The House by the Church-Yard (29 page)

The hall–door lay open, as Mary Matchwell had left it. Nutter stood on the door–step, where he could hear faintly, from above stairs, the cries and wails of poor, hysterical Mrs. Nutter. He remained there a good while, during which, unperceived by him, Dr. Toole’s pestle–and–mortar–boy, who had entered by the back–way, had taken a seat in the hall. He was waiting for an empty draught–bottle, in exchange for a replenished flask of the same agreeable beverage, which he had just delivered; for physic was one of poor Mrs. Nutter’s weaknesses, though, happily, she did not swallow half what came home for her.

When Nutter turned round, the boy—a sharp, tattling vagabond, he knew him well—was reading a printed card he had picked up from the floor, with the impress of Nutter’s hob–nailed tread upon it. It was endorsed upon the back, 'For Mrs. Macnamara, with the humble duty of her obedient servant, M. M.'

'What’s that, Sirrah?' shouted Nutter.

'For Mrs. Nutter, I think, Sir,' said the urchin, jumping up with a start.

'Mrs. Nutter,' repeated he—'No—Mrs. Mac—Macnamara,' and he thrust it into his surtout pocket. 'And what brings you here, Sirrah?' he added savagely; for he thought everybody was spying after him now, and, as I said, he knew him for a tattling young dog—he had taken the infection from his master, who had trained him.

'Here, woman,' he cried to Moggy, who was passing again, 'give that pimping rascal his —— answer; and see, Sirrah, if I find you sneaking about the place again, I’ll lay that whip across your back.'

Nutter went into the small room again.

'An' how are ye, Jemmie—how’s every inch iv you?' enquired Moggy of the boy, when his agitation was a little blown over.

'I’m elegant, thank ye,' he answered; 'an' what’s the matther wid ye all? I cum through the kitchen, and seen no one.'

'Och! didn’t you hear? The poor mistress—she’s as bad as bad can be.' And then began a whispered confidence, broken short by Nutter’s again emerging, with the leather belt he wore at night on, and a short back–sword, called a
coutteau de chasse
, therein, and a heavy walking–cane in his hand.

'Get tea for me, wench, in half an hour,' said he, this time quite quietly, though still sternly, and without seeming to observe the quaking boy, who, at first sight, referred these martial preparations to a resolution to do execution upon him forthwith; 'you’ll find me in the garden when it’s ready.'

And he strode out, and pushing open the wicket door in the thick garden hedge, and, with his cane shouldered, walked with a quick, resolute step down towards the pretty walk by the river, with the thick privet hedge and the row of old pear trees by it. And that was the last that was heard or seen of Mr. Nutter for some time.

At about half–past six that evening, Puddock arrived at Captain Cluffe’s lodgings, and for the last time the minstrels rehearsed their lovelorn and passionate ditties. They were drest 'all in their best,' under that outer covering, which partly for mystery and partly for bodily comfort—the wind, after the heavy rains of the last week, having come round to the east—these prudent troubadours wore.

Though they hardly glanced at the topic to one another, each had his delightful anticipations of the chances of the meeting. Puddock did not value Dangerfield a rush, and Cluffe’s mind was pretty easy upon that point from the moment his proposal for Gertrude Chattesworth had taken wind.

Only for that cursed shower the other night, that made it incumbent on Cluffe, who had had two or three sharp little visits of his patrimonial gout, and no notion of dying for love, to get to his quarters as quickly as might be—he had no doubt that the last stave of their first duet rising from the meadow of Belmont, with that charming roulade—devised by Puddock, and the pathetic twang–twang of his romantic instrument, would have been answered by the opening of the drawing–room window, and Aunt Becky’s imperious summons to the serenaders to declare themselves, and come in and partake of supper!

The only thing that at all puzzled him, unpleasantly connected with that unsuccessful little freak of musical love–making, was the fellow they saw getting away from under the open window—the very same at which Lilias Walsingham had unintentionally surprised her friend Gertrude. He had a surtout on, with the cape cut exactly after the fashion of Dangerfield, and a three–cocked hat with very pinched corners, in the French style, which identical hat Cluffe was ready to swear he saw upon Dangerfield’s head very early one morning, as he accidentally espied him viewing his peas and tulips in the little garden of the Brass Castle by the river side.

'Twas fixed, in fact, in Cluffe’s mind that Dangerfield was the man; and what the plague need had a declared lover of any such clandestine manoeuvres. Was it possible that the old scoundrel was, after all, directing his night visits differently, and keeping the aunt in play, as a reserve, in the event of the failure of his suit to the niece? Plans as gross, he knew, had succeeded; old women were so devilish easily won, and loved money too, so well sometimes.

These sly fellows agreed that they must not go to Belmont by Chapelizod–bridge, which would lead them through the town, in front of the barrack, and under the very sign–board of the Phoenix. No, they would go by the Knockmaroon–road, cross the river by the ferry, and unperceived, and unsuspected, enter the grounds of Belmont on the further side.

So away went the amorous musicians, favoured by the darkness, and talking in an undertone, and thinking more than they talked, while little Puddock, from under his cloak, scratched a faint little arpeggio and a chord, ever and anon, upon 'the inthrument.'

When they reached the ferry, the boat was tied at the near side, but deuce a ferryman could they see. So they began to shout and hallo, singly, and together, until Cluffe, in much ire and disgust, exclaimed—

'Curse the sot—drunk in some whiskey–shop—the blackguard! That is the way such scoundrels throw away their chances, and help to fill the high roads with beggars and thieves; curse him, I sha’n’t have a note left if we go on bawling this way. I suppose we must go home again.'

'Fiddle–thtick!' exclaimed the magnanimous Puddock. 'I pulled myself across little more than a year ago, and 'twas as easy as—as—anything. Get in, an' loose her when I tell you.'

This boat was managed by means of a rope stretched across the stream from bank to bank; seizing which, in both hands, the boatman, as he stood in his skiff, hauled it, as it seemed, with very moderate exertion across the river.

Cluffe chuckled as he thought how sold the rascally boatman would be, on returning, to find his bark gone over to the other side.

'Don’t be uneathy about the poor fellow,' said Puddock; 'we’ll come down in the morning and make him a present, and explain how it occurred.'

'Explain
yourself
—poor fellow, be hanged!' muttered Cluffe, as he took his seat, for he did not part with his silver lightly. 'I say, Puddock, tell me when I’m to slip the rope.'

The signal given, Cluffe let go, entertaining himself with a little jingle of Puddock’s guitar, of which he had charge, and a verse or two of their last song; while the plump little lieutenant, standing upright, midships in the boat, hauled away, though not quite so deftly as was desirable. Some two or three minutes had passed before they reached the middle of the stream, which was, as Puddock afterwards remarked, 'gigantically thwollen;' and at this point they came to something very like a stand–still.

'I say, Puddock, keep her head a little more up the stream, will you?' said Cluffe, thinking no evil, and only to show his nautical knowledge.

'It’s easy to say keep her head up the stream,' gasped Puddock who was now labouring fearfully, and quite crimson in the face, tugging his words up with a desperate lisp, and too much out of breath to say more.

The shades of the night and the roar of the waters prevented Cluffe observing these omens aright.

'What the plague are you doing
now
? cried Cluffe, arresting a decorative passage in the middle, and for the first time seriously uncomfortable, as the boat slowly spun round, bringing what Cluffe called her head—though head and tail were pretty much alike—toward the bank they had quitted.

'Curse you, Puddock, why—what are you going back for? you can’t do it.'

'Lend a hand,' bawled Puddock, in extremity. 'I say, help, seize the rope; I say, Cluffe, quick, Sir, my arms are breaking.'

There was no exaggeration in this—there seldom was in any thing Puddock said; and the turn of the boat had twisted his arms like the strands of a rope.

'Hold on, Puddock, curse you, I’m comin',' roared Cluffe, quite alive to the situation. 'If you let go, I’m
diddled
but I’ll shoot you.'

'Catch the rope, I thay, Thir, or 'tith all over!'

Cluffe, who had only known that he was slowly spinning round, and that Puddock was going to commit him to the waves, made a vehement exertion to catch the rope, but it was out of reach, and the boat rocked so suddenly from his rising, that he sat down by mistake again, with a violent plump that made his teeth gnash, in his own place; and the shock and his alarm stimulated his anger.

'Hold on, Sir; hold on, you little devil, I say, one minute, here—hold—hollo!'

While Cluffe was shouting these words, and scrambling forward, Puddock was crying—

'Curth it, Cluffe, quick—oh! hang it, I can’t thtand it—bleth my
thoul
!

And Puddock let go, and the boat and its precious freightage, with a horrid whisk and a sweep, commenced its seaward career in the dark.

'Take the oars, Sir, hang you!' cried Cluffe.

'There are no oarth,' replied Puddock, solemnly.

'Or the helm.'

'There’th no helm.'

'And what the devil, Sir?' and a splash of cold water soused the silken calves of Cluffe at this moment.

'Heugh! heugh!—and what the devil
will
you do, Sir? you don’t want to drown me, I suppose?' roared Cluffe, holding hard by the gunwale.

'
You
can thwim, Cluffe; jump in, and don’t mind me,' said little Puddock, sublimely.

Cluffe, who was a bit of a boaster, had bragged, one evening at mess, of his swimming, which he said was famous in his school days; 'twas a lie, but Puddock believed it implicitly.

'Thank you!' roared Cluffe. 'Swim, indeed!—buttoned up this way—and—and the gout too.'

'I say, Cluffe, save the guitar, if you can,' said Puddock.

In reply, Cluffe cursed that instrument through his teeth, with positive fury, and its owner; and, indeed, he was so incensed at this unfeeling request, that if he had known where it was, I think he would have gone nigh to smash it on Puddock’s head, or at least, like the 'Minstrel Boy,' to tear its chords asunder; for Cluffe was hot, especially when he was frightened. But he forgot—though it was hanging at that moment by a pretty scarlet and gold ribbon about his neck.

'Guitar be
diddled
!' cried he; ''tis gone—where
we’re
going—to the bottom. What devil possessed you, Sir, to drown us this way?'

Puddock sighed. They were passing at this moment the quiet banks of the pleasant meadow of Belmont, and the lights twinkled from the bow–window in the drawing–room. I don’t know whether Puddock saw them—Cluffe certainly did not.

'Hallo! hallo!—a rope!' cried Cluffe, who had hit upon this desperate expedient for raising the neighbourhood. 'A rope—a rope! hallo! hallo!—a ro–o–o–ope!'

And Aunt Becky, who heard the wild whooping, mistook it for drunken fellows at their diversions, and delivered her sentiments in the drawing–room accordingly.

'We’re coming to something—what’s that?' said Puddock, as a long row of black stakes presented themselves at some distance ahead, in the dusky moonlight, slanting across the stream.

''Tis the salmon–weir!' roared Cluffe with an oath that subsided into something like a sickening prayer.

It was only a fortnight before that a tipsy fellow had been found drowned in the net. Cluffe had lost his head much more than Puddock, though Cluffe had fought duels. But then, he really could not swim a bit, and he was so confoundedly buckled up.

'Sit to the right. Trim the boat, Sir!' said little Puddock.

'Trim the devil!' bawled Cluffe, to whom this order of Puddock’s, it must be owned a useless piece of marinetism in their situation, was especially disgusting; and he added, looking furiously ahead—''Tisn’t the boat I’d trim, I promise you: you—you ridiculous murderer!'

Just then Puddock’s end of the boat touched a stone, or a post, or something in the current, and that in which Cluffe sat came wheeling swiftly round across the stream, and brought the gallant captain so near the bank that, with a sudden jerk, he caught the end of a branch that stretched far over the water, and, spite of the confounded tightness of his toilet, with the energy of sheer terror, climbed a good way; but, reaching a point where the branch forked, he could get no further, though he tugged like a brick. But what was a fat fellow of fifty, laced, and buckled, and buttoned up, like poor Cluffe—with his legs higher up among the foliage than his head and body—to do, and with his right calf caught in the fork of a branch, so as to arrest all progress, and especially as the captain was plainly too much for the branch, which was drooping toward the water, and emitting sounds premonitory of a smash.

With a long, screaking crash the branch stooped down to the water, and, so soon as the old element made itself acquainted with those parts that reached it first, the gallant captain, with a sort of sob, redoubled his efforts, and down came the faithless bough, more and more perpendicularly, until his nicely got–up cue and bag, then his powdered head, and finally Captain Cluffe’s handsome features, went under the surface. When this occurred, he instantaneously disengaged his legs with a vague feeling that his last struggle above water was over.

His feet immediately touched the bottom; he stood erect, little above his middle, and quite out of the main current, within half–a–dozen steps of the bank, and he found himself—he scarcely knew how—on terra firma, impounded in a little flower–garden, with lilacs and laburnums, and sweet–briars, and, through a window close at hand, whom should he see but Dangerfield, who was drying his hands in a towel; and, as Cluffe stood for a moment, letting the water pour down through his sleeves, he further saw him make some queer little arrangements, and eventually pour out and swallow a glass of brandy, and was tempted to invoke his aid on the spot; but some small incivilities which he had bestowed upon Dangerfield, when he thought he cherished designs upon Aunt Rebecca, forbade; and at that moment he spied the little wicket that opened upon the road, and Dangerfield stept close up to the window, and cried sternly, 'Who’s there?' with his grim spectacles close to the window.

The boyish instinct of 'hide and seek' took possession of Cluffe, and he glided forth from the precincts of the Brass Castle upon the high road, just as the little hall–door was pushed open, and he heard the harsh tones of Dangerfield challenging the gooseberry bushes and hollyhocks, and thrashing the evergreens with his cane.

Cluffe hied straight to his lodgings, and ordered a sack posset. Worthy Mrs. Mason eyed him in silent consternation, drenched and dishevelled, wild, and discharging water from every part of his clothing and decorations, as he presented himself without a hat, before her dim dipt candle in the hall.

'I’ll take that—that vessel, if you please, Sir, that’s hanging about your neck,' said the mild and affrighted lady, meaning Puddock’s guitar, through the circular orifice of which, under the chords, the water with which it was filled occasionally splashed.

'Oh—eh?—the instrument?—confound it!' and rather sheepishly he got the gray red and gold ribbon over his dripping head, and placing it in her hand without explanation, he said—'A warming–pan as quickly as may be, I beg, Mrs. Mason—and the posset, I do earnestly request. You see—I—I’ve been nearly drowned—and—and I can’t answer for consequences if there be one minute’s delay.

And up he went streaming, with Mrs. Mason’s candle, to his bed–room, and dragged off his clinging garments, and dried his fat body, like a man coming out of a bath, and roared for hot water for his feet, and bellowed for the posset and warming–pan, and rolled into his bed, and kept the whole house in motion.

And so soon as he had swallowed his cordial, and toasted his sheets, and with the aid of his man rolled himself in a great blanket, and clapped his feet in a tub of hot water, and tumbled back again into his bed, he bethought him of Puddock, and ordered his man to take his compliments to Captain Burgh and Lieutenant Lillyman, the tenants of the nearest lodging–house, and to request either to come to him forthwith on a matter of life or death.

Lillyman was at home, and came.

'Puddock’s drowned, my dear Lillyman, and I’m little better. The ferry boat broke away with us. Do go down to the adjutant—they ought to raise the salmon nets—I’m very ill myself—very ill, indeed—else I’d have assisted; but you know
me
, Lillyman. Poor Puddock—'tis a sad business—but lose no time.'

'And can’t he swim?' asked Lillyman, aghast.

'Swim?—ay, like a stone, poor fellow! If he had only thrown himself out, and held by me, hang it, I’d have brought him to shore; but poor Puddock, he lost his head. And I—you see me here—don’t forget to tell them the condition you found me in, and—and—now don’t lose a moment.'

So off went Lillyman to give the alarm at the barrack.