely--but the walls seemed to have
closed in a foot or two, and the ceiling to have dropped down
proportionably, and he felt himself confined and oppressed.
'My head's a little bit heated--_ira furo brevis_,' and he sneered a
solitary laugh, more like himself, and went out into his tiny hall, and
opened the door, and stood on the step for air, enjoying the cold wind
that played about his temples. Presently he heard the hollow clink of
two pair of feet walking toward the village. The pedestrians were
talking eagerly; and he thought, as they passed the little iron gate of
his domain, he heard his own name mentioned, and then that of Mervyn. I
dare say it was mere fancy; but, somehow, he did not like it, and he
walked swiftly down to the little gate by the road side--it was only
some twenty yards--keeping upon the grass that bounded it, to muffle the
sound of his steps. This white phantom noiselessly stood in the shadow
of the road side. The interlocutors had got a good way on, and were
talking loud and volubly. But he heard nothing that concerned him from
either again, though he waited until their steps and voices were lost in
the distance.
The cool air was pleasant about his bare temples, and Mr. Paul
Dangerfield waited a while longer, and listened, for any sound of
footsteps approaching from the village, but none such was audible; and
beginning to feel a little chilly, he entered his domicile again, shut
the hall-door, and once more found himself in the little parlour of the
Brass Castle.
His housekeeper heard his harsh voice barking down the passage at her,
and rising with a start from her seat, cried,
'At your service, Sir.'
'At a quarter to twelve o'clock fetch me a sandwich, and a glass of
absynthe, and meanwhile, don't disturb me.'
And she heard him enter his little parlour, and shut the door.
'There's something to vex, but nothing to threaten--nothing. It's all
that comical dream--curse it! What tricks the brain plays us! 'Tis fair
it should though. We work it while we please, and it plays when it may.
The slave has his saturnalia, and flouts his tyrant. Ha, ha! 'tis time
these follies were ended. I've something to do to-night.'
So Mr. Dangerfield became himself again, and applied himself keenly to
his business.
When I first thought of framing the materials which had accumulated in
my hands into a narrative, dear little Lily Walsingham's death was a
sore trouble to me. 'Little' Lily I call her, but though slight, she was
not little--rather tall, indeed.
It was, however, the term I always heard connected with her pretty name
in my boyhood, when the old people, who had remembered her very long
ago, mentioned her, as they used, very kindly, a term of endearment that
had belonged to her, and in virtue of the childlike charm that was about
her, had grown up with her from childhood. I had plans for mending this
part of the record, and marrying her to handsome Captain Devereux, and
making him worthy of her; but somehow I could not. From very early times
I had known the sad story. I had heard her beauty talked about in my
childhood; the rich, clear tints, the delicate outlines, those tender
and pleasant dimples, like the wimpling of a well; an image so pure, and
merry, and melancholy withal, had grown before me, and in twilight
shadows visited the now lonely haunts of her brief hours; even the old
church, in my evening rambles along the uplands of the park, had in my
eyes so saddened a grace in the knowledge that those slender bones lay
beneath its shadows, and all about her was so linked in my mind with
truth, and melancholy, and altogether so sacred, that I could not trifle
with the story, and felt, even when I imagined it, a pang, and a
reproach, as if I had mocked the sadness of little Lily's fate; so,
after some ponderings and trouble of mind I gave it up, and quite
renounced the thought.
And, after all, what difference should it make? Is not the generation
among whom her girlish lot was cast long passed away? A few years more
or less of life. What of them now? When honest Dan Loftus cited those
lines from the 'Song of Songs,' did he not make her sweet epitaph? Had
she married Captain Devereux, what would her lot have been? She was not
one of those potent and stoical spirits, who can survive the wreck of
their best affections, and retort injury with scorn. In forming that
simple spirit, Nature had forgotten arrogance and wrath. She would never
have fought against the cruelty of changed affections if that or the
treasons of an unprincipled husband had come. His love would have been
her light and life, and when that was turned away, like a northern
flower that has lost its sun, she would have only hung her pretty head,
and died, in her long winter. So viewing now the ways of wisdom from a
distance, I think I can see they were the best, and how that fair, young
mortal, who seemed a sacrifice, was really a conqueror.
Puddock and Devereux on this eventful night, as we remember, having
shaken hands at the door-steps, turned and went up stairs together, very
amicably again, to the captain's drawing-room.
So Devereux, when they returned to his lodgings, had lost much of his
reserve, and once on the theme of his grief, stormed on in gusts, and
lulls, and thunder, and wild upbraidings, and sudden calms; and the
good-natured soul of little Puddock was touched, and though he did not
speak, he often dried his eyes quietly, for grief is conversant not with
self, but with the dead, and whatever is generous moves us.
'There's no one stirring now, Puddock--I'll put my cloak about me and
walk over to the Elms, to ask how the rector is to-night,' said
Devereux, muffling himself in his military mantle.
It was only the restlessness of grief. Like all other pain, grief is
haunted with the illusion that change means relief; motion is the
instinct of escape. Puddock walked beside him, and they went swiftly and
silently together.
When they reached the other side of the bridge, and stood under the
thorn-hedge fronting the leafless elms, Devereux was irresolute.
'Would you wish _me_ to enquire?' asked Puddock. Devereux held him
doubtfully by the arm for a moment or two, and then said gently--
'No, I thank you, Puddock--I'll go--yes--I'll go myself;' and so Captain
Devereux went up to the door.
John Tracy, at the steps, told him that he thought his master wished to
speak with him; but he was not quite sure. The tall muffled figure
therefore waited at the door while John went in to tell his master, and
soon returned to say that Doctor Walsingham would be much obliged to him
to step into the study.
When the doctor saw Devereux, he stood up to meet him.
'I hope, Sir,' said Devereux, very humbly, 'you have forgiven me.'
The doctor took his hand and shook it very hard, and said, 'There's
nothing--we're both in sorrow. Everyone--everyone is sorry, Sir, but you
more.'
Devereux did not say anything, being moved, as I suppose. But he had
drawn his cloak about his face, and was looking down.
'There was a little message--only a word or two,' said the doctor; 'but
everything of hers is sacred.'
He turned over some papers in his desk, and chose one. It was in Lily's
pretty handwriting.
'I am charged with this little message. Oh, my darling!' and the old man
cried bitterly.
'Pray, read it--you will understand it--'tis easily read. What a pretty
hand it was!'
So Devereux took the little paper, and read just the words which
follow:--
'My beloved father will, I hope, if he thinks it right, tell Captain
Richard Devereux that I was not so unkind and thankless as I may
have seemed, but very grateful for his preference, of which I know,
in many ways, how unworthy I was. But I do not think we could have
been happy; and being all over, it is a great comfort to friends who
are separated here, that there is a place where all may meet again,
if God will; and as I did not see or speak with him since my dear
father brought his message, I wished that so much should be said,
and also to say a kind good-bye, and give him all good wishes.
'LILIAS.'
'Friday evening.'
Captain Richard Devereux read this simple little record through, and
then he said:--
'Oh, Sir, may I have it--isn't it mine?'
We who have heard those wondrous aërial echoes of Killarney, when the
breath has left the bugle and its cadences are silent, take up the
broken links of the lost melody with an answer far away, sad and
celestial, real, yet unreal, the fleeting yet lingering spirit of music,
that is past and over, have something in memory by which we can
illustrate the effect of these true voices of the thoughts and
affections that have perished, returning for a few charmed moments
regretfully and sweetly from the sea of eternal silence.
And so that sad and clear farewell, never repeated, was long after, in
many a lonely night, answered by the voice of Devereux.
'Did she--did she know how I loved her? Oh, never, never! I'll never
love any but you. Darling, darling--you can't die. Oh, no, no, no! Your
place knows you still; your place is here--here--here.'
And he smote his breast over that heart which, such as it was, cherished
a pure affection for her.