The House by the Church-Yard eBook

Dr. Walsingham offered his brother-clergyman his hospitalities; but somehow that cleric preferred returning to town for his supper and his bed.  Mervyn also excused himself.  It was late, and he meant to stay that night at the Phoenix, and to-morrow designed to make his compliments in person to Dr. Walsingham.  So the bilious clergyman from town climbed into the vehicle in which he had come, and the undertaker and his troop got into the hearse and the mourning coach and drove off demurely through the town; but once a hundred yards or so beyond the turnpike, at such a pace that they overtook the rollicking cortege of the Alderman of Skinner’s Alley upon the Dublin road, all singing and hallooing, and crowing and shouting scraps of banter at one another, in which recreations these professional mourners forthwith joined them; and they cracked screaming jokes, and drove wild chariot races the whole way into town, to the terror of the divine, whose presence they forgot, and whom, though he shrieked from the window, they never heard, until getting out, when the coach came to a stand-still, he gave Mr. Tressels a piece of his mind, and that in so alarming a sort, that the jolly undertaker, expressing a funereal concern at the accident, was obliged to explain that all the noise came from the scandalous party they had so unfortunately overtaken, and that ’the drunken blackguards had lashed and frightened his horses to a runaway pace, singing and hallooing in the filthy way he heard, it being a standing joke among such roisterers to put quiet tradesmen of his melancholy profession into a false and ridiculous position.’  He did not convince, but only half puzzled the ecclesiastic, who muttering, ‘credat Judaeus,’ turned his back upon Mr. Tressels, with an angry whisk, without bidding him good-night.

Dr. Walsingham, with the aid of his guide, in the meantime, had reached the little garden in front of the old house, and the gay tinkle of a harpsichord and the notes of a sweet contralto suddenly ceased as he did so; and he said—­smiling in the dark, in a pleasant soliloquy, for he did not mind John Tracy,—­old John was not in the way—­’She always hears my step—­always—­little Lily, no matter how she’s employed,’ and the hall-door opened, and a voice that was gentle, and yet somehow very spirited and sweet, cried a loving and playful welcome to the old man.

CHAPTER III.

MR. MERVYN IN HIS INN.

The morning was fine—­the sun shone out with a yellow splendour—­all nature was refreshed—­a pleasant smell rose up from tree, and flower, and earth.  The now dry pavement and all the row of village windows were glittering merrily—­the sparrows twittered their lively morning gossip among the thick ivy of the old church tower—­here and there the village cock challenged his neighbour with high and vaunting crow, and the bugle notes soared sweetly into the air from the artillery ground beside the river.