famous cities.' He always felt in these interviews, as if she and he were extemporising a burlesque—she the Queen of Crim Tartary, and he an Archbishop in her court—and would have spoken blank verse, only he feared she might perceive it, and break up the conference.
'And what's that to the purpose?—don't I know they're the same all over the world—nothing but brutes and barbarians.'
'But suppose, Madam, he has only gone up the river, and just taken his rod——'
'Oh! rod, indeed. I know where he wants a rod, the rascal!'
'I tell you, Madam,' urged the chaplain, 'you're quite in the wrong. You've discovered after twenty years' wedlock that your husband's—a man! and you're vexed: would you have him anything else?'
'You're all in a story,' she blubbered maniacally; 'there's no justice, nor feeling, nor succour for a poor abused woman; but I'll do it—I will. I'll go to his reverence—don't try to persuade me—the Rev. Hugh Walsingham, Doctor of Divinity, and Rector of Chapelizod (she used to give him at full length whenever she threatened Zekiel with a visitation from that quarter, by way of adding ponderosity to the menace)—I'll go to him straight—don't think to stop me—and we'll see what he'll say;' and so she addressed herself to go.
'And when you see him, Madam, ask the learned doctor—don't ask me—believe the rector of the parish—he'll tell you, that it hath prevailed from the period at which Madam Sarah quarrelled with saucy Miss Hagar; that it hath prevailed among all the principal nations of antiquity, according to Pliny, Strabo, and the chief writers of antiquity; that Juno, Dido, Eleanor Queen of England, and Mrs. Partridge, whom I read of here (and he pointed to the open volume of Tom Jones), each made, or thought she made, a like discovery.' And the captain delivered this slowly, with knitted brow and thoughtful face, after the manner of the erudite and simple doctor.
'Pretty Partridges, indeed! and nice game for a parish clerk!' cried the lady, returning. 'I wonder, so I do, when I look at him, and think of his goings on, how he can have the assurance to sit under the minister, and look the congregation in the face, and tune his throat, and sing the blessed psalms.'
'You are not to wonder, Madam; believe the sage, who says, omnibus hoc vitium est cantoribus.'
Devereux knew of old that the effect of Latin on Mrs. Irons was to heighten the inflammation, and so the matron burst into whole chapters of crimination, enlivened with a sprinkling of strong words, as the sages of the law love to pepper their indictments and informations with hot adverbs and well-spiced parentheses, 'falsely,' 'scandalously,' 'maliciously,' and suadente diabolo, to make them sit warm on the stomachs of a loyal judge and jury, and digest easily.
The neighbours were so accustomed to Mrs. Irons' griefs, that when her voice was audible, as upon such occasions it was, upon the high road and in the back gardens, it produced next to no sensation; everybody had heard from that loud oracle every sort of story touching Irons which could well be imagined, and it was all so thoroughly published by the good lady, that curiosity on the subject was pretty well dead and gone, and her distant declamation rattled over their heads and boomed in their ears, like the distant guns and trumpets on a review day, signifying nothing.
And all this only shows what every man who has ruralised a little in his lifetime knows, more than in theory, that the golden age lingers in no corner of the earth, but is really quite gone and over everywhere, and that peace and prisca fides have not fled to the nooks and shadows of deep valleys and bowery brooks, but flown once, and away to heaven again, and left the round world to its general curse. So it is even in pretty old villages, embowered in orchards, with hollyhocks and jessamine in front of the houses, and primeval cocks and hens pecking and scraping in the street, and the modest river dimpling and simpering among osiers and apple trees, and old ivied walls close by—you sometimes hear other things than lowing herds, and small birds singing, and purling streams; and shrill accents and voluble rhetoric will now and then trouble the fragrant air, and wake up the dim old river-god from his nap.
As to Irons, if he was all that his wife gave out, he must have been a mighty sly dog indeed; for on the whole, he presented a tolerably decent exterior to society. It is said, indeed, that he liked a grave tumbler of punch, and was sardonic and silent in his liquor; that his gait was occasionally a little queer and uncertain, as his lank figure glided home by moonlight, from the 'Salmon House;' and that his fingers fumbled longer than need be with the latch, and his tongue, though it tried but a short and grim 'bar'th door, Marjry,' or 'gi' me can'le, wench,' sometimes lacked its cunning, and slipped and kept not time. There were, too, other scandals, such as the prying and profane love to shoot privily at church celebrities. Perhaps it was his reserve and sanctity that provoked them. Perhaps he was, in truth, though cautious, sometimes indiscreet. Perhaps it was fanciful Mrs. Irons' jealous hullabaloos and hysterics that did it—I don't know—but people have been observed, apropos of him, to wink at one another, and grin, and shake their heads, and say: 'the nearer the church, you know'—and 'he so ancient, too! but 'tis an old rat that won't eat cheese,' and so forth.
Just as Mrs. Irons whisked round for the seventh time to start upon her long threatened march to Dr. Walsingham's study to lay her pitiful case before him, Captain Devereux, who was looking toward the 'Phoenix,' saw the truant clerk and Mr. Dangerfield turn the corner together on their return.
'Stay, Madam, here comes the traitor,' said he; 'and, on my honour, 'tis worse than we thought; for he has led my Lord Castlemallard's old agent into mischief too—and Meg Partlet has had two swains at her feet this morning; and, see, the hypocrites have got some trout in their basket, and their rods on their shoulders—and look, for all the world, as if they had only been fishing—sly rogues!'
'Well, it's all one,' said Mrs. Irons, gaping from the other window, and sobering rapidly; 'if 'tisn't to-day, 'twill be to-morrow, I suppose; and at any rate 'tis a sin and shame to leave any poor crature in this miserable taking, not knowing but he might be drownded—or worse—dear knows it would not be much trouble to tell his wife when the gentleman wanted him—and sure for any honest matter I'd never say against it.'
Her thoughts were running upon Dangerfield, and what 'compliment' he had probably made her husband at parting; and a minute or two after this, Devereux saw her, with her riding-hood on, trudging up to the "Salmon House" to make inquisition after the same.
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