Complete Works of Sheridan Le Fanu (Illustrated)

by Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu

  And in accordance with this resolution, upon the next day, early in the forenoon, Mr. Toole pursued his route toward the old manorhouse. As he approached the domain, however, he slackened his pace, and, with extreme hesitation and caution, began to loiter toward the mansion, screening his approach as much as possible among the thick brushwood which skirted the rich old timber that clothed the slopes and hollows of the manor in irregular and stately masses. Sheltered in his post of observation, Larry lounged about until he beheld Sir Henry emerge from the hall door and join Nicholas Blarden in the tête-à-tête which we have in our last chapter described. Our romantic friend no sooner beheld this occurrence, than he felt all his uneasiness at once dispelled. He marched rapidly to the hall door, which remained open, and forthwith entered the house. He had hardly reached the interior of the hall, when he was encountered by no less a person than the fair object of his soul’s idolatry, the beauteous Mistress Betsy Carey.

  “La, Mr. Laurence,” cried she, with an affected start, “you’re always turning up like a ghost, when you’re least expected.”

  “By the powers of Moll Kelly!” rejoined Larry, with fervour, “it’s more and more beautiful, the Lord be merciful to us, you’re growin’ every day you live. What the divil will you come to at last?”

  “Well, Mr. Toole,” rejoined she, relaxing into a gracious smile, “but you do talk more nonsense than any ten beside. I wonder at you, so I do, Mr. Toole. Why don’t you have a discreeterer way of conversation and discourse?”

  “Och! murdher! — heigho! beautiful Betsy,” sighed Larry, rapturously.

  “Did you walk, Mr. Toole?” inquired the maiden.

  “I did so,” rejoined Larry.

  “Young master’s just gone out,” continued the maid.

  “So I seen, jewel,” replied Mr. Toole.

  “An’ you may as well come into the parlour, an’ have some drink and victuals,” added she, with an encouraging smile.

  “Is there no fear of his coming in on me?” inquired Larry, cautiously.

  “Tilly vally, man, who are you afraid of?” exclaimed the handmaiden, cheerily. “Come, Mr. Toole, you used not to be so easily frightened.”

  “I’ll never be afraid to folly your lead, most beautiful and bewildhering iv famales,” ejaculated Mr. Toole, gallantly. “So here goes; folly on, and I’ll attind you behind.”

  Accordingly, they both entered the great parlour, where the table bore abundant relics of a plenteous meal, and Mistress Betsy Carey, with her own fair hands, placed a chair for him at the table, and heaping a plate with cold beef and bread, laid it before her grateful swain, along with a foaming tankard of humming ale. The maid was gracious, and the beef delicious; his ears drank in her accents, and his throat her ale, and his heart and mouth were equally full. Thus, in a condition as nearly as human happiness can approach to unalloyed felicity, realizing the substantial bliss of Mahomet’s paradise, Mr. Toole ogled and ate, and glanced and guzzled in soft rapture, until the force of nature could no further go on, and laying down his knife and fork, he took one long last draught of ale, measuring, it is supposed, about three half-pints, and then, with an easy negligence, wiping the froth from his mouth with the cuff of his coat, he addressed himself to the fair dame once more, —

  “They may say what they like, by the hokey! all the world over; but divil bellows me, if ever I seen sich another beautiful, fascinating, flusthrating famale, since I was the size iv that musthard pot — may the divil bile me if I did,” ejaculated Mr. Toole, rapturously throwing himself into the chair with something between a sigh and a grunt, and ready to burst with love and repletion.

  The fair maiden endeavoured to look contemptuous; but she smiled in spite of herself.

  “Well, well, Mr. Toole,” she exclaimed, “I see there is no use in talking; a fool’s a fool to the end of his days, and some people’s past cure. But tell me, how’s Mr. O’Connor?”

  “Bedad, it’s time for me to think iv it,” exclaimed Larry, briskly. “Do you know what brought me here?”

  “How should I know?” responded she, with a careless toss of her head, and a very conscious look.

  “Well,” replied Mr. Toole, “I’ll tell you at once. I lost the masther as clane as a new shilling, an’ I’m fairly braking my heart lookin’ for him; an’ here I come, trying would I get the chance iv hearing some soart iv a sketch iv him.”

  “Is that all?” inquired the damsel, drily.

  “All!” ejaculated Larry; “begorra. I think it’s enough, an’ something to spare. All! why, I tell you the masther’s lost, an’ anless I get some news of him here, it’s twenty to one the two of us ‘ill never meet in this disappinting world again. All! I think that something.”

  “An’ pray, what should I know about Mr. O’Connor?” inquired the girl, tartly.

  “Did you see him, or hear of him, or was he out here at all?” asked he.

  “No, he wasn’t. What would bring him?” replied she.

  “Then he is gone in airnest,” exclaimed Larry, passionately; “he’s gone entirely! I half guessed it from the first minute. By jabers, my bitther curse attind that bloody little public. He’s lost, an’ tin to one he’s in glory, for he was always unfortunate. Och! divil fly away with the liquor.”

  “Well, to be sure,” ejaculated the lady’s maid, with contemptuous severity, “but it is surprising what fools some people is. Don’t you think your master can go anywhere for a day or two, but he must bring you along with him, or ask your leave and licence to go where he pleases forsooth? Marry, come up, it’s enough to make a pig laugh only to listen to you.”

  Just at this moment, and when Larry was meditating his reply, steps were heard in the hall, and voices in debate. They were those of Nicholas Blarden and of Sir Henry Ashwoode. Larry instantly recognized the latter, and his companion both of them.

  “They’re coming this way,” gasped Larry, with agonized alarm. “Tare an’ ouns, evangelical girl, we’re done for. Put me somewhere quick, or begorra it’s all over with us.”

  “What’s to be done, merciful Moses? Where can you go?” ejaculated the terrified girl, surveying the room with frantic haste. “The press. Oh! thank God, the press. Come along, quick, quick, Mr. Toole, for gracious goodness sake.”

  So saying, she rushed headlong at a kind of cupboard or press, whose doors opened in the panelling of the wall, and fumbling with frightful agitation among her keys, she succeeded at length in unlocking it, and throwing open its door, exhibited a small orifice of about four feet and a half by three in the wall.

  “Now, Mr. Toole, into it, as you vally your precious life — quick, quick, for the love of heaven,” ejaculated the maiden.

  Larry was firmly persuaded that the feat was a downright physical impossibility; yet with a devotion and desperation which love and terror combined alone could inspire, he mounted a chair, and, supported by all the muscular strength of his soul’s idol, scrambled into the aperture. A projecting shelf about half way up threw his figure so much out of equilibrium, that the task of keeping him in his place was no light one. By main strength, however, the girl succeeded in closing the door and locking her visitor fairly in, and before her master entered the chamber, Mr. Toole became a close prisoner, and the key which confined him was safely deposited in the charming Betsy’s pocket.

  Blarden roared lustily to the servants, and with sundry impressive imprecations, commanded them to remove every vestige of the breakfast of which the prisoner had just clandestinely partaken. Meanwhile he continued to walk up and down the room, whistling a lively ditty, and here and there, at particularly sprightly parts, drumming with his foot in time upon the floor.

  “Well, that job’s done at last,” said he. “The room’s clean and quiet, and we can’t do better than take a twist at the cards. So let’s have a pack, and play your best, d’ye mind.”

  This was addressed to Ashwoode, who, of course, acquiesced.

  “Oh, bloody wars, I’m in for it,” murmured Larry, “the
y’ll be playin’ here to no end, and I smothering fast, as it is; I’ll never come out iv this pisition with my life.”

  Few situations could indeed be conceived physically more uncomfortable. A shelf projecting about midway pressed him forward, exerting anything but a soothing influence upon the backbone, so that his whole weight rested against the door of his narrow prison, and was chiefly sustained by his breast-bone and chin. In this very constrained attitude, and afraid to relieve his fatigue by moving even in the very slightest degree, lest some accidental noise should excite suspicion and betray his presence, the ill-starred squire remained; his discomforts still further enhanced by the pouring of some pickles, which had been overturned upon an upper shelf, in cool streams of vinegar down his back.

  “I could not have betther luck,” murmured he. “I never discoorsed a famale yet, but I paid through the nose for it. Didn’t I get enough iv romance, bad luck to it, an’ isn’t it a plisint pisition I’m in at last — locked up in an ould cupboard in the wall, an’ fairly swimming in vinegar. Oh, the women, the women. I’d rather than every stitch of cloth on my back, I walked out clever an’ clane to meet the young masther, and not let myself be boxed up this way, almost dying with the cramps and the snuffication. Oh, them women, them women!”

  Thus mourned our helpless friend in inarticulate murmurings. Meanwhile young Ashwoode opened two or three drawers in search of a pack of cards.

  “There are several, I know, in that locker,” said Ashwoode. “I laid some of them there myself.”

  “This one?” inquired Blarden, making the interrogatory by a sharp application of the head of his cane to the very panel against which Larry’s chin was resting. The shock, the pain, and the exaggerated loudness of the application caused the inmate of the press, in spite of himself, to ejaculate, —

  “Oh, holy Pether!”

  “Did you hear anything queer?” inquired Blarden, with some consternation. “Anyone calling out?”

  “No,” said Ashwoode.

  “Well, see what the nerves is,” cried Blarden, “by —— , I’d have bet ten to one I heard a voice in the wall the minute I hit that locker door — this —— weather don’t agree with me.”

  This sentence he wound up by administering a second knock where he had given the first; and Larry, with set teeth and a grin, which in a horse-collar would have won whole pyramids of gingerbread, nevertheless bore it this time with the silent stoicism of a tortured Indian.

  “The nerves is a —— quare piece of business,” observed Mr. Blarden — a philosophical remark in which Larry heartily concurred— “but get the cards, will you — what the —— is all the delay about?”

  In obedience to Ashwoode’s summons, Mistress Betsy Carey entered the room.

  “Carey,” said he, “open that press and take out two or three packs of cards.”

  “I can’t open the locker,” replied she, readily, “for the young mistress put the key astray, sir — I’ll run and look for it, if you please, sir.”

  “God bless you,” murmured Larry, with fervent gratitude.

  “Hand me that bunch of keys from under your apron,” said Blarden, “ten to one we’ll find some one among them that’ll open it.”

  “There’s no use in trying, sir,” replied the girl, very much alarmed, “it’s a pitiklar soart of a lock, and has a pitiklar key — you’ll ruinate it, sir, if you go for to think to open it with a key that don’t fit it, so you will — I’ll run and look for it if you please, sir.”

  “Give me that bunch of keys, young woman; give them, I tell you,” exclaimed Blarden.

  Thus constrained, she reluctantly gave the keys, and among them the identical one to whose kind offices Mr. O’Toole owed his present dignified privacy.

  “Come in here, Chancey,” said Mr. Blarden, addressing that gentleman, who happened at that moment to be crossing the hall— “take these keys here and try if any of them will pick that lock.”

  Chancey accordingly took the keys, and mounting languidly upon a chair, began his operations.

  It were not easy to describe Mr. Toole’s emotions as these proceedings were going forward — some of the keys would not go in at all — others went in with great difficulty, and came out with as much — some entered easily, but refused to turn, and during the whole of these various attempts upon his “dungeon keep,” his mental agonies grew momentarily more and more intense, so much so that he was repeatedly prompted to precipitate the dénouement, by shouting his confession from within. His heart failed him, however, and his resolution grew momentarily feebler and more feeble — he would have given worlds at that moment that he could have shrunk into the pickle-pot, whose contents were then streaming down his back — gladly would he have compounded for escape at the price of being metamorphosed for ever into a gherkin. His prayers were, however, unanswered, and he felt his inevitable fate momentarily approaching.

  “This one will do it — I declare to God I have it at last,” drawled Chancey, looking lazily at a key which he held in his hand; and then applying it, it found its way freely into the keyhole.

  “Bravo, Gordy, by —— ,” cried Blarden, “I never knew you fail yet — you’re as cute as a pet fox, you are.”

  Mr. Blarden had hardly finished this flattering eulogium, when Chancey turned the key in the lock: with astonishing violence the doors burst open, and Larry Toole, Mr. Chancey, and the chair on which he was mounted, descended with the force of a thunderbolt on the floor. In sheer terror, Chancey clutched the interesting stranger by the throat, and Larry, in self-defence, bit the lawyer’s thumb, which had by a trifling inaccuracy entered his mouth, and at the same time, with both his hands, dragged his nose in a lateral direction until it had attained an extraordinary length and breadth. In equal terror and torment the two combatants rolled breathless along the floor; the charming Betsy Carey screamed murder, robbery, and fire — while Ashwoode and Blarden both started to their feet in the extremest amazement.

  “How the devil did you get into that press?” exclaimed Ashwoode, as soon as the rival athletes had been separated and placed upon their feet, addressing Larry Toole.

  “Oh! the robbing villain,” ejaculated Mistress Betsy Carey— “don’t suffer nor allow him to speak — bring him to the pump, gentlemen — oh! the lying villain — kick him out, Mr. Chancey — thump him, Sir Henry — don’t spare him, Mr. Blarden — turn him out, gentlemen all — he’s quite aperiently a robber — oh! blessed hour, but it’s I that ought to be thankful — what in the world wide would I do if he came powdering down on me, the overbearing savage!”

  “Och! murder — the cruelty iv women!” ejaculated Larry, reproachfully— “oh! murdher, beautiful Betsy.”

  “Don’t be talking to me, you sneaking, skulking villain,” cried Mistress Carey, vehemently, “you must have stole the key, so you must, and locked yourself up, you frightful baste. For goodness gracious sake, gentlemen, don’t keep him talking here — he’s dangerous — the Turk.”

  “Oh! the villainy iv women!” repeated Larry, with deep pathos.

  A brief cross-examination of Mistress Carey and of Larry Toole sufficed to convict the fair maiden of her share in concealing the prisoner.

  “Now, Mr. Toole,” said Ashwoode, addressing that personage, “you have been once before turned out of this house for misconduct — I tell you, that if you do not make good use of your time, and run as fast as your best exertions will enable you, you shall have abundant reason to repent it, for in five minutes more I will set the dogs after you; and if ever I find you here again, I will have you ducked in the horse-pond for a full hour — depart, sirrah — away — run.”

  Larry did not require any more urgent remonstrances to induce him to expedite his retreat — he made a contrite bow to Sir Henry — cast a look of melancholy reproach at the beautiful Betsy, who, with a heightened colour, was withdrawing from the scene, and then with sudden nimbleness, effected his retreat.

  “The fellow,” said Ashwoode, “is a servant of th
at O’Connor, whom I mentioned to you. I do not think we shall ever have the pleasure of his company again. I am glad the thing has happened, for it proves that we cannot trust Carey.”

  “That it does,” echoed Blarden, with an oath.

  “Well, then, she shall take her departure hence before a week,” rejoined Ashwoode. “We shall see about her successor without loss of time. So much for Mistress Carey.”

  CHAPTER LI.

  FLORA GUY.

  “Why, I thought you had done for that fellow, that O’Connor,” exclaimed Blarden, after he had carefully closed the door. “I thought you had pinked him through and through like a riddle — isn’t he dead — didn’t you settle him?”

  “So I thought myself, but some troublesome people have the art of living through what might have killed a hundred,” rejoined Ashwoode; “and I do not at all like this servant of his privately coming here, to hold conference with my sister’s maid — it looks suspicious; if it be, however, as I suspect, I have effectually countermined them.”

  “Well, then,” replied Blarden, with an oath, “at all events we must set to work now in earnest.”

  “The first thing to be done is to find a substitute for the girl whom I am about to dismiss,” said Ashwoode, “we must select carefully, one whom we can rely upon — do you choose her?”

  “Why, I’m no great judge of such cattle,” rejoined Blarden. “But here’s Chancey that understands them. I stake this ring to a sixpence he has one in his eye this very minute that’ll fit our purpose to a hair — what do you say, Gordy, boy — can you hit on the kind of wench we want — eh, you old sly boots?”

  Chancey sat sleepily before the fire, and a languid, lazy smile expanded his sallow sensual face as he gazed at the bars of the grate.

  “Are you tongue-tied, or what?” exclaimed Blarden; “speak out — can you find us such a one as we want? she must be a regular knowing devil, and no mistake — as sly as yourself — a dead hand at a scheming game like this — a deep one.”