The House by the Churchyard

by J. Sheridan le Fanu

  And thus this heavy night wore over; and the wind, which began to rise as the hours passed, made sounds full of sad untranslatable meaning in the ears of the watchers.

  Poor Mrs. Sturk meanwhile, in the House by the Church–yard, sat listening and wondering, and plying her knitting–needles in the drawing–room. When the hour of her Barney’s expected return had passed some time, she sent down to the barrack, and then to the club, and then on to the King’s House, with her service to Mrs. Stafford, to enquire, after her spouse. But her first and her second round of enquiries, despatched at the latest minute at which she was likely to find any body out of bed to answer them, were altogether fruitless. And the lights went out in one house after another, and the Phoenix shut its doors, and her own servants were for hours gone to bed; and the little town of Chapelizod was buried in the silence of universal slumber. And poor Mrs. Sturk still sat in her drawing–room, more and more agitated and frightened.

  But her missing soldier did not turn up, and Leonora sat and listened hour after hour. No sound of return, not even the solemn clank and fiery snort of the fiend–horse under her window, or the 'ho–lo, ho–la—my life, my love!' of the phantom rider, cheated her with a momentary hope.

  Poor Mrs. Sturk! She raised the window a few inches, that she might the better hear the first distant ring of his coming on the road. She forgot he had not his horse that night, and was but a pedestrian. But somehow the night–breeze through the aperture made a wolfish howling and sobbing, that sounded faint and far away, and had a hateful character of mingled despair and banter in it.

  She said every now and then aloud, to reassure herself—'What a noise the wind makes to be sure!' and after a while she opened the window wider. But her candle flared, and the flame tossed wildly about, and the perplexed lady feared it might go out absolutely. So she shut down the window altogether; for she could not bear the ill–omened baying any longer.

  So it grew to be past two o’clock, and she was afraid that Barney would be very angry with her for sitting up, should he return.

  She went to bed, therefore, where she lay only more feverish—conjecturing, and painting frightful pictures, till she heard the crow of the early village cock, and the caw of the jackdaw wheeling close to the eaves as he took wing in the gray of the morning to show her that the business of a new day had commenced; and yet Barney had not returned.

  Not long after seven o’clock, Dr. Toole, with Juno, Cæsar, Dido, and Sneak at his heels, paid his half–friendly, half–professional visit at the Mills.

  Poor little Mrs. Nutter was much better—quiet for her was everything, packed up, of course, with a little physic; and having comforted her, as well as he was able, he had a talk with Moggy in the hall, and all about Nutter’s disappearance, and how Mrs. Macan saw him standing by the river’s brink, and that was the last anyone near the house had seen of him; and a thought flashed upon Toole, and he was very near coming out with it, but checked himself, and only said—

  'What hat had he on?'

  So she told him.

  'And was his name writ in it, or how was it marked?'

  'Two big letters—a C and an N.'

  'I see; and do you remember any other mark you’d know it by?'

  'Well, yes; I stitched the lining only last month, with red silk, and that’s how I remember the letters.'

  'I know; and are you sure it was that hat he had on?'

  'Certain sure—why, there’s all the rest;' and she conned them over, as they hung on their pegs on the rack before them.

  'Now, don’t let the mistress be downhearted—keep her up, Moggy, do you mind. I told her the master was with Lord Castlemallard since yesterday evening, on business, and don’t you say anything else; keep her quiet, do ye mind, and humour her.'

  And away went Toole, at a swift pace, to the town again, and entered the barrack, and asked to see the adjutant, and then to look at the hat the corporal had fished up by 'Bloody Bridge;' and, by Jupiter! his heart gave a couple of great bounces, and he felt himself grow pale—they were the identical capitals, C N, and the clumsy red silk stitching in the lining.

  Toole was off forthwith, and had a fellow dragging the river before three–quarters of an hour.

  Dr. Walsingham, returning from an early ride to Island Bridge, saw this artist at work, with his ropes and great hooks, at the other side of the river; and being a man of enquiring mind, and never having witnessed the process before, he cried out to him, after some moments lost in conjecture—

  'My good man, what are you fishing for?'

  'A land–agent,' answered Isaac Walton.

  'A land–agent?' repeated the rector, misdoubting his ears.

  The saturnine angler made no answer.

  'And has a gentleman been drowned here?' he persisted.

  The man only looked at him across the stream, and nodded.

  'Eh! and his name, pray?'

  'Old Nutter, of the Mills,' he replied.

  The rector made a woeful ejaculation, and stared at the careless operator, who had a pipe in his mouth the while, which made him averse from conversation. He would have liked to ask him more questions, but he was near the village, and refrained himself; and he met Toole at the corner of the bridge who, leaning on the shoulder of the rector’s horse, gave him the sad story in full.

  CHAPTER LII.

  CONCERNING A ROULEAU OF GUINEAS AND THE CRACK OF A PISTOL.

  Dangerfield went up the river that morning with his rod and net, and his piscatory fidus Achates, Irons, at his elbow. It was a nice gray sky, but the clerk was unusually silent even for him; and the sardonic piscator appeared inscrutably amused as he looked steadily upon the running waters. Once or twice the spectacles turned full upon the clerk, over Dangerfield’s shoulder, with a cynical light, as if he were on the point of making one of his ironical jokes; but he turned back again with a little whisk, the jest untold, whatever it was, to the ripple and the fly, and the coy gray troutlings.

  At last, Dangerfield said over his shoulder, with the same amused look, 'Do you remember Charles Archer?'

  Irons turned pale, and looked down embarrassed as it seemed, and began plucking at a tangled piece of tackle, without making any answer.

  'Hey? Irons,' persisted Dangerfield, who was not going to let him off.

  'Yes, I do,' answered the man surlily; 'I remember him right well; but I’d rather not, and I won’t speak of him, that’s all.'

  'Well, Charles Archer’s here, we’ve seen him, haven’t we? and just the devil he always was,' said Dangerfield with a deliberate chuckle of infinite relish, and evidently enjoying the clerk’s embarrassment as he eyed him through his spectacles obliquely.

  'He has seen you, too, he says; and thinks you have seen him, hey?' and Dangerfield chuckled more and more knowingly, and watched his shiftings and sulkings with a pleasant grin, as he teased and quizzed him in his own enigmatical way.

  'Well, supposing I did see him,' said Irons, looking up, returning Dangerfield’s comic glance with a bold and lowering stare; 'and supposing he saw me, so long as we’ve no business one of another, and never talks like, nor seems to remember—I think 'tisnt, no ways, no one’s business—that’s what I say.'

  'True, Irons, very true; you, I, and Sturk—the doctor I mean—are cool fellows, and don’t want for nerve; but I think, don’t you? we’re afraid of Charles Archer, for all that.'

  'Fear or no fear, I don’t want to talk to him nor of him, no ways,' replied the clerk, grimly, and looking as black as a thunder–cloud.

  'Nor I neither, but you know he’s here, and what a devil he is; and we can’t help it,' replied Dangerfield, very much tickled.

  The clerk only looked through his nearly closed eyes, and with the same pale and surly aspect toward the point to which Dangerfield’s casting line had floated, and observed—

  'You’ll lose them flies, Sir.'

  'Hey?' said Dangerfield, and made another cast further into the stream.

  'Whatever he may seem,
and I think I know him pretty well,' he continued in the same sprightly way, 'Charles Archer would dispose of each of us—you understand—without a scruple, precisely when and how best suited his convenience. Now doctor Sturk has sent him a message which I know will provoke him, for it sounds like a threat. If he reads it so, rely on’t, he’ll lay Sturk on his back, one way or another, and I’m sorry for him, for I wished him well; but if he will play at brag with the devil I can’t help him.'

  'I’m a man that holds his tongue; I never talks none, even in my liquor. I’m a peaceable man, and no bully, and only wants to live quiet,' said Irons in a hurry.

  'A disciple of my school, you’re right, Irons, that’s my way; I never name Charles except to the two or three who meet him, and then only when I can’t help it, just as you do; fellows of that kidney I always take quietly, and I’ve prospered. Sturk would do well to reconsider his message. Were I in his shoes, I would not eat an egg or a gooseberry, or drink a glass of fair water from that stream, while he was in the country, for fear of poison! curse him! and to think of Sturk expecting to meet him, and walk with him, after such a message, together, as you and I do here. Do you see that tree?'

  It was a stout poplar, just a yard away from Irons’s shoulder; and as Dangerfield pronounced the word 'tree,' his hand rose, and the sharp report of a pocket–pistol half–deafened Irons’s ear.

  'I say,' said Dangerfield, with a startling laugh, observing Irons wince, and speaking as the puff of smoke crossed his face, 'he’d lodge a bullet in the cur’s heart, as suddenly as I’ve shot that tree;' the bullet had hit the stem right in the centre, 'and swear he was going to rob him.'

  Irons eyed him with a livid squint, but answered nothing. I think he acquiesced in Dangerfield’s dreadful estimate of Charles Archer’s character.

  'But we must give the devil his due; Charles can do a handsome thing sometimes. You shall judge. It seems he saw you, and you him—here, in this town, some months ago, and each knew the other, and you’ve seen him since, and done likewise; but you said nothing, and he liked your philosophy, and hopes you’ll accept of this, which from its weight I take to be a little rouleau of guineas.'

  During this speech Irons seemed both angry and frightened, and looked darkly enough before him on the water; and his lips were moving, as if in a running commentary upon it all the while.

  When Dangerfield put the little roll in his hand, Irons looked suspicious and frightened, and balanced it in his palm, as if he had thoughts of chucking it from him, as though it were literally a satanic douceur. But it is hard to part with money, and Irons, though he still looked cowed and unhappy, put the money into his breeches' pocket, and he made a queer bow, and he said—

  'You know, Sir, I never asked a farthing.'

  'Ay, so he says,' answered Dangerfield.

  'And,' with an imprecation, Irons added, 'I never expected to be a shilling the better of him.'

  'He knows it; and now you have the reason why I mentioned Charles Archer; and having placed that gold in your hand, I’ve done with him, and we sha’n’t have occasion, I hope, to name his name for a good while to come,' said Dangerfield.

  Then came a long refreshing silence, while Dangerfield whipt the stream with his flies. He was not successful; but he did not change his flies. It did not seem to trouble him; indeed, mayhap he did not perceive it. And after fully twenty minutes thus unprofitably employed, he suddenly said, as if in continuation of his last sentence—

  'And, respecting that money you’ll use caution; a hundred guineas is not always so honestly come by. Your wife drinks—suppose a relative in England had left you that gold, by will, 'twould be best not to let her know; but give it to Dr. Walsingham, secretly, to keep for you, telling him the reason. He’ll undertake the trust and tell no one—that’s your plan—mind ye.'

  Then came another long silence, and Dangerfield applied himself in earnest to catch some trout, and when he had accomplished half–a–dozen, he tired altogether of the sport, and followed by Irons, he sauntered homewards, where astounding news awaited him.

  CHAPTER LIII.

  RELATING AFTER WHAT FASHION DR. STURK CAME HOME.

  As Dangerfield, having parted company with Irons at the corner of the bridge, was walking through the town, with his rod over his shoulder and his basket of troutlings by his side, his attention was arrested by a little knot of persons in close and earnest talk at the barrack–gate, nearly opposite Sturk’s house.

  He distinguished at a glance the tall grim figure of Oliver Lowe, of Lucan, the sternest and shrewdest magistrate who held the commission for the county of Dublin in those days, mounted on his iron–gray hunter, and holding the crupper with his right hand, as he leaned toward a ragged, shaggy little urchin, with naked shins, whom he was questioning, as it seemed closely. Half–a–dozen gaping villagers stood round.

  There was an indescribable something about the group which indicated horror and excitement. Dangerfield quickened his pace, and arrived just as the adjutant rode out.

  Saluting both as he advanced, Dangerfield asked—

  'Nothing amiss, I hope, gentlemen?'

  'The surgeon here’s been found murdered in the park!' answered Lowe.

  'Hey—Sturk?' said Dangerfield.

  'Yes,' said the adjutant: 'this boy here says he’s found him in the Butcher’s Wood.'

  'The Butcher’s Wood!—why, what the plague brought him there?' exclaimed Dangerfield.

  ''Tis his straight road from Dublin across the park,' observed the magistrate.

  'Oh!—I thought 'twas the wood by Lord Mountjoy’s,' said Dangerfield; 'and when did it happen?'

  'Pooh!—some time between yesterday afternoon and half an hour ago,' answered Mr. Lowe.

  'Nothing known?' said Dangerfield. ''Twill be a sad hearing over the way;' and he glared grimly with a little side–nod at the doctor’s house.

  Then he fell, like the others, to questioning the boy. He could tell them but little—only the same story over and over. Coming out of town, with tea and tobacco, a pair of shoes, and a bottle of whisky, for old Mrs. Tresham—in the thick of the wood, among brambles, all at once he lighted on the body. He could not mistake Dr. Sturk; he wore his regimentals; there was blood about him; he did not touch him, nor go nearer than a musket’s length to him, and being frightened at the sight in that lonely place he ran away and right down to the barrack, where he made his report.

  Just then out came Sergeant Bligh, with his men—two of them carrying a bier with a mattress and cloaks thereupon. They formed, and accompanied by the adjutant, at quick step marched through the town for the park. Mr. Lowe accompanied them, and in the park–lane they picked up the ubiquitous Doctor Toole, who joined the party.

  Dangerfield walked a while beside the adjutant’s horse; and, said he—

  'I’ve had as much walking as I can well manage this morning, and you don’t want for hands, so I’ll turn back when I’ve said just a word in your ear. You know, Sir, funerals are expensive, and I happen to know that poor Sturk was rather pressed for money—in fact, 'twas only the day before yesterday I myself lent him a trifle. So will you, through whatever channel you think best, let poor Mrs. Sturk know that she may draw upon me for a hundred pounds, if she requires it?'

  'Thank you, Mr. Dangerfield; I certainly shall.'

  And so Dangerfield lifted his hat to the party and fell behind, and came to a stand still, watching them till they disappeared over the brow of the hill.

  When he reached his little parlour in the Brass Castle, luncheon was upon the table. But he had not much of an appetite, and stood at the window, looking upon the river with his hands in his pockets, and a strange pallid smile over his face, mingling with the light of the silver spectacles.

  'When Irons hears of this,' he said, 'he’ll come to my estimate of Charles Archer, and conclude he has had a finger in that pretty pie; 'twill frighten him.'

  And somehow Dangerfield looked a little bit queer himself, and he drank off two small gla
sses, such as folks then used in Ireland—of Nantz; and setting down the glass, he mused—

  'A queer battle life is; ha, ha! Sturk laid low—the wretched fool! Widow—yes; children—ay. Charles! Charles! if there be a reckoning after death, your score’s an ugly one. I’m tired of playing my part in this weary game of defence. Irons and I remain with the secret between us. Glasscock had his fourth of it, and tasted death. Then we three had it; and Sturk goes next; and now I and Irons—Irons and I—which goes first?' And he fell to whistling slowly and dismally, with his hands in his breeches' pockets, looking vacantly through his spectacles on the ever–running water, an emblem of the eternal change and monotony of life.

  In the meantime the party, with Tim Brian, the bare–shanked urchin, still in a pale perspiration, for guide, marched on, all looking ahead, in suspense, and talking little.

  On they marched, till they got into the bosky shadow of the close old whitethorn and brambles, and there, in a lonely nook, the small birds hopping on the twigs above, sure enough, on his back, in his regimentals, lay the clay–coloured image of Sturk, some blood, nearly black now, at the corners of his mouth, and under his stern brows a streak of white eye–ball turned up to the sky.

  There was a pool of blood under his pomatumed, powdered, and curled head, more under his right arm, which was slightly extended, with the open hand thrown palm upwards, as if appealing to heaven.

  Toole examined him.

  'No pulse, by Jove! Quiet there! don’t stir!' Then he clapped his ear on Sturk’s white Marseilles vest.

  'Hush!' and a long pause. Then Toole rose erect, but still on his knees, 'Will you be quiet there? I think there’s some little action still; only don’t talk, or shift your feet; and just—just, do be quiet!'

  Then Toole rose to his knees again, with a side glance fixed on the face of Sturk, with a puzzled and alarmed look. He evidently did not well know what to make of it. Then he slipped his hand within his vest, and between his shirt and his skin.

  'If he’s dead, he’s not long so. There’s warmth here. And see, get me a pinch or two of that thistle–down, d’ye see?'