‘An affair of honour?’ said O’Flaherty,
squaring himself. He smelt powder in everything.
‘More like an affair of dishonour,’
said Toole, buttoning his coat. ’He’s
been “kiting” all over the town. Nutter
can distrain for his rent to-morrow, and Cluffe called
him outside the bar to speak with him; put that and
that together, Sir.’ And home went Toole.
Sturk, indeed, had no plan, and was just then incapable
of forming any. He changed his route, not knowing
why, and posted over the bridge, and a good way along
the Inchicore road, and then turned about and strode
back again and over the bridge, without stopping,
and on towards Dublin; and suddenly the moon shone
out, and he recollected how late it was growing, and
so turned about and walked homeward.
As he passed by the row of houses looking across the
road towards the river, from Mr. Irons’s hall-door
step a well-known voice accosted him—
’A thweet night, doctor—the moon
tho thilver bright—the air tho thoft!’
It was little Puddock, whose hand and face were raised
toward the sweet regent of the sky.
‘Mighty fine night,’ said Sturk, and he
paused for a second. It was Puddock’s way
to be more than commonly friendly and polite with any
man who owed him money; and Sturk, who thought, perhaps
rightly, that the world of late had been looking cold
and black upon him, felt, in a sort of way, thankful
for the greeting and its cordial tone.
‘A night like this,’ pursued the little
lieutenant, ’my dear Sir, brings us under the
marble balconies of the palace of the Capulets, and
sets us repeating “On such a night sat Dido
on the wild seabanks”—you remember—“and
with a willow wand, waved her love back to Carthage,”—or
places us upon the haunted platform, where buried Denmark
revisits the glimpses of the moon. My dear doctor,
’tis wonderful—isn’t it—how
much of our enjoyment of Nature we owe to Shakespeare—’twould
be a changed world with us, doctor, if Shakespeare
had not written—’ Then there was
a little pause, Sturk standing still.
‘God be wi’ ye, lieutenant,’ said
he, suddenly taking his hand. ’If there
were more men like you there would be fewer broken
hearts in the world.’ And away went Sturk.
SHOWING HOW CHARLES NUTTER’S BLOW DESCENDED,
AND WHAT PART THE SILVER SPECTACLES BORE IN THE CRISIS.
In the morning the distress and keepers were in Sturk’s
house.
We must not be too hard upon Nutter. ’Tis
a fearful affair, and no child’s play, this
battle of life. Sturk had assailed him like a
beast of prey; not Nutter, to be sure, only Lord Castlemallard’s
agent. Of that functionary his wolfish instinct
craved the flesh, bones, and blood. Sturk had
no other way to live and grow fat. Nutter or he
must go down. The little fellow saw his great
red maw and rabid fangs at his throat. If he
let him off, he would devour him, and lie in his bed,
with his cap on, and his caudles and cordials all
round, as the wolf did by Little Red Riding Hood’s
grandmamma; and with the weapon which had come to
hand—a heavy one too,—he was
going, with Heaven’s help, to deal him a brainblow.
