The House by the Churchyard

by J. Sheridan le Fanu

  In the meantime, the mirth, and frolic, and flirtation were drawing to a close. The dowager, in high good humour, was conveyed down stairs to her carriage, by Colonel Stafford and Lord Castlemallard, and rolled away, with blazing flambeaux, like a meteor, into town. There was a breaking–up and leave–taking, and parting jokes on the door–steps; and as the ladies, old and young, were popping on their mantles in the little room off the hall, and Aunt Becky and Mrs. Colonel Strafford were exchanging a little bit of eager farewell gossip beside the cabinet, Gertrude Chattesworth—by some chance she and Lilias had not had an opportunity of speaking that evening—drew close to her, and she took her hand and said 'Good–night, dear Lily,' and glanced over her shoulder, still holding Lily’s hand; and she looked very pale and earnest, and said quickly, in a whisper:

  'Lily, darling, if you knew what I could tell you, if I dare, about Mr. Mervyn, you would cut your hand off rather than allow him to talk to you, as, I confess, he has talked to me, as an admirer, and knowing what I know, and with my eye upon him—Lily—Lily—I’ve been amazed by him to–night. I can only warn you now, darling, to beware of a great danger.'

  ''Tis no danger, however, to me, Gertrude, dear,' said Lily, with a pleasant little smile. 'And though he’s handsome, there’s something, is there not, funeste in his deep eyes and black hair; and the dear old man knows something strange about him, too; I suppose 'tis all the same story.'

  'And he has not told you,' said Gertrude, looking down with a gloomy face at her fan.

  'No; but I’m so curious, I know he will, though he does not like to speak of it; but you know, Gerty, I love a horror, and I know the story’s fearful, and I feel uncertain whether he’s a man or a ghost; but see, Aunt Rebecca and Mistress Strafford are kissing.'

  'Good–night, dear Lily, and remember!' said pale Gertrude without a smile, looking at her, for a moment, with a steadfast gaze, and then kissing her with a hasty and earnest pressure. And Lily kissed her again, and so they parted.

  CHAPTER XXVI.

  RELATING HOW THE BAND OF THE ROYAL IRISH ARTILLERY PLAYED, AND, WHILE THE MUSIC WAS GOING ON, HOW VARIOUSLY DIFFERENT PEOPLE WERE MOVED.

  Twice a week the band of the Royal Irish Artillery regaled all comers with their music on the parade–ground by the river; and, as it was reputed the best in Ireland, and Chapelizod was a fashionable resort, and a very pretty village, embowered in orchards, people liked to drive out of town on a fine autumn day like this, by way of listening, and all the neighbours showed there, and there was quite a little fair for an hour or two.

  Mervyn, among the rest, was there, but for scarce ten minutes, and, as usual, received little more than a distant salutation, coldly and gravely returned, from Gertrude Chattesworth, to whom Mr. Beauchamp, whom she remembered at the Stafford’s dinner, addicted himself a good deal. That demigod appeared in a white surtout, with a crimson cape, a French waistcoat, his hair en papillote, a feather in his hat, a couteau de chasse by his side, with a small cane hanging to his button, and a pair of Italian greyhounds at his heels; and he must have impressed Tresham prodigiously; for I observe no other instance in which he has noted down costume so carefully. Little Puddock, too, was hovering near, and his wooing made uncomfortable by Aunt Becky’s renewed severity, as well as by the splendour of 'Mr. Redheels,' who was expending his small talk and fleuerets upon Gertrude. Cluffe, moreover, who was pretty well in favour with Aunt Rebecca, and had been happy and prosperous, had his little jealousies too to plague him, for Dangerfield, with his fishing–rod and basket, no sooner looked in, with his stern front and his remarkable smile, than Aunt Becky, seeming instantaneously to forget Captain Cluffe, and all his winning ways, and the pleasant story, to the point of which he was just arriving, in his best manner, left him abruptly, and walked up to the grim pescator del onda, with an outstretched hand, and a smile of encouragement, and immediately fell into confidential talk with him.

  'The minds of anglers,' says the gentle Colonel Robert Venables, 'be usually more calm and composed than many others; when he hath the worst success he loseth but a hook or line, or perhaps what he never possessed, a fish; and suppose he should take nothing, yet he enjoyeth a delightful walk by pleasant rivers, in sweet pastures, amongst odoriferous flowers, which gratify his senses and delight his mind; and if example, which is the best proof, may sway anything, I know no sort of men less subject to melancholy than anglers.' It was only natural, then, that Dangerfield should be serene and sunny.

  Aunt Becky led him a little walk twice or thrice up and down. She seemed grave, earnest, and lofty, and he grinned and chatted after his wont energetically, to stout Captain Cluffe’s considerable uneasiness and mortification. He had seen Dangerfield the day before, through his field–glass, from the high wooded grounds in the park, across the river, walk slowly for a good while under the poplars in the meadow at Belmont, beside Aunt Becky, in high chat; and there was something particular and earnest in their manner, which made him uncomfortable then. And fat Captain Cluffe’s gall rose and nearly choked him, and; he cursed Dangerfield in the bottom of his corpulent, greedy soul, and wondered what fiend had sent that scheming old land–agent three hundred miles out of his way, on purpose to interfere with his little interests, as if there were not plenty of—of—well!—rich old women—in London. And he bethought him of the price of the cockatoo and the probable cost of the pelican, rejoinders to Dangerfield’s contributions to Aunt Rebecca’s menagerie, for those birds were not to be had for nothing; and Cluffe, who loved money as well, at least, as any man in his Majesty’s service, would have seen the two tribes as extinct as the dodo, before he would have expended sixpence upon such tom–foolery, had it not been for Dangerfield’s investments in animated nature. 'The hound! as if two could not play at that game.' But he had an uneasy and bitter presentiment that they were birds of paradise, and fifty other cursed birds beside, and that in this costly competition Dangerfield could take a flight beyond and above him; and he thought of the flagitious waste of money, and cursed him for a fool again. Aunt Becky had said, he thought, something in which 'to–morrow' occurred, on taking leave of Dangerfield. 'To–morrow!' 'What to–morrow? She spoke low and confidentially, and seemed excited and a little flushed, and very distrait when she came back. Altogether, he felt as if Aunt Rebecca was slipping through his fingers, and would have liked to take that selfish old puppy, Dangerfield, by the neck and drown him out of hand in the river. But, notwithstanding the state of his temper, he knew it might be his only chance to shine pre–eminently at that moment in amiability, wit, grace, and gallantry, and, though it was up–hill work, he did labour uncommonly.

  When Mr. Dangerfield’s spectacles gleamed through the crowd upon Dr. Sturk, who was thinking of other things beside the music, the angler walked round forthwith, and accosted that universal genius. Mrs. Sturk felt the doctor’s arm, on which she leaned, vibrate for a second with a slight thrill—an evidence in that hard, fibrous limb of what she used to call 'a start'—and she heard Dangerfield’s voice over his shoulder. And the surgeon and the grand vizier were soon deep in talk, and Sturk brightened up, and looked eager and sagacious, and important, and became very voluble and impressive, and, leaving his lady to her own devices, with her maid and children, he got to the other side of the street, where Nutter, with taciturn and black observation, saw them busy pointing with cane and finger, and talking briskly as they surveyed together Dick Fisher’s and Tom Tresham’s tenements, and the Salmon House; and then beheld them ascend the steps of Tresham’s door, and overlook the wall on the other side toward the river, and point this way and that along the near bank, as it seemed to Nutter discussing detailed schemes of alteration and improvement. Sturk actually pulled out his pocket–book and pencil, and then Dangerfield took the pencil, and made notes of what he read to him, on the back of a letter; and Sturk looked eager and elated, and Dangerfield frowned and looked impressed, and nodded again and again. Diruit ædificat, mutat quadrata rotundis, under his very nose—he unconsult
ed! It was such an impertinence as Nutter could ill–digest. It was a studied slight, something like a public deposition, and Nutter’s jealous soul seethed secretly in a hellbroth of rage and suspicion.

  I mentioned that Mistress Sturk felt in that physician’s arm the telegraphic thrill with which the brain will occasionally send an invisible message of alarm from the seat of government to the extremities; and as this smallest of all small bits of domestic gossip did innocently escape me, the idle and good–natured reader will, I hope, let me say out my little say upon the matter, in the next chapter.

  CHAPTER XXVII.

  CONCERNING THE TROUBLES AND THE SHAPES THAT BEGAN TO GATHER ABOUT DOCTOR STURK.

  It was just about that time that our friend, Dr. Sturk, had two or three odd dreams that secretly acted disagreeably upon his spirits. His liver he thought was a little wrong, and there was certainly a little light gout sporting about him. His favourite 'pupton,' at mess, disagreed with him; so did his claret, and hot suppers as often as he tried them, and that was, more or less, nearly every night in the week. So he was, perhaps, right, in ascribing these his visions to the humours, the spleen, the liver, and the juices. Still they sat uncomfortably upon his memory, and helped his spirits down, and made him silent and testy, and more than usually formidable to poor, little, quiet, hard–worked Mrs. Sturk.

  Dreams! What talk can be idler? And yet haven’t we seen grave people and gay listening very contentedly at times to that wild and awful sort of frivolity; and I think there is in most men’s minds, sages or zanies, a secret misgiving that dreams may have an office and a meaning, and are perhaps more than a fortuitous concourse of symbols, in fact, the language which good or evil spirits whisper over the sleeping brain.

  There was an ugly and ominous consistency in these dreams which might have made a less dyspeptic man a little nervous. Tom Dunstan, a sergeant whom Sturk had prosecuted and degraded before a court–martial, who owed the doctor no good–will, and was dead and buried in the church–yard close by, six years ago, and whom Sturk had never thought about in the interval—made a kind of resurrection now, and was with him every night, figuring in these dreary visions and somehow in league with a sort of conspirator–in–chief, who never showed distinctly, but talked in scoffing menaces from outside the door, or clutched him by the throat from behind his chair, and yelled some hideous secret into his ear, which his scared and scattered wits, when he started into consciousness, could never collect again. And this fellow, with whose sneering cavernous talk—with whose very knock at the door or thump at the partition–wall he was as familiar as with his own wife’s voice, and the touch of whose cold convulsive hand he had felt so often on his cheek or throat, and the very suspicion of whose approach made him faint with horror, his dreams would not present to his sight. There was always something interposed, or he stole behind him, or just as he was entering and the door swinging open, Sturk would awake—and he never saw him, at least in a human shape.

  But one night he thought he saw, as it were, his sign or symbol. As Sturk lay his length under the bed–clothes, with his back turned upon his slumbering helpmate, he was, in the spirit, sitting perpendicularly in his great balloon–backed chair at his writing–table, in the window of the back one–pair–of–stairs chamber which he called his library, where he sometimes wrote prescriptions, and pondering over his pennyweights, his Roman numerals, his guttæ and pillulæ, his 3s, his 5s, his 9s, and the other arabesque and astrological symbols of his mystery, he looked over his pen into the church–yard, which inspiring prospect he thence commanded.

  Thus, as out of the body sat our recumbent doctor in the room underneath the bed in which his snoring idolon lay, Tom Dunstan stood beside the table, with the short white threads sticking out on his blue sleeve, where the stitching of the stripes had been cut through on that twilight parade morning when the doctor triumphed, and Tom’s rank, fortune, and castles in the air, all tumbled together in the dust of the barrack pavement; and so, with his thin features and evil eye turned sideways to Sturk, says he, with a stiff salute—'A gentleman, Sir, that means to dine with you,' and there was the muffled knock at the door which he knew so well, and a rustling behind him. So the doctor turned him about quickly with a sort of chill between his shoulders, and perched on the back of his chair sat a portentous old quizzical carrion–crow, the antediluvian progenitor of the whole race of carrion–crows, monstrous, with great shining eyes, and head white as snow, and a queer human look, and the crooked beak of an owl, that opened with a loud grating 'caw' close in his ears; and with a 'bo–o–oh!' and a bounce that shook the bed and made poor Mrs. Sturk jump out of it, and spin round in the curtain, Sturk’s spirit popped back again into his body, which sat up wide awake that moment.

  It is not pretended that at this particular time the doctor was a specially good sleeper. The contrary stands admitted; and I don’t ask you, sagacious reader, to lay any sort of stress upon his dreams; only as there came a time when people talked of them a good deal over the fireside in Chapelizod, and made winter’s tales about them, I thought myself obliged to tell you that such things were.

  He did not choose to narrate them to his brother–officers, and to be quizzed about them at mess. But he opened his budget to old Dr. Walsingham, of course, only as a matter to be smiled at by a pair of philosophers like them. But Dr. Walsingham, who was an absent man, and floated upon the ocean of his learning serenely and lazily, drawn finely and whimsically, now hither, now thither, by the finest hair of association, glided complacently off into the dim region of visionary prognostics and warnings, and reminded him how Joseph dreamed, and Pharaoh, and Benvenuto, Cellini’s father, and St. Dominick’s mother, and Edward II. of England, and dodged back and forward among patriarchs and pagans, and modern Christians, men and women not at all suspecting that he was making poor Sturk, who had looked for a cheerful, sceptical sort of essay, confoundedly dismal and uncomfortable.

  And, indeed, confoundedly distressed he must have been, for he took his brother–chip, Tom Toole, whom he loved not, to counsel upon his case—of course, strictly as a question of dandelion, or gentian, or camomile flowers; and Tom, who, as we all know, loved him reciprocally, frightened him as well as he could, offered to take charge of his case, and said, looking hard at him out of the corner of his cunning, resolute little eye, as they sauntered in the park—

  'But I need not tell you, my good Sir, that physic is of small avail, if there is any sort of—a—a—vexation, or—or—in short—a—a—vexation, you know, on your mind.'

  'A—ha, ha, ha!—what? Murdered my father, and married my grandmother?' snarled Sturk, sneeringly, amused or affecting to be so, and striving to laugh at the daisies before his toes, as he trudged along, with his hands in his breeches' pockets. 'I have not a secret on earth, Sir. 'Tis not a button to me, Sir, who talks about me; and I don’t owe a guinea, Sir, that is, that I could not pay to–morrow, if I liked it; and there’s nothing to trouble me—nothing, Sir, except this dirty, little, gouty dyspepsy, scarce worth talking about.

  Then came a considerable silence; and Toole’s active little mind, having just made a note of this, tripped off smartly to half–a–dozen totally different topics, and he was mentally tippling his honest share of a dozen of claret, with a pleasant little masonic party at the Salmon–leap, on Sunday next, and was just going to charm them with his best song, and a new verse of his own compounding, when Sturk, in a moment, dispersed the masons, and brought him back by the ear at a jump from the Salmon–leap, with a savage——

  'And I’d like to know, Sir, who the deuce, or, rather, what the ——(plague we’ll say) could put into your head, Sir, to suppose any such matter?'

  But this was only one of Sturk’s explosions, and he and little Toole parted no better and no worse friends than usual, in ten minutes more at the latter’s door–step.

  So Toole said to Mrs. T. that evening——

  'Sturk owes money, mark my words, sweetheart. Remember I say it—he’ll coo
l his heels in a prison, if he’s no wiser than of late, before a twel’month. Since the beginning of February he has lost—just wait a minute, and let me see—ay, that, £150 by the levanting of old Tom Farthingale; and, I had it to–day from little O’Leary, who had it from Jim Kelly, old Craddock’s conducting clerk, he’s bit to the tune of three hundred more by the failure of Larkin, Brothers, and Hoolaghan. You see a little bit of usury under the rose is all very well for a vulgar dog like Sturk, if he knows the town, and how to go about it; but hang, it, he knows nothing. Why, the turnpike–man, over the way, would not have taken old Jos. Farthingale’s bill for fippence—no, nor his bond neither; and he’s stupid beside—but he can’t help that, the hound!—and he’ll owe a whole year’s rent only six weeks hence, and he has not a shilling to bless himself with. Unfortunate devil—I’ve no reason to like him—but, truly, I do pity him.'

  Saying which Tom Toole, with his back to the fire, and a look of concern thrown into his comic little mug, and his eyebrows raised, experienced a very pleasurable glow of commiseration.

  Sturk, on the contrary, was more than commonly silent and savage that evening, and sat in his drawing–room, with his fists in his breeches' pockets, and his heels stretched out, lurid and threatening, in a gloomy and highly electric state. Mrs. S. did not venture her usual 'would my Barney like a dish of tea?' but plied her worsted and knitting–needles with mild concentration, sometimes peeping under her lashes at Sturk, and sometimes telegraphing faintly to the children if they whispered too loud—all cautious pantomime—nutu signisque loquuntur.