Читать книгу Personal Sketches of His Own Times, Vol. 3 (of 3) - Jonah Barrington - Страница 4

Personal description of Counsellor Conaghty – Singular contrast of physical roughness and mental suavity – A legal costume – The Counsellor’s marriage – The bride described – Her plan for inducing her husband to sacrifice to the Graces – The fatal mirror – The Counsellor views himself in a new light – His consternation and false persuasion – The devil unjustly accused – Conaghty’s illness and death.

The most extraordinary instance I recollect of a sudden affection of the mind being fatal to the body was presented by an old acquaintance of mine, Counsellor Conaghty, a gentleman of the Irish bar, who pined and died in consequence of an unexpected view of his own person; but by no means upon the same principle as Narcissus.

Mr. Conaghty was a barrister of about six feet two inches in length; his breadth was about three feet across the shoulders; his hands splay, with arms in full proportion to the rest of his members. He possessed, indeed, a set of limbs that would not have disgraced a sucking elephant; and his body appeared slit up two-thirds of its length, as if Nature had originally intended (which is not very improbable) to have made twins of him – but finding his brains would not answer for two, relinquished her design. His complexion, not a disagreeable fawn-colour, was spotted by two good black eyes, well intrenched in his head, and guarded by a thick chevaux de frise of curly eyebrows. His mouth, which did not certainly extend, like a john-dory’s, from ear to ear, was yet of sufficient width to disclose between thirty and forty long, strong, whitish tusks, the various heights and distances whereof gave a pleasing variety to that feature. Though his tall countenance was terminated by a chin which might, upon a pinch, have had an interview with his stomach, still there was quite enough of him between the chin and waistband to admit space for a waistcoat, without the least difficulty.

Conaghty, in point of disposition, was a quiet, well-tempered, and, I believe, totally irreproachable person. He was not unacquainted with the superficies of law, nor was he without professional business. Nobody, in fact, disliked him, and he disliked nobody. In national idiom, and Emerald brogue, he unquestionably excelled (save one) all his contemporaries. Dialogues sometimes occurred in Court between him and Lord Avonmore, the Chief Baron, which were truly ludicrous.

The most unfortunate thing, however, about poor Conaghty, was his utter contempt for what fastidious folks call dress. – As he scorned both garters and suspenders, his stockings and small-clothes enjoyed the full blessings of liberty. A well-twisted cravat, as if it feared to be mistaken for a cord, kept a most respectful distance from his honest throat – upon which the neighbouring beard flourished in full crops, to fill up the interstice. His rusty black coat, well trimmed with peeping button-moulds, left him, altogether, one of the most tremendous figures I ever saw, of his own profession.

At length it pleased the Counsellor, or old Nick on his behalf, to look out for a wife; and, as dreams go by contraries, so Conaghty’s perverse vision of matrimonial happiness induced him to select a sposa very excellent internally, but in her exterior as much the reverse of himself as any two of the same species could be.

Madam Conaghty was (and I dare say still is) a neat, pretty, dressy little person: her head reached nearly up to her spouse’s hip; and if he had stood wide, to let her pass, she might (without much stooping) have walked under him as through a triumphal arch.

He was quite delighted with his captivating fairy, and she equally so with her good-natured giant. Nothing could promise better for twenty or thirty years of honey-moons, when an extraordinary and most unexpected fatality demonstrated the uncertainty of all sublunary enjoyments, and might teach ladies who have lost their beauty the dangers of a looking-glass.

The Counsellor had taken a small house, and desired his dear little Mary to furnish it to her own dear little taste. This, as new-married ladies usually do, she set about with the greatest zeal and assiduity. She had a proper taste for things in general, and was besides extremely anxious to make her giant somewhat smarter; and, as he had seldom in his life had any intercourse with looking-glasses larger than necessary just to reflect his chin whilst shaving, she determined to place a grand mirror in her little drawing-room, extensive enough to exhibit the Counsellor to himself from head to foot – and which, by reflecting his loose, shabby habiliments, and tremendous contour, might induce him to trim himself up.

This plan was extremely promising in the eyes of little Mary; and she had no doubt it would be entirely consonant with her husband’s own desire of Mrs. Conaghty’s little drawing-room being the nicest in the neighbourhood. She accordingly purchased, in Great George Street, at a very large price, a looking-glass of sufficing dimensions, and it was a far larger one than the Counsellor had ever before noticed.

When this fatal reflector was brought home, it was placed leaning against the wall in the still unfurnished drawing-room, – and the lady, having determined at once to surprise and reform her dear giant, did not tell him of the circumstance. The ill-fated Counsellor, wandering about his new house – as people often do toward the close of the evening – that interregnum between sun, moon, and candlelight, when shadows are deep and figures seem lengthened – suddenly entered the room where the glass was deposited. Unconscious of the presence of the immense reflector, he beheld, in the gloom, a monstrous and frightful Caliban – wild, loose, and shaggy, – standing close and direct before him; and, as he raised his own gigantic arms in a paroxysm of involuntary horror, the goblin exactly followed his example, lifting its tremendous fists, as if with a fixed determination to fell the Counsellor, and extinguish him for ever.

Conaghty’s imagination was excited to its utmost pitch. Though the spectre appeared larger than any d – l on authentic record, he had no doubt it was a genuine demon sent express to destroy his happiness and carry him to Belzebub. As his apprehensions augmented, his pores sent out their icy perspiration: he tottered – the fiend too was in motion! his hair bristled up, as it were like pikes to defend his head. At length his blood recoiled, his eyes grew dim, his pulse ceased, his long limbs quivered – failed; and down came poor Conaghty with a loud shriek and a tremendous crash. His beloved bride, running up alarmed by the noise, found the Counsellor as inanimate as the boards he lay on. A surgeon was sent for, and phlebotomy was resorted to as for apoplexy, which the seizure was pronounced to be. His head was shaved; and by the time he revived a little, he had three extensive blisters and a cataplasm preparing their stings for him.

It was two days before he recovered sufficiently to tell his Mary of the horrid spectre that had assailed him – for he really thought he had been felled to the ground by a blow from the goblin. Nothing, indeed, could ever persuade him to the contrary, and he grew quite delirious.

His reason returned slowly and scantily; and when assured it was only a looking-glass that was the cause of his terror, the assurance did not alter his belief. He pertinaciously maintained, that this was only a kind story invented to tranquillise him. “Oh, my dearest Mary!” said poor Conaghty, “I’m gone! – my day is come – I’m called away for ever. Oh! had you seen the frightful figure that struck me down, you could not have survived it one hour! Yet why should I fear the d – l? I’m not wicked, Mary! No, I’m not very wicked!”

A thorough Irish servant, an old fellow whom the Counsellor had brought from Connaught, and who of course was well acquainted with supernatural appearances, and had not himself seen the fatal mirror, – discovered, as he thought, the real cause of the goblin’s visit, which he communicated to his mistress with great solemnity, as she afterward related.

“Mistress,” said the faithful Dennis Brophy, “Mistress, it was all a mistake. By all the books in the master’s study, I’d swear it was only a mistake! – What harm did ever my master do nobody? and what would bring a d – l overhauling a Counsellor that did no harm? What say could he have to my master?”

“Don’t teaze me, Dennis,” said the unhappy Mary; “go along! – go!”

“I’ll tell you, mistress,” said he; “it was a d – l sure enough that was in it!”

“Hush! nonsense!” said his mistress.

“By J – s! it was the d – l, or one of his gossoons,” persisted Dennis; “but he mistook the house, mistress, and that’s the truth of it!”

“What do you mean?” said the mistress.

“Why, I mane that you know Mr. – lives on one side of us, and Mr. – lives at the other side, and they are both attornies, and the people say they’ll both go to him: and so the d – l, or his gossoon, mistook the door, and you see he went off again when he found it was my master that was in it, and not an attorney, mistress.”

All efforts to convince Conaghty he was mistaken were vain. The illusion could not be removed from his mind; he had received a shock which affected his whole frame; a constipation of the intestines took place; and in three weeks, the poor fellow manifested the effects of groundless horror in a way which every one regretted.