CONCERNING CERTAIN DOCUMENTS WHICH REACHED MR. MERVYN, AND THE WITCHES'
REVELS AT THE MILLS.
I would be ashamed to say how, soon after Dangerfield had spoken to Mr.
Mervyn in the church-yard on the Sunday afternoon, when he surprised him
among the tombstones, the large-eyed young gentleman, with the long
black hair, was at his desk, and acting upon his suggestion. But the
_Hillsborough_ was to sail next day; and Mr. Mervyn's letter, containing
certain queries, and an order for twenty guineas on a London house,
glided in that packet with a favouring breeze from the Bay of Dublin, on
its way to the London firm of Elrington Brothers.
On the morning of the day whose events I have been describing in the
last half-dozen chapters, Mr. Mervyn received his answer, which was to
the following effect:--
'SIR,--Having made search for the Paper which you enquire
after, we have Found one answering your description in a General
way; and pursuant to your request and Direction, beg leave to
forward you a Copy thereof, together with a copy of a letter
concerning it, received by the same post from Sir Philip Drayton,
of Drayton Hall, Sometime our Client, and designed in Part to
explain his share in the matter. Your order for twenty guineas, on
Messrs. Trett and Penrose, hath come to hand, and been duly
honoured, and we thankfully Accept the same, in payment for all
trouble had in this matter.
'&c, &c, &c.'
The formal document which it enclosed said:--
'This is to certify that Charles Archer, Esq., aged, as shortly
before his death he reported himself, thirty-five years, formerly
of London, departed this life, on the 4th August, 1748, in his
lodgings, in the city of Florence, next door to the "Red Lion," and
over against the great entrance of the Church of the Holy Cross, in
the which, having conformed to the holy Roman faith, he is
buried.--Signed this 12th day of August, 1748.
'PHILIP DRAYTON, Baronet.
'GAETANO MELONI, M.D.
'ROBERT SMITH, Musician.
'We three having seen the said Charles Archer during his sickness,
and after his decease.'
Then followed the copy of the baronet's letter to his attorneys, which
was neither very long nor very business-like.
'Why the plague don't you make the scoundrel, Jekyl, pay? His
mother's dead only t'other day, and he must be full of money. I've
scarce a marvedy in hand, now; so let him have a writ in his, drat
him. About that certificate, I'm almost sorry I signed it. I've bin
thinking 'tis like enough I may be troubled about it. So you may
tell 'em I know no more only what is there avouched. No more I do.
He played at a faro-table here, and made a very pretty figure. But
I hear now from Lord Orland that there are many bad reports of him.
He was the chief witness against that rogue, Lord Dunoran, who
swallowed poison in Newgate, and, they say, leaned hard against
him, although he won much money of him, and swore with a
blood-thirsty intention. But that is neither here nor there; I mean
ill reports of his rogueries at play, and other doings, which, had
I sooner known, my name had not bin to the paper. So do not make a
noise about it, and maybe none will ask for't. As for Jack Jekyl,
why not take the shortest way with him. You're very pitiful
fellows; but I wish o' my conscience you'd take some pity o' me,
and not suffer me to be bubbled,' &c., &c.
There was only a sentence or two more, referring in the same strain to
other matters of business, of which, in the way of litigation, he seemed
to have no lack, and the letter ended.
'I'll go direct to London and see these people, and thence to Florence.
Gaetano Meloni--he may be living--who knows? He will remember the priest
who confessed him. A present to a religious house may procure--in a
matter of justice, and where none can be prejudiced, for the case is
very special--a dispensation, if he be the very Charles Archer--and he
may--why not?--have disclosed all on his death-bed. First, I shall see
Mr. Dangerfield--then those attorneys; and next make search in Florence;
and, with the aid of whatever I can glean there, and from Irons,
commence in England the intensest scrutiny to which a case was ever yet
subjected.'
Had it not been so late when he found this letter on his return, he
would have gone direct with it to the Brass Castle; but that being quite
out of the question, he read it again and again. It is wonderful how
often a man will spell over and over the same commonplace syllables, if
they happen to touch a subject vitally concerning himself, and what
theories and speculations he will build upon the accidental turn of a
phrase, or the careless dash of a pen.
As we see those wild animals walk their cages in a menagerie, with the
fierce instincts of suppressed action rolling in the vexed eye and
vibrating in every sinew, even so we behold this hero of the flashing
glance and sable locks treading, in high excitement, the floor of the
cedar parlour. Every five minutes a new hope--a new conjecture, and
another scrutiny of the baronet's letter, or of the certificate of
Archer's death, and hour after hour speeding by in the wild chase of
successive chimeras.
While Mr. Justice Lowe's servant was spurring into town at a pace which
made the hollow road resound, and struck red flashes from the stones, up
the river, at the Mills, Mistress Mary Matchwell was celebrating a sort
of orgie. Dirty Davy and she were good friends again. Such friendships
are subject to violent vicissitudes, and theirs had been interrupted by
a difference of opinion, of which the lady had made a note with a brass
candlestick over his eye. Dirty Davy's expressive feature still showed
the green and yellow tints of convalescence. But there are few
philosophers who forgive so frankly as a thorough scoundrel, when it is
his interest to kiss and be friends. The candlestick was not more
innocent of all unpleasant feeling upon the subject than at that moment
was Dirty Davy.
Dirty Davy had brought with him his chief clerk, who was a facetious
personage, and boozy, and on the confidential footing of a common
rascality with his master, who, after the fashion of Harry V. in his
nonage, condescended in his frolics and his cups to men of low estate;
and Mary Matchwell, though fierce and deep enough, was not averse on
occasion, to partake of a bowl of punch in sardonic riot, with such
agreeable company.
Charles Nutter's unexpected coming to life no more affected Mary
Matchwell's claim than his supposed death did her spirits. Widow or
wife, she was resolved to make good her position, and the only thing she
seriously dreaded was that an intelligent jury, an eminent judge, and an
adroit hangman, might remove him prematurely from the sphere of his
conjugal duties, and forfeit his worldly goods to the crown.
Next morning, however, a writ or a process of some sort, from which
great things were expected, was to issue from the court in which her
rights were being vindicated. Upon the granting of this, Mistress
Matchwell and Dirty Davy--estranged for some time, as we have
said,--embraced. She forgot the attorney's disrespectful language, and
he the lady's brass candlestick, and, over the punch-bowl of oblivion
and vain glory, they celebrated their common victory.
Under advice, M. M. had acquiesced, pending her vigorous legal
proceedings, in poor little Sally Nutter's occupying her bed-room in the
house for a little while longer. The beleagured lady was comforted in
her strait by the worthy priest, by honest Dr. Toole, and not least, by
that handsome and stalworth nymph, the daring Magnolia. That blooming
Amazon was twice on the point of provoking the dismal sorceress, who
kept her court in the parlour of the Mills, to single combat. But
fortune willed it otherwise, and each time the duel had been interrupted
in its formal inception, and had gone no further than that spirited
prologue in which the female sex so faithfully preserve the tradition of
those thundering dialogues which invariably precede the manual business
of the Homeric fray.
This was the eve of a great triumph and a memorable gala. Next morning,
Sally Nutter was to be scalped, roasted, and eaten up, and the night was
spent in savage whoopings, songs and dances. They had got a reprobate
blind fiddler into the parlour, where their punch-bowl steamed--a most
agreeable and roistering sinner, who sang indescribable songs to the
quaver of his violin, and entertained the company with Saturnalian
vivacity, jokes, gibes, and wicked stories. Larry Cleary, thou man of
sin and music! methinks I see thee now. Thy ugly, cunning, pitted face,
twitching and grinning; thy small, sightless orbs rolling in thy devil's
merriment, and thy shining forehead red with punch.
In the kitchen things were not more orderly; M. M.'s lean maid was making
merry with the bailiff, and a fat and dreadful trollop with one
eye--tipsy, noisy, and pugnacious.
Poor little Sally Nutter and her maids kept dismal vigil in her
bed-room. But that her neighbours and her lawyer would in no sort permit
it, the truth is, the frightened little soul would long ago have made
herself wings, and flown anywhere for peace and safety.
It is remarkable how long one good topic, though all that may be said
upon it has been said many scores of times, will serve the colloquial
purposes of the good folk of the kitchen or the nursery. There was
scarcely half-an-hour in the day during which the honest maids and their
worthy little mistress did not discuss the dreadful Mary Matchwell. They
were one and all, though in different degrees, indescribably afraid of
her. Her necromantic pretensions gave an indistinctness and poignancy to
their horror. She seemed to know, by a diabolical intuition, what
everybody was about--she was so noiseless and stealthy, and always at
your elbow when you least expected. Those large dismal eyes of hers,
they said, glared green in the dark like a cat's; her voice was
sometimes so coarse and deep, and her strength so unnatural, that they
were often on the point of believing her to be a man in disguise. She
was such a blasphemer, too; and could drink what would lay a trooper
under the table, and yet show it in nothing but the superintensity of
her Satanic propensities. She was so malignant, and seemed to bear to
all God's creatures so general a malevolence, that her consistent and
superlative wickedness cowed and paralysed them. The enigma grew more
horrible every day and night, and they felt, or fancied, a sort of
influence stealing over them which benumbed their faculty of resistance,
and altogether unstrung their nerves.
The grand compotation going on in the parlour waxed louder and wilder as
the night wore on. There were unseen guests there, elate and inspiring,
who sat with the revellers--phantoms who attend such wassail, and keep
the ladle of the punch-bowl clinking, the tongue of the songster glib
and tuneful, and the general mirth alive and furious. A few honest folk,
with the gift of a second sight in such matters, discover their uncanny
presence--leprous impurity, insane blasphemy, and the stony grin of
unearthly malice--and keep aloof.
To heighten their fun, this jovial company bellowed their abominable
ballads in the hall, one of them about 'Sally M'Keogh,' whose sweetheart
was hanged, and who cut her throat with his silver-mounted razor, and
they hooted their gibes up the stairs. And at last Mary Matchwell,
provoked by the passive quietude of her victim, summoned the three
revellers from the kitchen, and invaded the upper regions at their
head--to the unspeakable terror of poor Sally Nutter--and set her demon
fiddler a scraping, and made them and Dirty Davy's clerk dance a frantic
reel on the lobby outside her bed-room door, locked and bolted inside,
you may be sure.
In the midst of this monstrous festivity and uproar, there came, all on
a sudden, a reverberating double-knock at the hall-door, so loud and
long that every hollow, nook, and passage of the old house rang again.
Loud and untimely as was the summons, it had a character, not of riot,
but of alarm and authority. The uproar was swallowed instantly in
silence. For a second only the light of the solitary candle shone upon
the pale, scowling features of Mary Matchwell, and she quenched its wick
against the wall. So the Walpurgis ended in darkness, and the company
instinctively held their breaths.
There was a subdued hum of voices outside, and a tramping on the crisp
gravel, and the champing and snorting of horses, too, were audible.
'Does none o' yez see who's in it?' said the blind fiddler.
'Hold your tongue,' hissed Mary Matchwell with a curse, and visiting the
cunning pate of the musician with a smart knock of the candlestick.
'I wisht I had your thumb undher my grinder,' said the fiddler, through
his teeth, 'whoever you are.'
But the rest was lost in another and a louder summons at the hall-door,
and a voice of authority cried sternly,
'Why don't you open the door?--hollo! there--I can't stay here all
night.'
'Open to him, Madam, I recommend you,' said Dirty Davy, in a hard
whisper; 'will I go?'
'Not a step; not a word;' and Mary Matchwell griped his wrist.
But a window in Mrs. Nutter's room was opened, and Moggy's voice cried
out--
'Don't go, Sir; for the love o' goodness, don't go. Is it Father Roach
that's in it?'
''Tis I, woman--Mr. Lowe--open the door, I've a word or two to say.'