'The rent's not mine; I can't give it or lose it; and Sturk's not safe.

Will _you_ lend it? _I_ can't.'

This brought Cluffe to reason. He had opened the business, like a jolly companion, in a generous, full-blooded way.

'Well, by Jove, Nutter, I can't blame you; for you see, between ourselves, I'm afraid 'tis as you say. We of the Royal Irish have done, under the rose, you know, all we can; and I'm sorry the poor devil has run himself into a sc.r.a.pe; but hang it, we must have a conscience; and if you think there's a risk of losing it, why I don't see that I can press you.

The reader must not suppose when Cluffe said, 'we of the Royal Irish,'

in connection with some pecuniary kindness shown to Sturk, that that sensible captain had given away any of his money to the surgeon; but Sturk, in their confidential conference, had hinted something about a 'helping hand,' which Cluffe coughed off, and mentioned that Puddock had lent him fifteen pounds the week before.

And so he had, though little Puddock was one of the poorest officers in the corps. But he had no vices, and husbanded his little means carefully, and was very kindly and off-hand in a.s.sisting to the extent of his little purse a brother in distress, and never added advice when so doing--for he had high notions of politeness--or, in all his life, divulged any of these little money transactions.

Sturk stood at his drawing-room window, with his hat on, looking towards the Phoenix, and waiting for Cluffe's return. When he could stand the suspense no longer, he went down and waited at his door-steps. And the longer Cluffe stayed the more did Sturk establish himself in the conviction that the interview had prospered, and that his amba.s.sador was coming to terms with Nutter. He did not know that the entire question had been settled in a minute-and-a-half, and that Cluffe was at that moment rattling away at backgammon with his arch-enemy, Toole, in a corner of the club parlour.

It was not till Cluffe, as he emerged from the Phoenix, saw Sturk's figure stalking in the glimpses of the moon, under the village elm, that he suddenly recollected and marched up to him. Sturk stood, with his face and figure mottled over with the shadows of the moving leaves and the withered ones dropping about him, his hands in his pockets, and a crown-piece--I believe it was his last available coin just then--shut up fast and tight in his cold fingers, with his heart in his mouth, and whistling a little to show his unconcern.

'Well,' said Sturk, 'he won't, of course?'

Cluffe shook his head.

'Very good--I'll manage it another way,' said Sturk, confidently.

'Good-night;' and Sturk walked off briskly towards the turnpike.

'He might have said "thank you," I think,' Cluffe said, looking after him with a haughty leer--'mixing myself up in his plaguy affairs, and asking favours of fellows like Nutter.' But just then, having reached the corner next the Phoenix, Sturk hesitated, and Cluffe, thinking he might possibly turn back and ask him for money, turned on his heel, and, like a prudent fellow, trudged rapidly off to his lodgings.

Toole and O'Flaherty were standing in the doorway of the Phoenix, observing the brief and secret meeting under the elm.

'That's Sturk,' said Toole.

O'Flaherty grunted acquiescence.

Toole watched attentively till the gentlemen separated, and then glancing on O'Flaherty from the corner of his eye, with a knowing smile, 'tipped him the wink,' as the phrase went in those days.

'An affair of honour?' said O'Flaherty, squaring himself. He smelt powder in everything.

'More like an affair of _dishonour_,' said Toole, b.u.t.toning his coat.

'He's been "kiting" all over the town. Nutter can distrain for his rent to-morrow, and Cluffe called him outside the bar to speak with him; put that and that together, Sir.' And home went Toole.

Sturk, indeed, had no plan, and was just then incapable of forming any.

He changed his route, not knowing why, and posted over the bridge, and a good way along the Inchicore road, and then turned about and strode back again and over the bridge, without stopping, and on towards Dublin; and suddenly the moon shone out, and he recollected how late it was growing, and so turned about and walked homeward.

As he pa.s.sed by the row of houses looking across the road towards the river, from Mr. Irons's hall-door step a well-known voice accosted him--

'A thweet night, doctor--the moon tho thilver bright--the air tho thoft!'

It was little Puddock, whose hand and face were raised toward the sweet regent of the sky.

'Mighty fine night,' said Sturk, and he paused for a second. It was Puddock's way to be more than commonly friendly and polite with any man who owed him money; and Sturk, who thought, perhaps rightly, that the world of late had been looking cold and black upon him, felt, in a sort of way, thankful for the greeting and its cordial tone.

'A night like this,' pursued the little lieutenant, 'my dear Sir, brings us under the marble balconies of the palace of the Capulets, and sets us repeating "On such a night sat Dido on the wild seabanks"--you remember--"and with a willow wand, waved her love back to Carthage,"--or places us upon the haunted platform, where buried Denmark revisits the glimpses of the moon. My dear doctor, 'tis wonderful--isn't it--how much of our enjoyment of Nature we owe to Shakespeare--'twould be a changed world with us, doctor, if Shakespeare had not written--' Then there was a little pause, Sturk standing still.

'G.o.d be wi' ye, lieutenant,' said he, suddenly taking his hand. 'If there were more men like you there would be fewer broken hearts in the world.' And away went Sturk.

CHAPTER XLIII.

SHOWING HOW CHARLES NUTTER'S BLOW DESCENDED, AND WHAT PART THE SILVER SPECTACLES BORE IN THE CRISIS.

In the morning the distress and keepers were in Sturk's house.

We must not be too hard upon Nutter. 'Tis a fearful affair, and no child's play, this battle of life. Sturk had a.s.sailed him like a beast of prey; not Nutter, to be sure, only Lord Castlemallard's agent. Of that functionary his wolfish instinct craved the flesh, bones, and blood. Sturk had no other way to live and grow fat. Nutter or he must go down. The little fellow saw his great red maw and rabid fangs at his throat. If he let him off, he would devour him, and lie in his bed, with his cap on, and his caudles and cordials all round, as the wolf did by Little Red Riding Hood's grandmamma; and with the weapon which had come to hand--a heavy one too,--he was going, with Heaven's help, to deal him a brainblow.

When Sturk heard in the morning that the blow was actually struck, he jumped out of bed, and was taken with a great shivering fit, sitting on the side of it. Little Mrs. Sturk, as white as her nightcap with terror, was yet decisive in emergency, and bethought her of the brandy bottle, two gla.s.ses from which the doctor swallowed before his teeth gave over chattering, and a more natural tint returned to his blue face.

'Oh! Barney, dear, are we ruined?' faltered poor little Mrs. Sturk.

'Ruined, indeed!' cried Sturk, with an oath, 'Come in here.' He thought his study was on the same floor with his bed-room, as it had been in old times in their house in Limerick, ten or twelve years before.

'That's the nursery, Barney, dear,' she said, thinking, in the midst of the horror, like a true mother, of the children's sleep.

Then he remembered and ran down to the study, and pulled out a sheaf of bills and promissory notes, and renewals thereof, making a very respectable show.

'Ruined, indeed!' he cried, hoa.r.s.ely, talking to his poor little wife in the tones and with the ferocity which the image of Nutter; with which his brain was filled, called up. 'Look, I say, here's one fellow owes me that--and that--and that--and there--there's a dozen in that by another--there's two more sets there pinned together--and here's an account of them all--two thousand two hundred--and you may say three hundred--two thousand three hundred--owed me here; and that miscreant won't give me a day.'

'Is it the rent, Barney?'

'The rent? To be sure; what else should it be?' shouted the doctor, with a stamp.

And so pale little Mrs. Sturk stole out of the room, as her lord with bitter mutterings pitched his treasure of bad bills back again into the escritoire: and she heard him slam the study door and run down stairs to browbeat and curse the men in the hall, for he had lost his head somewhat, between panic and fury. He was in his stockings and slippers, with an old flowered silk dressing-gown, and nothing more but his shirt, and looked, they said, like a madman. One of the fellows was smoking, and Sturk s.n.a.t.c.hed the pipe from his mouth, and stamped it to atoms on the floor, roaring at them to know what the ---- brought them there; and without a pause for an answer, thundered, 'And I suppose you'll not let me take my box of instruments out of the house--mind, it's worth fifty pounds; and curse me, if one of our men dies for want of them in hospital, I'll indict you both, and your employer along with you, _for murder!_' And so he railed on, till his voice failed him with a sort of choking, and there was a humming in his ears, and a sort of numbness in his head, and he thought he was going to have a fit; and then up the stairs he went again, and into his study, and resolved to have Nutter out--and it flashed upon him that he'd say, 'Pay the rent first;' and then--what next? why he'd post him all over Dublin, and Chapelizod, and Leixlip, where the Lord Lieutenant and Court were.

And down he sat to a sheet of paper, with his left hand clenched on the table, and his teeth grinding together, as he ransacked his vocabulary for befitting terms; but alas, his right hand shook so that his penmanship would not do, in fact, it half frightened him. 'By my soul! I believe something bad has happened me,' he muttered, and popped up his window, and looked out, half dreaming over the church-yard on the park beyond, and the dewy overhanging hill, all pleasantly lighted up in the morning sun.

While this was going on, little Mrs. Sturk, who on critical occasions took strong resolutions promptly, made a wonderfully rapid toilet, and let herself quietly out of the street door. She had thought of Dr.

Walsingham; but Sturk had lately, in one of his imperious freaks of temper, withdrawn his children from the good doctor's catechetical cla.s.s, and sent him besides, one of his st.u.r.dy, impertinent notes--and the poor little woman concluded there was no chance there. She knew little of the rector--of the profound humility and entire placability of that n.o.ble soul.

Well, she took the opposite direction, and turning her back on the town, walked at her quickest pace toward the Bra.s.s Castle. It was not eight o'clock yet, but the devil had been up betimes and got through a good deal of his day's work, as we have seen. The poor little woman had made up her mind to apply to Dangerfield. She had liked his talk at Belmont, where she had met him; and he enquired about the poor, and listened to some of her woful tales with a great deal of sympathy; and she knew he was very rich, and that he appreciated her Barney, and so she trudged on, full of hope, though I don't think many people who knew the world better would have given a great deal for her chance.

Dangerfield received the lady very affably, in his little parlour, where having already despatched his early meal, he was writing letters. He looked hard at her when she came in, and again when she sat down; and when she had made an end of her long and dismal tale, he opened a sort of strong box, and took out a thin quarto and read, turning the leaves rapidly over.

'Ay, here we have him--Chapelizod--Sturk, Barnabas--Surgeon, R.I.A., a.s.signee of John Lowe--hey! one gale day, as you call it, only!--September. How came that? Rent, 40. Why, then, he owes a whole year's rent, 40, Ma'am. September, and his days of grace have expired.

He ought to have paid it.'

Here there came a dreadful pause, during which nothing was heard but the sharp ticking of his watch on the table.

'Well, Ma'am,' he said, 'when a thing comes before me, I say yes or no promptly. I like your husband, and I'll lend him the amount of his rent.'

Poor little Mrs. Sturk jumped up in an ecstasy, and then felt quite sick, and sat down almost fainting, with a deathlike smile.