"Very well, then, on this day week we shall be in town, too, and will call at your office about ten o'clock.
"The exact hour, my dear friend--and pray be punctual--and my friend Palmer--my dear friend, will you confer a great, an important favor on me? and you, Mrs. Lenehan, for you can?"
"What is it?" said Palmer. "When at family worship think of me. If I am what the world begins to say I am, oh! do not I require, and stand in need of your prayers, and most earnest supplications--yea, Mrs. Lenehan, even that you should wrestle for me--that I may be restored to the fold:--and if I am innocent--if--if--oh! why do I say if?" said he, turning up his eyes, and clasping his hands, whilst the tears of hypocrisy actually trickled down his cheeks, "but it is known--that precious word innocence is known? Peace be with you both!"
Darby, on his arrival, found him engaged in writing at his desk, and on casting his eye slightly at the paper he perceived that he was drawing out a bill of costs.
"Darby, my friend," said Solomon, after the first salutations were over, "when will you enter upon the duties of your new office."
"Plaise God, as soon as Mr. M'Darby leaves it--which will be in a few days, I hope; and how are you, Mr. M'Slime?"
"Tried in the furnace of affliction, nine times heated, Darby."
"It's a sad thing to be accused unjustly, Mr. M'Slime," said Darby looking him shrewdly in the face with one eye shut; "but then it's well that this--this--visitation has come upon a man that has thrue religion to support him, as you have, under it."
"Darby, my friend, there are none of us perfect--we all have our frailties--our precious little--ay! yes;--you know, Darby, the just man falleth seven times a day."
Darby started, and despite of all the influence of his new creed exclaimed--"Blessed Saints, seven times! Arra when was this, Mr.
M'Slime? Troth, I think, it must be in the owld pagan times long ago, when the people were different from what they are now."
"You see, Darby, that just men, that is the Elect, have their privileges."
"Troth, if to fall seven times a day is the privilege of a just man, I'd never be anything else all my life," replied Darby; "and myself wondhers that there's e'er an unjust man alive."
"Darby, I fear that Mr. Lucre has not improved your perceptions of spiritual things."
"Why, as to that, Mr. M'Slime, if you knew Mr. Lucre's piety as well as I do--however, as you say yourself, sir, it's known, or rather it's unknown, the piety of that gintleman."
"Well, Darby, between you and me, I am just as well satisfied that you did not attach yourself, as I expected you would have done, to our congregation; for, to acknowledge a truth, Darby, which I do in all charity, I tell you, my friend, that they are awfully Pharisaical, and wretchedly deficient in a proper sense of Christian justice; I, Darby, am a proof of it. I mentioned to another person before, Darby, that the Christian devotion of an act I did, would occasion considerable risk to my own reputation, and you see it has done so. I shall bear all the blame, Darby--all shame, Darby--all opprobium, Darby, sooner than that precious vessel--hitherto precious, I should have said--and yet, perhaps, precious still--"
"He is a just man, may be," said Darby. "He is, I would trust--sooner, I say, than that precious vessel should be broken up as unprofitable."
"I suppose he is one of those vessels, sir," said Darby, "that don't wish to hould any wather, unless when it's mix--"
"He is, or rather was, a brother Elder, Darby; but then, it mattereth not; I have covered his trangressions with my charity. I permit you to say as much among your friends in the religious world, whenever you hear the name of Solomon M'Slime mentioned. It is also due to myself to say as much."
"I'm afther comin' from Mr. M'Clutchy's, sir," said Darby, "and he desired me to say that he hopes you'll attend at Mr. M'Loughlin's about two o'clock, and not to fail, as its to be a busy day wid him. The sheriffs to be there to put them out."
"I shall not fail, Darby," replied the attorney; "but who comes here, riding at a rapid pace, like a messenger who bringeth good tidings?"
Darby looked out, and at once recognized one of Deaker's grooms, riding at a smart gallop towards Solomon's house.
The latter raised the window as the man approached--
"Well, my friend, what is the matter?"
"Sir, Mr. Deaker wishes to see you above all things; he is just dying, and swears he cannot depart till you come."
"I shall order the car immediately," replied Solomon. "Say I shall not lose a moment."
The man wheeled round his horse, and galloped off at even a greater speed than before.
"Darby, my friend," said he, "I shall attend at M'Loughlin's without fail. Justice must be rendered, Darby; justice must be rendered to that wretched man and his family."
Darby looked him in the face with a peculiar expression--
"Yes, sir," said he; "plaise God, justice shall be rendhered as you say--no doubt of that."
He then left the house, and ere he had proceeded a score yards, turned and said--
"Yes, you netarnal villain--you know the justice you and M'Clutchy rendhered me--bad luck to you both, I pray, this day! Any how it'll soon come back to yez."
In a few minutes Solomon was on his way, with an anxious expectation that he had been called upon to draw up Deaker's will.
Val, on reaching his father's, heard from Tom Corbet, with a good deal of surprise, that Solomon had been sent for expressly. A glance, however, at the invalid induced him to suppose that such a message could proceed from nothing but the wild capricious impulses under which he labored. Much to his surprise also, and indeed to his mortification, he found before him two gentlemen, whom Deaker, who it appears had been conscious of his approaching dissolution, had sent for, with his usual shrewdness, to guard and preserve his loose property from his unfortunate housekeeper on the one hand, and his virtuous son Val, on the other. These gentlemen were his cousins, and indeed we are inclined to think that their presence at that precise period was, considering all things, rather seasonable than otherwise. They had not, however, arrived many minutes before Val, so that when he came, they were still in one of the parlors, waiting for Deaker's permission to see him. A little delay occurred; but the moment Val entered, with his usual privilege he proceeded straight to the sick room, whilst at the same moment a message came up to say that the other gentlemen "might come up and be d--d." The consequence was, that the three entered the room nearly together. Great was their surprise, however--at least of two of them their disgust, their abhorrence, on seeing, as they approached his bed-room, a female--Young certainly, and handsome--wrapped in a night-dress--her naked feet slippered, her nice flushed and her gait tottering, escaping, as it were, out of it.
On passing them, which it was necessary she should do, she did not seem ashamed, but turned her eyes on them with an expression of maudlin resentment, that distorted her handsome but besotted features into something that was calculated to shock those who looked upon her. There she passed, a licentious homily upon an ill-spent life--upon a life of open, steady, and undeviating profligacy; there she passed the meretricious angel of his death-bed, actually chased by the presence of men from the delirious depravity of his dying pollutions!
"There is no necessity, gentlemen," said Val, "for my making an apology for this shocking sight--you all know the life, in this respect, that my unfortunate father led."
* This, like most other scenes in the present work, is no fiction.
"In any case it is unprecedented," replied one of them; "but if he be so near death, as we apprehend, it is utterly unaccountable--it is awful."
They then entered.
Deaker was lying a little raised, with an Orange silk night-cap on his head, embellished with a figure of King William on horseback. Three or four Orange pocket-handkerchiefs, each, owing to the excellent taste of the designer, with a similar decoration of his Majesty in the centre, lay about the bed, and upon a little table that stood near his head.
There was no apothecary's bottles visible, for it is well known that whatever may have been the cause of Deaker's death he died not of any malady known in the Pharmacopeia. In truth, he died simply of an over-wrought effort at reviving his departed energies, joined to a most loyal, but indomitable habit of drinking the Glorious Memory in brandy.
"Well, Vulture," said he on seeing Val, "do you smell the death-damp yet, that you're here? Is the putrefaction of my filthy old carcase on the wind yet? Here Lanty, you imp," he said turning his eyes on the ripe youth as he brought in a large jug of the "Boyne"--in other words of St. Patrick's Well water--"I say you--you clip, do you smell the putrefaction of my filthy old carcase yet? eh?"
"Begad, sir, it's no the pleasantest smell in the world at the present time; and there's a pair of big, black, thievish look in' ould Ravens, sittin' for the last two or three days upon the black beech, as if they had a suspicion of something. Tom Corbet and I have fired above a dozen shots at them, and blazes to the feather we can take out o' them. So far from that, they sit there laughin' at us. Be me sowl, it's truth, gentlemen."
"Begone, sirra," said Val, "how dare you use such language as this to your master; Leave the room."
Lanty rubbed his hair with his middle finger and went reluctantly out.
"Ah," said Deaker, "I'm glad to see you bore, Dick Bredin--and you Jack--stay here till I'm in the dirt, and you'll find I have not forgotten either of you.--As for the Vulture there, he is very well able to take care of himself--he is--oh, a d----d rogue!"
Deaker's face, was such a one as, perhaps, was never witnessed on a similar occasion, if there ever were a similar occasion. It presented the cadaverous aspect of the grave, lit up into the repulsive and unnatural animation that resulted from intoxication, and the feeble expiring leer of a worse passion. There was a dead but turbid glare in his eye; half of ice, and half of fire, as it were, which when taken in connection with his past life, was perfectly dreadful and appalling. If it was not the ruling passion strong in death, it was the ruling passion struggling for a divided empire with that political Protestantism which regulated his life, but failed to control his morals.
"Here," said he, "mix me some brandy and water, or--stop, ring the bell, Dick Bredin."
Bredin rang the bell accordingly, and in a minute or so Lanty came in.
"Here, you imp, do your duty."
"Haven't you enough, sir? more, I think, will do you harm."