Читать книгу Tempest-Driven: A Romance (Vol. 2 of 3) - Dowling Richard - Страница 1

Jerry O'Brien's words had been no sooner uttered than he saw how foolishly injudicious they were. In the excitement of the moment he had forgotten what ought to have been uppermost in his thoughts-the condition of his friend.

He rang the bell. In a few seconds Madge entered the room. He briefly explained what had occurred, and then set off to summon Dr. Santley.

The doctor looked grave, and hurried back to Carlingford House. Here he stayed an hour, and left with gloomy looks and words. A relapse was possible, and a great delay to convalescence certain. There was danger, serious danger of the patient's life.

Jerry O'Brien was in despair. He had the greatest affection for Alfred, and he was in love with Alfred's sister. Yes, he might as well confess the matter boldly to himself; plain-looking, gentle, cheerful Madge was worth more to him than all the rest of the girls in the world put together. And here his impetuous rashness had brought her brother to death's door. Curses on his rashness!

Santley said he was by no means to see Alfred again that day, or until he got formal leave to do so. He would give no opinion as to the ultimate course of the disease; but there was cause for anxiety-great anxiety.

Jerry took his leave of the house with a heavy heart. He was quite alone in the world, and since he lost his mother, now years ago, he had known no trouble so trying as this. He told himself over and over again that all would yet be well with Alfred. In vain! His heart would not be comforted; his mind would not abide in peace.

When he got into town, he did not know where to turn. The idea of going to the club under the unpleasant circumstances was out of the question. Walking about alone was dull work. He did not care to call on any friend, and the notion of spending the evening at a place of entertainment was simply monstrous. There seemed to be nothing else for it but to go home, and that was a stupid programme enough.

Jerry had lodgings in Cecil Street, Strand, and thither he went. He let himself in with a latchkey, and walked upstairs in the gathering gloom of a late February afternoon. His rooms were on the second floor. He entered the one looking out on the street, and lit the lamp deliberately. There were two reasons for his proceeding slowly. In the first place, it was not yet quite dark; in the second, deliberation killed time, and he had nothing to do between that hour and to-morrow morning, when he should call to know how Alfred was.

"Killing time," he thought, "is, when one is anxious, an excellent though slow way of killing one's self."

He pulled down the blinds, drew the curtains, and roused up the smouldering fire; then, with a heavy sigh, he threw himself into an easy-chair, and looked indolently, discontentedly around.

The room at best was not very cheering or elegant. The house was old, the room low, the furniture heavy, by no means fresh, and far from new. The table on which the lamp stood had a staring crimson cover. This was a recent and outrageous addition to the chromatic elements of the place. Until that afternoon the cover had been of a dim, nameless green, quite inoffensive, except for motley stains.

In his present state of mind, this cover felt like an insult, and he rose quickly, and, having lifted the lamp, flung the obnoxious cover into a corner, and was about to sit down again, when his eyes caught sight of a letter lying on the carpet at his feet.

He stooped and picked it up.

"A letter from O'Hanlon, and a fat letter, too! What can it be, now? Nothing more about those weirs and the commissioners, I hope. Well, even the weirs and the commissioners in moderation would be better than dwelling on this wretched business about poor Alfred."

He broke the cover, sat down, and began to read a long and closely-written letter in a clerks hand. It was signed in a different hand "John O'Hanlon," and from a printed chaplet in the corner it appeared John O'Hanlon was a solicitor residing at Kilbarry.

Jerry O'Brien read on resolutely. The only sign he gave of perturbation while mastering the eight pages he held in his hand was now and then crossing, uncrossing, and recrossing his legs. When he came to the end he threw the letter from him with an exclamation of annoyance and disgust. Then he sat awhile motionless, with his elbow resting on the table, his cheek on his hand, and his eyebrows drawn low down over his eyes. At last he muttered:

"It is my unfortunate weirs again-or, rather, it is the weirs of unfortunate me. They'll end by tearing up my weirs and leaving me to graze on the parish. I'll make a nice pauper-splendid! I don't think paupers have numbers like convicts; but if they have, I shall be number naught, naught, naught recurring. Confound those commissioners eternally! Obstruct the navigation of the Bawn! My salmon weirs obstruct as much the navigation of the Bawn as they do of the Euphrates or the Mississippi! If I had my will, these infernal, meddling commissioners would be drowned first in the Euphrates and then in the Mississippi, after which I'd give them a roasting alive in Vesuvius for a change. This will take eight hundred a year out of my pocket, and hand it over to-the Atlantic, and parts adjacent! That's a nice way to help a struggling country!"

He paused for a while, and began walking up and down the room hastily, angrily. Presently his thoughts took another turn.

"It's fortunate I said nothing to Madge. She must know by this time how I feel towards her, and I don't think her people would have any objection if this infernal affair was not hanging over me. But I could not speak to her father if I had to say: 'Will you, sir, be good enough to bring your daughter over to Kilbarry, and see her married to me in the poor-house?' It would not look swell. Not a bit of it! Why, 'twould look quite squalid and ungenteel. Never mind, Madge. I'll fight them, darling, to the last. I won't leave a stone unturned, and every one I turn I'll fling at these rapacious fools."

He paused in his walk at the table.

He took up the letter again and looked at the end of it.

"He says I must go over at once-that I must start to-night. That's peremptory and but short notice. Never mind; it may be all for the best. I know the people at Dulwich will not think I am running away from them after bringing this fresh trouble upon them. They are the most generous people in the world. My honour is perfectly safe with them. I have plenty of time to catch the mail. This letter must have come at noon, and fallen off the table. I'll write a letter to Carlingford House explaining matters, and then when I have packed a portmanteau I shall be all right for the road." He sang in a low voice:

Adding: "I wish to heavens the days were not gone for 'pistols cocked' and 'the road.' Nothing would give me greater pleasure than to bag these accursed commissioners on the road, or in the water, or on the wing. Unfortunately, 'old times are changed, old manners gone,' as the poet says, and shooting even ruffianly commissioners is against the law of the land, or the sea, or the air."

He got writing materials, gave Mr. Paulton a short account of the reason for his unexpected departure from London; then he ordered his dinner, packed his portmanteau, ate his dinner, and caught the mail train for Holyhead easily.

He slept half the way from Euston to Holyhead, and nearly all the way from Holyhead to Kingstown. In Dublin, at an hotel close to the Westland Row Station, he got his breakfast, and then drove to Kingsbridge, where he booked and took train for Kilbarry, an important town in the south of Ireland.

A railway journey in the early part of the year from Dublin to the south of Ireland is far from exhilarating. Half the way may be performed at a fair, but the second half is done at a funereal pace. The country looks damp, and is ill-clad with trees. It has not yet donned its summer vesture of astonishing green. The towns are small, far apart, and generally invisible from the train. Few people are on the platforms, and the stations of even important towns are paltry and forlorn. There are occasionally lovely mountains and pastoral streams, but the whole effect is dulling, depressing, from the absence of trees and the melancholy thinness of the population. It is a country empty of its children, and desolate at the loss of them.

Jerry O'Brien was of a mercurial nature, and when he was down he was at zero, and when up, at boiling. This last stage of his journey plunged him into the profoundest gloom. Overhead there was a sick, watery sun, which gave a feeble white glare more dejecting than a pall of thunder cloud. Tobacco was powerless to ameliorate the chill influence of that changing landscape. He tried to read a newspaper, but found he could not fix his attention on one word of what he read. After ascertaining there was nothing in it about Fishery Commissioners, he gave it up as a bad job, and laid it with resignation on the rug which covered his knees.

When he arrived at Kilbarry he was in the lowest and most desponding state of mind. He was firmly persuaded that nothing could save his weirs, and was almost convinced that the first news he should hear was that his weirs had been destroyed, and that the commissioners had resolved to lynch him if they could lay hands on him before he died of hunger.

He left the station in an omnibus and drove along the mile of broad quays beside the noble river Bawn to the "Munster Hotel." Here the prospect was more cheering than on the bleak, cold journey down. The river was thick with shipping; the quays noisy with traffic; the stores, warehouses, wharfs, and shops alive with people. Sailing vessels were discharging corn and coal, and steamers taking in cattle, and cases of eggs, and bales of bacon, and firkins of butter. Here the stream of humanity was vivid and strong. Moderate prosperity asserted its presence blithely. The weather had cleared and brightened, and the sun hung in the clear western air, a pale golden shield of light.

O'Brien was well known at "The Munster," and as he went up the steps of the hotel, was greeted cordially by the cheerful landlord and a few loungers with whom he was acquainted. He did not see a trace of the hated Fishery Commissioners, and by the time he had eaten a light luncheon, he began to think they were little more than an amiable fiction of a jovial Government. No one he met seemed to think his fortunes were in peril. The manners of John, the old waiter, were respectful and joyous as though the traveller had just returned from far distant lands, after an absence of many years, to enter into possession of a princely patrimony.

There was no time to be lost if he wanted to catch his solicitor, O'Hanlon, at the office. Accordingly he set off at once in that direction, and, having gone through two or three streets, found himself in the presence of his legal adviser, agent, and friend all in one.

John O'Hanlon was a man past middle life, tall, a little stooped in the shoulders, black-haired, neither fat nor lean, dark, ruddy, with whiskers just tinged with gray, loud-voiced, and aggressive in manner, and owning a pair of enormous brown hands. One of the peculiarities of O'Hanlon was that no matter how well prepared he might be for the advent of any one who came to him he was always at that moment busy, or about to be busy, with something or somebody else.

As the young man entered the private office of the solicitor the latter rose hastily, pointed to a chair, and said rapidly:

"A minute, O'Brien-a minute. Sit down. I want to tell Gorman something."

Gorman was the head clerk-a red-haired, restless little man, who was always to be found in the front office, and who never seemed to have anything more important to do than lean against the folded window-shutter and look out into the street, but who was reputed to be more wily than any two fully sworn-in attorneys in Kilbarry.

After a short absence, O'Hanlon came back.

"My dear O'Brien, I'm delighted to see you."

He took both his client's hands, and shook them most cordially. He had the reputation of being the most insincere man you could meet on a summer's day; but no one had ever been able to point out any one act of insincerity in his conduct.

"I got your letter," said O'Brien, after replying to the greetings of the other, "and here I am. I came post-haste."

"Right, right, my boy! Those rascally commissioners will be the death of me. They'll be the death of every man in the neighbourhood who takes an interest in salmon, except the net men."

"Well, what is it this time? The same old story, as well as I could gather from your letter."

"The same old story over again. The same old three-and-fourpence-(a professional sum, which, I am sorry to see, has grown into a saying, although a colourless and unmeaning saying). The facts are these."

Here the solicitor gave a long and energetic account of the vile proceedings of these rascally commissioners, and wound up by saying that they hadn't a leg to stand on, and that "we" were sure to win in the long run, but that to insure success it was absolutely necessary for O'Brien to be in town or within very easy call for a month or two, as petitions and declarations and so-ons had to be considered, drawn up, and attended to generally and particularly.

When Jerry heard the whole state of affairs, he felt considerably relieved on the score of his salmon weirs on the lower Bawn. Upon telling this to his friend, the latter became hilarious, slapped Jerry on the back, and said that he'd prove the commissioners were the greatest fools in Ireland, and, moreover, make them confess it themselves in their own little dirty hole-and-corner court.

These and other gallant words and brave assurances served to put Jerry in good spirits, and when he rose to leave he was as buoyant as though he already held the proofs of triumph in his hand.

As he was about to quit the office, O'Hanlon took him by the hand, and mysteriously said:

"You were in London while that Davenport inquest was going on?"

"Yes."

"Do you know anything about it?"

O'Brien's good spirits instantly took flight.

"Too much! I know everything about it."

"You read a good report of the inquest?"

"No; I was at the inquest."

"Ah-h!" It was a long-drawn, deep breath. The eyes of the solicitor became suddenly introspective, and he lolled his head over his right shoulder as if in deep thought. "Why did you attend that inquest?"

"Well, for two reasons. First, I, as you of course know, was acquainted with the Davenports; and second, because the dearest friend I have in London was greatly interested in Mrs. Davenport. It's a long story."

"Is it? Ah-h! I am greatly interested in that story too."

"Are you? Why? I didn't think you knew the Davenports."

The solicitor straightened his head on his shoulders. His eyes were still turned inward.

"You are right so far. I did not know the Davenports. But do you remember a client of mine named Michael Fahey-commonly called Mike Fahey!"

"Let me see. That's a good while ago?"

"Ten or eleven years ago," said the solicitor, shaking his head in accord with his private thoughts rather than with his words.

"I do. He was drowned near Kilcash, wasn't he?"

"At the Black Rock."

"An awful death. I never think of any one being drowned there without shuddering. Wasn't there something wrong with that man-that client of yours?"

"Yes. The police were after him."

"Why do you speak of him now?"

"Don't you remember that when seen by the police who were in chase he was in the neighbourhood of Davenport's house, and that he ran like a madman until he got to the Black Rock, and then threw himself in?"

"Yes; it makes my flesh creep," said O'Brien, with a shiver.

"He left some documents in my possession. They are in my possession yet. They show he had some connection with Davenport. I had forgotten all about it until-"

The solicitor paused, and suddenly the eyes, which had been so long turned inward, flashed out their light, and blazed into those of the young man standing opposite.

O'Brien started back in vague dread.

"Until when?" he asked, in a low, constrained voice.

"Until this day week."

"And then" – O'Hanlon's eyes dilated-"I saw-"

"In the name of Heaven, what?"

"His ghost."