Kitabı oku: «The House by the Churchyard / Дом у кладбища», sayfa 11

Chapter XX
In Which Mr. Dangerfield Visits the Church Of Chapelizod, And Zekiel Irons Goes a Fishing

Early next morning Lord Castlemallard, Dangerfield, and Nutter, rode into Chapelizod, plaguy dusty, having already made the circuit of that portion of his property which lay west of the town. They had poked into the new mills and the old mills, and contemplated the quarries, and lime-kilns, and talked with Doyle about his holding, and walked over the two vacant farms, and I know not all besides. And away trotted his lordship to his breakfast in town. And Dangerfield seeing the church door open, dismounted and walked in, and Nutter did likewise.

Bob Martin was up in the gallery, I suppose, doing some good, and making a considerable knocking here and there in the pews, and walking slowly with creaking shoes. Zekiel Irons, the clerk, was down below about his business, at the communion table at the far end, lean, blue-chinned, thin-lipped, stooping over his quarto prayer books, and gliding about without noise, reverent and sinister. When they came in, Nutter led the way to Lord Castlemallard's pew, which brought them up pretty near to the spot where grave Mr. Irons was prowling serenely. The pew would soon want new flooring, Mr. Dangerfield thought, and the Castlemallard arms and supporters, a rather dingy piece of vainglory, overhanging the main seat on the wall, would be nothing the worse of a little fresh gilding and paint.

'There was a claim – eh – to one foot nine inches off the eastern end of the pew, on the part of – of the family – at Inchicore, I think they call it,' said Dangerfield, laying his riding-whip like a rule along the top to help his imagination – 'Hey – that would spoil the pew.'

'The claim's settled, and Mr. Langley goes to the other side of the aisle,' said Nutter, nodding to Irons, who came up, and laid his long clay-coloured fingers on the top of the pew door, and one long, thin foot on the first step, and with half-closed eyes, and a half bow, he awaited their pleasure.

'The Langley family had this pew,' said Dangerfield, with a side nod to that next his lordship's.

'Yes, Sir,' said Irons, with the same immutable semblance of a smile, and raising neither his head nor his eyes.

'And who's got it now?'

'His reverence, Dr. Walsingham.'

And so it came out, that having purchased Salmonfalls, the rector had compromised the territorial war that was on the point of breaking out among his parishioners, by exchanging with that old coxcomb Langley, the great square pew over the way, that belonged to that house, for the queer little crib in which the tenant of Inchicore had hitherto sat in state; and so there was peace, if not good will, in the church.

'Hey – let's see it,' said Dangerfield, crossing the aisle, with Irons at his heels, for he was a man that saw everything for himself, that ever so remotely concerned him or his business.

'We buried Lord – ' (and the title he spoke very low) 'in the vault here, just under where you stand, on Monday last, by night,' said Irons, very gently and grimly, as he stood behind Dangerfield.

A faint galvanic thrill shot up through the flagging and his firmly planted foot to his brain, as though something said, 'Ay, here I am!'

'Oh! indeed?' said Dangerfield, dryly, making a little nod, and raising his eyebrows, and just moving a little a one side – "Twas a nasty affair.'

He looked up, with his hands in his breeches' pockets, and read a mural tablet, whistling scarce audibly the while. It was not reverent, but he was a gentleman; and the clerk standing behind him, retained his quiet posture, and that smile, that yet was not a smile, but a sort of reflected light – was it patience, or was it secret ridicule? – you could not tell: and it never changed, and somehow it was provoking.

'And some persons, I believe, had an unpleasant duty to do there,' said Dangerfield, abruptly, in the middle of his tune, and turning his spectacles fully and sternly on Mr. Irons.

The clerk's head bent lower, and he shook it; and his eyes, but for a little glitter through the eyelashes, seemed to close.

"Tis a pretty church, this – a pretty town, and some good families in the neighbourhood,' said Dangerfield, briskly; 'and I dare say some trout in the river – hey? – the stream looks lively.'

'Middling, only – poor gray troutlings, Sir – not a soul cares to fish it but myself,' he answered.

'You're the clerk – eh?'

'At your service, Sir.'

'Dublin man? – or – '

'Born and bred in Dublin, your honour.'

'Ay – well! Irons – you've heard of Mr. Dangerfield – Lord Castlemallard's agent – I am he. Good-morning, Irons;' and he gave him half-a-crown, and he took another look round; and then he and Nutter went out of the church, and took a hasty leave of one another, and away went Nutter on his nag, to the mills. And Dangerfield, just before mounting, popped into Cleary's shop, and in his grim, laconic way, asked the proprietor, among his meal-bags and bacon, about fifty questions in less than five minutes. 'That was one of Lord Castlemallard's houses – eh – with the bad roof, and manure-heap round the corner?' – and, 'Where's the pot-house they call the Salmon House? – doing a good business – eh?' and at last – 'I'm told there's some trout in the stream. Is there anyone in the town who knows the river, and could show me the fishing? – Oh, the clerk! and what sort of fish is he – hey? – Oh! an honest, worthy man, is he? Very good, Sir. Then, perhaps, Mr. a – perhaps, Sir, you'll do me the favour to let one of your people run down to his house, and say Mr. Dangerfield, Lord Castlemallard's agent, who is staying, you know, at the Brass Castle, would be much obliged if he would bring his rod and tackle, and take a walk with him up the river, for a little angling, at ten o'clock!'

Jolly Phil Cleary was deferential, and almost nervous in his presence. The silver-haired, grim man, with his mysterious reputation for money, and that short decisive way of his, and sudden cynical chuckle, inspired a sort of awe, which made his wishes, where expressed with that intent, very generally obeyed; and, sure enough, Irons appeared, with his rod, at the appointed hour, and the interesting anglers – Piscator and his 'honest scholar,' as Isaac Walton hath it – set out side by side on their ramble, in the true fraternity of the gentle craft.

The clerk had, I'm afraid, a shrew of a wife – shrill, vehement, and fluent. 'Rogue,' 'old miser,' 'old sneak,' and a great many worse names, she called him. Good Mrs. Irons was old, fat, and ugly, and she knew it; and that knowledge made her natural jealousy the fiercer. He had learned, by long experience, the best tactique under fire: he became actually taciturn; or, if he spoke, his speech was laconic and enigmatical; sometimes throwing out a proverb, and sometimes a text; and sometimes when provoked past endurance, spouting mildly a little bit of meek and venomous irony.

He loved his trout-rod and the devious banks of the Liffey, where, saturnine and alone, he filled his basket. It was his helpmate's rule, whenever she did not know to a certainty precisely what Irons was doing, to take it for granted that he was about some mischief. Her lodger, Captain Devereux, was her great resource on these occasions, and few things pleased him better than a stormy visit from his hostess in this temper. The young scapegrace would close his novel, and set down his glass of sherry and water (it sometimes smelt very like brandy, I'm afraid). To hear her rant, one would have supposed, who had not seen him, that her lank-haired, grimly partner, was the prettiest youth in the county of Dublin, and that all the comely lasses in Chapelizod and the country round were sighing and setting caps at him; and Devereux, who had a vein of satire, and loved even farce, enjoyed the heroics of the fat old slut.

'Oh! what am I to do, captain, jewel?' she bounced into the room, with flaming face and eyes swelled, and the end of her apron, with which she had been swobbing them, in her hand, while she gesticulated, with her right; 'there, he's off again to Island Bridge, – the owdacious sneak! It's all that dirty hussy's doing. I'm not such a fool, but I know how to put this and that together, though he thinks I don't know of his doings; but I'll be even with you, Meg Partlet, yet – you trollop;' and all this was delivered in renewed floods of tears, and stentorian hysterics, while she shook her fat red fist in the air, at the presumed level of Meg's beautiful features.

'Nay, Madam,' said the gay captain; 'I prithee, weep not; the like discoveries, as you have read, have been made in Rome, Salamanca, Ballyporeen, Babylon, Venice, and fifty other famous cities.' He always felt in these interviews, as if she and he were extemporising a burlesque – she the Queen of Crim Tartary, and he an Archbishop in her court – and would have spoken blank verse, only he feared she might perceive it, and break up the conference.

'And what's that to the purpose? – don't I know they're the same all over the world – nothing but brutes and barbarians.'

'But suppose, Madam, he has only gone up the river, and just taken his rod – '

'Oh! rod, indeed. I know where he wants a rod, the rascal!'

'I tell you, Madam,' urged the chaplain, 'you're quite in the wrong. You've discovered after twenty years' wedlock that your husband's – a man! and you're vexed: would you have him anything else?'

'You're all in a story,' she blubbered maniacally; 'there's no justice, nor feeling, nor succour for a poor abused woman; but I'll do it – I will. I'll go to his reverence – don't try to persuade me – the Rev. Hugh Walsingham, Doctor of Divinity, and Rector of Chapelizod (she used to give him at full length whenever she threatened Zekiel with a visitation from that quarter, by way of adding ponderosity to the menace) – I'll go to him straight – don't think to stop me – and we'll see what he'll say;' and so she addressed herself to go.

'And when you see him, Madam, ask the learned doctor – don't ask me – believe the rector of the parish – he'll tell you, that it hath prevailed from the period at which Madam Sarah quarrelled with saucy Miss Hagar; that it hath prevailed among all the principal nations of antiquity, according to Pliny, Strabo, and the chief writers of antiquity; that Juno, Dido, Eleanor Queen of England, and Mrs. Partridge, whom I read of here (and he pointed to the open volume of Tom Jones), each made, or thought she made, a like discovery.' And the captain delivered this slowly, with knitted brow and thoughtful face, after the manner of the erudite and simple doctor.

'Pretty Partridges, indeed! and nice game for a parish clerk!' cried the lady, returning. 'I wonder, so I do, when I look at him, and think of his goings on, how he can have the assurance to sit under the minister, and look the congregation in the face, and tune his throat, and sing the blessed psalms.'

'You are not to wonder, Madam; believe the sage, who says, omnibus hoc vitium est cantoribus.'

Devereux knew of old that the effect of Latin on Mrs. Irons was to heighten the inflammation, and so the matron burst into whole chapters of crimination, enlivened with a sprinkling of strong words, as the sages of the law love to pepper their indictments and informations with hot adverbs and well-spiced parentheses, 'falsely,' 'scandalously,' 'maliciously,' and suadente diabolo, to make them sit warm on the stomachs of a loyal judge and jury, and digest easily.

The neighbours were so accustomed to Mrs. Irons' griefs, that when her voice was audible, as upon such occasions it was, upon the high road and in the back gardens, it produced next to no sensation; everybody had heard from that loud oracle every sort of story touching Irons which could well be imagined, and it was all so thoroughly published by the good lady, that curiosity on the subject was pretty well dead and gone, and her distant declamation rattled over their heads and boomed in their ears, like the distant guns and trumpets on a review day, signifying nothing.

And all this only shows what every man who has ruralised a little in his lifetime knows, more than in theory, that the golden age lingers in no corner of the earth, but is really quite gone and over everywhere, and that peace and prisca fides have not fled to the nooks and shadows of deep valleys and bowery brooks, but flown once, and away to heaven again, and left the round world to its general curse. So it is even in pretty old villages, embowered in orchards, with hollyhocks and jessamine in front of the houses, and primeval cocks and hens pecking and scraping in the street, and the modest river dimpling and simpering among osiers and apple trees, and old ivied walls close by – you sometimes hear other things than lowing herds, and small birds singing, and purling streams; and shrill accents and voluble rhetoric will now and then trouble the fragrant air, and wake up the dim old river-god from his nap.

As to Irons, if he was all that his wife gave out, he must have been a mighty sly dog indeed; for on the whole, he presented a tolerably decent exterior to society. It is said, indeed, that he liked a grave tumbler of punch, and was sardonic and silent in his liquor; that his gait was occasionally a little queer and uncertain, as his lank figure glided home by moonlight, from the 'salmon House;' and that his fingers fumbled longer than need be with the latch, and his tongue, though it tried but a short and grim 'bar'th door, Marjry,' or 'gi' me can'le, wench,' sometimes lacked its cunning, and slipped and kept not time. There were, too, other scandals, such as the prying and profane love to shoot privily at church celebrities. Perhaps it was his reserve and sanctity that provoked them. Perhaps he was, in truth, though cautious, sometimes indiscreet. Perhaps it was fanciful Mrs. Irons' jealous hullabaloos and hysterics that did it – I don't know – but people have been observed, apropos of him, to wink at one another, and grin, and shake their heads, and say: 'the nearer the church, you know' – and 'he so ancient, too! but 'tis an old rat that won't eat cheese,' and so forth.

Just as Mrs. Irons whisked round for the seventh time to start upon her long threatened march to Dr. Walsingham's study to lay her pitiful case before him, Captain Devereux, who was looking toward the 'Phœnix,' saw the truant clerk and Mr. Dangerfield turn the corner together on their return.

'stay, Madam, here comes the traitor,' said he; 'and, on my honour, 'tis worse than we thought; for he has led my Lord Castlemallard's old agent into mischief too – and Meg Partlet has had two swains at her feet this morning; and, see, the hypocrites have got some trout in their basket, and their rods on their shoulders – and look, for all the world, as if they had only been fishing – sly rogues!'

'Well, it's all one,' said Mrs. Irons, gaping from the other window, and sobering rapidly; 'if 'tisn't to-day, 'twill be to-morrow, I suppose; and at any rate 'tis a sin and shame to leave any poor crature in this miserable taking, not knowing but he might be drownded – or worse – dear knows it would not be much trouble to tell his wife when the gentleman wanted him – and sure for any honest matter I'd never say against it.'

Her thoughts were running upon Dangerfield, and what 'compliment' he had probably made her husband at parting; and a minute or two after this, Devereux saw her, with her riding-hood on, trudging up to the “Salmon House” to make inquisition after the same.

Chapter XXI
Relating Among Other Things How Doctor Toole Walked Up To the Tiled House; And Of His Pleasant Discourse With Mr. Mervyn

Dr. Sturk's spirits and temper had not become more pleasant lately. In fact he brooded more, and was more savage at home than was at all agreeable. He used to go into town oftener, and to stay there later; and his language about Toole and Nutter, when there was none but submissive little Mrs. Sturk by, was more fierce and coarse than ever. To hear him, then, one would have supposed that they were actually plotting to make away with him, and that in self-defence he must smite them hip and thigh. Then, beside their moral offensiveness, they were such 'idiots,' and: 'noodles,' and botching and blundering right and left, so palpably to the danger and ruin of their employers, that no man of conscience could sit easy and see it going on; and all this simply because he had fixed his affections upon the practice of the one, and the agency of the other. For Sturk had, in his own belief, a genius for business of every sort. Everybody on whom his insolent glance fell, who had any sort of business to do, did it wrong, and was a 'precious disciple,' or a 'goose,' or a 'born jackass,' and excited his scoffing chuckle. And little Mrs. Sturk, frightened and admiring, used to say, while he grinned and muttered, and tittered into the fire, with his great shoulders buried in his balloon-backed chair, his heels over the fender and his hands in his breeches' pockets – 'But, Barney, you know, you're so clever – there's no one like you!' And he was fond of just nibbling at speculations in a small safe way, and used to pull out a roll of bank-notes, when he was lucky, and show his winnings to his wife, and chuckle and swear over them, and boast and rail, and tell her, if it was not for the cursed way his time was cut up with hospital, and field days, and such trumpery regimental duties, he could make a fortune while other men were thinking of it; and he very nearly believed it. And he was, doubtless, clear-headed, though wrong-headed, too, at times, and very energetic; but his genius was for pushing men out of their places to make way for himself.

But with all that he had the good brute instincts too, and catered diligently for his brood, and their 'dam' – and took a gruff unacknowledged pride in seeing his wife well dressed – and had a strong liking for her – and thanked her in his soul for looking after things so well; and thought often about his boys, and looked sharply after their education; and was an efficient and decisive head of a household; and had no vices nor expensive indulgences; and was a hard but tolerably just man to deal with.

All this time his uneasiness and puzzle about Dangerfield continued, and, along with other things, kept him awake often to unseasonable hours at night. He did not tell Mrs. Sturk. In fact, he was a man, who, though on most occasions he gave the wife of his bosom what he called 'his mind' freely enough, yet did not see fit to give her a great deal of his confidence.

Dangerfield had his plans too. Who has not? Nothing could be more compact and modest than his household. He had just a housekeeper and two maids, who looked nearly as old, and a valet, and a groom, who slept at the 'Phœnix,' and two very pretty horses at livery in the same place. All his appointments were natty and complete, and his servants, every one, stood in awe of him; for no lip or eye-service would go down with that severe, prompt, and lynx-eyed gentleman. And his groom, among the coachmen and other experts of the 'salmon House,' used to brag of his hunters in England; and his man, of his riches, and his influence with Lord Castlemallard.

In England, Dangerfield, indeed, spent little more money than he did in Chapelizod, except in his stable; and Lord Castlemallard, who admired his stinginess, as he did everything else about him, used to say: 'He's a wonder of the world! How he retains his influence over all the people he knows without ever giving one among them so much as a mutton-chop or a glass of sherry in his house, I can't conceive. I couldn't do it, I know.' But he had ultimate plans, if not of splendour, at least of luxury. His tastes, and perhaps some deeper feelings, pointed to the continent, and he had purchased a little paradise on the Lake of Geneva, where was an Eden of fruits and flowers, and wealth of marbles and coloured canvas, and wonderful wines maturing in his cellars, and aquaria for his fish, and ice-houses and baths, and I know not what refinements of old Roman Villa-luxury beside – among which he meant to pass the honoured evening of his days; with just a few more thousands, and, as he sometimes thought, perhaps a wife. He had not quite made up his mind; but he had come to the time when a man must forthwith accept matrimony frankly, or, if he be wise, shake hands with bleak celibacy, and content himself for his earthly future with monastic jollity and solitude.

It is a maxim with charitable persons – and no more than a recognition of a great constitutional axiom – to assume, in the absence of proof to the contrary, that every British subject is an honest man. Now, if we had gone to Lord Castlemallard for his character – and who more competent to give him one – we know very well what we should have heard about Dangerfield; and, on the other hand, we have never found him out – have we, kind reader? – in a shabby action or unworthy thought; and, therefore, it leaves upon our mind an unpleasant impression about that Mr. Mervyn, who arrived in the dark, attending upon a coffin as mysterious as himself, and now lives solitarily in the haunted house near Ballyfermot, that the omniscient Dangerfield should follow him, when they pass upon the road, with that peculiar stern glance of surprise which seemed to say, – 'Was ever such audacity conceived? Is the man mad?'

But Dangerfield did not choose to talk about him – if indeed he had anything to disclose – though the gentlemen at the club pressed him often with questions, which however, he quietly parried, to the signal vexation of active little Dr. Toole, who took up and dropped, in turn, all sorts of curious theories about the young stranger. Lord Castlemallard knew all about him, too, but his lordship was high and huffy, and hardly ever in Chapelizod, except on horseback, and two or three times in the year at a grand dinner at the Artillery mess. And when Mervyn was mentioned he always talked of something else, rather imperiously, as though he said, 'You'll please to observe that upon that subject I don't choose to speak.' And as for Dr. Walsingham, when he thought it right to hold his tongue upon a given matter, thumb-screws could not squeeze it from him.

In short, our friend Toole grew so feverish under his disappointment that he made an excuse of old Tim Molloy's toothache to go up in person to the 'Tiled House,' in the hope of meeting the young gentleman, and hearing something from him (the servants, he already knew, were as much in the dark as he) to alleviate his distress. And, sure enough, his luck stood him in stead; for, as he was going away, having pulled out old Molloy's grinder to give a colour to his visit, who should he find upon the steps of the hall-door but the pale, handsome young gentleman himself.

Dr. Toole bowed low, and grinned with real satisfaction, reminded him of their interview at the 'Phœnix,' and made by way of apology for his appearance at the 'Tiled House,' a light and kind allusion to poor old Tim, of whose toothache he spoke affectionately, and with water in his eyes – for he half believed for the moment what he was saying – declared how he remembered him when he did not come up to Tim's knee-buckle, and would walk that far any day, and a bit further too, he hoped, to relieve the poor old boy in a less matter. And finding that Mr. Mervyn was going toward Chapelizod, he begged him not to delay on his account, and accompanied him down the Ballyfermot road, entertaining him by the way with an inexhaustible affluence of Chapelizod anecdote and scandal, at which the young man stared a good deal, and sometimes even appeared impatient: but the doctor did not perceive it, and rattled on; and told him moreover, everything about himself and his belongings with a minute and voluble frankness, intended to shame the suspicious reserve of the stranger. But nothing came; and being by this time grown bolder, he began a more direct assault, and told him, with a proper scorn of the village curiosity, all the theories which the Chapelizod gossips had spun about him.

'And they say, among other things, that you're not – a – in fact – there's a mystery – a something – about your birth, you know,' said Toole, in a tone implying pity and contempt for his idle townsfolk.

'They lie, then!' cried the young man, stopping short, more fiercely than was pleasant, and fixing his great lurid eyes upon the cunning face of the doctor; and, after a pause, 'Why can't they let me and my concerns alone, Sir?'

'But there's no use in saying so, I can tell you,' exclaimed little Toole, recovering his feet in an instant. 'Why, I suppose there isn't so tattling, prying, lying, scandalous a little colony of Christians on earth; eyes, ears, and mouths all open, Sir; heads busy, tongues wagging; lots of old maids, by Jove; ladies' women, and gentlemen's gentlemen, and drawers and footmen; club talk, Sir, and mess-table talk, and talk on band days, talk over cards, talk at home, Sir – talk in the streets – talk – talk; by Jupiter Tonans! 'tis enough to bother one's ears, and make a man envy Robinson Crusoe!'

'so I do, Sir, if we were rid of his parrot,' answered Mervyn: and with a dry 'I wish you a good-morning, doctor – doctor – a – Sir' – turned sharply from him up the Palmerstown-road.

'Going to Belmont,' murmured little Toole, with his face a little redder than usual, and stopping in an undignified way for a moment at the corner to look after him. 'He's close – plaguy close; and Miss Rebecca Chattesworth knows nothing about him neither – I wander does she though – and doesn't seem to care even. He's not there for nothing though. Some one makes him welcome, depend on't,' and he winked to himself. 'A plaguy high stomach, too, by Jove. I bet you fifty, if he stays here three months, he'll be at swords or pistols with some of our hot bloods. And whatever his secret is – and I dare say 'tisn't worth knowing – the people here will ferret it out at last, I warrant you. There's small good in making all the fuss he does about it; if he knew but all, there's no such thing as a secret here – hang the one have I, I know, just because there's no use in trying. The whole town knows when I've tripe for dinner, and where I have a patch or a darn. And when I got the fourteen pigeons at Darkey's-bridge, the birds were not ten minutes on my kitchen table when old Widow Foote sends her maid and her compliments, as she knew my pie-dish only held a dozen, to beg the two odd birds. Secret, indeed!' and he whistled a bar or two contemptuously, which subsided into dejected silence, and he muttered, 'I wish I knew it,' and walked over the bridge gloomily; and he roared more fiercely on smaller occasions than usual at his dogs on the way home, and they squalled oftener and louder.

Now, for some reason or other, Dangerfield had watched the growing intimacy between Mervyn and Miss Gertrude Chattesworth with an evil eye. He certainly did know something about this Mr. Mervyn, with his beautiful sketches, and his talk about Italy, and his fine music. And his own spectacles had carefully surveyed Miss Chattesworth, and she had passed the ordeal satisfactorily. And Dangerfield thought, 'These people can't possibly suspect the actual state of the case, and who and what this gentleman is to my certain knowledge; and 'tis a pity so fine a young lady should be sacrificed for want of a word spoken in season.' And when he had decided upon a point, it was not easy to make him stop or swerve.