The House by the Church-Yard Part 70

And over his solitary tea-cup and his book the sorrowful news from the Elms reached him, and all his historical castles in the air were shivered. In the morning, before the town was stirring, he crossed the bridge, and knocked softly at the familiar hall-door. Honest old John Tracy opened it, and Dan shook hands with him, and both cried for a while quietly.

'How is the honoured master?' at last said Loftus.

'He's there in the study, Sir. Thank G.o.d, you're come, Sir. I'm sure he'd like to see you--I'll ask him.'

Dan went into the drawing-room. He looked out at the flowers, and then at the harpsichord, and on her little walnut table, where her work-basket lay, and her thimble, and the little coral necklace--a childish treasure that she used to wear when she was quite a little thing. It was like a dream; and everything seemed to say--'Poor little Lily!'

So old John came in, and 'Sir,' said he, 'the master will be glad to see you.' And Dan Loftus found himself in the study; and the good doctor and he wrung one another's hands for a long time.

'Oh, Dan--Dan--she's gone--little Lily.'

'You'll see her again, Sir--oh, you'll see her again.'

'Oh, Dan! Dan! Till the heavens be no more they shall not awake, nor be raised out of their sleep. Oh, Dan, a day's so long--how am I to get over the time?'

'The loving Lord, Sir, will find a way.'

'But, oh! was there no pitying angel to stay the blow--to plead for a few years more of life? I deserved it--oh, Dan, yes!--I know it--I deserved it. But, oh! could not the avenger have pierced me, without smiting my innocent darling?'

'Oh! she was taken in love, not in judgment, Sir--my pastor--but in love. It was the voice of the Redeemer that called her.'

And honest Dan repeated, through his sobs, a verse of that 'Song of Songs,' which little Lily had loved so well--

'My well-beloved spake, and said unto me: Arise, my love, my fair one, and come thy way.'

The old man bowed his sorrowful head listening.

'You never saw anything so beautiful,' said he after a while. 'I think, Dan, I could look at her for ever. I don't think it was partiality, but it seems to me there never was--I never saw a creature like her.'

'Oh, n.o.ble! n.o.ble!' sobbed poor Dan.

The doctor took him by the arm, and so into the solemn room.

'I think you'd like to see her, Dan?'

'I would--I would indeed, Sir.'

And there was little Lily, never so like the lily before. Poor old Sally had laid early spring flowers on the white coverlet. A snow-drop lay by her pale little finger and thumb, just like a flower that has fallen from a child's hand it its sleep. He looked, at her--the white angelic apparition--a smile, or a light upon the face.

'Oh, my darling, my young darling, gone--"He is not a man as I am, that I should answer him."'

But poor Dan, loudly crying, repeated the n.o.ble words of Paul, that have spoken down to us through the sorrows of nigh two thousand years--

'For this we say unto you by the word of the Lord, that we which are alive, and remain unto the coming of the Lord, shall not prevent them which are asleep. For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of G.o.d; and the dead in Christ shall rise first.'

And so there was a little pause, and the old man said--

'It was very good of you to come to me, my good young friend, in my helplessness and shipwreck, for the Lord hath hid himself from me; but he speaks to his desolate creature, my good Dan, through your gracious lips. My faith!--I thought I had faith till it was brought to the test, and then it failed! But my good friend, Loftus, was sent to help me--to strengthen the feeble knees.'

And Dan answered, crying bitterly, and clasping the rector's hand in both of his--

'Oh, my master, all that ever I knew of good, I learned from you, my pastor, my benefactor.'

So, with a long, last look, Dan followed the old man to the study, and they talked long there together, and then went out into the lonely garden, and paced its walks side by side, up and down.

CHAPTER Lx.x.xV.

IN WHICH CAPTAIN DEVEREUX HEARS THE NEWS; AND MR. DANGERFIELD MEETS AN OLD FRIEND AFTER DINNER.

'On the night when this great sorrow visited the Elms, Captain Richard Devereux, who had heard nothing of it, was strangely saddened and disturbed in mind. They say that a distant death is sometimes felt like the shadow and chill of a pa.s.sing iceberg; and if this ominous feeling crosses a mind already saddened and embittered, it overcasts it with a feeling akin to despair.

Mrs. Irons knocked at his door, and with the eagerness of a messenger of news, opened it without awaiting his answer.

'Oh, captain, jewel, do you know what? There's poor Miss Lily Walsingham; and what do you think but she's dead--the poor little thing; gone to-night, Sir--not half an hour ago.'

He staggered a little, and put his hand toward his sword, like a man struck by a robber, and looked at her with a blank stare. She thought he was out of his mind, and was frightened.

''Tis only me, Sir, Mrs. Irons.'

'A--thank you;' and he walked towards the chimney, and then towards the door, like a man looking for something; and on a sudden clasping his forehead in his hands, he cried a wild and terrible appeal to the Maker and Judge of all things.

''Tis impossible--oh, no--oh, no--it's _not_ true.'

He was in the open air, he could not tell how, and across the bridge, and before the Elms--a dream--the dark Elms--dark everything.

'Oh, no--it can't be--oh, no--oh, no;' and he went on saying as he stared on the old house, dark against the sky, 'Oh, no--oh, no.'

Two or three times he would have gone over to the hall-door to make enquiry, but he sickened at the thought. He clung to that hope, which was yet not a hope, and he turned and walked quickly down the river's side by the Inchicore-road. But the anguish of suspense soon drew him back again; and now his speech was changed, and he said--

'Yes, she's gone--she's gone--oh, she's gone--she's certainly gone.'

He found himself at the drawing-room window that looked into the little garden at the front of the house, and tapping at the window-pane. He remembered, all on a sudden--it was like waking--how strange was such a summons. A little after he saw a light crossing the hall, and he rang the door-bell. John Tracy opened the door. Yes, it was all true.

The captain was looking very pale, John thought, but otherwise much as usual. He stared at the old servant for some seconds after he told him all, but said nothing, not even good-night, and turned away. Old John was crying; but he called after the captain to take care of the step at the gate: and as he shut the hall-door his eye caught, by the light of his candle, a scribbling in red chalk, on the white door-post, and he stooped to read it, and muttered, 'Them mischievous young blackguards!'

and began rubbing it with the cuff of his coat, his cheek still wet with tears. For even our grief is volatile; or, rather, it is two tunes that are in our ears together, the requiem of the organ, and, with it, the faint hurdy-gurdy jig of our vulgar daily life; and now and then this latter uppermost.

It was not till he had got nearly across the bridge that Captain Devereux, as it were, waked up. It was no good waking. He broke forth into sheer fury. It is not my business to note down the horrors of this impious frenzy. It was near five o'clock when he came back to his lodgings; and then, not to rest. To sit down, to rise again, to walk round the room and round, and stop on a sudden at the window, leaning his elbows on the sash, with hands clenched together, and teeth set; and so those demoniac hours of night and solitude wore slowly away, and the cold gray stole over the east, and Devereux drank a deep draught of his fiery Lethe, and cast himself down on his bed, and fell at once into a deep, exhausted lethargy.

When his servant came to his bed-side at seven o'clock, he was lying motionless, with flushed cheeks, and he could not rouse him. Perhaps it was well, and saved him from brain-fever or madness.

But after such paroxysms comes often a reaction, a still, stony, awful despondency. It is only the oscillation between active and pa.s.sive despair. Poor Leonora, after she had worked out her fit, tearing 'her raven hair,' and reviling heaven, was visited in sadder and tenderer guise by the vision of the past; but with that phantom went down in fear and isolation to the grave.

This morning several of the neighbours went into Dublin, for the bills were to be presented against Charles Nutter for a murderous a.s.sault, with intent to kill, made upon the person of Barnabas Sturk, Esq., Doctor of Medicine, and Surgeon to the Royal Irish Artillery. As the day wore on, the honest gossips of Chapelizod looked out anxiously for news.

And everybody who met any one else asked him--'Any news about Nutter, eh?'--and then they would stop to speculate--and then one would wonder that Dr. Walsingham's man, Clinton, had not yet returned--and the other would look at his watch, and say 'twas one o'clock--and then both agreed that Spaight, at all events, must soon come--for he has appointed two o'clock for looking at that brood mare of f.a.gan's.