CHAPTER VIII. TWO MEN WELL MET
Sewell had long coveted the suite of rooms known at the Priory as “Miss Lucy’s.” They were on the ground-floor; they opened on a small enclosed garden of their own; they had a delicious aspect; and it was a thousand pities they should be consigned to darkness and spiders while he wanted so much a snuggery of his own, – a little territory which could be approached without coming through the great entrance, and where he could receive his familiars, and a variety of other creatures whose externals alone would have denied them admittance to any decent household.
Now, although Sir William’s letter to Lucy was the sort of document which, admitting no species of reply, usually closes a correspondence, Sewell had not courage to ask the Chief for the rooms in question. It would be too like peremptory action to be prudent. It might lead the old man to reconsider his judgment. Who knows what tender memories the thought might call up? Indeed, as Sewell himself remembered, he had seen fellows in India show great emotion at the sale of a comrade’s kit, though they had read the news of his death with comparative composure. “If the old fellow were to toddle in here, and see her chair and her writing-table and her easel, it might undo everything,” said he; so that he wisely resolved it would be better to occupy the premises without a title than endeavor to obtain them legitimately.
By a slight effort of diplomacy with Mrs. Beales, he obtained possession of the key, and as speedily installed himself in occupancy. Indeed, when the venerable housekeeper came round to see what the Colonel could possibly want to do with the rooms, she scarcely recognized them. A pipe-rack covered one wall, furnished with every imaginable engine for smoke; a stand for rifles and fowling-pieces occupied a corner; some select prints of Derby winners and ballet celebrities were scattered about; while a small African monkey, of that color they call green, sat in a small arm-chair, of his own, near the window, apparently sunk in deep reflection. This creature, whom his master called Dundas – I am unable to say after what other representative of the name – was gifted with an instinctive appreciation of duns, and flew at the man who presented a bill as unerringly as ever a bull rushed at the bearer of a red rag.
How he learned to know tailors, shoemakers, and tobacconists, and distinguish them from the rest of mankind, and how he recognized them as natural enemies, I cannot say. As for Se well, he always spoke of the gift as the very strongest evidence in favor of the Darwinian theory, and declared it was the prospective sense of troubles to come that suggested the instinct. The chalk head, the portrait Lucy had made of Sir Brook, still hung over the fireplace. It would be a curious subject of inquiry to know why Sewell suffered it still to hold its place there. If there was a man in the world whom he thoroughly hated, it was Fossbrooke. If there was one to injure whom he would have bartered fortune and benefit to himself, it was he. And how came it that he could bear to have this reminder of him so perpetually before his eyes? – that the stern features should be ever bent upon him, – darkly, reproachfully lowering, as he had often seen them in life? If it were simply that his tenure of the place was insecure, what so easy as to replace the picture, and why should he endure the insult of its presence there? No, there was some other reason, – some sentiment stronger than a reason, – some sense of danger in meddling with that man in any shape. Over and over again he vowed to himself he would hang it against a tree, and make a pistol-mark of it. Again and again he swore that he would destroy it; he even drew out his penknife to sever the head from the neck, significant sign of how he would like to treat the original; but yet he had replaced his knife, and repressed his resolve, and sat down again to brood over his anger inoperative.
To frown at the “old rascal,” as he loved to call him, – to menace him with his fist as he passed, – to scowl at him as he sat before the fire, were, after all, the limits of his wrath; but still the picture exerted a certain influence over him, and actually inspired a sense of fear as well as a sense of hatred.
Am I imposing too much on my reader’s memory by asking him to recall a certain Mr. O’Reardon, in whose humble dwelling at Cullen’s Wood Sir Brook Fossbrooke was at one time a lodger? Mr. O’Reardon, though an official of one of the law courts, and a patriot by profession, may not have made that amount of impression necessary to retain a place in the reader’s recollection, nor indeed is it my desire to be exacting on this head. He is not the very best of company, and we shall not see much of him.
When Sewell succeeded to the office of Registrar, which the old Judge carried against the Castle with a high hand, he found Mr. O’Reardon there; he had just been promoted to the rank of keeper of the waiting-room. In the same quick glance with which the shrewd Colonel was wont to single out a horse, and knew the exact sort of quality he possessed, he read this man, and saw with rapid intelligence the stuff he was made of, and the sort of service he could render.
He called him into his office, and, closing the door, asked him a few questions about his former life. O’Reardon, long accustomed to regard the man who spoke with an English accent as an easy dupe, launched out on his devoted loyalty, the perils it had cost him, the hate to which his English attachment exposed him from his countrymen, and the little reward all his long-proved fidelity had ever won him; but Sewell cut him suddenly short with: “Don’t try any of this sort of balderdash upon me, old fellow, – it’s only lost time: I’ve been dealing with blackguards of your stamp all my life, and I read them like print.”
“Oh! your honor, them’s hard words, – blackguard, blackguard! to a decent man that always had a good name and a good character.”
“What I want you to understand is this,” said Sewell, scanning him keenly while he spoke, “and to understand it well: that if you intend to serve me, and make yourself useful in whatever way I see fit to employ you, there must be no humbug about it. The first lesson you have to learn is, never to imagine you can take me in. As I have just told you, I have had my education amongst fellows more than your masters in craft, – so don’t lose your time in trying to outrogue me.”
“Your honor’s practical, – I always like to serve a gentleman that’s practical,” said the fellow, with a totally changed voice.
“That will do, – speak that way, – drop your infernal whine, – turn out your patriotic sentiments to grass, and we’ll get on comfortably.”
“Be gorra! that’s practical, – practical, every word of it.”
“Now the first thing I want is to know who are the people who come here. I shall require to be able to distinguish those who are accustomed to frequent the office from strangers; I suppose you know the attorneys and solicitors, all of them?”
“Every man of them, sir; there’s not a man in Dublin with a pair of black trousers that I could n’t give you the history of.”
“That’s practical, certainly,” said Sewell, adopting his phrase; and the other laughed pleasantly at the employment of it. “Whenever you have to announce persons that are strangers to you, and whose business you can’t find out, mention that I am most busily engaged, – that persons of consequence are with me, – delay them, in short, and put them off for another day – ”
“Till I can find out all about them?” broke in O’Reardon.
“Exactly.”
“And that’s what I can do as well as any man in Ireland,” said the fellow, overjoyed at the thought of such congenial labor.
“I suppose you know a dun by the look of him?” asked Sewell, with a low, quiet laugh.
“Don’t I, then?” was the reply.
“I ‘ll have none of them hanging about here, – mind that; you may tell them what you please, but take care that my orders are obeyed.”
“I will, sir.”
“I shall probably not come down every day to the office; it may chance that I may be absent a week at a time; but remember, I am always here, – you understand, – I am here, or I am at the Chief Baron’s chambers, – somewhere, in short, about the Court.”
“Up in one of the arbitration rooms, maybe,” added O’Rear-don, to show he perfectly comprehended his instructions.
“But whether I come to the office or not, I shall expect you every morning at the Priory, to report to me whatever I ought to know, – who has called, – what rumors are afloat; and mind you tell everything as it reaches you. If you put on any embroidery of your own, I ‘ll detect it at once, and out you go, Master O’Reardon, notwithstanding all your long services and all your loyalty.”
“Practical, upon my conscience, – always practical,” said the fellow, with a grin of keen approval.
“One caution more; I’m a tolerably good friend to the man who serves me faithfully. When things go well, I reward liberally; but if a fellow doubles on me, if he plays me false, I ‘ll back myself to be the worst enemy he ever met with. That’s practical, isn’t it?”
“It is indeed, sir, – nothing more so.”
“I’ll expect you to begin your visits on Thursday, then. Don’t come to the hall-door, but pass round by the end of the house and into the little garden. I ‘ll leave the gate open, and you ‘ll find my room easily. It opens on the garden. Be with me by eleven.”
Colonel Sewell was not more than just to himself when he affirmed that he read men very quickly. As the practised cashier never hesitates about the genuineness of a note, but detects the forgery at a glance, this man had an instinctive appreciation of a scoundrel. Who knows if there be not some magnetic affinity between such natures, that saves them the process of thought and reason? He was right in the present case. O’Reardon was the very man he wanted. The fellow liked the life of a spy and an informer. To track, trace, connect this with that, and seek out the missing link which gave connection to the chain, had for him the fascination of a game, and until now his qualities had never been fairly appreciated. It was with pride too that he showed his patron that his gifts could be more widely exercised than within the narrow limits of an antechamber; for he brought him the name of the man who wrote in “The Starlight” the last abusive article on the Chief Baron, and had date and place for the visit of the same man to the under-secretary, Mr. Cholmondely Balfour. He gave him the latest news of the Curragh, and how Faunus had cut his frog in a training gallop, and that it was totally impossible he could be “placed” for his race. There were various delicate little scandals in the life of society too, which, however piquant to Sewell’s ears, would have no interest for us; while of the sums lost at play, and the costly devices to raise the payments, even Sewell himself was amazed at the accuracy and extent of his information.
Mr. O’Reardon was one of a small knot of choice spirits who met every night and exchanged notes. Doubtless each had certain “reserves” which he kept strictly to himself; but otherwise they dealt very frankly and loyally with each other, well aware that it was only on such a foundation their system could be built; and the training-groom, and the butler, and the club-waiter, the office messenger, and the penny-postman became very active and potent agents in that strange drama we call life.
Now, though Mr. O’Reardon had presented himself each morning with due punctuality at the little garden, in which he was wont to make his report while Sewell smoked his morning cigar, for some days back the Colonel had not appeared. He had gone down to the country to a pigeon-match, from which he returned vexed and disappointed. He had shot badly, lost his money, lost his time, and lost his temper, – even to the extent of quarrelling with a young fellow whom he had long been speculating on “rooking,” and from whom he had now parted on terms that excluded further acquaintance.
Although it was a lovely morning, and the garden looking its very brightest and best, – the birds singing sweetly on the trees, and the air balmy with the jasmine and the sweet-brier, – Sewell strolled out upon the velvety sward in anything but a mood of kindred enjoyment. His bills were flying about on all sides, renewals upon renewals swelling up to formidable sums, for which he had not made any provision. Though his residence at the Priory, and his confident assurance to his creditors that the old Judge had made him his heir, obtained a certain credit for him, there were “small-minded scoundrels,” as he called them, who would n’t wait for their fifty per cent. In his desperation to stave off the demands he could not satisfy, he had been driven to very ruinous expedients. He sold timber off the lawn without the old Judge’s knowledge, and only hesitated about forging Sir William’s name through the conviction that the document to which he would have to append it would itself suggest suspicion of the fraud. His increasing necessities had so far impaired his temper that men began to decline to play with him. Nobody was sure of him, and this cause augmented the difficulties of his position. Formerly his two or three hours at the club before dinner, or his evening at mess, were certain to keep him in current cash. He could hold out his handful of sovereigns, and offer to bet them in that reckless carelessness which, amongst very young men, is accepted as something akin to generosity. Now his supply was almost stopped, not to say that he found, what many have found, the rising generation endowed with an amount of acuteness that formerly none attained to without sore experiences and sharp lessons.
“Confound them,” he would say, “there are curs without fluff on their chins that know the odds at Newmarket as well as John Day! What chance has a man with youngsters that understand the ‘call for trumps’?”
It was thus moralizing over a world in decline that he strolled through the garden, his unlit cigar held firm between his teeth, and his hands deep sunk in his trousers’ pockets. As he turned an angle of a walk, he was arrested by a very silky voice saying, “Your honor’s welcome home. I hope your honor’s well, and enjoyed yourself when you were away.”
“Ah, O’Reardon, that you! pretty well, thank you; quite well, I believe; at least, as well as any man can be who is in want of money, and does not know where to find it.”
Mr. O’Reardon grinned, as if that, at least, was one of the contingencies his affluent chief could never have had any experience of. “Moses is to run after all, sir,” said he, after a pause; “the bandages was all a sham, – he never broke down.”
“So much the worse for me. I took the heavy odds against him on your fine information,” said Sewell, savagely.
“You ‘ll not be hurt this time. He ‘ll have a tongue as big as three on the day of the race; and there will be no putting a bridle on him.”
“I don’t believe in that trick, O’Reardon.”
“I do, sir; and I’m laying the only ten-pound note I have on it,” said the other, calmly.
“What about Mary Draper? is she coughing still?”
“She is, sir, and won’t feed besides; but Mr. Harman is in such trouble about his wife going off with Captain Peters, that he never thinks of the mare. Any one goes into the stable that likes.”
“Confounded fool he must be! He stood heavily on that mare. When did Lady Jane bolt?”
“On Tuesday night, sir. She was here at the Priory at luncheon with Captain Peters that morning. She and Mrs. Sewell were walking more than an hour together in the back garden.”
“Did you overhear anything they said?”
“Only once, sir, for they spoke low; but one time your Lady said aloud, ‘If any one blames you, dear, it won’t be me.’ I think the other was crying when she said it.”
“Stuff and nonsense!” said Sewell, angrily.
“She’s gone away, at all events, sir; and Mr. Harman ‘s out of his mind about it. Cross told me this morning that he would n’t be surprised if his master cut his throat or went to live on the Continent.”
“Do you happen to know anybody would lend me a thousand pounds on no particular security, O’Reardon?”
“Not just at the minute, – perhaps if I had a day or two to think of it.”
“I could give you a week, – a fortnight if it was any use, but it is not; and you know it’s not, Master O’Reardon, as well as any man breathing.”
There was a silence of some minutes now between them; and while Sewell brooded over his hard fortune, O’Reardon seemed to be reviewing in his mind the state of the share market, and taking a sweeping view of the course of the exchanges.
“Well, indeed, sir, money is tight, – mighty tight, at this time. Old M’Cabe of the lottery office wouldn’t advance three hundred to Lord Arthur St. Aubin without the family plate, and I saw the covered dishes going in myself.”
“I wish I had family plate,” sighed Sewell.
“So you will yet, please God,” said the other, piously. “His Lordship can’t live forever! But jewels is as good,” resumed he, after a slight pause.
“I have just as much of the one as the other, O’Reardon. They were a sort of scrip I never invested in.”
“It is n’t a bad thing to do, after all. I remember poor Mr. Giles Morony saying one day, ‘I dined yesterday, Tom,’ says he, ‘off one of my wife’s ear-rings, and I never ate a better dinner in my life; and with the blessing of Providence I’ll go drunk to bed off the other to-night.’”
“Was n’t he hanged afterwards for a murder?”
“No, sir, – sentenced, but never hanged. Mr. Wallace got him off on a writ of error. He was a most agreeable man. Has Mrs. Sewell any trinkets of value, sir?”
“I believe not – I don’t know – I don’t care,” said he, angrily; for the subject, as an apropos, was scarcely pleasant. “Any one at the office since I left?” asked he, with a twang of irritation still in his tone.
“That ould man I tould your honor about called three times.”
“You told me nothing of any old man.”
“I wrote it twice to your honor since I saw you, and left the letters here myself.”
“You don’t think I break open letters in such handwriting as yours, do you? Why, man, my table is covered with them. Who is the old man you speak of?”
“Well, sir, that’s more than I know yet; but I ‘ll be well acquainted with all about him before a week ends, for I knew him before and he puzzled me too.”
“What’s his business with me?”
“He would not tell. Indeed, he’s not much given to talk. He just says, ‘Is Colonel Sewell here?’ and when I answer, ‘No, sir,’ he goes on, ‘Can you tell the day or the hour when I may find him here?’ Of course I say that your honor might come at any moment, – that your time is uncertain, and such-like, – that you ‘re greatly occupied with the Chief Baron.”
“What is he like? Is he a gentleman?”
“I think he is, – at least he was once; for though his clothes is not new and his boots are patched, there’s a look about him that common people never have.”
“Is he short or tall? What is he like?” Just as Sewell had put this question they had gained the door of the little sitting-room, which lay wide open, admitting a full view of the interior. “Give me some notion of his appearance, if you can.”
“There he is, then,” cried O’Reardon, pointing to the chalk head over the chimney. “That’s himself, and as like as life.”
“What? that!” exclaimed Sewell, clutching the man’s arm, and actually shaking him in his eagerness. “Do you mean that he is the same man you see here?”
“I do indeed, sir. There’s no mistaking him. His beard’s a little longer than the picture, and he’s thinner, perhaps; but that’s the man.”
Sewell sat down on the chair nearest him, sick and faint; a cold clammy sweat broke over his face and temples, and he felt the horrible nausea of intense weakness. “Tell me,” said he at last, with a great effort to seem calm, “just the words he said, as nearly as you can recall them.”
“It was what I told your honor. ‘Is Colonel Sewell here? Is there no means of knowing when he may be found here?’ And then when I’d say, ‘What name am I to give? who is it I ‘m to say called?’ his answer would be, ‘That is no concern of yours. It is for me to leave my name or not, as it pleases me.’ I was going to remind him that he once lodged in my house at Cullen’s Wood, but I thought better of it, and said nothing.”
“Did he speak of calling again?”
“No, but he came yesterday; and whether he thought I was denying your honor or not I don’t know, but he sat down in the waiting-room and smoked a cigar there, and heard two or three come in and ask for you and get the same answer.”
Sewell groaned heavily, and covered his face with his hands.
“I think,” said O’Reardon, with a half-hesitating, timid manner, as though it was a case where any blunder would be very awkward, “that if it was how that this man was any trouble, – I mean any sort of an inconvenience to your honor, – and that it was displeasing to your honor to have any dealings with him, I think I could find a way to make him cut his stick and leave the country; or if he would n’t do that, come to worse luck here.”
“What do you mean, – have you anything against him?” cried Sewell, with a wild eagerness.
“If I ‘m not much mistaken, I can soon have against him as much as his life ‘s worth.”
“If you could,” said Sewell, clutching both his arms, and staring him fixedly in the face, – “if you could! I mean, if you could rid me of him, now and forever, – I don’t care how, and I ‘ll not ask how, – only do it; and I ‘ll swear to you there ‘s nothing in my power to serve you I ‘ll refuse doing, – nothing!”
“What ‘s between your honor and him?” said O’Reardon, with an assurance that his present power suggested.
“How dare you ask me, sir? Do you imagine that when I take such a fellow as you into my service, I make him my confidant and my friend?”
“That’s true, sir,” said the other, whose face only grew paler under this insult, while his manner regained all its former subserviency, – “that’s true, sir. My interest about your honor made me forget myself; and I was thinking how I could be most use to you. But, as your honor says, it’s no business of mine at all.”
“None whatever,” said Sewell, sternly; for a sudden suspicion had crossed him of what such a fellow as this might become if once intrusted with the power of a secret.
“Then it’s better, your honor,” said he, with a slavish whine, “that I ‘d keep to what I ‘m fit for, – sweeping out the office, and taking the messages, and the like, and not try things that ‘s above me.”
“You ‘ll just do whatever my service requires, and whenever I find that you do it ill, do it unfaithfully, or even unwillingly, we part company, Master O’Reardon. Is that intelligible?”
“Then, sir, the sooner you fill up my place the better. I ‘ll give notice now, and your honor has fifteen days to get one that will suit him better.”
Sewell turned on him a look of savage hatred. He read, through all the assumed humility of the fellow’s manner, the determined insolence of his stand.
“Go now, and go to the devil, if you like, so that I never see your hang-dog face again; that ‘s all I bargain for.”
“Good-morning, sir; there’s the key of the office, and that’s the key of the small safe; Mr. Simmes has the other. There ‘s a little account I have, – it’s only a few shillings is coming to me. I ‘ll leave it here to-morrow; and if your honor would like me to tell the new man about the people that come after your honor – who ‘s to be let in and who ‘s not – ”
Sewell made a haughty gesture with his arm as though to say that he need not trouble himself on that head.
“Here’s them cigars your honor gave me last week. I suppose I ought to hand them back, now that I ‘m discharged and turned away.”
“You have discharged yourself, my good friend. With a civil tongue in your head, and ordinary prudence, you might have held on to your place till it was time to pension you out of it.”
“Then I crave your honor’s pardon, and you ‘ll never have to find the same fault with me again. It was just breaking my heart, it was, – the thought of leaving your honor.”
“That’s enough about it; go back to your duty. Mind your business; and take good care you never meddle with mine.”
“Has your honor any orders?” said O’Reardon, with his ordinary tone of respectful attention.
“Find out if Hughes is well enough to ride; they tell me he was worse yesterday. Don’t bother me any more about that fellow that writes the attacks on the Chief Baron. They do the thing better now in the English papers, and ask nothing for it. Look out for some one who will advance me a little money, – even a couple of hundreds; and above all, track the old fellow who called at the office; find out what he ‘s in Ireland for, and how long he stays. I intend to go to the country this evening, so that you ‘ll have to write your report, – the post-town is Killaloe.”
“And if the ould man presses me hard,” said O’Reardon, with one eye knowingly closed, “your honor’s gone over to England, and won’t be back till the cock-shooting.”
Sewell nodded, and with a gesture dismissed the fellow, half ashamed at the familiarity that not only seemed to read his thoughts, but to follow them out to their conclusions.