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THE HOUSE BY THE CHURCHYARD
suppose you’ll not let me take my box of instruments out of the
house – mind, it’s worth fi fty pounds; and curse me, if one of our
men dies for want of them in hospital, I’ll indict you both, and
your employer along with you, for murder!’ And so he railed on,
till his voice failed him with a sort of choking, and there was a
humming in his ears, and a sort of numbness in his head, and he
thought he was going to have a fi t; and then up the stairs he went
again, and into his study, and resolved to have Nutter out – and
it fl ashed upon him that he’d say, ‘Pay the rent fi rst;’ and then –
what next? why he’d post him all over Dublin, and Chapelizod,
and Leixlip, where the Lord Lieutenant and Court were.
And down he sat to a sheet of paper, with his left hand
clenched on the table, and his teeth grinding together, as he ransacked his vocabulary for befi tting terms; but alas, his right hand
shook so that his penmanship would not do, in fact, it half frightened him. ‘By my soul! I believe something bad has happened me,’
he muttered, and popped up his window, and looked out, half
dreaming over the church-yard on the park beyond, and the dewy
overhanging hill, all pleasantly lighted up in the morning sun.
While this was going on, little Mrs. Sturk, who on critical occasions took strong resolutions promptly, made a wonderfully
rapid toilet, and let herself quietly out of the street door. She had
thought of Dr. Walsingham; but Sturk had lately, in one of his
imperious freaks of temper, withdrawn his children from the
good doctor’s catechetical class, and sent him besides, one of his
sturdy, impertinent notes – and the poor little woman concluded there was no chance there. She knew little of the rector – of
the profound humility and entire placability of that noble soul.
Well, she took the opposite direction, and turning her back
on the town, walked at her quickest pace toward the Brass Castle.
It was not eight o’clock yet, but the devil had been up betimes
and got through a good deal of his day’s work, as we have seen.
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JOSEPH SHERIDAN LE FANU
The poor little woman had made up her mind t o apply to Dangerfi eld. She had liked his talk at Belmont, where she had met
him; and he enquired about the poor, and listened to some of her
woful tales with a great deal of sympathy; and she knew he was
very rich, and that he appreciated her Barney, and so she trudged
on, full of hope, though I don’t think many people who knew the
world better would have given a great deal for her chance.
Dangerfi eld received the lady very affably, in his little parlour, where having already despatched his early meal, he was
writing letters. He looked hard at her when she came in, and
again when she sat down; and when she had made an end of her
long and dismal tale, he opened a sort of strong box, and took
out a thin quarto and read, turning the leaves rapidly over.
‘Ay, here we have him – Chapelizod – Sturk, Barnabas –
Surgeon, R.I.A., assignee of John Lowe – hey! one gale day, as you
call it, only! – September. How came that? Rent, £40. Why, then,
he owes a whole year’s rent, £40, Ma’am. September, and his days
of grace have expired. He ought to have paid it.’
Here there came a dreadful pause, during which nothing was
heard but the sharp ticking of his watch on the table.
‘Well, Ma’am,’ he said, ‘when a thing comes before me, I say
yes or no promptly. I like your husband, and I’ll lend him the
amount of his rent.’
Poor little Mrs. Sturk jumped up in an ecstasy, and then felt
quite sick, and sat down almost fainting, with a deathlike smile.
‘There’s but one condition I attach, that you tell me truly, my
dear Ma’am, whether you came to me directly or indirectly at his
suggestion.’
No, indeed, she had not; it was all her own thought; she had
not dared to mention it to him, lest he should forbid her, and
now she should be almost afraid to tell him where she had been.
‘He’ll not be very angry, depend on’t, my good Madam; you
did wisely in coming to me. I respect your sense and energy; and
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THE HOUSE BY THE CHURCHYARD
should you hereafter stand in need of a friendly offi ce, I beg
you’ll remember once who is disposed to help you.’
Then he sat down and wrote with a fl ying pen –
‘My dear Sir, – I have just learned from Mrs. Sturk that you
have an immediate concern for forty pounds, to which, I venture
to surmise, will be added some fees, etc. I take leave, therefore,
to send herewith fi fty guineas, which I trust will suffi ce for this
troublesome affair. We can talk hereafter about repayment. Mrs.
Sturk has handed me a memorandum of the advance.
‘Your very obedient, humble servant,
Giles Dangerfi eld.
The Brass Castle, Chapelizod,
‘2nd October, 1767.’
Then poor little Mrs. Sturk was breaking out into a delirium
of gratitude. But he put his hand upon her arm kindly, and with
a little bow and an emphasis, he said –
‘Pray, not a word, my dear Madam. Just write a line;’ and he
slid his desk before her with a sheet of paper on it; ‘and say Mr.
Dangerfi eld has this day handed me a loan of fi fty guineas for
my husband, Doctor Barnabas Sturk. Now sign, if you please, and
add the date. Very good!’
‘I’m afraid you can hardly read it – my fi ngers tremble a little,’ said Mrs. Sturk, with a wild little deprecatory titter, and for
the fi rst time very near crying.
‘’Tis mighty well,’ said Dangerfi eld, politely; and he accompanied the lady with the note and fi fty guineas, made up in a
little rouleau, fast in her hand, across his little garden, and with
– ’A fi ne morning truly,’ and ‘God bless you, Madam,’ and one
of his peculiar smiles, he let her out through his little wicket
on the high road. And so away went Mrs. Sturk, scarce feeling
the ground under her feet; and Giles Dangerfi eld, carrying his
white head very erect, with an approving conscience, and his sil-
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JOSEPH SHERIDAN LE FANU
ver spectacles fl ashing through the leaves of his lilacs and laburnums, returned to his parlour.
Mrs. Sturk, who could hardly keep from running, glided
along at a wonderful rate, wondering now and then how quickly
the whole affair – so awful as it seemed to her in magnitude –
was managed. Dangerfi eld had neither hurried her nor himself,
and yet he despatched the matter and got her away in less than
fi ve minutes.
In little more than a quarter of an hour after, Dr. Sturk descended his door-steps in full costume, and marched down the
street and passed the artillery barrack, from his violated fortress,
as it were, with colours fl ying, drums beating, and ball in mouth.
He paid the money down at Nutter’s table, in the small room at
the Phœnix, where he sat in the morning to receive his rents,
eyeing the agent with a fi xed smirk of hate and triumph, and
telling down each piece on the table with a fi erce clink that had
the ring of a curse in it. Little Nutter met his stare of suppressed
fury with an eye just as steady and malign and a countenance
blackened by disappointment. Not a word was heard but Sturk’s
insolent tone counting the gold at every clang on the table.
Nutter shoved him a receipt across the table, and swept the
gold into his drawer.
‘Go over, Tom,’ he said to the bailiff, in a stern low tone, ‘and
see the men don’t leave the house till the fees are paid.’
And Sturk laughed a very pleasant laugh, you may be sure,
over his shoulder at Nutter, as he went out at the door.
When he was gone Nutter stood up, and turned his face toward the empty grate. I have seen some plain faces once or twice
look so purely spiritual, and others at times so infernal, as to acquire in their homeliness a sort of awful gra ndeur; and from every feature of Nutter’s dark wooden face was projected at that
moment a supernatural glare of baffl ed hatred that dilated to
something almost sublime.
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CHAPTER XLIV.
RELATING HOW, IN THE WATCHES OF
THE NIGHT, A VISION CAME
TO STURK, AND HIS EYES WERE
OPENED
Sturk’s triumph was only momentary. He was in ferocious
spirits, indeed, over the breakfast-table, and bolted quantities of
buttered toast and eggs, swallowed cups of tea, one after the other, almost at a single gulp, all the time gabbling with a truculent
volubility, and every now and then a thump, which made his
spoon jingle in his saucer, and poor, little Mrs. Sturk start, and
whisper, ‘Oh, my dear!’ But after he had done defying and paying
off the whole world, and showing his wife, and half convincing
himself, that he was the cleverest and fi nest fellow alive, a letter
was handed to him, which reminded him, in a dry, short way, of
those most formidable and imminent dangers that rose up, apparently insurmountable before him; and he retired to his study
to ruminate again, and chew the cud of bitter fancy, and to write
letters and tear them to pieces, and, fi nally, as was his wont, after hospital hours, to ride into Dublin, to bore his attorney with
barren inventions and hopeless schemes of extrication.
Sturk came home that night with a hang-dog and jaded look,
and taciturn and half desperate. But he called for whiskey, and
drank a glass of that cordial, and brewed a jug of punch in silence, and swallowed glass after glass, and got up a little, and
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JOSEPH SHERIDAN LE FANU
grew courageous and fl ushed, and prated away, rather loud and
thickly with a hiccough now and then, and got to sleep earlier
than usual.
Somewhere among the ‘small hours’ of the night he awoke
suddenly, recollecting something.
‘I have it,’ cried Sturk, with an oath, and an involuntary kick
at the foot-board, that made his slumbering helpmate bounce.
‘What is it, Barney, dear?’ squalled she, diving under the bedclothes, with her heart in her mouth.
‘It’s like a revelation,’ cried Sturk, with another oath; and
that was all Mrs. Sturk heard of it for some time. But the surgeon was wide awake, and all alive about it, whatever it was. He
sat straight up in the bed, with his lips energetically compressed,
and his eyebrows screwed together, and his shrewd, hard eyes
rolling thoughtfully over the curtains, in the dark, and now and
then an ejaculation of wonder, or a s hort oath, would slowly rise
up, and burst from his lips, like a great bubble from the fermentation.
Sturk’s brain was in a hubbub. He had fi fty plans, all jostling
and clamouring together, like a nursery of unruly imps – ’Take
me’ – ’No, take me’ – ’No, me!’ He had been dreaming like mad,
and his sensorium was still all alive with the images of fi fty
phantasmagoria, fi lled up by imagination and conjecture, and a
strange, painfully-sharp remembrance of things past – all whirling in a carnival of roystering but dismal riot – masks and dice,
laughter, maledictions, and drumming, fair ladies, tipsy youths,
mountebanks, and assassins: tinkling serenades, the fatal clang
and rattle of the dice-box, and long drawn, distant screams.
There was no more use in Sturk’s endeavours to reduce all
this to order, than in reading the Riot Act to a Walpurgis gathering. So he sat muttering unconscious ejaculations, and looking down, as it were, from his balcony, waiting for the uproar to
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THE HOUSE BY THE CHURCHYARD
abate; and when the air did clear and cool a little, there was just
one face that remained impassive, and serenely winked before
his eyes.
When things arrived at this stage, and he had gathered his
recollections about him, and found himself capable of thinking,
being a man of action, up he bounced and struck a light, vaulted
into his breeches, hauled on his stockings, hustled himself into
his roquelaure, and, candle in hand, in slippered feet, glided,
like a ghost, down stairs to the back drawing-room, which, as we
know, was his study.
The night was serene and breathless. The sky had cleared,
and the moonlight slept mistily on the soft slopes of the park.
The landscape was a febrifuge, and cooled and quieted his brain
as he stood before it at his open window, in solitary meditation.
It was not till his slowly wandering eye lighted on the churchyard, with a sort of slight shock, that he again bestirred himself.
There it lay, with its white tombstones and its shadows spread
under him, seeming to say – ’Ay, here I am; the narrow goal of
all your plans. Not one of the glimmering memorials you see
that does not cover what once was a living world of long-headed
schemes, chequered remembrances, and well-kept secrets. Here
lie your brother plotters, all in bond, only some certain inches
below; with their legs straight and their arms by their sides, as
when grim Captain Death called the stern word “attention!”
with their sightless faces and unthinking foreheads turned up
to the moon. Dr. Sturk, there are lots of places for you to choose
among – suit yourself – here – or here – or maybe here.’
And so Sturk closed the window and remembered his dream,
and looked out stealthily but sternly from the door, which was
ajar, and shut it sharply, and with his hands in his breeches’
pockets, took a quick turn to the window; his soul had got into
harness again, and he was busy thinking. Then he snuffed the
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JOSEPH SHERIDAN LE FANU
candle, and then quickened his invention by another brisk turn;
and then he opened his desk, and sat down to write a note.
‘Yes,’ said he to himself, pausing for a minute, with his pen in
his fi ngers, ‘’tis as certain as that I sit here.’
Well, he wrote the note. There was a kind of smile on his
face, which was paler than usual all the while; and he read it
over, and threw himself back in his chair, and then read it over
again, and did not like it, and tore it up.
Then he thought hard for a while, leaning upon his elbow;
and took a couple of great pinches of snuff, and snuffed his
candle again, and, as it were, snuffed his wits, and took up his
pen with a little fl ourish, and dashed off another, and read it,
and liked it, and gave it a little sidelong nod, as though he said,
‘You’ll do;’ and, indeed, considering all the time and thought he
spent upon it, the composition was no great wonder, being, after
all, no more than this: –
‘Dear Sir, – Will you give me the honour of a meeting at my
house this morning, as you pass through the town? I shall remain within till noon; and hope for some minutes’ private discourse with you.
‘Your most obedient, very humble servant,
‘Barnabas Sturk.’
Then he sealed it with a great red seal, large enough for a
patent almost, impressed with the Sturk arms – a boar’s head
for crest, and a fl aunting scroll, with ‘Dentem fulmineum cave’
upon it. Then he peeped again from the window to see if the gray
of the morning had come, for he had left his watch under his
bolster, and longed for the time of action.
Then up stairs went Sturk; and so, with the note, like a loaded pistol, over the chimney, he popped into bed, where he lay
awake in agitating rumination, determined to believe that he
had seen the last of those awful phantoms – those greasy bailiffs
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THE HOUSE BY THE CHURCHYARD
– that smooth, smirking, formidable attorney; and – curse him
– that bilious marshal’s deputy, with the purplish, pimply tinge
about the end of his nose and the tops of his cheeks, that beset
his bed in a moving ring – this one pushing out a writ, and that
rumpling open a parchment deed, and the other fumbling with
his keys, and extending his open palm for the garnish. Avaunt.
He had found out a charm to rout them all, and they sha’n’t now
lay a fi nger on him – a short and sharp way to clear himself; and
so I believe he had.
299
CHAPTER XLV.
CONCERNING A LITTLE REHEARSAL
I N CAPTAIN CLUFFE’S, LODGING, AND
A CERTAIN CONFIDENCE BETWEEN
DR. STURK AND MR. DANGERFIELD
Mrs. Sturk, though very quiet, was an active little body, with
a gentle, anxious face. She was up and about very early, and ran
down to the King’s House, to ask Mrs. Colonel Stafford, who was
very kind to her, and a patroness of Sturk’s, to execute a little
commission for her in Dublin, as she understood she was going
into town that day, and the doctor’s horse had gone lame, and
was in the hands of the farrier. So the good lady undertook it,
and offered a seat in her carriage to Dr. Sturk, should his business call him to town. The carriage would be at the door at halfpast eleven.
And as she trotted home – for her Barney’s breakfast-hour
was drawing nigh – whom should she encounter upon the road,
just outside the town, but their grim spectacled benefactor, Dangerfi eld, accompanied by, and talking in his usual short way to
Nutter, the arch enemy, who, to say truth, looked confoundedly
black and she heard the silver spectacles say, ‘’Tis, you understand, my own thoughts only I speak, Mr. Nutter.’
The fright and the shock of seeing Nutter so near her, made
her salutation a little awkward; and she had, besides, an instinctive consciousness that they were talking about the terrible af-
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