CHAPTER XLIII.
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.
When Sturk heard in the morning that the blow was actually struck, he
jumped out of bed, and was taken with a great shivering fit, sitting on
the side of it. Little Mrs. Sturk, as white as her nightcap with terror, was yet decisive in emergency, and bethought her of the brandy bottle, two glasses from which the doctor swallowed before his teeth gave over chattering, and a more natural tint returned to his blue face.
'Oh! Barney, dear, are we ruined?' faltered poor little Mrs. Sturk.
'Ruined, indeed!' cried Sturk, with an oath, 'Come in here.' He thought
his study was on the same floor with his bed-room, as it had been in old
times in their house in Limerick, ten or twelve years before.
'That's the nursery, Barney, dear,' she said, thinking, in the midst of
the horror, like a true mother, of the children's sleep.
Then he remembered and ran down to the study, and pulled out a sheaf of
bills and promissory notes, and renewals thereof, making a very
respectable show.
'Ruined, indeed!' he cried, hoarsely, talking to his poor little wife in
the tones and with the ferocity which the image of Nutter; with which
his brain was filled, called up. 'Look, I say, here's one fellow owes me
that—and that—and that—and there—there's a dozen in that by
another—there's two more sets there pinned together—and here's an
account of them all—two thousand two hundred—and you may say three
hundred—two thousand three hundred—owed me here; and that miscreant
won't give me a day.'
'Is it the rent, Barney?'
'The rent? To be sure; what else should it be?' shouted the doctor, with
a stamp.
And so pale little Mrs. Sturk stole out of the room, as her lord with
bitter mutterings pitched his treasure of bad bills back again into the
escritoire: and she heard him slam the study door and run down stairs to
browbeat and curse the men in the hall, for he had lost his head
somewhat, between panic and fury. He was in his stockings and slippers, with an old flowered silk dressing-gown, and nothing more but his shirt, and looked, they said, like a madman. One of the fellows was smoking, and Sturk snatched the pipe from his mouth, and stamped it to atoms on the floor, roaring at them to know what the —— brought them there; and without a pause for an answer, thundered, 'And I suppose you'll not let me take my box of instruments out of the house—mind, it's worth fifty pounds; and curse me, if one of our men dies for want of them in hospital, I'll indict you both, and your employer along with you, for murder! And so he railed on, till his voice failed him with a sort of choking, and there was a humming in his ears, and a sort of numbness in his head, and he thought he was going to have a fit; and then up the stairs he went again, and into his study, and resolved to have Nutter out—and it flashed upon him that he'd say, 'Pay the rent first;' and then—what next? why he'd post him all over Dublin, and Chapelizod, and Leixlip, where the Lord Lieutenant and Court were.
And down he sat to a sheet of paper, with his left hand clenched on the
table, and his teeth grinding together, as he ransacked his vocabulary
for befitting terms; but alas, his right hand shook so that his
penmanship would not do, in fact, it half frightened him. 'By my soul! I
believe something bad has happened me,' he muttered, and popped up his
window, and looked out, half dreaming over the church-yard on the park
beyond, and the dewy overhanging hill, all pleasantly lighted up in the
morning sun.