J. S. Le Fanus Ghostly Tales, Volume 5 | Page 9

sharp
features of the corpse. Moll Doyle was not to be put down by the
Captain, whom she hated, and accordingly, in her phrase, "he got as

good as he gave." And the Captain's wrath waxed fiercer, and he
chucked the wax taper from the dead hand, and was on the point of
flinging it at the old serving-woman's head.
"The holy candle, you sinner!" cried she.
"I've a mind to make you eat it, you beast," cried the Captain.
But I think he had not known before what it was, for he subsided a little
sulkily, and he stuffed his hand with the candle (quite extinct by this
time) into his pocket, and said he--
"You know devilish well you had no business going on with y-y-your
d---- _witch_-craft about my poor wife, without my leave--you do--and
you'll please take off that d---- brown pinafore, and get her decently
into her coffin, and I'll pitch your devil's waxlight into the sink."
And the Captain stalked out of the room.
"An' now her poor sowl's in prison, you wretch, be the mains o' ye; an'
may yer own be shut into the wick o' that same candle, till it's burned
out, ye savage."
"I'd have you ducked for a witch, for two-pence," roared the Captain up
the staircase, with his hand on the banisters, standing on the lobby. But
the door of the chamber of death clapped angrily, and he went down to
the parlour, where he examined the holy candle for a while, with a tipsy
gravity, and then with something of that reverential feeling for the
symbolic, which is not uncommon in rakes and scamps, he thoughtfully
locked it up in a press, where were accumulated all sorts of obsolete
rubbish--soiled packs of cards, disused tobacco pipes, broken powder
flasks, his military sword, and a dusky bundle of the "Flash Songster,"
and other questionable literature.
He did not trouble the dead lady's room any more. Being a volatile man
it is probable that more cheerful plans and occupations began to
entertain his fancy.

CHAPTER III
My Uncle Watson Visits Wauling So the poor lady was buried decently,
and Captain Walshawe reigned alone for many years at Wauling. He
was too shrewd and too experienced by this time to run violently down
the steep hill that leads to ruin. So there was a method in his madness;
and after a widowed career of more than forty years, he, too, died at last
with some guineas in his purse.
Forty years and upwards is a great edax rerum, and a wonderful
chemical power. It acted forcibly upon the gay Captain Walshawe.
Gout supervened, and was no more conducive to temper than to
enjoyment, and made his elegant hands lumpy at all the small joints,
and turned them slowly into crippled claws. He grew stout when his
exercise was interfered with, and ultimately almost corpulent. He
suffered from what Mr. Holloway calls "bad legs," and was wheeled
about in a great leathern-backed chair, and his infirmities went on
accumulating with his years.
I am sorry to say, I never heard that he repented, or turned his thoughts
seriously to the future. On the contrary, his talk grew fouler, and his fun
ran upon his favourite sins, and his temper waxed more truculent. But
he did not sink into dotage. Considering his bodily infirmities, his
energies and his malignities, which were many and active, were
marvellously little abated by time. So he went on to the close. When his
temper was stirred, he cursed and swore in a way that made decent
people tremble. It was a word and a blow with him; the latter, luckily,
not very sure now. But he would seize his crutch and make a swoop or
a pound at the offender, or shy his medicine-bottle, or his tumbler, at
his head.
It was a peculiarity of Captain Walshawe, that he, by this time, hated
nearly everybody. My uncle, Mr. Watson, of Haddlestone, was cousin
to the Captain, and his heir-at-law. But my uncle had lent him money
on mortgage of his estates, and there had been a treaty to sell, and terms
and a price were agreed upon, in "articles" which the lawyers said were
still in force.

I think the ill-conditioned Captain bore him a grudge for being richer
than he, and would have liked to do him an ill turn. But it did not lie in
his way; at least while he was living.
My uncle Watson was a Methodist, and what they call a "classleader";
and, on the whole, a very good man. He was now near fifty--grave, as
beseemed his profession--somewhat dry--and a little severe,
perhaps--but a just man.
A letter from the Penlynden doctor reached him at Haddlestone,
announcing the death of the wicked old