In which Two Comrades are Tete-A-Tete in Their Old Quarters, and Doctor Sturk’s Cue is Cut Off, and a Consultation Commences.

The buzz of a village, like the hum of a city, represents a very wonderful variety of human accent and feeling. It is marvellous how few families thrown together will suffice to furnish forth this dubia coena of sweets and bitters.

The roar of many waters — the ululatus of many-voiced humanity — marvellously monotonous, considering the infinite variety of its ingredients, booms on through the dark. The story-teller alone can take up the score of the mighty medley, and read at a glance what every fife and fiddle-stick is doing. That pompous thrum-thrum is the talk of the great white Marseilles paunch, pietate gravis; the whine comes from Lazarus, at the area rails; and the bass is old Dives, roaring at his butler; the piccolo is contributed by the studious school-boy, whistling over his Latin Grammar; that wild, long note is poor Mrs. Fondle’s farewell of her dead boy; the ugly barytone, rising from the tap-room, is what Wandering Willie calls a sculduddery song — shut your ears, and pass on; and that clear soprano, in nursery, rings out a shower of innocent idiotisms over the half-stripped baby, and suspends the bawl upon its lips.

So, on this night, as usual, there rose up toward the stars a throbbing murmur from our village — a wild chaos of sound, which we must strive to analyse, extracting from the hurly-burly each separate tune it may concern us to hear.

Captain Devereux was in his lodging. He was comparatively tranquil now; but a savage and impious despair possessed him. Serene outwardly — he would not let the vulgar see his scars and sores; and was one of those proud spirits who build to themselves desolate places.

Little Puddock was the man with whom he had least reserve. Puddock was so kindly, and so true and secret, and cherished beside, so great an admiration for him, that he greeted him rather kindly at a moment when another visitor would have fared scurvily enough. Puddock was painfully struck with his pallor, his wild and haggard eye, and something stern and brooding in his handsome face, which was altogether new and shocking to him.

‘I’ve been thinking, Puddock,’ he said; ‘and thought with me has grown strangely like despair — and that’s all. Why, man, think — what is there for me?— all my best stakes I’ve lost already; and I’m fast losing myself. How different, Sir, is my fate from others? Worse men than I— every way incomparably worse — and d —— them, they prosper, while I go down the tide. ‘Tisn’t just!’ And he swore a great oath. ‘’Tis enough to make a man blaspheme. I’ve done with life — I hate it. I’ll volunteer. ’Tis my first thought in the morning, and my last at night, how well I’d like a bullet through my brain or heart. D—— the world, d —— feeling, d —— memory. I’m not a man that can always be putting prudential restraints upon myself. I’ve none of those plodding ways. The cursed fools that spoiled me in my childhood, and forsake me now, have all to answer for — I charge them with my ruin.’ And he launched a curse at them (meaning his aunt) which startled the plump soul of honest little Puddock.

‘You must not talk that way, Devereux,’ he said, still a good deal more dismayed by his looks than his words. ‘Why are you so troubled with vapours and blue devils?’

‘Nowhy!’ said Devereux, with a grim smile.

‘My dear Devereux, I say, you mustn’t talk in that wild way. You — you talk like a ruined man!’

‘And I so comfortable!’

‘Why, to be sure, Dick, you have had some little rubs, and, maybe, your follies and your vexations; but, hang it, you are young; you can’t get experience — at least, so I’ve found it — without paying for it. You mayn’t like it just now; but it’s well worth the cost. Your worries and miscarriages, dear Richard, will make you steady.’

‘Steady!’ echoed Devereux, like a man thinking of something far away.

‘Ay, Dick — you’ve sown your wild oats.’

On a sudden, says the captain, ‘My dear little Puddock,’ and he took him by the hand, with a sort of sarcastic flicker of a smile, and looked in his face almost contemptuously; but his eyes and his voice softened before the unconscious bonhomie of the true little gentleman. ‘Puddock, Puddock, did it never strike you, my boy, that Hamlet never strives to speak a word of comfort to the forlorn old Dane? He felt it would not do. Every man that’s worth a button knows his own case best; and I know the secrets of my own prison-house. Sown my wild oats! To be sure I have, Puddock, my boy; and the new leaf I’ve turned over is just this; I’ve begun to reap them; and they’ll grow, my boy, and grow as long as grass grows; and — Macbeth has his dagger, you know, and I’ve my sickle — the handle towards my hand, that you can’t see; and in the sweat of my brow, I must cut down and garner my sheaves; and as I sowed, so must I reap, and grind, and bake, the black and bitter grist of my curse. Don’t talk nonsense, little Puddock. Wasn’t it Gay that wrote the “Beggar’s Opera?” Ay! Why don’t you play Macheath? Gay!— Ay — a pleasant fellow, and his poems too. He writes — don’t you remember — he writes,

‘So comes a reckoning when the banquet’s o’er — The dreadful reckoning, and men smile no more.’

‘Puddock, throw up that window, the room’s too hot — or stay never mind; read a book, Puddock, you like it, and I’ll stroll a little along the path, and find you when I come back.’

‘Why it’s dark,’ remonstrated his visitor.

‘Dark? I dare say — yes, of course — very dark — but cool; the air is cool.’

He talked like a man who was thinking of something else; and Puddock thought how strangely handsome he looked, with that pale dash of horror, like King Saul when the evil spirit was upon him; and there was a terrible misgiving in his mind. The lines of the old ballad that Devereux used to sing with a sort of pathetic comicality were humming in his ear,—

‘He walked by the river, the river so clear — The river that runs through Kilkenny; His name was Captain Wade, And he died for that fair maid.’

and so following. What could he mean by walking, at that hour, alone, by the river’s brink? Puddock, with a sinking and flutter at his heart, unperceived, followed him down stairs, and was beside him in the street.

‘The path by the river?’ said Puddock.

‘The river — the path? Yes, Sir, the path by the river. I thought I left you up stairs,’ said Devereux, with an odd sort of sulky shrinking.

‘Why, Devereux, I may as well walk with you, if you don’t object,’ lisped Puddock.

‘But I do object, Sir,’ cried Devereux, suddenly, in a fierce high key, turning upon his little comrade. ‘What d’ye mean, Sir? You think I mean to — to drown myself — ha, ha, ha! or what the devil’s running in your head? I’m not a madman, Sir, nor you a mad-doctor. Go home, Sir — or go to — to where you will, Sir; only go your own way, and leave me mine.’

‘Ah, Devereux, you’re very quick with me,’ said Puddock, placing his plump little hand on Devereux’s arm, and looking very gently and gravely in his face.

Devereux laid his hand upon Puddock’s collar with an agitated sort of sneer. Bu............