Chapter XVIII: Under the Park Wall

All through that August day which witnessed the hurried journey of Mr Richard Hold, master mariner, from the river-side bowers of Plugger’s to the silvan shades of _The Traveller’s Rest_, Sir Sykes Denzil’s ward was in a state of feverish agitation, which it was hard for even her to conceal from those about her. We may fairly own that women surpass us in the social diplomacy which they study from the cradle almost, and that their powers of suppressing what they feel—not seldom from a noble motive—are greater than ours. All of us must have wondered, as we read the marvellous narratives of such prisoners as Trenck and Latude, at the patient ingenuity that could contrive rope-ladders out of the flax thread of shirts, files out of scraps of rusty iron, tools from any fragment of metal that came to hand. None the less should we be astonished at the power of dissembling evinced by the captives on the watch for the propitious moment to break prison.

What Ruth dreaded above all other things was what a woman always does dread, the scrutiny of her own sex. That men are credulous, careless, prone to give credit to the shallowest excuse, readily hoodwinked, and easy to pacify, has been an article of faith with Eve’s daughters since prehistoric times. The real spy to be feared, the real censor before whom to tremble, is decidedly feminine, in the estimation of women who have anything to hide. Ruth therefore devoted her whole attention to keeping up a brave outside before the eyes of her guardian’s daughters, Blanche and Lucy, two as honestly unsuspicious girls as could be met with in all Devonshire.

But as all _a priori_ reasoning is tainted with the fatal flaw of bad logic, Ruth forgot Jasper Denzil, still shut up in the house on account of his recent accident, and whose crooked mind had not much to do save to employ itself in fathoming the crooked ways of others. Now a man, if circumstances coerce him to limit his powers of observation to the narrow sphere of domesticity, is capable of becoming a spy more formidable than women would readily admit. If he sees less, he reasons more cogently as to what he does see, and he has the further advantage of being an unsuspected scout from whom no danger is anticipated.

Jasper Denzil had excellent reasons for the profound mistrust with which he regarded the Indian orphan. The very presence beneath his father’s roof of such a one as Ruth was in itself a standing puzzle and challenge to his curiosity. That she was Hold’s sister, the sister of a coarse-mannered adventurer of humble birth, was what the captain could not bring himself to believe. For Ruth seemed innately a lady. Either she must have had the advantages of gentle nurture and education, or as an actress in the never-ending social drama she displayed consummate skill. But whatever might have been her birth (and there were times when he was tempted to fancy that in her he saw that young sister of his own, long dead, the date of whose decease was supposed to coincide with that of the sad mood which had become habitual to Sir Sykes), Jasper with just cause regarded her as a most artful person.

The ex-cavalry officer remembered well enough that interview between Sir Sykes and Hold, at which he had played the part of an unsuspected audience. The demand to which his father had acceded was that Sir Sykes should receive in a false character Hold’s sister as an inmate of Carbery. True the seafaring fellow—smuggler, pirate, or whatever he might be—had laughed mockingly, and had spoken in strangely ironical accents when dictating to the baronet on this subject. But be she who she might, Ruth must be either an accomplished schemer or the willing instrument of others, or she would not have been where she was.

It may have been a petty malice, suited to his feline nature, that caused Jasper on that particular night to remain down-stairs later than usual, causing his sisters also to defer their retiring to rest for an extra half-hour. They kept early hours at Carbery as a rule, as rich people, in the profound dullness of the dignified ease which is not enlivened by guests, are sometimes apt to do. Sir Sykes, who always stayed long enough in the drawing-room to sip his coffee, was the first to disappear; but no one save himself and his valet knew when he left the library for his bedroom. When the captain was in health it was his custom to spend an hour or two in trying rare combinations of skill and luck among the ivory balls in the billiard-room; but since the steeplechase he had been glad to retire unfashionably early.

It was because he fancied that Miss Willis was impatiently awaiting the moment for separating for the night, that Jasper chose to delay it; but at length the time came when the good-nights had been exchanged, and the drawing-room was abandoned. Captain Denzil’s room, which adjoined the picture-gallery on the first-floor, was immediately beneath that occupied by the Indian orphan. Repeatedly, after he reached it, did Jasper fancy that he heard a light swift step overhead, as if Sir Sykes’s ward were hurrying to and fro; and then his sharpened ear caught the sound of a stealthy tread upon the oaken staircase.

Extinguishing the lights for the time being, Captain Denzil threw open his window, which overlooked the park; and by the time his eyes grew somewhat accustomed to the darkness, he saw, or thought he saw, a female form glide from under the black shadow of the giant sycamores and flit bat-like away through the solitary gloom.

‘If it were not for this provoking arm,’ said the captain, who was still, despite the skilful care of worthy little Dr Aulfus from Pebworth, suffering less from his hurts than from the Nemesis that dogs the steps of the hard-liver, ‘I’d win the odd trick to-night. But if I can’t follow to see who it is that she meets, at anyrate I shall get a second peep at yonder ingenuous creature when she comes back. A rare moonless night it is for such an errand!’

Jasper’s eyes had not deceived him. It was Ruth whose slight figure had passed away into the deepening shadows of the night, crossing the park towards its northern boundary, which abutted upon the broken country leading to the royal forest, treeless, but none the less in sound law the forest of Dartmoor. It was so dark that even one better accustomed to the locality might have failed to keep to the right course among narrow and grass-grown paths, many of them trodden by no human foot, but by the cloven hoofs of the deer trooping down to pool or pasture.

Yet Ruth threaded her devious way past holt and thicket, past pond and hollow, almost as well as the oldest keeper on the estate would have done, and presently gained the gate which, as has been already remarked, stood always open on the northern side of the park, corresponding to that on the southern or seaward side, for, as has been said, the public had an ancient right or user to traverse Carbery Chase. But as a right of ingress for men might imply a right of egress for deer, some zigzag arrangement of iron bars had been set up, screen-like, at either extremity of the footpath, and this effectually restrained the roving propensities of the antlered herd within.

‘So—you are late, Ruth! I have kicked about here, till I began to think you’d thrown me over. No wonder, living among fine folks, that you’re getting to care little how long a rough fellow like yours to command is kept on the look-out.’

Such was the surly greeting of the stout sailor-like man whom Ruth found irritably pacing to and fro under the lee of the wall.

‘I could not come, brother, one moment earlier without arousing suspicion that might be the ruin of us both,’ answered the girl steadily, but in a conciliatory tone. ‘And what, after all, signify a few minutes more or less of expectation, compared with a life of constant effort, constant watchfulness, and the sense of depending on one’s self alone in the midst of enemies who sleep beneath the same roof and feed at the same table? I tell you that the tension on my nerves is far greater than I ever dreamed that it could be, and that there are times when I even fancy that I shall be driven mad by the strain imposed upon me of playing a part, ever and always, without rest or respite!’

Ruth’s voice as she proceeded had grown shrill and tremulous with the effect of the emotions, long pent up, that found expression at last, and she pressed her slender hand upon her heated brow with a gesture which Hold was not slow to mark.

‘Come, come, Missy,’ he said in accents far more gentle than those which he had first employed; ‘you’ve taken this thing, whatever it is, too much to heart. See, now; I’d never have suggested the plan if I had not believed that in the house of Sir Sykes Denzil, Baronet, you’d have been like a fish in water. Didn’t we always call you in joke “My Lady,” and that because your ways weren’t as our plain ways? Haven’t you got your head stuffed as full of book-learning as an egg is full of meat? Aren’t you dainty and proud and what not? Till folks declared, to be sister o’ mine, you must have been changed at nurse. And now do you find it a hardship to have to consort with yon Denzil people?—not your equals, I’ll be bound, if all had their due.’

‘You can’t understand me, Brother Dick,’ said the girl softly, and turning away her face. ‘Give me, I say, a real stand-point; let not my life be a lie, and I should fear no comparison with those who are daily my dupes. But I hold my tenure of the bed I sleep on, the bread I eat, by mere sufferance, and I see no way as yet to’——

‘That fop—the dandy Lancer fellow—Captain Jasper don’t seem to take to you then?’ asked Hold; and Ruth winced perceptibly at the blunt question.

‘Captain Denzil will never, I imagine, care very much for any one but his dear self,’ she answered gently. ‘Now that he is an invalid—though he will soon be out and about again—he thinks that he pays me no small compliment in preferring my conversation to the insipid society of his excellent sisters. But I no more expect a proposal of marriage from Jasper Denzil than I expect the sky to fall.’

‘That’s a pity,’ said Hold dryly; and then a pause ensued. ‘You didn’t send for me, Missy, to tell me that?’ he added, after some moments spent in thought.

‘No!’ returned Ruth in her low clear voice. ‘I sent for you that you might read a letter—how obtained I leave you to guess—which concerns us both. Have you the means of doing so?’

‘Catch me without light, Missy!’ complacently replied the seaman, drawing from one of his deep coat-pockets a small dark-lantern, which he lighted. ‘Now for this letter,’ he said; and receiving it from Ruth’s hand, read it attentively twice over. As he did so, some rays from the shaded lantern that he held illumined his resolute face.

‘Wilkins, eh? Enoch Wilkins. That’s the name the craft hails by; and he’s a land-shark, it seems,’ muttered Hold, as he refolded the document.

‘He is a London lawyer, as you see,’ explained Ruth; ‘and all I know of him, gleaned from various sources, is that he was the captain’s creditor for a large sum, which Sir Sykes has very recently paid. He is, I gather, a sort of turf solicitor of no very good repute, and has somehow a grip on poor weak Sir Sykes. Now the baronet, I feel sure, has but one secret’——

‘That, you may be certain of!’ interjected Hold.

‘And this man knows it and trades on it,’ said the baronet’s ward eagerly; ‘and in doing so his path crosses ours. See! The word “others,” which is underlined, must surely have reference to you and me. Rely on it, he has an inkling of our plans, and may counteract them.’

‘Take the wind out of my sails, will he, eh?’ said Hold grimly, and with a threatening gesture.

‘Brother Dick, Brother Dick, when will you learn wisdom!’ said his sister, smiling. ‘Your buccaneer tricks of clenched fist and angry frown are as out of place in peaceable England as it would be to strut about with pistols and cutlass. You are not on the West Coast now, or off the Isle of Pines, or in the Straits of Malacca, to carry things with a high hand. Our plain course is to make an ally, not an enemy of this lawyer. He knows much, but perhaps not all, and may be induced to accept as true the story that has been told to Sir Sykes. In any case, he cannot be very scrupulous; and will not be desirous, by bringing about a dispute and a scandal, to kill the goose that lays the golden eggs. The baronet’s purse is deep enough for all of us.’

‘You’re right!’ rejoined the sailor, with a whistle that was meant to express unbounded admiration for his sister’s shrewdness. ‘I’ll make tracks to London, and see what terms can be made with Commodore Wilkins, before he shews his face here.’

‘Tell him nothing that he does not know,’ said Ruth, as the pair separated.

‘Trust me for that!’ was Hold’s confident reply.

Jasper, still at his window, caught but a glimpse of the girl’s slight form as it glided by and re-entered the house.

_To be continued._

RECOLLECTIONS OF THE IRISH BAR.

If the walls of the Dublin ‘Four Courts’ could speak, how many a pleasant story and witty repartee and sparkling bon-mot they could tell! Let me recall and string together some of these pearls of anecdote and wit, some of which, though perhaps not altogether new to lovers of anecdote, may well bear repetition.

The first Viscount Guillamore, when Chief Baron O’Grady, was remarkable for his dry humour and biting wit. The latter was so fine that its sarcasm was often unperceived by the object against whom the shaft was directed.

A legal friend, extremely studious, but in conversation notoriously dull, was once shewing off to him his newly-built house. The bookworm prided himself especially on a sanctum he had contrived for his own use, so secluded from the rest of the building that he could pore over his books in private quite secure from disturbance.

‘Capital!’ exclaimed the Chief Baron. ‘You surely could, my dear fellow, read and study here from morning till night, and no human being be _one bit the wiser_.’

A young and somewhat dull tyro at the bar pleading before him commenced: ‘My lord, my unfortunate client’—— then stopped, hemmed, hawed, hesitated. Again he began: ‘My lord, my most unfortunate client’—— Another stop, more hemming and confusion.

‘Pray go on, sir,’ said the Chief Baron. ‘So far the court is with you.’

* * * * *

In those days, before competitive examinations were known, men with more interest than brains got good appointments, for the duties of which they were wholly incompetent. Of such was the Honourable —— ——. He was telling Lord Guillamore of the summary way in which he disposed of matters in his court.

‘I say to the fellows that are bothering with foolish arguments, that there’s no use in wasting my time and their breath; for that all their talk only just goes in at one ear and out at the other.’

‘No great wonder in that,’ said O’Grady, ‘seeing that there’s so little between to stop it.’

It was this worthy, who being at a public dinner shortly after he got his place, had his health proposed by a waggish guest.

‘I will give you a toast,’ he said: ‘The Honourable —— ——, and long may he continue indifferently to administer justice.’ The health was drunk with much merriment, the object of it never perceiving what caused the fun.

* * * * *

Lord Guillamore could tell a story with inimitable humour. He used to vary his voice according to the speakers, and act as it were the scene he was describing, in a way infinitely diverting. Very droll was his mimicry of a dialogue between the guard of the mail and a mincing old lady with whom he once travelled from Cork to Dublin, in the old coaching days.

The coach had stopped to change horses, and the guard, a big red-faced jolly man, beaming with good-humour and civility, came bustling up to the window to see if the ‘insides’ wanted anything.

‘Guard!’ whispered the old lady.

‘Well, ma’am, what can I do for you?’

‘Could you’—in a faint voice—‘could you get me a glass of water?’

‘To be sure, ma’am; with all the pleasure in life.’

‘And guard!’—still fainter—‘I’d—hem—I’d—a—like it hot.’

‘_Hot_ water! Oh, all right, ma’am! Why not, if it’s plazing to you?’

‘With a lump of sugar, guard, if you please.’

‘By all manner of means, ma’am.’

‘And—and—guard dear’—as the man was turning to go away—‘a small squeeze of lemon, and a little—just a thimbleful—of spirits through it.’

‘Och, isn’t that _punch_!’ shouted the guard. ‘Where was the good of beating about the bush? Couldn’t you have asked out for a tumbler of punch at once, ma’am, like a man!’

Another favourite story was of a trial at quarter-sessions in Mayo, which developed some of the ingenious resources of Paddy when he chooses to exercise his talent in an endeavour not to pay. A doctor had summoned a man for the sum of one guinea, due for attendance on the man’s wife. The _medico_ proved his case, and was about to retire triumphant, when the defendant humbly begged leave to ask him a few questions. Permission was granted, and the following dialogue took place.

_Defendant._ ‘Docthor, you remember when I called on you?’

_Doctor._ ‘I do.’

_Defendant._ ‘What did I say?’

_Doctor._ ‘You said your wife was sick, and you wished me to go and see her.’

_Defendant._ ‘What did you say?’

_Doctor._ ‘I said I would, if you’d pay me my fee.’

_Defendant._ ‘What did I say?’

_Doctor._ ‘You said you’d pay the fee, if so be you knew what it was.’

_Defendant._ ‘What did you say?’

_Doctor._ ‘I said I’d take the guinea at first, and maybe more at the end, according to the sickness.’

_Defendant._ ‘Now, docthor, by vartue of your oath, didn’t I say: “Kill or cure, docthor, I’ll give you a guinea?” And didn’t you say: “Kill or cure, I’ll take it?”’

_Doctor._ ‘You did; and I agreed to the bargain. And I want the guinea accordingly.’

_Defendant._ ‘Now, docthor, by vartue of your oath answer this: Did you cure my wife?’

_Doctor._ ‘No; she’s dead. You know that.’

_Defendant._ ‘Then, docthor, by vartue of your oath answer this: Did you kill my wife?’

_Doctor._ ‘No; she died of her illness.’

_Defendant_ (to the bench). ‘Your worship, see this. You heard him tell our bargain. It was to kill or cure. By vartue of his oath, _he done neither!_—and he axes the fee!’

The verdict, however, went against poor Pat, notwithstanding his ingenuity.

* * * * *

Something like the following story has been told before in these pages. It will, however, bear repetition. Mr F——, Clerk of the Crown for Limerick, was over six feet high and stout in proportion. He was the dread of the cabmen, and if their horses could have spoken, they would not have blessed him.

One day when driving in the outlets of Dublin, they came to a long and steep hill. Cabby got down, and walking alongside the cab, looked significantly in at the windows. ‘His honour’ knew very well what he meant; but the day was hot, and he was lazy and fat, and had no notion of taking the hint and getting out to ease the horse while ‘larding the lean earth’ himself. At last Paddy changed his tactics. Making a rush at the cab, he suddenly opened the door, and then slammed it to with a tremendous bang.

‘What’s that for?’ roared Mr F——, startled at the man’s violence and the loud report.

‘Whist, yer honour! Don’t say a word!’ whispered Paddy, putting his finger on his lips.

‘But what do you mean, sirrah?’ cried the fare.

‘Arrah, can’t ye hush, sir? Spake low now—do. Sure, ’tis letting on I am to the little mare that your honour’s got out to walk. Don’t let her hear you, and the craythur ’ll have more heart to face the hill if she thinks you’re not inside, and that ’tis only the cab that’s throubling her.’

* * * * *

Baron R——, one of the gravest and most decorous judges on the bench, had a younger brother singularly unlike him, who was a perpetual thorn in his side. A scapegrace at school, the youth would learn nothing, and was the torment of his teachers. Having been set a sum by one of the latter, he, after an undue delay, presented himself before the desk and held up his slate, at one corner of which appeared a pile of coppers.

‘What is the meaning of all this, sir?’ said the master.

‘Oh!’ cried the youth, ‘I’m very sorry, sir, but I really can’t help it. All the morning I’ve been working at that sum. Over and over again I’ve tried, but in spite of all I can do, it will not come right. So I’ve made up the difference in halfpence, and there it is on the slate.’

The originality of the device disarmed the wrath of the pedagogue, and young R—— was dismissed with his coppers to his place.

The youngster when grown up boasted an enormous pair of whiskers, of which he was very proud. One day a friend met him walking up Dame Street with one of these cherished bushy adornments shaved clean off, giving a most comical lop-sided appearance to his physiognomy.

‘Hollo, R——!’ he exclaimed, ‘what has become of your whisker?’

‘Lost it at play,’ he replied. ‘Regularly cleaned out last night at the gaming-table of every mortal thing I had—nothing left to wager but my whisker.’

‘And why, man, don’t you cut off the rest, and not have one side of your face laughing at the other?’

‘I’m keeping that for to-night,’ said the scamp with a wink, as he passed on.

* * * * *

The father of the Lord Chancellor—afterwards Lord Plunket—was a very simple-minded man. Kindly and unsuspicious, he was often imposed upon, and the Chancellor used to tell endless stories illustrative of his parent’s guileless nature.

One morning, Mr Plunket taking an early walk was overtaken by two respectable-looking men, carpenters apparently by trade, each carrying the implements of his work.

‘Good-morning, my friends,’ said the old gentleman; ‘you are early afoot. Going on a job, eh?’

‘Good-morrow kindly, sir; yes, we are; and a quare job too. The quarest and the most out-of-the-way you ever heard of, I’ll be bound, though you’ve lived long in the world, and heard and read of many a thing. Oh, you’ll never guess it, your honour, so I may as well tell at once. We’re going to cut the legs off a dead man.’

‘What!’ cried his hearer, aghast. ‘You don’t mean’——

‘Yes, indeed, ’tis true for me; and here’s how it come about. Poor Mary Neil’s husband—a carpenter like ourselves, and an old comrade—has been sick all the winter, and departed life last Tuesday. What with the grief and the being left on the wide world with her five orphans, and no one to earn bit or sup for them, the craythur is fairly out of her mind—stupid from the crying and the fret; for what does she do, poor woman, but send the wrong measure for the coffin; and when it come home it was ever so much too short! Barney Neil was a tall man; nigh six feet we reckoned him. He couldn’t be got into it, do what they would; and the poor craythur hadn’t what would buy another. Where would she get it, after the long sickness himself had, and with five childher to feed and clothe? So, your honour, all that’s in it is to cut the legs off him. Me and my comrade here is going to do it for the desolate woman. We’ll just take ’em off at the knee-joints and lay them alongside him in the coffin. I think, sir, now I’ve told you our job, you’ll say ’tis the quarest ever you heard of.’

‘Oh!’ cried the old gentleman, ‘such a thing must not be done. It’s impossible! How much will a new coffin cost?’

The carpenter named the sum, which was immediately produced, and bestowed on him with injunctions to invest forthwith in the necessary purchase.

The business, however, took quite an unexpected turn. Mr Plunket on his return home related his matutinal adventure to his family at breakfast, the future Chancellor, then a young barrister, being at the table. Before the meal was ended, the carpenters made their appearance, and with many apologies tendered back the coin they had received. He who had been spokesman in the morning explained that on seeing the gentleman in advance of them on the road, he had for a lark made a bet with his companion that he would obtain the money; which, having won his wager, he now refunded. Genuine Irish this!

MONSIEUR HOULOT.

IN THREE CHAPTERS.