Delphi Complete Works of Sheridan Le Fanu

by J. Sheridan le Fanu

  ‘Remember, for Heaven’s sake, remember,’ said Mervyn, with agonised urgency, as he followed him with a light along the passage to the back-door.

  Irons made no answer; and walking straight on, without turning his head, only lifted his hand with a movement backward, like a man who silently warns another from danger.

  So Irons went forth into the night and the roaring storm, dark and alone, like an evil spirit into desert places; and Mervyn barred the door after him, and returned to the cedar parlour, and remained there alone and long in profound and not unnatural agitation.

  CHAPTER LXXIII.

  CONCERNING A CERTAIN GENTLEMAN, WITH A BLACK PATCH OVER HIS EYE, WHO MADE SOME VISITS WITH A LADY, IN CHAPELIZOD AND ITS NEIGHBOURHOOD.

  In the morning, though the wind had somewhat gone down, ’twas still dismal and wild enough; and to the consternation of poor Mrs. Macnamara, as she sat alone in her window after breakfast, Miss Mag and the major being both abroad, a hackney coach drew up at the door, which stood open. The maid was on the step, cheapening fish with a virulent lady who had a sieve-full to dispose of.

  A gentleman, with a large, unwholesome face, and a patch over one eye, popped his unpleasant countenance, black wig, and three-cocked hat, out of the window, and called to the coachman to let him out.

  Forth he came, somewhat slovenly, his coat not over-well brushed, having in his hand a small trunk, covered with gilt crimson leather, very dingy, and somewhat ceremoniously assisted a lady to alight. This dame, as she stepped with a long leg, in a black silk stocking, to the ground, swept the front windows of the house from under her velvet hood with a sharp and evil glance; and in fact she was Mistress Mary Matchwell.

  As she beheld her, poor Mrs. Mack’s heart fluttered up to her mouth, and then dropped with a dreadful plump, into the pit of her stomach. The dingy, dismal gentleman, swinging the red trunk in his hand, swaggered lazily back and forward, to stretch his legs over the pavement, and air his large cadaverous countenance, and sniff the village breezes.

  Mistress Matchwell in the meantime, exchanging a passing word with the servant, who darkened and drew back as if a ghost had crossed her, gathered her rustling silks about her, and with a few long steps noiselessly mounted the narrow stairs, and stood, sallow and terrible in her sables, before the poor gentlewoman.

  With two efforts Mrs. Mack got up and made a little, and then a great courtesy, and then a little one again, and tried to speak, and felt very near fainting.

  ‘See,’ says Mary Matchwell, ‘I must have twenty pounds — but don’t take on. You must make an effort, my dear— ’tis the last. Come, don’t be cast down. I’ll pay you when I come to my property, in three weeks’ time; but law expenses must be paid, and the money I must have.’

  Hereupon Mrs. Mack clasped her hands together in an agony, and ‘set up the pipes.’

  M. M. was like to lose patience, and when she did she looked most feloniously, and in a way that made poor soft Mrs. Mack quiver.

  ‘’Tis but twenty pounds, woman,’ she said, sternly. ‘Hub-bub-bub-boo-hoo-hoo,’ blubbered the fat and miserable Mrs. Macnamara. ‘It will be all about — I may as well tell it myself. I’m ruined! My Venetian lace — my watch — the brocade not made up. It won’t do. I must tell my brother; I’d rather go out for a charwoman and starve myself to a skeleton, than try to borrow more money.’

  Mrs. Matchwell advanced her face towards the widow’s tearful countenance, and held her in the spell of her dreadful gaze as a cat does a bird.

  ‘Why, curse you, woman, do you think ’tis to rob you I mean?— ’tisn’t a present even — only a loan. Stop that blubbering, you great old mouth! or I’ll have you posted all over the town in five minutes. A loan, Madam; and you need not pay it for three months — three whole months — there!’

  Well, this time it ended as heretofore — poor Mrs. Mack gave way. She had not a crown-piece, indeed, that she could call her own; but M. M. was obliging, and let her off for a bill of exchange, the nature of which, to her dying day, the unhappy widow could never comprehend, although it caused her considerable affliction some short time subsequently.

  Away went Mary Matchwell with her prize, leaving an odour of brandy behind her. Her dingy and sinister squire performed his clumsy courtesies, and without looking to the right or left, climbed into the coach after her, with his red trunk in his hand; and the vehicle was again in motion, and jingling on at a fair pace in the direction of Nutter’s house, The Mills, where her last visit had ended so tragically.

  Now, it so happened that just as this coach, with its sombre occupants, drew up at The Mills, Doctor Toole was standing on the steps, giving Moggy a parting injunction, after his wont; for poor little Mrs. Nutter had been thrown into a new paroxysm by the dreadful tidings of her Charlie’s death, and was now lying on her bed, and bathing the pillow in her tears.

  ‘Is this the tenement called the Mills, formerly in the occupation of the late Charles Nutter — eh?’ demanded the gentleman, thrusting his face from the window, before the coachman had got to the door.

  ‘It is, Sir,’ replied Toole, putting Moggy aside, and suspecting, he could not tell what amiss, and determined to show front, and not averse from hearing what the visit was about. ‘But Mrs. Nutter is very far from well, Sir; in fact, in her bedchamber, Sir, and laid upon her bed.’

  ‘Mrs. Nutter’s here, Sir,’ said the man phlegmatically. He had just got out on the ground before the door, and extended his hand toward Mary Matchwell, whom he assisted to alight.

  ‘This is Mrs. Nutter, relict of the late Charles Nutter, of The Mills, Knockmaroon, in the parish of Chapelizod.’

  ‘At your service, Sir,’ said Mary Matchwell, dropping a demure courtesy, and preparing to sail by him.

  ‘Not so fast, Ma’am, if you please,’ said Toole, astonished, but still sternly and promptly enough. ‘In with you, Moggy, and bar the kitchen door.’

  And shoving the maid back, he swung the door to, with a slam. He was barely in time, and Mary Matchwell, baffled and pale, confronted the doctor, with the devil gleaming from her face.

  ‘Who are you, man, that dare shut my own door in my face?’ said the beldame.

  ‘Toole’s my name, Madam,’ said the little doctor, with a lofty look and a bow. ‘I have the honour to attend here in a professional capacity.’

  ‘Ho! a village attorney,’ cried the fortuneteller, plainly without having consulted the cards or the planets. ‘Well, Sir, you’d better stand aside, for I am the Widow Nutter, and this is my house; and burn me, but one way or another, in I’ll get.’

  ‘You’d do well to avoid a trespass, Ma’am, and better to abstain from house breaking; and you may hammer at the knocker till you’re tired, but they’ll not let you in,’ rejoined Toole. ‘And as to you being the Widow Nutter, Ma’am, that is widow of poor Charles Nutter, lately found drowned, I’ll be glad to know, Ma’am, how you make that out.’

  ‘Stay, Madam, by your leave,’ said the cadaverous, large-faced man, interposing. ‘We are here, Sir, to claim possession of this tenement and the appurtenances, as also of all the money, furniture, and other chattels whatsoever of the late Charles Nutter; and being denied admission, we shall then serve certain cautionary and other notices, in such a manner as the court will, under the circumstances, and in your presence, being, by your admission, the attorney of Sarah Hearty, calling herself Nutter— ‘

  ‘I did not say I was,’ said Toole, with a little toss of his chin.

  The gentleman’s large face here assumed a cunning leer.

  ‘Well, we have our thoughts about that, Sir,’ he said. ‘But by your leave, we’ll knock at the hall-door.’

  ‘I tell you what, Sir,’ said Toole, who had no reliance upon the wisdom of the female garrison, and had serious misgivings lest at the first stout summons the maids should open the door, and the ill-favoured pair establish themselves in occupation of poor Mrs. Nutter’s domicile, ‘I’ll not object to the notices being received. There’s the servant
up at the window there — but you must not make a noise; Mrs. Nutter, poor woman, is sick and hypochondriac, and can’t bear a noise; but I’ll permit the service of the notices, because, you see, we can afford to snap our fingers at you. I say, Moggy, open a bit of that window, and take in the papers that this gentleman will hand you. There, Sir, on the end of your cane, if you please — very good.’

  ‘‘Twill do, she has them. Thank you, Miss,’ said the legal practitioner, with a grin. ‘Now, Ma’am, we’d best go to the Prerogative Court.’

  Mary Matchwell laughed one of her pale malevolent laughs up at the maid in the window, who stood there, with the papers in her hand, in a sort of horror.

  ‘Never mind,’ said Mary Matchwell, to herself, and, getting swiftly into the coach, she gleamed another ugly smile up at the window of The Mills, as she adjusted her black attire.

  ‘To the Prerogative Court,’ said the attorney to the coachman.

  ‘In that house I’ll lie tonight,’ said Mary Matchwell, with a terrible mildness, as they drove away, still glancing back upon it, with her peculiar smile; and then she leaned back, with a sneer of superiority on her pallid features, and the dismal fatigue of the spirit that rests not, looked savagely out from the deep, haggard windows of her eyes.

  When Toole saw the vehicle fairly off, you may be sure he did not lose time in getting into the house, and there conning over the papers, which puzzled him unspeakably.

  CHAPTER LXXIV.

  IN WHICH DOCTOR TOOLE, IN HIS BOOTS, VISITS MR. GAMBLE, AND SEES AN UGLY CLIENT OF THAT GENTLEMAN’S; AND SOMETHING CROSSES AN EMPTY ROOM.

  Here’s a conspiracy with a vengeance!’ muttered Toole, ‘if a body could only make head or tail of it. Widow! — Eh! — We’ll see: why, she’s like no woman ever I saw. Mrs. Nutter, forsooth!’ and he could not forbear laughing at the conceit. ‘Poor Charles! ’tis ridiculous — though upon my life, I don’t like it. It’s just possible it may be all as true as gospel — they’re the most devilish looking pair I’ve seen out of the dock — curse them — for many a day. I would not wonder if they were robbers. The widow looks consumedly like a man in petticoats — hey! — devilish like. I think I’ll send Moran and Brien up to sleep tonight in the house. But, hang it! if they were, they would not come out in the daytime to give an alarm. Hollo! Moggy, throw me out one of them papers till I see what it’s about.’

  So he conned over the notice which provoked him, for he could not half understand it, and he was very curious.

  ‘Well, keep it safe, Moggy,’ said he. ‘H’m — it does look like law business, after all, and I believe it is. No — they’re not housebreakers, but robbers of another stamp — and a worse, I’ll take my davy.’

  ‘See,’ said he, as a thought struck him, ‘throw me down both of them papers again — there’s a good girl. They ought to be looked after, I dare say, and I’ll see the poor master’s attorney to-day, d’ye mind? and we’ll put our heads together — and, that’s right — relict indeed!’

  And, with a solemn injunction to keep doors locked and windows fast, and a nod and a wave of his hand to Mistress Moggy, and muttering half a sentence or an oath to himself, and wearying his imagination in search of a clue to this new perplexity, he buttoned his pocket over the legal documents, and strutted down to the village, where his nag awaited him saddled, and Jimmey walking him up and down before the doctor’s hall-door.

  Toole was bound upon a melancholy mission that morning. But though properly a minister of life, a doctor is also conversant with death, and inured to the sight of familiar faces in that remarkable disguise. So he spurred away with more coolness, though not less regret than another man, to throw what light he could upon the subject of the inquest which was to sit upon the body of poor Charles Nutter.

  The little doctor, on his way to Ringsend, without the necessity of diverging to the right or left, drew bridle at the door of Mr. Luke Gamble, on the Blind Quay, attorney to the late Charles Nutter, and jumping to the ground, delivered a rattling summons thereupon.

  It was a dusty, dreary, wainscoted old house — indeed, two old houses intermarried — with doors broken through the partition walls — the floors not all of a level — joined by steps up and down — and having three great staircases, that made it confusing. Through the windows it was not easy to see, such a fantastic mapping of thick dust and dirt coated the glass.

  Luke Gamble, like the house, had seen better days. It was not his fault; but an absconding partner had well nigh been his ruin: and, though he paid their liabilities, it was with a strain, and left him a poor man, shattered his connexion, and made the house too large by a great deal for his business.

  Doctor Toole came into the clerk’s room, and was ushered by one of these gentlemen through an empty chamber into the attorney’s sanctum. Up two steps stumbled the physician, cursing the house for a place where a gentleman was so much more likely to break his neck than his fast, and found old Gamble in his velvet cap and dressing-gown, in conference with a hard-faced, pale, and pock-marked elderly man, squinting unpleasantly under a black wig, who was narrating something slowly, and with effort, like a man whose memory is labouring to give up its dead, while the attorney, with his spectacles on his nose, was making notes. The speaker ceased abruptly, and turned his pallid visage and jealous, oblique eyes on the intruder.

  Luke Gamble looked embarrassed, and shot one devilish angry glance at his clerk, and then made Doctor Toole very welcome.

  When Toole had ended his narrative, and the attorney read the notices through, Mr. Gamble’s countenance brightened, and darkened and brightened again, and with a very significant look, he said to the pale, unpleasant face, pitted with smallpox —

  ‘M. M.,’ and nodded.

  His companion extended his hand toward the papers.

  ‘Never mind,’ said the attorney; ‘there’s that here will fix M. M. in a mighty tight vice.’

  ‘And who’s M. M., pray?’ enquired Toole.

  ‘When were these notices served, doctor?’ asked Mr. Gamble.

  ‘Not an hour ago; but, I say, who the plague’s M. M.?’ answered Toole.

  ‘M. M.,’ repeated the attorney, smiling grimly on the backs of the notices which lay on the table; ‘why there’s many queer things to be heard of M. M.; and the town, and the country, too, for that matter, is like to know a good deal more of her before long; and who served them — a process-server, or who?’

  ‘Why, a fat, broad, bull-necked rascal, with a double chin, and a great round face, the colour of a bad suet-dumplin’, and a black patch over his eye,’ answered Toole.

  ‘Very like — was he alone?’ said Gamble.

  ‘No — a long, sly she-devil in black, that looked as if she’d cut your windpipe, like a cat in the dark, as pale as paper, and mighty large, black, hollow eyes.’

  ‘Ay — that’s it,’ said Gamble, who, during this dialogue, had thrown his morning-gown over the back of the chair, and got on his coat, and opened a little press in the wall, from which he took his wig, and so completed his toilet.

  ‘That’s it?’ repeated Toole: ‘what’s it? — what’s what?’

  ‘Why, ’tis David O’Regan — Dirty Davy, as we call him. I never knew him yet in an honest case; and the woman’s M. M.’

  ‘Hey! to be sure — a woman — I know — I remember; and he was on the point of breaking out with poor Mrs. Macnamara’s secret, but recovered in time. ‘That’s the she fortuneteller, the witch, M. M., Mary Matchwell; ’twas one of her printed cards, you know, was found lying in Sturk’s blood. Dr. Sturk, you remember, that they issued a warrant for, against our poor friend, you know.’

  ‘Ay, ay — poor Charles — poor Nutter. Are you going to the inquest?’ said Gamble; and, on a sudden, stopped short, with a look of great fear, and a little beckon of his hand forward, as if he had seen something.

  There was that in Gamble’s change of countenance which startled Toole, who, seeing that his glance was directed through an open door at the other end
of the room, skipped from his chair and peeped through it. There was nothing, however, visible but a tenebrose and empty passage.

  ‘What did you see — eh? What frightens you?’ said Toole. ‘One would think you saw Nutter — like — like.’

  Gamble looked horribly perturbed at these words.

  ‘Shut it,’ said he, nearing the door, on which Toole’s hand rested. Toole took another peep, and did so.

  ‘Why, there’s nothing there — like — like the women down at the Mills there,’ continued the doctor.

  ‘What about the women?’ enquired Gamble, not seeming to know very well what he was saying, agitated still — perhaps, intending to keep Toole talking.

  ‘Why, the women — the maids, you know — poor Nutter’s servants, down at the Mills. They swear he walks the house, and they’ll have it they saw him last night.’

  ‘Pish! Sir— ’tis all conceit and vapours — women’s fancies — a plague o’ them all. And where’s poor Mrs. Nutter?’ said Gamble, clapping on his cocked-hat, and taking his cane, and stuffing two or three bundles of law papers into his coat pockets.

  ‘At home — at the Mills. She slept at the village and so missed the ghost. The Macnamaras have been mighty kind. But when the news was told her this morning, poor thing, she would not stay, and went home; and there she is, poor little soul, breaking her heart.’

  Mr. Gamble was not ceremonious; so he just threw a cursory and anxious glance round the room, clapped his hands on his coat pockets, making a bunch of keys ring somewhere deep in their caverns. And all being right —

  ‘Come along, gentlemen,’ says he, ‘I’m going to lock the door;’ and without looking behind him, he bolted forth abstractedly into his dusty anteroom.

  ‘Get your cloak about you, Sir — remember your cough, you know — the air of the streets is sharp,’ said he with a sly wink, to his ugly client, who hastily took the hint.