Delphi Complete Works of Sheridan Le Fanu

by J. Sheridan le Fanu

  The vicar is a well-connected old gentleman, related, in some remote cousinship, to the late Sir Amyrald Vernon, and knows very well what he is about. Has not Lady Vernon, the relict of that lamented kinsman, two extremely desirable livings in her gift, besides smaller things? And, old as the Reverend Mr. Foljambe is, are not the incumbents of these fat fields of usefulness older still? Is not the Reverend Mr. Cripry eighty-nine? And is not the venerable Doctor Shanks ninety-two, by the records of Trinity College, Cambridge? Compared with these mature ornaments of the Church, the vicar justly feels himself a stripling; and being a young fellow, not yet in his seventy-first year, he may well complain of a selfish longevity which is sacrificing the interests of two important parishes which require a vigorous ministration.

  The vicar’s shrewd old eye, from its wrinkled corners, observes Doctor Malkin’s wistful look, and knows from experience that he likes to take possession of Lady Vernon’s ear, and has suffered more than once from the tenacity with which he keeps it, when he can, to himself.

  “Nothing of the kind shall happen tonight,” thinks the vicar, who, having a handsome bit of money in consols, has sold out a hundred pounds to invest in a subscription to the monument of his predecessor, the Reverend William Howard — a good work in which Lady Vernon takes a warm interest, as she always does in anything she takes up.

  The vicar has her fast upon this, and the doctor thinks he can read sly triumph in his eye, as, once or twice, it glides over to him, and their glances meet for a moment.

  “Well, doctor, and how’s all wid you?” inquires the Reverend Michael Doody, with a grin that shows his fine white fangs, and a trifling clap of his enormous hand on the doctor’s shoulder. “Elegant, I suppose?”

  The doctor’s slight frame quivers under the caress of the cleric, but he smiles politely; for who knows what influence this new importation may grow to in this part of the world?

  “I’m very well, thanks — as well as a fellow, so much knocked about as a doctor, can be in this hot weather.”

  The doctor is a pale man, a little bald, with a high pale nose, a long upper lip, a receding chin, very blue, and a pair of fine dark eyes, set too close together, and with a slight obliquity which spoils them a great deal, and does not improve his countenance; his shirt-front is beautified with needlework, and his rather tall choker, for his neck is long, is made up by his exemplary laundress with a snowy smoothness worthy of the neatness and decision with which the doctor ties it.

  “My governor, the vicar, has Lady Vernon fast by the button,” continued Mr. Doody, with something like a wink. “She must be a very conscientious woman, to listen so well to her clergy. He was talking about Vicar Howard’s monument when I was near them, just now.”

  The doctor laughed and shrugged, and Mr. Doody thought for a moment he squinted a little more than usual.

  Our good vicar has but one subject at present,” says the doctor, who gives Mr. Doody, as a stranger, credit for a good deal of waggish penetration; “You have heard of the clarionet-man who had but one tune, and played it always through the keyhole, till it answered its purpose, and extracted a gratuity; and he made it pay very well, I believe.”

  “And rayther hard, doctor, that you can’t get your turn at the keyhole, eh, my boy?”

  And the reverend gentleman utters a stentorian giggle, and pokes his finger on the doctor’s ribs.

  “I don’t quite see, Mr. Doody,” says Doctor Malkin, with a very creditable smile, all things considered.

  “Boo! docthor, my darlin’ fellow, don’t be comin’ the simpleton over us. Don’t we both know that every man in your profession likes to stand well with the women? And here you are, and if it was to make a man of ye, not a word can ye edge in. It’s too hard, docthor, that the man of death should be blocked out by a tombstone. Be the powers, it ain’t fair! He’s takin’ her all over the monument; up on the pedestal, down in the vault! It’s an unfair advantage. But, never mind, my boy, ye’ll be even with him yet; ye’ll attind him in his next indisposition.”

  This pleasant banter was accompanied by a running explosion of giggles; and while the tall and rather handsome Irishman is enjoying his little bit of farce, with intense relish, the vicar and Lady Vernon are discoursing thus:

  “I thought, Lady Vernon, you would like, of course, in the most private way in the world, to collect opinion upon the monument; so, as he draws very nicely, my wife says, I allowed my curate, Mr. Doody, just in the strictest privacy to ourselves, you understand, a peep at it, for about five minutes, this morning. He thinks it very fine indeed — very fine — as, indeed, every one who has seen it does. There is, I fancy, but one opinion. I wish so much, Lady Vernon, I might venture to invite you to pay my church — yours, indeed I might more properly call it — a visit-to-morrow, to look at what I may term your beautiful gift to the sacred edifice.”

  “No, thanks; I shall see it time enough.”

  “But, as it owes its existence, Lady Vernon, to your extremely munificent subscription — — “

  “I thought it was due, as the bishop said, to a very good clergyman,” says Lady Vernon, quietly cutting it short; “and I gave what I thought right. That is all. And so your curate draws?”

  “I’m nothing of a draughtsman myself, but my wife understands it, and says he draws extremely nicely.”

  “That tall young man, is he?”

  “I ought to have introduced him, Lady Vernon. It was an omission — an inexcusable omission — a very inexcusable omission.” He was trying to catch his curate’s eye all this time. “He has been with me only a week, and yesterday he did duty at Loxton. You remember, Lady Vernon, you thought an Irishman would answer best.”

  “The bishop says he has found them extremely energetic, and for very hard work unrivalled.”

  “He’s a very rough diamond, I must admit. But he’s a convert from Romanism, and a very laborious young man, and a good scholar.”

  He had beckoned Mr. Doody to approach, and accordingly that herculean labourer in the apostolic field drew near, a head and shoulders above all the other guests. The tall old vicar alone was sitting.

  “Allow me, Lady Vernon, to present my curate, Mr. Doody,” says the vicar, rising to do the honours.

  Mr. Doody is not the least overcome by the honour. His fine eyes have examined the lady, of whom he has heard so much, but of whom he has not had so near a view before, with the grave curiosity with which he would have scrutinised an interesting piece of waxwork.

  The florid young man, with black whiskers and glossy black head, makes his best bow gravely, and inquires unexpectedly:

  “How are ye, ma’am? A good evening, Lady Vernon.” A form of salutation with which it is his wont as it were, to clench an introduction.

  Lady Vernon does not mind answering or reciprocating these rather oddly placed greetings, but talks a few sentences with him, and then turns again to the vicar, and the curate after a little wait, turns on his heel, and seeks employment for his active mind elsewhere.

  Let me not be imagined to present an average Irish curate. Mr. Doody is almost as great a prodigy at home as anywhere else. His father, with his own hands, in his bare shins, with a dhuddeen stuck in his caubeen, cuts turf in the bog near the famous battle-field of Aghrim. He is not a bit ashamed of his father or his belongings. He holds him to be as good a gentleman as himself — being the lineal descendant of the O’Doody of Tyr Doody — and himself as good as the primate. He sends his mother a present every now and then, but the farm is well stocked; and his parents are, according to primitive ideas, wealthy people in their homely way. His lapse into Protestantism was, of course, a sore blow. And when Doctor Pollard’s wife mentioned to the priest, with perhaps a little excusable triumph, that Michael Doody had embraced the principles of the Reformation, his reverence scratched his tonsure, and said:

  “I’m not a bit surprised, ma’am, for he was always an impudent chap; but there was some good in the boy, also; and go where he may at present, so sure a
s I’m a Catholic, he’ll die one.”

  CHAPTER XV.

  DINNER.

  Old Mr. Foljambe takes precedence, at dinner, in right of his cloth, connexions, and antiquity, and has taken lady Vernon into the dining-room, and converses assiduously with that great lady.

  Maud finds herself between the curate and Doctor Malkin. Middle-aged and agreeable Captain Bamme resents an arrangement which isolates him, and eyes the curate with disgust.

  Captain Bamme does not count age by years. He knows better. As long as a fellow looks young, and feels young, he is young. The captain smiles more than any two other men in the parish. He is short and square, but he skips and swaggers like an officer and a gentleman. Who can talk to a girl like Charley Bamme? Who understands that mixture of gaiety and gallantry — with now and then a dash of tenderness — like this officer? To be sure he’s not a marrying man; every one knows that. It is out of the question. The captain laughs with a melancholy scorn over his scanty pittance. A fourth son, by Jove! and put to a poor profession. But is he not the life and soul of a picnic, and the darling of the ladies?

  “I’ve been quartered in Ireland,” says little Captain Bamme, under cover of the surrounding buzz, to his more fortunate neighbour, Doctor Malkin. “I’ve been in every part of it; I have talked to Irishmen of every rank and occupation, but such a brogue as that, I give you my honour, I never heard. Why, they wouldn’t have him to preach to a congregation of carmen in Dublin. I never heard anything like it. How did old Foljambe light on him? I really think, when people bring fellows like that to a place like this, where people must know him, and, for anything you or I can tell, that fellow may spend the rest of his days down here — by Jove! it’s pleasant — they ought to be prepared to give an account of him. I suppose Foljambe can say what he is? You never met such an insufferable creature. I never spoke to the fellow before in my life; and he came up to me in the hall here making some vulgar personal joke, I give you my honour.”

  “He seems to succeed very well,” says the doctor, “notwithstanding. I suppose there’s something interesting in it, though you and I can’t perceive it.”

  “Upon my soul, I can’t.”

  And with this declaration he turns to Mrs. Foljambe, who is at his right, determined to make her account for her intolerable curate.

  Mrs. Foljambe is tall, deaf, and melancholy — a woman very nearly useless, and quite harmless.

  “I was saying just now to Doctor Malkin,” begins the captain, “that I’ve been, at different times, quartered in Ireland — — “

  A footman here presents at the captain’s right hand an entrée which he loves, and on which he pounces.

  “A daughter in Ireland?” repeats the drowsy voice of Mrs. Foljambe, turning her dull and small grey eyes upon him, with a heavy sigh.

  “No, ha, ha! not yet. No. Time enough for that, I hope. I’m not married, Mrs. Foljambe — thanks, that will do. I say, I have been a little puzzled by your curate’s accent.” He was speaking low, but with measured articulation; for although the Reverend Michael Doody’s voice is loud and busy at the other side of the table, and the buzz of conversation is general, that odious person’s ears, for aught the captain knew, may be preternaturally acute. “And although I know Ireland pretty well — Athlone, Limerick, Cork, Dublin, and all that — yet I never heard his accent before in my life.”

  Mrs. Foljambe bowed her patient grey head, and did not seem aware that any answer was needed.

  “Can you say what part of the country he comes from?” persists Captain Bamme.

  “I rather think Ireland,” replies Mrs. Foljambe, with an effort and another sigh.

  “I rather think so myself,” says the captain, in a disgusted aside, over his veal and truffles. “The woman knows no more about him than my hat does of snipe-shooting,” he says, in the doctor’s ear, and drowns his indignation in a glass of hock, which the butler at that moment charitably proffers.

  The doctor has now got into talk with Miss Vernon. The captain has no wish to steal good Mrs. Foljambe’s bothered ear from old Mr. Puntles, who is labouring to entertain her. So Captain Bamme attends to his dinner with great concentration and energy for some time. It was not until he came to the iced-pudding that he thought of the Reverend Michael Doody again, and his joke upon the captain’s stature— “a fellow I had never exchanged six words with before!” — and raising his eyes, he saw, with a qualm, those of the florid divine, fixed jocosely on him from the other side of the table.

  “Upon my soul, it is very nearly intolerable!” the captain protests, mentally, as he leans back, with a flushed face. He resolves that this fellow must be snubbed, and laughed at, and sat upon, and taught to know his place, and held at arm’s length.

  As the captain has, however, nothing clever ready, he prefers not noticing the curate’s expression; and throwing into his countenance all the dignity which a not very tragic face can carry, he avails himself of Mr. Eccles’s murmur at his right elbow, and takes a glass of Madeira.

  “I’ll drink a glass of wine widgye, captain,” insists the curate, recurring to a happily obsolete usage. “Get me some white wine.”

  The captain bows and stares, with a rather withering condescension and gravity, which, however, does not in the least tell upon the impervious curate, who, his glass replenished, observes with a hilarious smile, “An agreeable way of makin’ acquaintance with my flock; better than a dhry domiciliary visit, captain, by a long chalk. I pledge you, my gallant parishioner — and here’s to our better acquaintance.”

  The captain nods curtly, and gulps down his wine, without half tasting its flavour; but even on these terms he thinks it is well to have escaped that brute.

  Miss Vernon is again talking to the curate. How disgusting! He turns, without thinking what he’s doing, to his right, and his eyes meet the dull and innocent gaze of grey Mrs. Foljambe, who, recalled to the festive scene, makes an effort, and tells him her only story.

  “We knew two very respectable poor women in this town. Anne Pluggs was one, and her sister, Julia Pluggs, was the other; there were two. They had both been servants, cooks, and they lived in the small house, last but one on your left, as you go towards the windmill.” A deep sigh here. “You’ll know it by wallflowers growing at the door; at least, there were, about a year or two ago; and they had saved a little money; and Mr. Foljambe had a very high opinion of them, and so had I.” The captain bows. “And about sixteen years ago they gave up their house here, and went to Coventry; it is a good way off, you know.”

  The captain knits his brows and calculates rapidly.

  “About forty-seven miles — by Jove, it is a good way.”

  “And when they arrived there, they set up a confectioner’s shop, in a small way, of course.”

  “Oh?” says the captain, very much interested, “that was very spirited of them.”

  “It had a bow-window that was painted brown, it was at a corner of a street near one of the spires, and they did very well, and they are both alive still.”

  Another deep sigh followed.

  “What a pity!” says the polite captain, who is looking across the table, and thinking, at the moment, of quite other things. The good lady does not hear his comment, and so its slight incongruity is harmless, and the captain inviting the conclusion of the tale, says, “and —— ?”

  But the story is over. That is all. And good Mrs. Foljambe, contented with her contribution towards keeping the conversation alive, is looking, in a melancholy reverie, on the tablecloth.

  As she has dropped off his hands in this gentle way, the captain resigns her with a good grace, and listens, undisturbed, to other talk.

  Lady Vernon has now taken the curate into council, and is leading the little cabinet. Mr. Michael Doody is attentive, and seems impressed by what Lady Vernon is saying. She has the reputation of being a clever woman, with a special talent for government.

  Mr. Puntles is listening, and sipping his wine; and being a polite old man, now an
d then plagues Mrs. Foljambe with a question or a remark.

  Doctor Malkin is in animated conversation with Miss Vernon. He is, perhaps, a little of an esprit fort; but in a rural region, always more pharisaical, as well as more pure than the city, he is very cautious, the more particularly as his great patroness, Lady Vernon, is a sharp and ready Christian, not high-church, not low-church; people at both sides of the controversy complain in whispers of ambiguities and inconsistencies; she is broad-church. Yes, very broad-church. She would throw the church-gates wide — as open as her heart — as open as her hand. She has built plain, sober churches — she has built meeting-houses — she has built florid chapels and churches, gleaming with purple and gold, and with saints and martyrs glowing in brilliant colours from stained windows, such as rejoice the heart of that learned and Gothic Christian, Archdeacon Complines. Her flatterers speak in this vein: and they are legion. The promoters of the projects which she vivifies by her magnificent bounty may hate their equally successful rivals, but they like her money; and they are extremely careful not to offend her, for she has not the reputation of forgiving easily.

  Doctor Malkin talks to Miss Vernon on her pet subjects, theories, and vagaries of all sorts, the abuses and corruptions begotten of an artificial system, bold social reforms, daring sentiments on all forms of civil government, treated romantically rather than very learnedly, or, indeed, very wisely.

  And now Lady Vernon, having established an understanding with old Mrs. Foljambe, rises, and with that dejected lady, and Maud, takes her departure. Captain Bamme, gallantly standing as guard of honour, with the handle of the open door in his hand, smiles with supernatural sweetness, sees them off, and returns to complete the little party of five.

  CHAPTER XVI.

  A SKIRMISH.

  Plump little Mr. Puntles is a cosey bachelor of two-and-sixty. Something of an antiquary, something of a herald, he is strong in county lore. He is the only man in Roydon who honestly likes books. He lives in the comfortable square brick house of Charles the First’s date, at the northern end of the village. He usually takes a nap of five minutes after his dinner, and then is bright for all the evening after.