The House by the Church-Yard (60 page)

'However, it was not to be. It might have been well for all had I never thought of it. For I’m a man who, when he once places an object before him, will not give it up without trying. I can wait as well as strike, and know what’s to be got by one and t’other. Well, what I’ve once proposed to myself I don’t forego, and that helped to hold me where I was.

'The nature of the beast, Sturk, and his circumstances were dangerous. 'Twas necessary for my safety to make away with him. I tried it by several ways. I made a quarrel between him and Toole, but somehow it never came to a duel; and a worse one between him and Nutter, but that too failed to come to a fight. It was to be, Sir, and my time had come. What I long suspected arrived, and he told me in his own study he knew me, and wanted money. The money didn’t matter; of that I could spare abundance, though 'tis the nature of such a tax to swell to confiscation. But the man who gets a sixpence from you on such terms is a tyrant and your master, and I can’t brook slavery.

'I owed the fellow no ill–will; upon my honour, as a gentleman; I forgive him, as I hope he has forgiven me. It was all fair he should try. We can’t help our instincts. There’s something wolfish in us all. I was vexed at his d——d folly, though, and sorry to have to put him out of the way. However, I saw I must be rid of him.

'There was no immediate hurry. I could afford to wait a little. I thought he would walk home on the night I met him. He had gone into town in Colonel Strafford’s carriage. It returned early in the afternoon without him. I knew his habits; he dined at Keating’s ordinary at four o’clock; and Mercer, whom he had to speak with, would not see him, on his bill of exchange business, in his counting–house. Sturk told me so; and he must wait till half–past five at his lodgings. What he had to say was satisfactory, and I allowed five minutes for that.

'Then he might come home in a coach. But he was a close–fisted fellow and loved a shilling; so it was probable he would walk. His usual path was by the Star Fort, and through the thorn woods between that and the Magazine. So I met him. I said I was for town, and asked him how he had fared in his business; and turned with him, walking slowly as though to hear. I had that loaded whalebone in my pocket, and my sword, but no pistol. It was not the place for firearms; the noise would have made an alarm. So I turned sharp upon him and felled him. He knew by an intuition what was about to happen, for as the blow fell he yelled "murder." That d——d fellow, Nutter, in the wood at our right, scarce a hundred yards away, halloed in answer. I had but time to strike him two blows on the top of his head that might have killed an ox. I felt the metal sink at the second in his skull, and would have pinked him through with my sword, but the fellow was close on me, and I thought I knew the voice for Nutter’s. I stole through the bushes swiftly, and got along into the hollow under the Magazine, and thence on.

'There was a slight fog upon the park, and I met no one. I got across the park–wall, over the quarry, and so down by the stream at Coyles, and on to the road near my house. No one was in sight, so I walked down to Chapelizod to show myself. Near the village tree I met Dr. Toole. I asked him if Nutter was in the club, and he said no—nor at home, he believed, for his boy had seen him more than half–an–hour ago leave his hall door, dressed for the road.

'So I made as if disappointed, and turned back again, assured that Nutter was the man. I was not easy, for I could not be sure that Sturk was dead. Had I been allowed a second or two more, I’d have made sure work of it. Still I was
nearly
sure. I could not go back now and finish the business. I could not say whether he lay there any longer, and if he did, how many men Nutter might have about him by this time. So, Sir, the cast was made, I could not mend it, and must abide my fortune be it good or ill.

'Not a servant saw me go out or return. I came in quietly, and went into my bed–room and lighted a candle. 'Twas a blunder, a blot, but a thousand to one it was not hit. I washed my hands. There was some blood on the whalebone, and on my fingers. I rolled the loaded whalebone up in a red handkerchief, and locked it into my chest of drawers, designing to destroy it, which I did, so soon as the servants were in bed; and then I felt a chill and a slight shiver;—'twas only that I was an older man. I was cool enough, but a strain on the mind was more to me then than twenty years before. So I drank a dram, and I heard a noise outside my window. 'Twas then that stupid dog, Cluffe, saw me, as he swears.

'Well, next day Sturk was brought home; Nutter was gone, and the suspicion attached to him. That was well. But, though Pell pronounced that he must die without recovering consciousness, and that the trepan would kill him instantaneously, I had a profound misgiving that he might recover speech and recollection. I wrote as exact a statement of the case to my London physician—a very great man—as I could collect, and had his answer, which agreed exactly with Doctor Pell’s. 'Twas agreed on all hands the trepan would be certain death. Days, weeks, or months—it mattered not what the interval—no returning glimmer of memory could light his death–bed. Still, Sir, I presaged evil. He was so long about dying.

'I’m telling you everything, you see. I offered Irons what would have been a fortune to him—he was attending occasionally in Sturk’s sick–room, and assisting in dressing his wounds—to watch his opportunity and smother him with a wet handkerchief. I would have done it myself afterwards, on the sole opportunity that offered, had I not been interrupted.

'I engaged, with Mrs. Sturk’s approval, Doctor Dillon. I promised him five hundred guineas to trepan him. That young villain, I could prove, bled Alderman Sherlock to death to please the alderman’s young wife. Who’d have thought the needy profligate would have hesitated to plunge his trepan into the brain of a dying man—a corpse, you may say, already—for five hundred guineas? I was growing feverish under the protracted suspense. I was haunted by the apprehension of Sturk’s recovering his consciousness and speech, in which case I should have been reduced to my present rueful situation; and I was resolved to end that cursed uncertainty.

'When I thought Dillon had forgot his appointment in his swinish vices, I turned my mind another way. I resolved to leave Sturk to
nature
, and clench the case against Nutter, by evidence I would have compelled Irons to swear. As it turned out,
that
would have been the better way. Had Sturk died without speaking, and Nutter hanged for his death, the question could have opened no more, and Irons would have been nailed to my interest.

'I viewed the problem every way. I saw the danger from the first, and provided many expedients, which, one after the other, fortune frustrated. I can’t confidently say even now that it would have been wiser to leave Sturk to die, as the doctors said he must. I had a foreboding, in spite of all they could say, he would wake up before he died and denounce me. If 'twas a mistake, 'twas a fated one, and I could not help it.

'So, Sir, you see I’ve nothing to blame myself for—though all has broken down.

'I guessed when I heard the sound at the hall–door of my house that Sturk or Irons had spoken, and that they were come to take me. Had I broken through them, I might have made my escape. It was long odds against me, but still I had a chance—that’s all. And the matter affecting my Lord Dunoran’s innocence, I’m ready to swear, if it can serve his son—having been the undesigned cause of some misfortunes to you, my lord, in my lifetime.'

Lord Dunoran said nothing, he only bowed his head.

So Dangerfield, when his statement respecting the murder of Beauclerc had been placed clearly in writing, made oath of its truth, and immediately when this was over (he had, while they were preparing the statement, been walking up and down his flagged chamber), he grew all on a sudden weak, and then very flushed, and they thought he was about to take a fit; but speedily he recovered himself, and in five minutes' time was much as he had been at the commencement.

After my lord and Mr. Armstrong went away, he had the gaoler with him, and seemed very sanguine about getting his pardon, and was very brisk and chatty, and said he’d prepare his petition in the morning, and got in large paper for drafting it on, and said, 'I suppose at the close of this commission they will bring me up for judgment; that will be the day after to–morrow, and I must have my petition ready.' And he talked away like a man who had got a care off his mind, and is in high spirits; and when grinning, beetle–browed Giant Despair shook his hand, and wished him luck at parting, he stopped him, laying his white hand upon his herculean arm, and, said he, 'I’ve a point to urge they don’t suspect. I’m sure of my liberty; what do you think of that—hey?' and he laughed. 'And when I get away what do you say to leaving this place and coming after me? Upon my life, you must, Sir. I like you, and if you don’t, rot me, but I’ll come and take you away myself.'

So they parted in a sprightly, genial way; and in the morning the turnkey called the gaoler up at an unseasonable hour, and told him that Mr. Dangerfield was dead.

The gaoler lay in the passage outside the prisoner’s cell, with his bed across the door, which was locked, and visited him at certain intervals. The first time he went in there was nothing remarkable. It was but half–an–hour after the gaoler had left. Mr. Dangerfield, for so he chose to be called, was dozing very quietly in his bed, and just opened his eyes, and nodded on awaking, as though he would say, 'Here I am,' but did not speak.

When, three hours later, the officer entered, having lighted his candle at the lamp, he instantly recoiled. 'The room felt so queer,' said he, 'I thought I’d a fainted, and I drew back. I tried it again a bit further in, and 'twas worse, and the candle almost went out—'twas as if the devil was there. I drew back quick, and I called the prisoner, but no word was there. Then I locks the door, and called Michael; and when he came we called the prisoner again, but to no purpose. Then we opened the door, and I made a rush, and smashed the glass of the window to let in air. We had to wait outside a good while before we could venture in; and when we did, there he was lying like a man asleep in his bed, with his nightcap on, and his hand under his cheek, and he smiling down on the flags, very sly, like a man who has won something cleverly. He was dead, and his limbs cold by this time.'

There was an inquest. Mr. Dangerfield 'looked very composed in death,' says an old letter, and he lay 'very like sleep,' in his bed, 'his fingers under his cheek and temple,' with the countenance turned 'a little downward, as if looking upon something on the floor,' with an 'ironical smile;' so that the ineffaceable lines of sarcasm, I suppose, were traceable upon that jaundiced mask.

Some said it was a heart disease, and others an exhalation from the prison floor. He was dead, that was all the jury could say for certain, and they found 'twas 'by a visitation of God.' The gaoler, being a superstitious fellow, was plaguily nervous about Mr. Dangerfield’s valediction, and took clerical advice upon it, and for several months after became a very serious and ascetic character; and I do believe that the words were spoken in reality with that sinister jocularity in which his wit sported like church–yard meteors, when crimes and horrors were most in his mind.

The niece of this gaoler said she well remembered her uncle, when a very old man, three years before the rebellion, relating that Mr. Dangerfield came by his death in consequence of some charcoal in a warming pan he had prevailed on him to allow him for his bed, he having complained of cold. He got it with a design to make away with himself, and it was forgotten in the room. He placed it under the bed, and waited until the first call of the turnkey was over, and then he stuffed his surtout into the flue of the small fire–place, which afforded the only ventilation of his cell, and so was smothered. It was not till the winter following that the gaoler discovered, on lighting a fire there, that the chimney was stopped. He had a misgiving about the charcoal before, and now he was certain. Of course, he said nothing about his suspicions at first, nor of his discovery afterwards.

So, sometimes in my musings, when I hear of clever young fellows taking to wild courses, and audaciously rushing—where good Christians pray they may not be led—into temptation, there rises before me, with towering forehead and scoffing face, a white image smoking his pipe grimly by a plutonic fire; and I remember the words of the son of Sirach—'The knowledge of wickedness is not wisdom, neither at any time the counsel of sinners prudence.'

Mr. Irons, of course, left Chapelizod. He took with him the hundred guineas which Mr. Dangerfield had given him, as also, it was said, a handsome addition made to that fund by open–handed Dr. Walsingham; but somehow, being much pressed for time, he forgot good Mistress Irons, who remained behind and let lodgings pretty much as usual, and never heard from that time forth anything very distinct about him; and latterly it was thought was, on the whole, afraid rather than desirous of his turning up again.

Doctor Toole, indeed, related in his own fashion, at the Phoenix, some years later, a rumour which, however, may have turned out to be no better than smoke.

'News of Zekiel, by Jove! The prophet was found, Sir, with a friend in the neighbourhood of Hounslow, with a brace of pistols, a mask, a handful of slugs, and a powder–horn in his pocket, which he first gave to a constable, and then made his compliments to a justice o' the peace, who gave him and his friend a note of commendation to my Lord Chief Justice, and his lordship took such a fancy to both that, by George, he sent them in a procession in his best one–horse coach, with a guard of honour and a chaplain, the high–sheriff dutifully attending, through the City, where, by the king’s commands, they were invested with the grand collar of the order of the hempen cravat, Sir, and with such an attention to their comfort they were not required to descend from their carriage, by George, and when it drove away they remained in an easy, genteel posture, with their hands behind their backs, in a sort of an ecstasy, and showed their good humour by dancing a reel together with singular lightness and agility, and keeping it up till they were both out of breath, when they remained quiet for about half an hour to cool, and then went off to pay their respects to the President of the College of Surgeons,' and so forth; but I don’t think Irons had pluck for a highwayman, and I can’t, therefore, altogether, believe the story.