"Who is there?" said the old herbalist. "Why do you come at this hour to deprive me of my rest? n.o.body comes for any good purpose at such an hour as this."
"Open your door, you hypocritical old sinner, and I will speak to you.
Open your door instantly."
"Wait, then; I will open it; to be sure--I will open it; because I know whoever you are that if there was not something extraordinary in it, it isn"t at this hour you"d be coming to me."
"Open the door I say, and then I shall speak to you."
The window, which the old herbalist had opened, and, in the hurry of the moment, left unshut, remained unshut, and Barney, after Woodward had entered, stood close to it in order to hear the conversation which might pa.s.s between them.
"Now," said Woodward, after he had entered the hut, "I want a dose from you. One of my dogs, I fear, is seized with incipient symptoms of hydrophobia, and I wish to dose him to death."
"And what hour is this to come for such a purpose?" asked Sol Donnel. "It isn"t at midnight that a man comes to me to ask for a dose of poison for a dog."
"You are very right in that," replied Woodward; "but the truth is, that I had an a.s.signation with a girl in the town, and I thought that I might as well call upon you now as at any other time."
The eye of the old sinner glistened, for he knew perfectly well that the malady of the dog was a fable.
"Well," said he, "I can give you the dose, but what"s to be the recompense?"
"What do you ask?" replied the other. "I will dose nothing under five pounds."
"Are you certain that your dose will be sure to effect its purpose?"
asked Woodward.
"As sure as I am of life," replied the old sinner; "one gla.s.s of it would settle a man as soon as it would a dog;" and as he spoke he fastened his keen, glittering eyes upon Woodward. The glance seemed to say, I understand you, and I know that the dog you are about to give the dose to walks upon two legs instead of four.
"Now," said Woodward after having secured the bottle, "here are your five pounds, and _mark me_----" he looked sternly in the face of the herbalist, but added not another word.
The herbalist, having secured the money and deposited it in his pocket, said, with a malicious grin,
"Couldn"t you, Mr. Woodward, have prevented yourself from going to the expense of five pounds for poisoning a dog, that you could have shot without all this expense?"
Woodward looked at him. "Your life," said he, "will not be worth a day"s purchase if you breathe a syllable of what took place between us this night. Sol Donnel, I am a desperate man, otherwise I would not have come to you. Keep the secret between us, for, if you divulge it, you may take my word for it that you will not survive it twenty-four hours. Now, be warned, for I am both resolute and serious."
The herbalist felt the energy of his language and was subdued.
"No," he replied, "I shall never breathe it; kill your dog in your own way; all I can say is, that half a gla.s.s of it would kill the strongest horse in your stable; only let me remark that I gave you the bottle to kill a dog!"
"Now," thought Barney Casey, "what can all this mean? There is none of the dogs wrong. He is at some devil"s work; but what it is I do not know; I shall watch him well, however, and it will go hard or I shall find out his purpose."
As Woodward was about to depart he mused for a time, and at length addressed the herbalist.
"Suppose," said he, "that I wish to kill this dog by slow degrees, would it not be a good plan to give him a little of it every day, and let him die, as it were, by inches?"
"That my bed may be made in heaven but it is a good thought, and by far the safest plan," replied the herbalist, "and the very one I would recommend you. A small spoonful every day put into his coffee or her coffee, as the case may be, will, in the course of a fortnight or three weeks, make a complete cure."
"Why, you old scoundrel, who ever heard of a dog drinking coffee?"
"I did," replied the old villain, with another grin, "and many a time it is newly sweetened for them, too, and they take it until they fall asleep; but they forget to waken somehow. Taste that yourself, and you"ll find that it is beautifully sweetened; because if it was given to the dog in its natural bitter state he might refuse to take it at all, or, what would be worse and more dangerous still, he might suspect the reason why it was given to him."
The two persons looked each other in the face, and it would, indeed, be difficult to witness such an expression as the countenance of each betrayed. That of the herbalist lay princ.i.p.ally in his ferret eyes. It was cruel, selfish, cunning, and avaricious. The eye of the other was dark, significant, vindictive, and terrible. In his handsome features there was, when contrasted with those of the herbalist, a demoniacal elevation, a satanic intellectuality of expression, which rendered the contrast striking beyond belief. The one appeared with the power of Apollyon, the G.o.d of destruction, conscious of that power; the other as his mere contemptible agent of evil-subordinate, low, villanous, and wicked.
Woodward, after a significant look, bade him good night, and took his way home.
Barney Casey, however, still dogged him stealthily, because he knew not whether the dose was intended for Grace Davoren or his brother Charles.
Mrs. Lindsay had made no secret of her intention to leave her property to the latter, whose danger, and the state of whose health, had awakened all those affections of the mother which had lain dormant in her heart so long. The revivification of her affections for him was one of those capricious manifestations of feeling which can emanate from no other source but the heart of a mother. Independently of this, there was in the mind of Mrs. Lindsay a principle of conscious guilt, of hardness of heart, of all want of common humanity, that sometimes startled her into terror. She knew the villany of her son Woodward, and, after all, the heart of a woman and a mother is not like the heart of a man. There is a tendency to recuperation in a woman"s and a mother"s heart, which can be found nowhere else; and the contrast which she felt herself forced to inst.i.tute between the generous character of her son Charles and the villany of Woodward broke down the hard propensities of her spirit, and subdued her very wickedness into something like humanity. Virtue and goodness, after all, will work their way, especially where a mother"s feelings, conscious of the evil and conscious of the good, are forced to strike the balance between them. This consideration it was which determined Mrs. Lindsay, in addition to other considerations already alluded to, to come to the resolution of leaving her property to her son Charles. There is, besides, a want of confidence and of mutual affection in villany which reacts upon the heart, precisely as it did upon that of Mrs. Lindsay. She knew that her eldest son was in intention a murderer; and there is a terrible summons in conscience which sometimes awakens the soul into a sense of virtue and truth.
Be this as it may, Barney Casey"s vigilance was ineffectual. From the night on which Woodward got the bottle from the herbalist, Charles Lindsay began gradually and slowly to decline. Barney"s situation in the family was that of a general servant, in fact, a man of all work, and the necessary consequence was, that he could not contravene the conduct of Harry Woodward, although he saw clearly that, notwithstanding Charles"s wound was nearly healed, his general health was getting worse.
Now, the benevolence and singular power of Valentine Greatrakes are historical facts which cannot be contradicted. After about a month from the time he cured Alice Goodwin he came to the town of Rathfillan, with several objects in view, one of which was to see Alice Goodwin, and to ascertain that her health was perfectly reestablished. But the other and greater one was that which we shall describe. Mr. Lindsay, having perceived that his son Charles"s health was gradually becoming worse, though his wound was healed, and on finding that the physician who attended him could neither do anything for his malady, nor even account for it, or p.r.o.nounce a diagnosis upon its character, bethought him of the man who had so completely cured Alice Goodwin. Accordingly, on Greatrakes"s visit to Rathfillan, he waited upon him, and requested, as a personal favor, that he would come and see his dying son, for indeed Charles at that time was apparently not many days from death. This distinguished and wealthy gentleman at once a.s.sented, and told Mr.
Lindsay that he "would visit his sen the next day.
"I may not cure him," said he, "because there are certain complaints which cannot be cured. Such complaints I never attempt to cure; and even in others that are curable I sometimes fail. But wherever there is a possibility of cure I rarely fail. I am not proud of this gift; on the contrary, it has subdued my heart into a sense of piety and grat.i.tude to G.o.d, who, in his mercy, has been pleased to make me the instrument of so much good to my fellow-creatures."
Mr Lindsay returned home to his family in high spirits, and on his way to the house observed his stepson Woodward and Barney Casey at the door of the dog-kennel.
"I maintain the dog is wrong," said Woodward, "and to me it seems an incipient case of hydrophobia."
"And to me," replied Barney, "it appears that his complaint is hunger, and that you have simply deprived him of his necessary food."
At this moment Mr. Lindsay approached them, and exclaimed,--
"Harry, let your honest and affectionate heart cheer up. Valentine Greatrakes will be here to-morrow, and will cure Charles, as he cured Alice Goodwin, and then we will have them married; for if he recovers I am determined on it, and will abide no opposition from any quarter.
Indeed, Harry, your mother is now willing that they should be married, and is sorry that she ever opposed it. Your mother, thank G.o.d, is a changed woman, and thank G.o.d the change is one that makes my very heart rejoice."
"G.o.d be praised," exclaimed Barney, "that is good news, and makes my heart rejoice nearly as much as yours."
"Father," said Woodward, "you have taken a heavy load off my mind.
Charles is certainly very ill, and until Greatrakes comes I shall make it a point to watch and nurse-tend him myself."
"It is just what I would expect from your kind and affectionate heart, Harry," replied Lindsay, rather slowly though, who then pa.s.sed into the house to communicate the gratifying intelligence to his wife and daughter.
The intensity of Woodward"s malignity and villany was such that, as we have mentioned before, on some occasions he forgot himself into such a state of mind, and, what was worse, into such an expression of countenance, as, especially to Barney Casey, who so deeply suspected him, challenged observation. After Lindsay had gone he put his hand to his chin, and said, still with caution,--
"Yes, poor fellow, I will watch him myself this night; for if he happened to die before Greatrakes comes to-morrow, what an affliction would it not be to the family, and especially to myself, who love him so well. Yes, in order to sustain and support him, I will watch him and act as his nurse this night."
There was, however, such an expression on his countenance as could not be mistaken even by a common observer, much less by such an acute one as Barney Casey, who had his eye upon him for such a length of time!
His countenance, Barney saw plainly, was as dark as h.e.l.l, and seemed to catch its inspiration from that d.a.m.nable region.
"Barney," said he, "I shall watch the sick bed, and nurse my brother Charles tonight, in order, if possible, to sustain him until Greatrakes cures him to-morrow."
"Ah, it"s you that is the affectionate brother," replied Barney, who had read deliberate murder in his countenance. "But," he exclaimed, after Woodward had gone, "if you watch him this night, I will watch you. You know now that he stands between you and your mother"s property, and you will put him out of the way if you can. Yes, I will watch you well this night."
The minute poisoned doses which he had contrived to administer to his brother were always followed by an excessive thirst. Now, Barney had, as we have often said, strong suspicions; but on this occasion he was determined to place himself in a position from which he could watch every movement of Woodward without being suspected himself. His usual sleeping place was in a low gallery below stairs; but it so happened that there was a closet beside Charles"s bed in which there was neither bed nor furniture of any kind, with the exception of a single chair. The door between them had, as is usual, two panes of gla.s.s in; it, through which any person in the dark could see what happened in the room in which Charles slept.
Barney locked the door on the inside, and it was well that he did so, for in a short time Woodward came in, with a guilty and a stealthy pace, and having looked, like a murderer, about the room, he approached the closet door and tried to open it; but finding that it was locked his apprehensions vanished, and he deliberately, on seeing that his brother was asleep, took a bottle out of his pocket, and having poured about a wine-gla.s.sful of the poison into the small jug which contained the usual drink of the patient, he left the room, satisfied that, as soon as his brother awoke, he would take the deadly draught. When he departed, Barney came out, and having subst.i.tuted another for it--for there was a variety of potions on the sick table--he, too, stealthily descended the stairs, and going to the dog-kennel deliberately administered the pernicious draught to the dog which Woodward had insisted was unwell.
He happily escaped all observation, and accomplished his plan without either notice or suspicion. He stayed in the kennel in order to watch the effects of the potion upon the dog, who died in the course of about fifteen minutes after having received it.