The House by the Church-Yard | Page 8

idle self, and the queer old
soldier--were then sitting. But wishes are as vain as regrets; so I'll just
do my best, bespeaking your attention, and submissively abiding your
judgment.
CHAPTER I.
THE RECTOR'S NIGHT-WALK TO HIS CHURCH.
A.D. 1767--in the beginning of the month of May--I mention it because,
as I said, I write from memoranda, an awfully dark night came down on
Chapelizod and all the country round.
I believe there was no moon, and the stars had been quite put out under
the wet 'blanket of the night,' which impenetrable muffler overspread
the sky with a funereal darkness.
There was a little of that sheet-lightning early in the evening, which
betokens sultry weather. The clouds, column after column, came up
sullenly over the Dublin mountains, rolling themselves from one
horizon to the other into one black dome of vapour, their slow but
steady motion contrasting with the awful stillness of the air. There was
a weight in the atmosphere, and a sort of undefined menace brooding
over the little town, as if unseen crime or danger--some mystery of
iniquity--was stealing into the heart of it, and the disapproving heavens
scowled a melancholy warning.
That morning old Sally, the rector's housekeeper, was disquieted. She
had dreamed of making the great four-post, state bed, with the dark
green damask curtains--a dream that betokened some coming
trouble--it might, to be sure, be ever so small--(it had once come with
no worse result than Dr. Walsingham's dropping his purse, containing
something under a guinea in silver, over the side of the ferry boat)--but

again it might be tremendous. The omen hung over them doubtful.
A large square letter, with a great round seal, as big as a crown piece,
addressed to the Rev. Hugh Walsingham, Doctor of Divinity, at his
house, by the bridge, in Chapelizod, had reached him in the morning,
and plainly troubled him. He kept the messenger a good hour awaiting
his answer; and, just at two o'clock, the same messenger returned with a
second letter--but this time a note sufficed for reply. ''Twill seem
ungracious,' said the doctor, knitting his brows over his closed folio in
the study; 'but I cannot choose but walk clear in my calling before the
Lord. How can I honestly pronounce hope, when in my mind there is
nothing but fear--let another do it if he see his way--I do enough in
being present, as 'tis right I should.'
It was, indeed, a remarkably dark night--a rush and downpour of rain!
The doctor stood just under the porch of the stout brick house--of King
William's date, which was then the residence of the worthy rector of
Chapelizod--with his great surtout and cape on--his leggings buttoned
up--and his capacious leather 'overalls' pulled up and strapped over
these--and his broad-leafed hat tied down over his wig and ears with a
mighty silk kerchief. I dare say he looked absurd enough--but it was the
women's doing--who always, upon emergencies, took the doctor's
wardrobe in hand. Old Sally, with her kind, mild, grave face, and gray
locks, stood modestly behind in the hall; and pretty Lilias, his only
child, gave him her parting kiss, and her last grand charge about his
shoes and other exterior toggery, in the porch; and he patted her cheek
with a little fond laugh, taking old John Tracy's, the butler's, arm. John
carried a handsome horn-lantern, which flashed now on a roadside
bush--now on the discoloured battlements of the bridge--and now on a
streaming window. They stepped out--there were no umbrellas in those
days--splashing among the wide and widening pools; while Sally and
Lilias stood in the porch, holding candles for full five minutes after the
doctor and his 'Jack-o'-the-lantern,' as he called honest John, whose arm
and candle always befriended him in his night excursions, had got
round the corner.
Through the back bow-window of the Phoenix, there pealed forth--faint

in the distance and rain--a solemn royal ditty, piped by the tuneful
Aldermen of Skinner's Alley, and neither unmusical nor somehow
uncongenial with the darkness, and the melancholy object of the
doctor's walk, the chant being rather monastic, wild, and dirge-like. It
was a quarter past ten, and no other sound of life or human
neighbourhood was stirring. If secrecy were an object, it was well
secured by the sable sky, and the steady torrent which rolled down with
electric weight and perpendicularity, making all nature resound with
one long hush--sh--sh--sh--sh--deluging the broad street, and turning
the channels and gutters into mimic mill-streams which snorted and
hurtled headlong through their uneven beds, and round the corners
towards the turbid Liffey, which, battered all over with rain, muddy,
and sullen, reeled its way towards the sea, rolling up to the heavens an
aspect black as their own.
As they passed by the Phoenix