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THE HOUSE BY THE CHURCHYARD
to his nose, a good deal; and Master Dicky Sturk, a grave boy,
who had a side view of his excellency, told his nurse that the lord
lieutenant laughed in church! and was rebuked for that scandalum magnatum with proper horror.
Then the good doctor told them that the blood of the murdered man cried to heaven. That they might comfort themselves
with the assurance that the man of blood would come to judgment. He reminded them of St. Augustan’s awful words, ‘God
hath woollen feet, but iron hands;’ and he told them an edifying
story of Mempricius, the son of Madan, the fourth king of England, then called Britaine, after Brute, who murdered his brother
Manlius, and mark ye this, after twenty years he was devoured by
wild beasts; and another of one Bessus – ’tis related by Plutarch
– who having killed his father, was brought to punishment by
means of swallows, which birds, his guilty conscience persuaded
him, in their chattering language did say to one another, that
Bessus had killed his father, whereupon he bewrayed his horrible crime, and was worthily put to death. ‘The great Martin
Luther,’ he continued, ‘reports such another story of a certain
Almaigne, who, when thieves were in the act of murdering him,
espying a fl ight of crows, cried aloud, «Oh crows, I take you for
witnesses and revengers of my death.» And so it fell out, some
days afterwards, as these same thieves were drinking in an inn, a
fl ight of crows came and lighted on the top of the house; whereupon the thieves, jesting, said to one another, «See, yonder are
those who are to avenge the death of him we despatched t’other
day,» which the tapster overhearing, told forthwith to the magistrate, who arrested them presently, and thereupon they confessed, and were put to death.’ And so he went on, sustaining his
position with strange narratives culled here and there from the
wilderness of his reading.
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JOSEPH SHERIDAN LE FANU
Among the congregation that heard this sermon, at the eccentricities of which I have hinted, but which had, beside, much
that was striking, simply pathetic, and even awful in it, there
glided – shall I say – a phantom, with the light of death, and
the shadows of hell, and the taint of the grave upon him, and
sat among these respectable persons of fl esh and blood – impenetrable – secure – for he knew there were but two in the
church for whom clever disguises were idle and transparent as
the air. The blue-chinned sly clerk, who read the responses, and
quavered the Psalms so demurely, and the white-headed, silverspectacled, upright man, in my Lord Castlemallard’s pew, who
turned over the leaves of his prayer-book so diligently, saw him
as he was, and knew him to be Charles Archer, and one of these
at least, as this dreadful spirit walked, with his light burning in
the noon-day, dogged by inexorable shadows through a desolate
world, in search of peace, he knew to be the slave of his lamp.
372
CHAPTER LVII.
IN WHICH DR. TOOLE AND MR. LOWE
MAKE A VISIT AT THE MILLS, AND
RECOGNISE SOMETHING REMARKABLE
WHILE THERE
After church, Dr. Toole walking up to the Mills, to pay an
afternoon visit to poor little Mrs. Nutter, was overtaken by Mr.
Lowe, the magistrate who brought his tall, iron-gray hunter to a
walk as he reached him.
‘Any tidings of Nutter?’ asked he, after they had, in the old
world phrase, given one another the time of day.
‘Not a word,’ said the doctor; ‘I don’t know what to make of it;
but you know what’s thought. The last place he was seen in was
his own garden. The river was plaguy swollen Friday night, and
just where he stood it’s deep enough, I can tell you; often I bathed
there when I was a boy. He was consumedly in the dumps, poor
fellow; and between ourselves, he was a resolute dog, and atrabilious, and just the fellow to make the jump into kingdom-come if
the maggot bit: and you know his hat was fi shed out of the river a
long way down. They dragged next morning, but – pish! – ’twas
all nonsense and moonshine; why, there was water enough to carry him to Ringsend in an hour. He was a good deal out of sorts,
as I said, latterly – a shabby design, Sir, to thrust him out of my
Lord Castlemallard’s agency; but that’s past and gone; and, besides,
I have reason to know there was some kind of an excitement – a
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JOSEPH SHERIDAN LE FANU
quarrel it could not be – poor Sally Nutter’s too mild and quiet for
that; but a – a – something – a – an – agitation – or a bad news
– or something – just before he went out; and so, poor Nutter,
you see, it looks very like as if he had done something rash.’
Talking thus, they reached the Mills by the river side, not far
from Knockmaroon.
On learning that Toole was about making a call there, Lowe
gave his bridle to a little Chapelizod ragamuffi n, and, dis mounting, accompanied the doctor. Mrs. Nutter was in her bed.
‘Make my service to your mistress,’ said Toole, ‘and say I’ll
look in on her in fi ve minutes, if she’ll admit me.’ And Lowe and
the doctor walked on to the garden, and so side by side down to
the river’s bank.
‘Hey! – look at that,’ said Toole, with a start, in a hard whisper; and he squeezed Lowe’s arm very hard, and looked as if he
saw a snake.
It was the impression in the mud of the same peculiar footprint they had tracked so far in the park. There was a considerable pause, during which Lowe stooped down to examine the
details of the footmark.
‘Hang it – you know – poor Mrs. Nutter – eh?’ said Toole,
and hesitated.
‘We must make a note of that – the thing’s important,’ said
Mr. Lowe, sternly fi xing his gray eye upon Toole.
‘Certainly, Sir,’ said the doctor, bridling; ‘I should not like to
be the man to hit him – you know; but it is remarkable – and,
curse it, Sir, if called on, I’ll speak the truth as straight as you, Sir
– every bit, Sir.’
And he added an oath, and looked very red and heated.
The magistrate opened his pocket-book, took forth the pattern sole, carefully superimposed it, called Toole’s attention, and
said –
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THE HOUSE BY THE CHURCHYARD
‘You see.’
Toole nodded hurriedly; and just then the maid came out to
ask him to see her mistress.
‘I say, my good woman,’ said Lowe; ‘just look here. Whose
foot-print is that – do you know it?’
‘Oh, why, to be sure I do. Isn’t it the master’s brogues?’ she
replied, frightened, she knew not why, after the custom of her
kind.
‘You observe that?’ and he pointed specially to the transverse
line across the heel. ‘Do you know that?’
The woman assented.
‘Who made or mended these shoes?’
‘Bill Heaney, the shoemaker, down in Martin’s-row, there –
’twas he made them, and mended them, too, Sir.’
So he came to a perfect identifi cation, and then an authentication of his paper pattern; then she could say they were certainly the shoes he wore on Friday night – in fact, every other
pair he had were then on the shoe-stand on the lobby. So Lowe
entered the house, and got pen and ink, and continued to question the maid and make little notes; and the other maid knocked
at the parlour door with a message to Toole.
Lowe urged his going; and somehow Toole thought the magistrate suspected him of making signs to his witness, and he
departed ill at ease; and at the foot of the stairs he said to the
woman –
‘You had better go in there – that stupid Lynn is doing her
best to hang your master, by Jove!’
And the woman cried –
‘Oh, dear, bless us!’
Toole was stunned and agitated, and so with his hand on the
clumsy banister he strode up the dark staircase, and round the
little corner in the lobby, to Mrs. Nutter’s door.
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JOSEPH SHERIDAN LE FANU
‘Oh, Madam, ‘twill all come right, be sure,’ said Toole, uncomfortably, responding to a vehement and rambling appeal of poor
Mrs. Nutter’s.
‘And do you really think it will? Oh, doctor, doctor, do you
think it will? The last two or three nights and days – how many
is it? – oh, my poor head – it seems like a month since he went
away.’
‘And where do you think he is? Do you think it’s business?’
‘Of course ‘tis business, Ma’am.’
‘And – and – oh, doctor! – you really think he’s safe?’
‘Of course, Madam, he’s safe – what’s to ail him?’
And Toole rummaged amongst the old medicine phials on
the chimneypiece, turning their labels round and round, but
neither seeing them nor thinking about them, and only muttering to himself with, I’m sorry to say, a curse here and there.
‘You see, my dear Ma’am, you must keep yourself as quiet as
you can, or physic’s thrown away upon you; you really must,’ said
Toole.
‘But doctor,’ pleaded the poor lady, ‘you don’t know – I – I’m
terrifi ed – I – I – I’ll never be the same again,’ and she burst
into hysterical crying.
‘Now, really, Madam – confound it – my dear, good lady –
you see – this will never do’ – he was uncorking and smelling
at the bottles in search of ‘the drops’ – ’and – and – here they
are – and isn’t it better, Ma’am, you should be well and hearty –
here drink this – when – when he comes back – don’t you see
– than – a – a – ’
‘But – oh, I wish I could tell you. She said – she said – the –
the – oh, you don’t know – ’
‘She – who? Who said what?’ cried Toole, lending his ear, for
he never refused a story.
‘Oh! Doctor, he’s gone – I’ll never – never – I know I’ll never
see him again. Tell me he’s not gone – tell me I’ll see him again.’
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THE HOUSE BY THE CHURCHYARD
‘Hang it, can’t she stick to one thing at a time – the poor
woman’s half out of her wits,’ said Toole, provoked; ‘I’ll wager a
dozen of claret there’s more on her mind than she’s told to anyone.’
Before he could bring her round to the subject again, the doctor was called down to Lowe; so he took his leave for th e present;
and after his talk with the magistrate, he did not care to go up
again to poor little Mrs. Nutter; and Moggy was as white as ashes
standing by, for Mr. Lowe had just made her swear to her little
story about the shoes; and Toole walked home to the village with
a heavy heart, and a good deal out of humour.
Toole knew that a warrant would be issued next day against
Nutter. The case against him was black enough. Still, even supposing he had struck those trenchant blows over Sturk’s head, it
did not follow that it was without provocation or in cold blood.
It looked, however, altogether so unpromising, that he would
have been almost relieved to hear that Nutter’s body had been
found drowned in the river.
Still there was a chance that he made good his retreat. If he
had not paid his fare in Charon’s packet-boat, he might, at least,
have crossed the channel in the Trevor or Hillsborough to Holyhead. Then, deuce was in it, if he did not make a fair run for it,
and earth himself snugly somewhere. ‘Twas lighter work then
than now. ‘The old saying at London, among servants,’ writes
that good-natured theatrical wag, Tate Wilkinson, ‘was, “I wish
you were at York!” which the wronged cook has now changed
for, “I wish you were at Jamaica.” Scotland was then imagined by
the cockney as a dreary place, distant almost as the West Indies;
now’(reader, pray note the marvel) ‘an agreeable party may, with
the utmost ease, dine early in the week in Grosvenor Square, and
without discomposure set down at table on Saturday or Sunday
in the new town of Edinburgh!’ From which we learn that mira-
377
JOSEPH SHERIDAN LE FANU
cles of celerity were already accomplishing themselves, and that
the existing generation contemplated their triumphs complacently. But even upon these we have improved, and nowadays,
our whole social organisation is subservient to detection. Cut
your telegraph wires, substitute sail boats for steam, and your old
fair and easy forty-miles-a-day stage-coaches for the train and
the rail, disband your City police and detective organisation, and
make the transit of a letter between London and Dublin a matter of from fi ve days to nearly as many weeks, and compute how
much easier it was then than now for an adventurous highwayman, an absconding debtor, or a pair of fugitive lovers, to make
good their retreat. Slow, undoubtedly, was the fl ight – they did
not run, they walked away; but so was pursuit, and altogether,
without authentic lights and offi cial helps – a matter of postchaises and perplexity, cross-roads and rumour, foundering in a
wild waste of conjecture, or swallowed in the quag of some country inn-yard, where nothing was to be heard, and out of which
there would be no relay of posters to pull you until nine o’clock
next morning.
As Toole debouched from Martin’s-row, on his return, into
the comparative amplitude of the main street of Chapelizod, he
glanced curiously up to Sturk’s bed-room windows. There wer e
none of the white signals of death there. So he ascended the door
step, and paid a visit – of curiosity, I must say – and looked on
the snorting image of his old foe, and the bandaged head, spellbound and dreamless, that had machinated so much busy mischief against his own medical sovereignty and the rural administration of Nutter.
As Toole touched his pulse, and saw him swallow a spoonful of chicken broth, and parried poor Mrs. Sturk’s eager quivering pleadings for his life with kind though cautious evasions,
he rightly judged that the fi gure that lay there was more than
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THE HOUSE BY THE CHURCHYARD
half in the land of ghosts already – that the enchanter who met
him in the Butcher’s Wood, and whose wand had traced those
parallel indentures in his skull, had not only exorcised for ever
the unquiet spirit of intrigue, but wound up the tale of his days.
It was true that he was never more to step from that bed, and
that his little children would, ere many days, be brought there
by kindly, horror-loving maids, to look their last on ‘the poor
master,’ and kiss awfully his cold stern mouth before the coffi n
lid was screwed down, and the white-robed image of their father
hidden away for ever from their sight.
379
CHAPTER LVIII.
IN WHICH ONE OF LITTLE BOPEEP’S
SHEEP COMES HOME AGAIN, AND
VARIOUS THEORIES ARE ENTERTAINED
RESPECTING CHARLES NUTTER AND
LIEUTENANT PUDDOCK
And just on Monday morning, in the midst of this hurlyburly of conjecture, who should arrive, of all the people in the
world, and re-establish himself in his old quarters, but Dick Devereux. The gallant captain was more splendid and handsome
than ever. But both his spirits and his habits had suffered. He
had quarrelled with his aunt, and she was his bread and butter – ay, buttered on both sides. How lightly these young fellows quarrel with the foolish old worshippers who lay their gold,
frankincense, and myrrh, at the feet of the handsome thankless
idols. They think it all independence and high spirit, whereas we
know it is nothing but a little egotistical tyranny, that unconsciously calculates even in the heyday of its indulgence upon the
punctual return of the penitent old worshipper, with his or her
votive offerings.
Perhaps the gipsy had thought better of it, and was already
sorry he had not kept the peace. At all events, though his toilet
and wardrobe were splendid – for fi ne fellows in his plight deny
themselves nothing – yet morally he was seedy, and in temper
soured. His duns had found him out, and pursued him i n wrath
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