Part 23 (2/2)

'Augh, bother!--didn't I swear my soul, Ma'am; and do you think I'm going to commit a perjury about ”Mary Matchwell”--phiat!'

Well, with much ado, and a great circ.u.mbendibus, and floods of tears, and all sorts of deprecations and confusions, out came the murder at last.

Poor Mrs. Mack had a duty to perform by her daughter. Her brother was the best man in the world; but what with 'them shockin' forfitures' in her father's time (a Jacobite granduncle had forfeited a couple of town-lands, value 37 per annum, in King William's time, and to that event, in general terms, she loved to refer the ruin of her family), and some youthful extravagances, his income, joined to hers, could not keep the dear child in that fas.h.i.+on and appearance her mother had enjoyed before her, and people without pedigree or solid pretension of any sort, looked down upon her, just because they had money (she meant the Chattesworths), and denied her the position which was hers of right, and so seeing no other way of doing the poor child justice, she applied to 'M. M.'

'To find a husband for Mag, eh?' said Toole.

'No, no. Oh, Dr. Toole, 'twas--'twas for _me_,' sobbed poor Mrs. Mack.

Toole stared for a moment, and had to turn quickly about, and admire some sh.e.l.l-work in a gla.s.s box over the chimneypiece very closely, and I think his stout short back was shaking tremulously as he did so; and, when he turned round again, though his face was extraordinarily grave, it was a good deal redder than usual.

'Well, my dear Madam, and where's the great harm in that, when all's done?' said Toole.

'Oh, doctor, I had the unpardonable _wake_ness, whatever come over me, to write her two letters on the subject, and she'll print them, and expose me, unless,'--here she rolled herself about in an agony of tears, and buried her fat face in the back of the chair.

'Unless you give her money, I suppose,' said Toole. 'There's what invariably comes of confidential communications with female enchanters and gipsies! And what do you propose to do?'

'I don't know--what can I do? She got the 5 I borrowed from my brother, and he can't lend me more; and I can't tell him what I done with that; and she has 3 10s. I--I raised on my best fan, and the elegant soiclainet, you know--I bought it of Knox & Acheson, at the Indian Queen, in Dame-street;' and his poor patient turned up her small tearful blue eyes imploringly to his face, and her good-natured old features were quivering all over with tribulation.

'And Mag knows nothing of all this?' said Toole.

'Oh, not for the wide world,' whispered the matron, in great alarm.

'Whisht! is that her coming?'

'No; there she is across the street talking to Mrs. Nutter. Listen to me: I'll manage that lady, Mrs. Mary--what's her name?--Matchwell. I'll take her in hands, and--whisper now.'

So Toole entered into details, and completed an officious little conspiracy; and the upshot of it was that Mrs. Mack, whenever M. M. fixed a day for her next extortionate visit, was to apprise the doctor, who was to keep in the way; and, when she arrived, the good lady was just to send across to him for some 'peppermint drops,' upon which hint Toole himself would come slily over, and place himself behind the arras in the bed-room, whither, for greater seclusion and secrecy, she was to conduct the redoubted Mary Matchwell, who was thus to be overheard, and taken by the clever doctor in the act; and then and there frightened not only into a surrender of the doc.u.ments, but of the money she had already extracted, and compelled to sign such a confession of her guilt as would effectually turn the tables, and place her at the mercy of the once more happy Macnamara.

The doctor was so confident, and the scheme, to the sanguine Celtic imagination of the worthy matron, appeared so facile of execution and infallible of success, that I believe she would at that moment have embraced, and even kissed, little Toole, in the exuberance of her grat.i.tude, had that learned physician cared for such fooleries.

The fact is, however, that neither the doctor nor his patient quite understood Mrs. Matchwell or her powers, nor had the least inkling of the marvellous designs that were ripening in her brain, and involving the fate of more than one of the good easy people of Chapelizod, against whom n.o.body dreamed a thunderbolt was forging.

So the doctor, being a discreet man, only shook her cordially by the hand, at his departure, patting her encouragingly at the same time, on her fat shoulder, and with a sly grin and a wink, and a wag of his head--offering to 'lay fifty,' that between them 'they'd be too hard for the witch.'

CHAPTER x.x.xI.

BEING A SHORT HISTORY OF THE GREAT BATTLE OF BELMONT THAT LASTED FOR SO MANY DAYS, WHEREIN THE BELLIGERENTS SHOWED SO MUCH CONSTANCY AND VALOUR, AND SOMETIMES ONE SIDE AND SOMETIMES T'OTHER WAS VICTORIOUS.

So jolly old General Chattesworth was away to Scarborough, and matters went by no means pleasantly at Belmont; for there was strife between the ladies. Dangerfield--cunning fellow--went first to Aunt Becky with his proposal; and Aunt Becky liked it--determined it should prosper, and took up and conducted the case with all her intimidating energy and ferocity. But Gertrude's character had begun to show itself of late in new and marvellous lights, and she fought her aunt with cool, but invincible courage; and why should she marry, and above all, why marry that horrid, grim old gentleman, Mr. Dangerfield. No, she had money enough of her own to walk through life in maiden meditation, fancy free, without being beholden to anybody for a sixpence. Why, Aunt Rebecca herself had never married, and was she not all the happier of her freedom? Aunt Rebecca tried before the general went away, to inflame and stir him up upon the subject. But he had no capacity for coercion. She almost regretted she had made him so very docile. He would leave the matter altogether to his daughter. So Aunt Rebecca, as usual, took, as we have said, the carriage of the proceedings.

Since the grand eclairciss.e.m.e.nt had taken place between Mervyn and Gertrude Chattesworth, they met with as slight and formal a recognition as was possible, consistently with courtesy. Puddock had now little to trouble him upon a topic which had once cost him some uneasiness, and Mervyn acquiesced serenely in the existing state of things, and seemed disposed to be 'sweet upon' pretty Lilias Walsingham, if that young lady had allowed it; but her father had dropped hints about his history and belongings which surrounded him in her eyes with a sort of chill and dismal halo. There was something funeste and mysterious even in his beauty; and her spirits faltered and sank in his presence. Something of the same unpleasant influence, too, or was it fancy, she thought his approach seemed now to exercise upon Gertrude also, and that she, too, was unaccountably chilled and darkened by his handsome, but ill-omened presence.

Aunt Becky was not a woman to be soon tired, or even daunted. The young lady's resistance put her upon her mettle, and she was all the more determined, that she suspected her niece had some secret motive for rejecting a partner in some respects so desirable.

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