Melmoth the Wanderer 1820 Read online

  ‘John, I must leave you, my poor boy; it has pleased God to take your father from you before he could do for you what would have made this hour less painful to him. You must look up, John, to your uncle for every thing. He has oddities and infirmities, but you must learn to bear with them, and with many other things too, as you will learn too soon. And now, my poor boy, may He who is the father of the fatherless look on your desolate state, and give you favour in the eyes of your uncle.’ As this scene rose to John’s memory, his eyes filled fast with tears, which he hastened to wipe away as the carriage stopt to let him out at his uncle’s gate.

  He alighted, and with a change of linen in a handkerchief, (his only travelling equipment), he approached his uncle’s gate. The lodge was in ruins, and a barefooted boy from an adjacent cabin ran to lift on its single hinge what had once been a gate, but was now a few planks so villainously put together, that they clattered like a sign in a high wind. The stubborn post of the gate, yielding at last to the united strength of John and his barefooted assistant, grated heavily through the mud and gravel stones, in which it left a deep and sloughy furrow, and the entrance lay open. John, after searching his pocket in vain for a trifle to reward his assistant, pursued his way, while the lad, on his return, cleared the road at a hop step and jump, plunging through the mud with all the dabbling and amphibious delight of a duck, and scare less proud of his agility than of his ‘sarving a gentleman.’ As John slowly trod the miry road which had once been the approach, he could discover, by the dim light of an autumnal evening, signs of increasing desolation since he had last visited the spot, – signs that penury had been aggravated and sharpened into downright misery. There was not a fence or a hedge round the domain: an uncemented wall of loose stones, whose numerous gaps were filled with furze or thorns, supplied their place. There was not a tree or shrub on the lawn; the lawn itself was turned into pasture-ground, and a few sheep were picking their scanty food amid the pebblestones, thistles, and hard mould, through which a few blades of grass made their rare and squalid appearance.

  The house itself stood strongly defined even amid the darkness of the evening sky; for there were neither wings, or offices, or shrubbery, or tree, to shade or support it, and soften its strong harsh outline. John, after a melancholy gaze at the grass-grown steps and boarded windows, addressed himself to knock at the door; but knocker there was none: loose stones, however, there were in plenty; and John was making vigorous application to the door with one of them, till the furious barking of a mastiff, who threatened at every bound to break his chain, and whose yell and growl, accompanied by ‘eyes that glow and fangs that grin,’ savoured as much of hunger as of rage, made the assailant raise the siege on the door, and betake himself to a well-known passage that led to the kitchen. A light glimmered in the window as he approached: he raised the latch with a doubtful hand; but, when he saw the party within, he advanced with the step of a man no longer doubtful of his welcome.

  Round a turf-fire, whose well-replenished fuel gave testimony to the ‘master’s’ indisposition, who would probably as soon have been placed on the fire himself as seen the whole kish emptied on it once, were seated the old housekeeper, two or three followers, (i.e. people who ate, drank, and lounged about in any kitchen that was open in the neighbourhood, on an occasion of grief or joy, all for his honor’s sake, and for the great rispict they bore the family), and an old woman, whom John immediately recognized as the doctress of the neighbourhood, – a withered Sybil, who prolonged her squalid existence by practising on the fears, the ignorance, and the sufferings of beings as miserable as herself. Among the better sort, to whom she sometimes had access by the influence of servants, she tried the effects of some simples, her skill in which was sometimes productive of success. Among the lower orders she talked much of the effects of the ‘evil eye’, against which she boasted a counter-spell, of unfailing efficacy; and while she spoke, she shook her grizzled locks with such witch-like eagerness, that she never failed to communicate to her half-terrified, half-believing audience, some portion of that enthusiasm which, amid all her consciousness of imposture, she herself probably felt a large share of; still, when the case at last became desperate, when credulity itself lost all patience, and hope and life were departing together, she urged the miserable patient to confess ‘there was something about his heart’; and when this confession was extorted from the weariness of pain and the ignorance of poverty, she nodded and muttered so mysteriously, as to convey to the bystanders, that she had had difficulties to contend with which were invincible by human power. When there was no pretext, from indisposition, for her visiting either ‘his honor’s’ kitchen, or the cottar’s hut, – when the stubborn and persevering convalescence of the whole country threatened her with starvation, – she still had a resource: – if there were no lives to be shortened, there were fortunes to be told; – she worked ‘by spells, and by such daubry as is beyond our element’. No one twined so well as she the mystic yarn to be dropt into the lime-kiln pit, on the edge of which stood the shivering inquirer into futurity, doubtful whether the answer to her question of ‘who holds?’ was to be uttered by the voice of demon or lover.

  No one knew so well as she to find where the four streams met, in which, on the same portentous season, the chemise was to be immersed, and then displayed before the fire, (in the name of one whom we dare not mention to ‘ears polite’), to be turned by the figure of the destined husband before morning. No one but herself (she said) knew the hand in which the comb was to be held, while the other was employed in conveying the apple to the mouth, – while, during the joint operation, the shadow of the phantom-spouse was to pass across the mirror before which it was performed. No one was more skilful or active in removing every iron implement from the kitchen where these ceremonies were usually performed by the credulous and terrified dupes of her wizardry, lest, instead of the form of a comely youth exhibiting a ring on his white finger, an headless figure should stalk to the rack, (Anglicè, dresser), take down a long spit, or, in default of that, snatch a poker from the fireside, and mercilessly take measure with its iron length of the sleeper for a coffin. No one, in short, knew better how to torment or terrify her victims into a belief of that power which may and has reduced the strongest minds to the level of the weakest; and under the influence of which the cultivated sceptic, Lord Lyttleton, yelled and gnashed and writhed in his last hours, like the poor girl who, in the belief of the horrible visitation of the vampire, shrieked aloud, that her grandfather was sucking her vital blood while she slept, and expired under the influence of imaginary horror. Such was the being to whom old Melmoth had committed his life, half from credulity, and (Hibernicè speaking) more than half from avarice. Among this groupe John advanced, – recognizing some, – disliking more, – distrusting all. The old housekeeper received him with cordiality; – he was always her ‘white-headed boy,’ she said, – (imprimis, his hair was as black as jet), and she tried to lift her withered hand to his head with an action between a benediction and a caress, till the difficulty of the attempt forced on her the conviction that that head was fourteen inches higher than her reach since she had last patted it. The men, with the national deference of the Irish to a person of superior rank, all rose at his approach, (their stools chattering on the broken flags), and wished his honor ‘a thousand years, and long life to the back of that; and would not his honor take something to keep the grief out of his heart;’ and so saying, five or six red and bony hands tendered him glasses of whiskey all at once. All this time the Sybil sat silent in the ample chimney-corner, sending redoubled whiffs out of her pipe. John gently declined the offer of spirits, received the attentions of the old housekeeper cordially, looked askance at the withered crone who occupied the chimney corner, and then glanced at the table, which displayed other cheer than he had been accustomed to see in his ‘honor’s time.’ There was a wooden dish of potatoes, which old Melmoth would have considered enough for a week’s subsistence. There was the salted salmon, (a
luxury unknown even in London. Vide Miss Edgeworth’s Tales, ‘The Absentee’).

  There was the slink-veal, flanked with tripe; and, finally, there were lobsters and fried turbot enough to justify what the author of the tale asserts, ‘suo periculo,’ that when his great grandfather, the Dean of Killala, hired servants at the deanery, they stipulated that they should not be required to eat turbot or lobster more than twice a-week. There were also bottles of Wicklow ale, long and surreptitiously borrowed from his ‘honor’s’ cellar, and which now made their first appearance on the kitchen hearth, and manifested their impatience of further constraint, by hissing, spitting, and bouncing in the face of the fire that provoked its animosity. But the whiskey (genuine illegitimate pot-sheen, smelling strongly of weed and smoke, and breathing defiance to excisemen) appeared, the ‘veritable Amphitryon’ of the feast; every one praised, and drank as deeply as he praised.

  John, as he looked round the circle, and thought of his dying uncle, was forcibly reminded of the scene at Don Quixote’s departure, where, in spite of the grief caused by the dissolution of the worthy knight, we are informed that ‘nevertheless the niece eat her victuals, the housekeeper drank to the repose of his soul, and even Sancho cherished his little carcase.’ After returning, ‘as he might,’ the courtesies of the party, John asked how his uncle was. ‘As bad as he can be;’ – ‘Much better, and many thanks to your honor,’ was uttered in such rapid and discordant unison by the party, that John turned from one to the other, not knowing which or what to believe. ‘They say his honor has had a fright,’ said a fellow, upwards of six feet high, approaching by way of whispering, and then bellowing the sound six inches above John’s head. ‘But then his honor has had a cool since,’ said a man who was quietly swallowing the spirits that John had refused. At these words the Sybil who sat in the chimney corner slowly drew her pipe from her mouth, and turned towards the party: The oracular movements of a Pythoness on her tripod never excited more awe, or impressed for the moment a deeper silence. ‘It’s not here,’ said she, pressing her withered finger on her wrinkled forehead, ‘nor here, – nor here,’ and she extended her hand to the foreheads of those who were near her, who all bowed as if they were receiving a benediction, but had immediate recourse to the spirits afterwards, as if to ensure its effects. – ‘It’s all here – it’s all about the heart;’ and as she spoke she spread and pressed her fingers on her hollow bosom with a force of action that thrilled her hearers. – ‘It’s all here,’ she added, repeating the action, (probably excited by the effect she had produced), and then sunk on her seat, resumed her pipe, and spoke no more. At this moment of involuntary awe on the part of John, and of terrified silence on that of the rest, an unusual sound was heard in the house, and the whole company started as if a musket had been discharged among them: – it was the unwonted sound of old Melmoth’s bell. His domestics were so few, and so constantly near him, that the sound of his bell startled them as much as if he had been ringing the knell for his own interment. ‘He used always to rap down for me,’ said the old housekeeper, hurrying out of the kitchen; ‘he said pulling the bells wore out the ropes.’ The sound of the bell produced its full effect. The housekeeper rushed into the room, followed by a number of women, (the Irish præficae), all ready to prescribe for the dying or weep for the dead, – all clapping their hard hands, or wiping their dry eyes. These hags all surrounded the bed; and to witness their loud, wild, and desperate grief, their cries of ‘Oh! he’s going, his honor’s going, his honor’s going,’ one would have imagined their lives were bound up in his, like those of the wives in the story of Sinbad the Sailor, who were to be interred alive with their deceased husbands.

  Four of them wrung their hands and howled round the bed, while one, with all the adroitness of a Mrs Quickly, felt his honor’s feet, and ‘upward and upward,’ and ‘all was cold as any stone.’

  Old Melmoth withdrew his feet from the grasp of the hag, – counted with his keen eye (keen amid the approaching dimness of death) the number assembled round his bed, – raised himself on his sharp elbow, and pushing away the housekeeper, (who attempted to settle his nightcap, that had been shoved on one side in the struggle, and gave his haggard, dying face, a kind of grotesque fierceness), bellowed out in tones that made the company start, – ‘What the devil brought ye all here?’ The question scattered the whole party for a moment; but rallying instantly, they communed among themselves in whispers, and frequently using the sign of the cross, muttered ‘The devil, – Christ save us, the devil in his mouth the first word he spoke.’ ‘Aye,’ roared the invalid, ‘and the devil in my eye the first sight I see.’ ‘Where, – where?’ cried the terrified housekeeper, clinging close to the invalid in her terror, and half-hiding herself in the blanket, which she snatched without mercy from his struggling and exposed limbs. ‘There, there,’ he repeated, (during the battle of the blanket), pointing to the huddled and terrified women, who stood aghast at hearing themselves arointed as the very demons they came to banish. ‘Oh! Lord keep your honor’s head,’ said the housekeeper in a more soothing tone, when her fright was over; ‘and sure your honor knows them all, is’n’t her name, – and her name, – and her name,’ – and she pointed respectively to each of them, adding their names, which we shall spare the English reader the torture of reciting, (as a proof of our lenity, adding the last only, Cotchleen O’Mulligan), ‘Ye lie, ye b—h,’ growled old Melmoth; ‘their name is Legion, for they are many, – turn them all out of the room, – turn them all out of doors, – if they howl at my death, they shall howl in earnest, – not for my death, for they would see me dead and damned too with dry eyes, but for want of the whiskey that they would have stolen if they could have got at it,’ (and here old Melmoth grasped a key which lay under his pillow, and shook it in vain triumph at the old housekeeper, who had long possessed the means of getting at the spirits unknown to his ‘honor’), ‘and for want of the victuals you have pampered them with.’ ‘Pampered, oh Ch—st!’ ejaculated the housekeeper. ‘Aye, and what are there so many candles for, all fours, and the same below I warrant. Ah! you – you – worthless, wasteful old devil.’ ‘Indeed, your honor, they are all sixes.’ ‘Sixes, – and what the devil are you burning sixes for, d’ye think it’s the wake already? Ha?’ ‘Oh! not yet, your honor, not yet,’ chorussed the beldams; ‘but in God’s good time, your honor knows,’ in a tone that spoke ill suppressed impatience for the event. ‘Oh! that your honor would think of making your soul.’ ‘That’s the first sensible word you have said,’ said the dying man, ‘fetch me the prayer-book, – you’ll find it there under that old boot-jack, – blow off the cobwebs; – it has not been opened this many a year.’ It was handed to him by the old gouvernante, on whom he turned a reproaching eye. ‘What made you burn sixes in the kitchen, you extravagant jade? How many years have you lived in this house?’ ‘I don’t know, your honor.’ ‘Did you ever see any extravagance or waste in it?’ ‘Oh never, never, your honor.’ ‘Was any thing but a farthing candle ever burned in the kitchen?’ ‘Never, never, your honor.’ ‘Were not you kept as tight as hand and head and heart could keep you, were you not? answer me that.’ ‘Oh yes, sure, your honor; every sowl about us knows that, – every one does your honor justice, that you kept the closest house and closest hand in the country, – your honor was always a good warrant for it.’ ‘And how dare you unlock my hold before death has unlocked it,’ said the dying miser, shaking his meagre hand at her. ‘I smelt meat in the house, – I heard voices in the house, – I heard the key turn in the door over and over. Oh that I was up,’ he added, rolling in impatient agony in his bed, ‘Oh that I was up, to see the waste and ruin that is going on. But it would kill me,’ he continued, sinking back on the bolster, for he never allowed himself a pillow; ‘it would kill me, – the very thought of it is killing me now.’ The women, discomfited and defeated, after sundry winks and whispers, were huddling out of the room, till recalled by the sharp eager tones of old Melmoth. – ‘Where are ye trooping to now? back
to the kitchen to gormandize and guzzle? Won’t one of ye stay and listen while there’s a prayer read for me? Ye may want it one day for yourselves, ye hags.’ Awed by this expostulation and menace, the train silently returned, and placed themselves round the bed, while the housekeeper, though a Catholic, asked if his honor would not have a clergyman to give him the rights, (rites) of his church. The eyes of the dying man sparkled with vexation at the proposal. ‘What for, – just to have him expect a scarf and hatband at the funeral. Read the prayers yourself, you old –; that will save something.’ The housekeeper made the attempt, but soon declined it, alleging, as her reason, that her eyes had been watery ever since his honor took ill. ‘That’s because you had always a drop in them,’ said the invalid, with a spiteful sneer, which the contraction of approaching death stiffened into a hideous grin. – ‘Here, – is not there one of you that’s gnashing and howling there, that can get up a prayer to keep me from it?’ So adjured, one of the women offered her services; and of her it might truly be said, as of the ‘most desartless man of the watch’ in Dogberry’s time, that ‘her reading and writing came by nature; for she never had been at school, and had never before seen or opened a Protestant prayer book in her life; nevertheless, on she went, and with more emphasis than good discretion, read nearly through the service for the ‘churching of women;’ which in our prayer-books following that of the burial of the dead, she perhaps imagined was someway connected with the state of the invalid.