The House by the Church-Yard Part 40

So she told him.

'And was his name writ in it, or how was it marked?'

'Two big letters--a C and an N.'

'I see; and do you remember any other mark you'd know it by?'

'Well, yes; I st.i.tched the lining only last month, with red silk, and that's how I remember the letters.'

'I know; and are you sure it was that hat he had on?'

'Certain sure--why, there's all the rest;' and she conned them over, as they hung on their pegs on the rack before them.

'Now, don't let the mistress be downhearted--keep her up, Moggy, do you mind. I told her the master was with Lord Castlemallard since yesterday evening, on business, and don't you say anything else; keep her quiet, do ye mind, and humour her.'

And away went Toole, at a swift pace, to the town again, and entered the barrack, and asked to see the adjutant, and then to look at the hat the corporal had fished up by 'b.l.o.o.d.y Bridge;' and, by Jupiter! his heart gave a couple of great bounces, and he felt himself grow pale--they were the identical capitals, C N, and the clumsy red silk st.i.tching in the lining.

Toole was off forthwith, and had a fellow dragging the river before three-quarters of an hour.

Dr. Walsingham, returning from an early ride to Island Bridge, saw this artist at work, with his ropes and great hooks, at the other side of the river; and being a man of enquiring mind, and never having witnessed the process before, he cried out to him, after some moments lost in conjecture--

'My good man, what are you fishing for?'

'A land-agent,' answered Isaac Walton.

'A land-agent?' repeated the rector, mis...o...b..ing his ears.

The saturnine angler made no answer.

'And has a gentleman been drowned here?' he persisted.

The man only looked at him across the stream, and nodded.

'Eh! and his name, pray?'

'Old Nutter, of the Mills,' he replied.

The rector made a woeful e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.n, and stared at the careless operator, who had a pipe in his mouth the while, which made him averse from conversation. He would have liked to ask him more questions, but he was near the village, and refrained himself; and he met Toole at the corner of the bridge who, leaning on the shoulder of the rector's horse, gave him the sad story in full.

CHAPTER LII.

CONCERNING A ROULEAU OF GUINEAS AND THE CRACK OF A PISTOL.

Dangerfield went up the river that morning with his rod and net, and his piscatory fidus Achates, Irons, at his elbow. It was a nice gray sky, but the clerk was unusually silent even for him; and the sardonic piscator appeared inscrutably amused as he looked steadily upon the running waters. Once or twice the spectacles turned full upon the clerk, over Dangerfield's shoulder, with a cynical light, as if he were on the point of making one of his ironical jokes; but he turned back again with a little whisk, the jest untold, whatever it was, to the ripple and the fly, and the coy gray troutlings.

At last, Dangerfield said over his shoulder, with the same amused look, 'Do you remember Charles Archer?'

Irons turned pale, and looked down embarra.s.sed as it seemed, and began plucking at a tangled piece of tackle, without making any answer.

'Hey? Irons,' persisted Dangerfield, who was not going to let him off.

'Yes, I do,' answered the man surlily; 'I remember him right well; but I'd rather not, _and_ I won't speak of him, that's all.'

'Well, Charles Archer's _here_, we've seen him, haven't we? and just the devil he always was,' said Dangerfield with a deliberate chuckle of infinite relish, and evidently enjoying the clerk's embarra.s.sment as he eyed him through his spectacles obliquely.

'He has seen _you_, too, he says; and thinks _you_ have seen _him_, hey?' and Dangerfield chuckled more and more knowingly, and watched his shiftings and sulkings with a pleasant grin, as he teased and quizzed him in his own enigmatical way.

'Well, supposing I _did_ see him,' said Irons, looking up, returning Dangerfield's comic glance with a bold and lowering stare; 'and supposing _he_ saw _me_, so long as we've no business one of another, and never talks like, nor seems to remember--I think 'tisnt, no ways, no one's business--that's what I say.'

'True, Irons, very true; you, I, and Sturk--the doctor I mean--are cool fellows, and don't want for nerve; but I think, don't you? we're afraid of Charles Archer, for all that.'

'Fear or no fear, I don't want to talk _to_ him nor _of_ him, no ways,'

replied the clerk, grimly, and looking as black as a thunder-cloud.

'Nor I neither, but you know he's here, and what a devil he is; and we can't help it,' replied Dangerfield, very much tickled.

The clerk only looked through his nearly closed eyes, and with the same pale and surly aspect toward the point to which Dangerfield's casting line had floated, and observed--

'You'll lose them flies, Sir.'

'Hey?' said Dangerfield, and made another cast further into the stream.

'Whatever he may seem, and I think I know him pretty well,' he continued in the same sprightly way, 'Charles Archer would dispose of each of us--you understand--without a scruple, precisely when and how best suited his convenience. Now doctor Sturk has sent him a message which I know will provoke him, for it sounds like a threat. If he reads it so, rely on't, he'll lay Sturk on his back, one way or another, and I'm sorry for him, for I wished him well; but if he will play at brag with the _devil I_ can't help him.'

'I'm a man that holds his tongue; I never talks none, even in my liquor.

I'm a peaceable man, and no bully, and only wants to live quiet,' said Irons in a hurry.

'A disciple of _my_ school, you're right, Irons, that's my way; _I_ never _name_ Charles except to the two or three who meet him, and then only when I can't help it, just as you do; fellows of that kidney I always take quietly, and I've prospered. Sturk would do well to reconsider his message. Were _I_ in his shoes, I would not eat an egg or a gooseberry, or drink a gla.s.s of fair water from that stream, while he was in the country, for fear of _poison_! curse him! and to think of Sturk expecting to meet him, and walk with him, after such a message, together, as you and I do here. Do you see that tree?'

It was a stout poplar, just a yard away from Irons's shoulder; and as Dangerfield p.r.o.nounced the word 'tree,' his hand rose, and the sharp report of a pocket-pistol half-deafened Irons's ear.

'I say,' said Dangerfield, with a startling laugh, observing Irons wince, and speaking as the puff of smoke crossed his face, 'he'd lodge a bullet in the cur's heart, as suddenly as I've shot that tree;' the bullet had hit the stem right in the centre, 'and swear he was going to rob him.'

Irons eyed him with a livid squint, but answered nothing. I think he acquiesced in Dangerfield's dreadful estimate of Charles Archer's character.

'But we must give the devil his due; Charles can do a handsome thing sometimes. You shall judge. It seems he saw you, and you him--here, in this town, some months ago, and each knew the other, and you've seen him since, and done likewise; but you said nothing, and he liked your philosophy, and hopes you'll accept of this, which from its weight I take to be a little rouleau of guineas.'

During this speech Irons seemed both angry and frightened, and looked darkly enough before him on the water; and his lips were moving, as if in a running commentary upon it all the while.

When Dangerfield put the little roll in his hand, Irons looked suspicious and frightened, and balanced it in his palm, as if he had thoughts of chucking it from him, as though it were literally a satanic douceur. But it is hard to part with money, and Irons, though he still looked cowed and unhappy, put the money into his breeches' pocket, and he made a queer bow, and he said--

'You know, Sir, I never asked a farthing.'

'Ay, so he says,' answered Dangerfield.