Delphi Complete Works of Sheridan Le Fanu

by J. Sheridan le Fanu

  ‘And amen with all my heart,’ said Miss Mag, gaily; ‘’tis an innocent creature — poor Dan; though he’d be none the worse of a little more lace to his hat, and a little less Latin in his head. But see here, doctor, here’s my poor old goose of a mother (and she kissed her cheek) as sick as a cat in a tub.’

  And she whispered something in Toole’s wig, and they both laughed uproariously.

  ‘I would not take five guineas and tell you what she says,’ cried Toole.

  ‘Don’t mind the old blackguard, mother dear!’ screamed Magnolia, dealing Æsculapius a lusty slap on the back; and the cook at that moment knocking at the door, called off the young lady to the larder, who cried over her shoulder as she lingered a moment at the door— ‘Now, send her something, Toole, for my sake, to do her poor heart good. Do you mind — for faith and troth the dear old soul is sick and sad; and I won’t let that brute, Sturk, though he does wear our uniform, next or near her.’

  ‘Well, ’tisn’t for me to say, eh? — and now she’s gone, — just let me try.’ And he took her pulse.

  CHAPTER XXX.

  CONCERNING A CERTAIN WOMAN IN BLACK.

  And Toole, holding her stout wrist, felt her pulse and said— ‘Hem — I see — and— ‘

  And so he ran on with half-a-dozen questions, and at the end of his catechism said, bluntly enough —

  ‘I tell you what it is, Mrs. Mack, you have something on your mind, my dear Madam, and till it’s off, you’ll never be better.’

  Poor Mrs. Mack opened her eyes, and made a gesture of amazed disclaimer, with her hands palm upwards. It was all affectation.

  ‘Pish!’ said Toole, who saw the secret almost in his grasp; ‘don’t tell me, my dear Madam — don’t you think I know my business by this time o’ day? I tell you again you’d better ease your mind — or take my word for it you’ll be sorry too late. How would you like to go off like poor old Peggy Slowe — eh? There’s more paralysis, apoplexy, heart-diseases, and lunacy, caused in one year by that sort of silly secrecy and moping, than by — hang it! My dear Madam,’ urged Toole, breaking into a bold exhortation on seeing signs of confusion and yielding in his fat patient— ‘you’d tell me all that concerns your health, and know that Tom Toole would put his hand in the fire before he’d let a living soul hear a symptom of your case; and here’s some paltry little folly or trouble that I would not — as I’m a gentleman — give a halfpenny to hear, and you’re afraid to tell me — though until you do, neither I, nor all the doctors in Europe, can do you a ha’porth o’ good.’

  ‘Sure I’ve nothing to tell, doctor dear,’ whimpered poor Mrs. Mack, dissolving into her handkerchief.

  ‘Look ye — there’s no use in trying to deceive a doctor that knows what he’s about.’ Toole was by this time half mad with curiosity. ‘Don’t tell me what’s on your mind, though I’d be sorry you thought I wasn’t ready and anxious, to help you with my best and most secret services; but I confess, my dear Ma’am, I’d rather not hear — reserve it for some friend who has your confidence — but ’tis plain from the condition you’re in’ — and Toole closed his lips hard, and nodded twice or thrice— ‘you have not told either the major or your daughter; and tell it you must to some one, or take the consequences.’

  ‘Oh! Dr. Toole, I am in trouble — and I’d like to tell you; but won’t you — won’t you promise me now, on your solemn honour, if I do, you won’t tell a human being?’ blubbered the poor matron.

  ‘Conscience, honour, veracity, Ma’am — but why should I say any more — don’t you know me, my dear Mrs. Mack?’ said Toole in a hot fidget, and with all the persuasion of which he was master.

  ‘Indeed, I do — and I’m in great trouble — and sometimes think no one can take me out of it,’ pursued she.

  ‘Come, come, my dear Madam, is it money?’ demanded Toole.

  ‘Oh! no — it’s— ’tis a dreadful — that is, there is money in it — but oh! dear Doctor Toole, there’s a frightful woman, and I don’t know what to do: and I sometimes thought you might be able to help me — you’re so clever — and I was going to tell you, but I was ashamed — there now, it’s out,’ and she blubbered aloud.

  ‘What’s out?’ said Toole, irritated. ‘I can’t stop here all day, you know; and if you’d rather I’d go, say so.’

  ‘Oh no, but the major, nor Maggy does not know a word about it; and so, for your life, don’t tell them; and — and — here it is.’

  And from her pocket she produced a number of the Freeman’s Journal, five or six weeks old and a great deal soiled.

  ‘Read it, read it, doctor dear, and you’ll see.’

  ‘Read all this! thank you, Ma’am; I read it a month ago,’ said the doctor gruffly.

  ‘Oh! no — this — only there — you see — here,’ and she indicated a particular advertisement, which we here reprint for the reader’s instruction; and thus it ran —

  “Mary Matchwell’s most humble Respects attend the Nobility and Gentry. She has the Honour to acquaint them that she transacts all Business relative to Courtship and Marriage, with the utmost Dispatch and Punctuality. She has, at a considerable Expense, procured a complete List of all the unmarried Persons of both Sexes in this Kingdom, with an exact Account of their Characters, Fortunes, Ages, and Persons. Any Lady or Gentleman, by sending a Description of the Husband or Wife they would chuse, shall be informed where such a One is to be had, and put in a Method for obtaining him, or her, in the speediest Manner, and at the smallest Expense. Mrs. Matchwell’s Charges being always proportioned to the Fortunes of the Parties, and not to be paid till the Marriage takes place. She hopes the Honour and Secrecy she will observe in her Dealings, will encourage an unfortunate Woman, who hath experienced the greatest Vicissitudes of Life, as will be seen in her Memoirs, which are shortly to be published under the Title of ‘Fortune’s Football.’ All Letters directed to M. M., and sent Post paid to the Office where this Paper is published, shall be answered with Care.”’

  ‘Yes, yes, I remember that — a cheating gipsy — why, it’s going on still — I saw it again yesterday, I think — a lying jade! — and this is the rogue that troubles you?’ said Toole with his finger on the paragraph, as the paper lay on the table.

  ‘Give it to me, doctor, dear. I would not have them see it for the world — and — and — oh! doctor — sure you wouldn’t tell.’

  ‘Augh, bother! — didn’t I swear my soul, Ma’am; and do you think I’m going to commit a perjury about “Mary Matchwell” — phiat!’

  Well, with much ado, and a great circumbendibus, and floods of tears, and all sorts of deprecations and confusions, out came the murder at last.

  Poor Mrs. Mack had a duty to perform by her daughter. Her brother was the best man in the world; but what with ‘them shockin’ forfitures’ in her father’s time (a Jacobite granduncle had forfeited a couple of town-lands, value £37 per annum, in King William’s time, and to that event, in general terms, she loved to refer the ruin of her family), and some youthful extravagances, his income, joined to hers, could not keep the dear child in that fashion and appearance her mother had enjoyed before her, and people without pedigree or solid pretension of any sort, looked down upon her, just because they had money (she meant the Chattesworths), and denied her the position which was hers of right, and so seeing no other way of doing the poor child justice, she applied to ‘M. M.’

  ‘To find a husband for Mag, eh?’ said Toole.

  ‘No, no. Oh, Dr. Toole, ’twas— ’twas for me,’ sobbed poor Mrs. Mack. Toole stared for a moment, and had to turn quickly about, and admire some shell-work in a glass box over the chimneypiece very closely, and I think his stout short back was shaking tremulously as he did so; and, when he turned round again, though his face was extraordinarily grave, it was a good deal redder than usual.

  ‘Well, my dear Madam, and where’s the great harm in that, when all’s done?’ said Toole.

  ‘Oh, doctor, I had the unpardonable wakeness, whatever come over me
, to write her two letters on the subject, and she’ll print them, and expose me, unless,’ — here she rolled herself about in an agony of tears, and buried her fat face in the back of the chair.

  ‘Unless you give her money, I suppose,’ said Toole. ‘There’s what invariably comes of confidential communications with female enchanters and gipsies! And what do you propose to do?’

  ‘I don’t know — what can I do? She got the £5 I borrowed from my brother, and he can’t lend me more; and I can’t tell him what I done with that; and she has £3 10s. I — I raised on my best fan, and the elegant soiclainet, you know — I bought it of Knox & Acheson, at the Indian Queen, in Dame-street;’ and his poor patient turned up her small tearful blue eyes imploringly to his face, and her goodnatured old features were quivering all over with tribulation.

  ‘And Mag knows nothing of all this?’ said Toole.

  ‘Oh, not for the wide world,’ whispered the matron, in great alarm. ‘Whisht! is that her coming?’

  ‘No; there she is across the street talking to Mrs. Nutter. Listen to me: I’ll manage that lady, Mrs. Mary — what’s her name? — Matchwell. I’ll take her in hands, and — whisper now.’

  So Toole entered into details, and completed an officious little conspiracy; and the upshot of it was that Mrs. Mack, whenever M. M. fixed a day for her next extortionate visit, was to apprise the doctor, who was to keep in the way; and, when she arrived, the good lady was just to send across to him for some ‘peppermint drops,’ upon which hint Toole himself would come slily over, and place himself behind the arras in the bedroom, whither, for greater seclusion and secrecy, she was to conduct the redoubted Mary Matchwell, who was thus to be overheard, and taken by the clever doctor in the act; and then and there frightened not only into a surrender of the documents, but of the money she had already extracted, and compelled to sign such a confession of her guilt as would effectually turn the tables, and place her at the mercy of the once more happy Macnamara.

  The doctor was so confident, and the scheme, to the sanguine Celtic imagination of the worthy matron, appeared so facile of execution and infallible of success, that I believe she would at that moment have embraced, and even kissed, little Toole, in the exuberance of her gratitude, had that learned physician cared for such fooleries.

  The fact is, however, that neither the doctor nor his patient quite understood Mrs. Matchwell or her powers, nor had the least inkling of the marvellous designs that were ripening in her brain, and involving the fate of more than one of the good easy people of Chapelizod, against whom nobody dreamed a thunderbolt was forging.

  So the doctor, being a discreet man, only shook her cordially by the hand, at his departure, patting her encouragingly at the same time, on her fat shoulder, and with a sly grin and a wink, and a wag of his head — offering to ‘lay fifty,’ that between them ‘they’d be too hard for the witch.’

  CHAPTER XXXI.

  BEING A SHORT HISTORY OF THE GREAT BATTLE OF BELMONT THAT LASTED FOR SO MANY DAYS, WHEREIN THE BELLIGERENTS SHOWED SO MUCH CONSTANCY AND VALOUR, AND SOMETIMES ONE SIDE AND SOMETIMES T’OTHER WAS VICTORIOUS.

  So jolly old General Chattesworth was away to Scarborough, and matters went by no means pleasantly at Belmont; for there was strife between the ladies. Dangerfield — cunning fellow — went first to Aunt Becky with his proposal; and Aunt Becky liked it — determined it should prosper, and took up and conducted the case with all her intimidating energy and ferocity. But Gertrude’s character had begun to show itself of late in new and marvellous lights, and she fought her aunt with cool, but invincible courage; and why should she marry, and above all, why marry that horrid, grim old gentleman, Mr. Dangerfield. No, she had money enough of her own to walk through life in maiden meditation, fancy free, without being beholden to anybody for a sixpence. Why, Aunt Rebecca herself had never married, and was she not all the happier of her freedom? Aunt Rebecca tried before the general went away, to inflame and stir him up upon the subject. But he had no capacity for coercion. She almost regretted she had made him so very docile. He would leave the matter altogether to his daughter. So Aunt Rebecca, as usual, took, as we have said, the carriage of the proceedings.

  Since the grand eclaircissement had taken place between Mervyn and Gertrude Chattesworth, they met with as slight and formal a recognition as was possible, consistently with courtesy. Puddock had now little to trouble him upon a topic which had once cost him some uneasiness, and Mervyn acquiesced serenely in the existing state of things, and seemed disposed to be ‘sweet upon’ pretty Lilias Walsingham, if that young lady had allowed it; but her father had dropped hints about his history and belongings which surrounded him in her eyes with a sort of chill and dismal halo. There was something funeste and mysterious even in his beauty; and her spirits faltered and sank in his presence. Something of the same unpleasant influence, too, or was it fancy, she thought his approach seemed now to exercise upon Gertrude also, and that she, too, was unaccountably chilled and darkened by his handsome, but ill-omened presence.

  Aunt Becky was not a woman to be soon tired, or even daunted. The young lady’s resistance put her upon her mettle, and she was all the more determined, that she suspected her niece had some secret motive for rejecting a partner in some respects so desirable.

  Sometimes, it is true, Gertrude’s resistance flagged; but this was only the temporary acquiescence of fatigue, and the battle was renewed with the old spirit on the next occasion, and was all to be fought over again. At breakfast there was generally, as I may say, an affair of picquets, and through the day a dropping fire, sometimes rising to a skirmish; but the social meal of supper was generally the period when, for the most part, these desultory hostilities blazed up into a general action. The fortune of war as usual shifted. Sometimes Gertrude left the parlour and effected a retreat to her bedroom. Sometimes it was Aunt Rebecca’s turn to slam the door, and leave the field to her adversary. Sometimes, indeed, Aunt Becky thought she had actually finished the exhausting campaign, when her artillery had flamed and thundered over the prostrate enemy for a full half hour unanswered; but when, at the close of the cannonade she marched up, with drums beating and colours flying, to occupy the position and fortify her victory, she found, much to her mortification, that the foe had only, as it were, lain down to let her shrapnels and canister fly over, and the advance was arrested with the old volley and hurrah. And there they were — not an inch gained — peppering away at one another as briskly as ever, with the work to begin all over again.

  ‘You think I have neither eyes nor understanding; but I can see, young lady, as well as another; ay, Madam, I’ve eyes, and some experience too, and ’tis my simple duty to my brother, and to the name I bear, not to mention you, niece, to prevent, if my influence or authority can do it, the commission of a folly which, I can’t but suspect, may possibly be meditated, and which, even you, niece, would live very quickly to repent.’

  Gertrude did not answer; she only looked a little doubtfully at her aunt, with a gaze of deep, uneasy enquiry. That sort of insinuation seemed to disconcert her. But she did not challenge her aunt to define her meaning, and the attack was soon renewed at another point.

  When Gertrude walked down to the town, to the King’s House, or even to see Lily, at this side of the bridge, Dominick, the footman, was ordered to trudge after her — a sort of state she had never used in her little neighbourly rambles — and Gertrude knew that her aunt catechised that confidential retainer daily. Under this sort of management, the haughty girl winced and fretted, and finally sulked, grew taciturn and sarcastic, and shut herself up altogether within the precincts of Belmont.

  CHAPTER XXXII.

  NARRATING HOW LIEUTENANT PUDDOCK AND CAPTAIN DEVEREUX BREWED A BOWL OF PUNCH, AND HOW THEY SANG AND DISCOURSED TOGETHER.

  If people would only be content with that which is, let well alone, and allow to-day to resemble yesterday and tomorrow to day, the human race would be much fatter at no greater cost, and sleep remarkably well. But so it is tha
t the soul of man can no more rest here than the sea or the wind. We are always plotting against our own repose, and as no man can stir in a crowd without disturbing others, it happens that even the quietest fellows are forced to fight for their status quo, and sometimes, though they would not move a finger or sacrifice a button for the chance of ‘getting on,’ are sulkily compelled to cut capers like the rest. Nature will have it so, and has no end of resources, and will not suffer even the sluggish to sit still, but if nothing else will do, pins a cracker to their skirts, in the shape of a tender passion, or some other whim, and so sets them bouncing in their own obese and clumsy way, to the trouble of others as well as their own discomfort. It is a hard thing, but so it is; the comfort of absolute stagnation is nowhere permitted us. And such, so multifarious and intricate our own mutual dependencies, that it is next to impossible to marry a wife, or to take a house for the summer at Brighton, or to accomplish any other entirely simple, goodhumoured, and selfish act without affecting, not only the comforts, but the reciprocal relations of dozens of other respectable persons who appear to have nothing on earth to say to us or our concerns. In this respect, indeed, society resembles a pyramid of potatoes, in which you cannot stir one without setting others, in unexpected places, also in motion. Thus it was, upon very slight motives, the relations of people in the little world of Chapelizod began to shift and change considerably, and very few persons made a decided move of any sort without affecting or upsetting one or more of his neighbours.

  Among other persons unexpectedly disturbed just now was our friend Captain Devereux. The letter reached him at night. Little Puddock walked to his lodgings with him from the club, where he had just given a thplendid rethitation from Shakespeare, and was, as usual after such efforts, in a high state of excitement, and lectured his companion, for whom, by-the-bye, he cherished a boyish admiration, heightened very considerably by his not quite understanding him, upon the extraordinary dramatic capabilities and versatilities of Shakespeare’s plays, which, he said, were not half comprehended.