The House by the Churchyard, Page 54

  The three gentlemen at the table called for more liquor, and the stout personage, sitting opposite to Irons, dropped into their talk, having smoked out his pipe, and their conversation became more general and hilarious; but Irons scarce heard it. Curiosity is an idle minx, and a soul laden like the clerk’s has no entertainment for her. But when one of the three gentlemen who sat together—an honest but sad–looking person with a flaxen wig, and a fat, florid face—placing his hand in the breast of his red plush waistcoat, and throwing himself back in his chair, struck up a dismal tune, with a certain character of psalmody in it, the clerk’s ear was charmed for a moment, and he glanced on the singer and sipped some punch; and the ballad, rude and almost rhymeless, which he chanted had an undefined and unpleasant fascination for Irons. It was thus:—

  'A man there was near Ballymooney,

  Was guilty of a deed o' blood,

  For thravellin' alongside iv ould Tim Rooney.

  He kilt him in a lonesome wood.

  'He took his purse, and his hat and cravat.

  And stole his buckles and his prayer–book, too;

  And neck–and–heels, like a cruel savage,

  His corpus through the wood he drew.

  'He pult him over to a big bog–hole,

  And sunk him undher four–foot o' wather,

  And built him down wid many a thumpin' stone.

  And slipt the bank out on the corpus afther.'

  Here the singer made a little pause, and took a great pull at the beer–can, and Irons looked over his shoulder at the minstrel; but his uneasy and malignant glance encountered only the bottom of the vessel; and so he listened for more, which soon came thus:—

  'An' says he, "Tim Rooney, you’re there, my boy,

  Kep' down in the bog–hole wid the force iv suction,

  An' tisn’t myself you’ll throuble or annoy,

  To the best o' my opinion, to the resurrection."

  'With that, on he walks to the town o' Drumgoole,

  And sot by the fire in an inn was there;

  And sittin' beside him, says the ghost—"You fool!

  'Tis myself’s beside ye, Shamus, everywhere."'

  At this point the clerk stood up, and looked once more at the songster, who was taking a short pull again, with a suspicious, and somewhat angry glance. But the unconscious musician resumed—

  '"Up through the wather your secret rises;

  The stones won’t keep it, and it lifts the mould,

  An' it tracks your footsteps, and yoar fun surprises

  An' it sits at the fire beside you black and cowld.

  '"At prayers, at dances, or at wake or hurling;

  At fair, or funeral, or where you may;

  At your going out, and at your returning,

  'Tis I’ll be with you to your dying day."'

  'Is there much more o' that?' demanded Irons, rather savagely.

  The thirsty gentleman in the red plush waistcoat was once more, as he termed it, 'wetting his whistle;' but one of his comrades responded tartly enough—

  'I’d like there was—an' if you mislike it, neighbour, there’s the door.'

  If he expected a quarrel, however, it did not come; and he saw by Irons’s wandering eye, fierce as it looked, that his thoughts for the moment were elsewhere. And just then the songster, having wiped his mouth in his coat–sleeve, started afresh in these terms—

  '"You’ll walk the world with a dreadful knowledge,

  And a heavy heart and a frowning brow;

  And thinking deeper than a man in college,

  Your eye will deaden, and your back will bow.

  '"And when the pariod iv your life is over,

  The frightful hour of judgment then will be;

  And, Shamus Hanlon, heavy on your shoulder,

  I’ll lay my cowld hand, and you’ll go wid me."'

  This awful ditty died away in the prolonged drone which still finds favour in the ears of our Irish rustic musicians, and the company now began to talk of congenial themes, murders, ghosts, and retributions, and the horrid tune went dismally booming on in Mr. Irons’s ear.

  Trifling, and apparently wholly accidental, as was this occurrence, the musical and moral treat had a very permanent effect upon the fortunes of Irons, and those of other persons who figure in our story. Mr. Irons had another and another glass of punch. They made him only more malign and saturnine. He sat in his corner by the fire, silent and dismal; and no one cared what was passing in the brain behind that black and scowling mask. He paid sternly and furiously, like a villain who has lost at play; and without a 'good–night,' or any other leave taking, glided ominously from the room; and the gentlemen who carried on the discourse and convivialities of the Salmon House, followed him with a gibe or two, and felt the pleasanter for the removal of that ungracious presence.

  A few minutes later, Mr. Lowe stood on the hall–door step, and calling to his man, gave him a little note and some silver, and a message—very impressively repeated—and the groom touched his hat, and buttoned up his coat about his neck, the wind being from the east, and he started, at something very near a gallop, for Dublin.

  There was a man at the door of the Salmon House, who, with a taciturn and saturnine excitement, watched the unusual bustle going on at the door–steps of Doctor Sturk’s dwelling. This individual had been drinking there for a while; and having paid his shot, stood with his back to the wall, and his hands in his pockets, profoundly agitated, and with a chaos of violent and unshaped thoughts rising and rolling in his darkened brain.

  After Lowe went into the house again, seeing the maid still upon the steps, talking with Mr. Moore, the barber, who was making his lingering adieux there, this person drew near, and just as the tonsor made his final farewell, and strode down the street towards his own dwelling, he presented himself in time to arrest the retreat of the damsel.

  'By your leave, Mistress Katty,' said he, laying his hand on the iron rail of the door–steps.

  'Oh, good jewel! an' is that yourself, Mr. Irons? And where in the world wor you this month an' more?'

  'Business—nothin'—in Mullingar—an' how’s the docthor to–night?'

  The clerk spoke a little thickly, as he commonly did on leaving the Salmon House.

  'He’s elegant, my dear—beyant the beyants—why, he’s sittin' up, dhrinking chicken–broth, and talking law–business with Mr. Lowe.'

  'He’s talkin’!'

  'Ay is he, and Mr. Lowe just this minute writ down all about the way he come by the breakin' of his skull in the park, and we’ll have great doings on the head of it; for the master swore to it, and Doctor Toole——'

  'An’who done it?' demanded Irons, ascending a step, and grasping the iron rail.

  'I couldn’t hear—nor no one, only themselves.'

  'An' who’s that rode down the Dublin road this minute?'

  'That’s Mr. Lowe’s man; 'tis what he’s sent him to Dublin wid a note.'

  'I see,' said Irons, with a great oath, which seemed to the maid wholly uncalled for; and he came up another step, and held the iron rail and shook it, like a man grasping a battle–axe, and stared straight at her, with a look so strange, and a visage so black, that she was half–frightened.

  'A what’s the matther wid you, Misther Irons?' she demanded.

  But he stared on in silence, scowling through her face at vacancy, and swaying slightly as he griped the metal banister.

  'I will,' he muttered, with another most unclerklike oath, and he took Katty by the hand, and shook it slowly in his own cold, damp grasp as he asked, with the same intense and forbidding look,

  'Is Mr. Lowe in the house still?'

  'He is, himself and Doctor Toole, in the back parlour.'

  'Whisper him, Katty, this minute, there’s a man has a thing to tell him.'

  'What about?' enquired Katty.

  'About a great malefactor.'

  Katty paused, with her mouth open, expecting more.

  'Tell him now; at once, wo
man; you don’t know what delay may cost.'

  He spoke impetuously, and with a bitter sort of emphasis, like a man in a hurry to commit himself to a course, distrusting his own resolution.

  She was frightened at his sudden fierceness, and drew back into the hall and he with her, and he shut the door with a clang behind him, and then looked before him, stunned and wild, like a man called up from his bed into danger.

  'Thank God. I’m in for it,' muttered he, with a shudder and a sardonic grin, and he looked for a moment something like that fine image of the Wandering Jew, given us by Gustave Doreé, the talisman of his curse dissolved, and he smiling cynically in the terrible light of the judgment day.

  The woman knocked at the parlour door, and Lowe opened it.

  'Who’s here?' he asked, looking at Irons, whose face he remembered, though he forgot to whom it belonged.

  'I’m Zekiel Irons, the parish–clerk, please your worship, and all I want is ten minutes alone with your honour.'

  'For what purpose?' demanded the magistrate, eyeing him sharply.

  'To tell you all about a damned murder.'

  'Hey—why—who did it?'

  'Charles Archer,' he answered; and screwed up his mouth with a convulsive grimace, glaring bloodlessly at the justice.

  'Ha! Charles Archer! I think we know something already about that.'

  'I don’t think you do, though; and by your leave, you’ll promise, if I bring it home to him, you’ll see me safe through it. 'Tis what I’m the only witness living that knows all about it.'

  'Well, what is it about?'

  'The murder of Mr. Beauclerc, that my Lord Dunoran was tried and found guilty for.'

  'Why, all very good; but that did not happen in Ireland.'

  'No. At Newmarket, the "Pied Horse."'

  'Ay, in England. I know, and that’s out of our jurisdiction.'

  'I don’t care. I’ll go to London if you like—to Bow–street—anywhere—so as I make sure to hang him; for my life is worse than death while he’s at this side of the grave—and I’d rather be in my coffin—I would—than live within five miles of him. Anyway, you’ll hear what I have to say, and to swear, and send me safe across the water to Bow–street, or wherever else you think best; for, if he has his liberty, and gets sight o' me again, I’m a dead man.'

  'Come in here, Mr. Irons, and take a chair,' said the justice.

  Doctor Toole was in the room, in a balloon–backed chair, regaling himself with a long pipe, and Mr. Lowe shut the door.

  'We have another deposition, doctor, to take; Mr. Irons, here, is prepared to swear informations of very singular importance.'

  'Irons, hollo! from what planet did you drop to–night?'

  'Mullingar, Sir.'

  'Nothing about the burning of the old woman at Tyrrell’s Pass, eh?'

  'No—'tis an old story. I don’t care what comes of it, I’m innocent, only you’ll say I kept it too long to myself. But you can’t touch my life. I’m more afeard of him than you, and with good cause; but I think he’s in a corner now, and I’ll speak out and take my chance, and you mustn’t allow me to be murdered.'

  By this time Lowe had procured writing materials, and all being ready, he and the curious and astonished doctor heard a story very like what we have already heard from the same lips.

  CHAPTER XC.

  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 t
han 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.'