The Greatest Supernatural Tales of Sheridan Le Fanu (70+ Titles in One Edition). M. R. James

started afresh, never caring for Mervyn’s somewhat dangerous looks.

      ‘Mighty pretty prospects about here, Sir. The painters come out by dozens in the summer, with their books and pencils, and scratch away like so many Scotchmen. Ha! ha! ha! If you draw, Sir, there’s one prospect up the river, by the mills — upon my conscience — but you don’t draw?’

      No answer.

      ‘A little, Sir, maybe? Just for a maggot, I’ll wager — like my good lady, Mrs. Toole.’ A nearer glance at his dress had satisfied Toole that he was too much of a maccaroni for an artist, and he was thinking of placing him upon the lord lieutenant’s staff. ‘We’ve capital horses here, if you want to go on to Leixlip,’ (where — this between ourselves and the reader — during the summer months His Excellency and Lady Townshend resided, and where, the old newspapers tell us, they ‘kept a public day every Monday,’ and he ‘had a levée, as usual, every Thursday.’) But this had no better success.

      ‘If you design to stay over the day, and care for shooting, we’ll have some ball practice on Palmerstown fair-green today. Seven baronies to shoot for ten and five guineas. One o’clock, hey?’

      At this moment entered Major O’Neill, of the Royal Irish Artillery, a small man, very neatly got up, and with a decidedly Milesian cast of countenance, who said little, but smiled agreeably —

      ‘Gentlemen, your most obedient. Ha, doctor; how goes it? — anything new — anything on the Freeman?’

      Toole had scanned that paper, and hummed out, as he rumpled it over — ‘nothing — very — particular. Here’s Lady Moira’s ball: fancy dresses — all Irish; no masks; a numerous appearance of the nobility and gentry — upwards of five hundred persons. A good many of your corps there, major?’

      ‘Ay, Lord Blackwater, of course, and the general, and Devereux, and little Puddock, and ——’

      ‘Sturk wasn’t,’ with a grin, interrupted Toole, who bore that practitioner no good-will. ‘A gentleman robbed, by two foot-pads, on Chapelizod-road, on Wednesday night, of his watch and money, together with his hat, wig and cane, and lies now in a dangerous state, having been much abused; one of them dressed in an old light-coloured coat, wore a wig. By Jupiter, major, if I was in General Chattesworth’s place, with two hundred strapping fellows at my orders, I’d get a commission from Government to clear that road. It’s too bad, Sir, we can’t go in and out of town, unless in a body, after night-fall, but at the risk of our lives. [The convivial doctor felt this public scandal acutely.] The bloody-minded miscreants, I’d catch every living soul of them, and burn them alive in tar-barrels. By Jove! here’s old Joe Napper, of Dirty-lane’s dead. Plenty of dry eyes after him. And stay, here’s another row.’ And so he read on.

      In the meantime, stout, tightly-braced Captain Cluffe of the same corps, and little dark, hard-faced, and solemn Mr. Nutter, of the Mills, Lord Castlemallard’s agents, came in, and half a dozen more, chiefly members of the club, which met by night in the front parlour on the left, opposite the bar, where they entertained themselves with agreeable conversation, cards, backgammon, draughts, and an occasional song by Dr. Toole, who was a florid tenor, and used to give them, ‘While gentlefolks strut in silver and satins,’ or ‘A maiden of late had a merry design,’ or some other such ditty, with a recitation by plump little stage-stricken Ensign Puddock, who, in ‘thpite of hith lithp,’ gave rather spirited imitations of some of the players — Mossop, Sheridan, Macklin, Barry, and the rest. So Mervyn, the stranger, by no means affecting this agreeable society, took his cane and cocked-hat, and went out — the dark and handsome apparition — followed by curious glances from two or three pairs of eyes, and a whispered commentary and criticism from Toole.

      So, taking a meditative ramble in ‘His Majesty’s Park, the Phoenix;’ and passing out at Castleknock gate, he walked up the river, between the wooded slopes, which make the valley of the Liffey so pleasant and picturesque, until he reached the ferry, which crossing, he at the other side found himself not very far from Palmerstown, through which village his return route to Chapelizod lay.

      Chapter 4.

      The Fair-Green of Palmerstown

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      There were half-a-dozen carriages, and a score of led horses outside the fair-green, a precious lot of ragamuffins, and a good resort to the public-house opposite; and the gate being open, the artillery band, rousing all the echoes round with harmonious and exhilarating thunder, within — an occasional crack of a ‘Brown Bess,’ with a puff of white smoke over the hedge, being heard, and the cheers of the spectators, and sometimes a jolly chorus of many-toned laughter, all mixed together, and carried on with a pleasant running hum of voices — Mervyn, the stranger, reckoning on being unobserved in the crowd, and weary of the very solitude he courted, turned to his right, and so found himself upon the renowned fair-green of Palmerstown.

      It was really a gay rural sight. The circular target stood, with its bright concentric rings, in conspicuous isolation, about a hundred yards away, against the green slope of the hill. The competitors in their best Sunday suits, some armed with muskets and some with fowling pieces — for they were not particular — and with bunches of ribbons fluttering in their three-cornered hats, and sprigs of gay flowers in their breasts, stood in the foreground, in an irregular cluster, while the spectators, in pleasant disorder, formed two broad, and many-coloured parterres, broken into little groups, and separated by a wide, clear sweep of green sward, running up from the marksmen to the target.

      In the luminous atmosphere the men of those days showed bright and gay. Such fine scarlet and gold waistcoats — such sky-blue and silver — such pea-green lutestrings — and pink silk linings — and flashing buckles — and courtly wigs — or becoming powder — went pleasantly with the brilliant costume of the stately dames and smiling lasses. There was a pretty sprinkling of uniforms, too — the whole picture in gentle motion, and the bugles and drums of the Royal Irish Artillery filling the air with inspiring music.

      All the neighbours were there — merry little Dr. Toole in his grandest wig and gold-headed cane, with three dogs at his heels — he seldom appeared without this sort of train — sometimes three — sometimes five — sometimes as many as seven — and his hearty voice was heard bawling at them by name, as he sauntered through the town of a morning, and theirs occasionally in short screeches, responsive to the touch of his cane. Now it was, ‘Fairy, you savage, let that pig alone!’ a yell and a scuffle —‘Juno, drop it, you slut’— or ‘Cæsar, you blackguard, where are you going?’

      ‘Look at Sturk there, with his lordship,’ said Toole, to the fair Magnolia, with a wink and a nod, and a sneering grin. ‘Good natured dog that — ha! ha! You’ll find he’ll oust Nutter at last, and get the agency; that’s what he’s driving at — always undermining somebody.’ Doctor Sturk and Lord Castlemallard were talking apart on the high ground, and the artillery surgeon was pointing with his cane at distant objects. ‘I’ll lay you fifty he’s picking holes in Nutter’s management this moment.’

      I’m afraid there was some truth in the theory, and Toole — though he did not remember to mention it — had an instinctive notion that Sturk had an eye upon the civil practice of the neighbourhood, and was meditating a retirement from the army, and a serious invasion of his domain.

      Sturk and Toole, behind backs, did not spare one another. Toole called Sturk a ‘horse doctor,’ and ‘the smuggler’— in reference to some affair about French brandy, never made quite clear to me, but in which, I believe, Sturk was really not to blame; and Sturk called him ‘that drunken little apothecary’— for Toole had a boy who compounded, under the rose, his draughts, pills, and powders in the back parlour — and sometimes, ‘that smutty little ballad singer,’ or ‘that whiskeyfied dog-fancier, Toole.’ There was no actual quarrel, however; they met freely — told one another the news — their mutual disagreeabilities were administered guardedly — and, on the whole, they hated one another