Curiosity, or
something that perhaps deserves a better name, the wild and awful
pursuit of an indefinite object, had taken strong hold of his mind. His
guardians (who were men of respectability and property in the
neighbourhood, and in whose eyes John’s consequence had risen rapidly
since the reading of the will), pressed him to accept of a temporary
residence in their respective houses, till his return to Dublin. This
was declined gratefully, but steadily. They called for their horses,
shook hands with the heir, and rode off--Melmoth was left alone. The remainder of the day was passed in gloomy and anxious
deliberation,--in traversing his late uncle’s room,--approaching the
door of the closet, and then retreating from it,--in watching the
clouds, and listening to the wind, as if the gloom of the one, or the
murmurs of the other, relieved instead of increasing the weight that
pressed on his mind. Finally, towards evening, he summoned the old
woman, from whom he expected something like an explanation of the
extraordinary circumstances he had witnessed since his arrival at his
uncle’s. The old woman, proud of the summons, readily attended, but she
had very little to tell,--her communication was nearly in the following
words: (We spare the reader her endless circumlocutions, her Irishcisms,
and the frequent interruptions arising from her applications to her
snuff-box, and to the glass of whiskey punch with which Melmoth took
care to have her supplied). The old woman deposed, “That his honor (as
she always called the deceased) was always intent upon the little room
inside his bed-chamber, and reading there, within the last two
years;--that people, knowing his honor had money, and thinking it must
be there, had broke into that room, (in other words, there was a robbery
attempted there), but finding nothing but some papers, they had
retired;--that he was so frightened, he had bricked up the window; but
_she thought there was more in it than that_, for when his honor missed
but a half-penny, he would make the house ring about it, but that, when
the closet was bricked up, he never said a word;--that afterwards his
honor used to lock himself up in his own room, and though he was never
fond of reading, was always found, when his dinner was brought him,
hanging over a paper, which he hid the moment any one came into the
room, and once there was a great bustle about a picture that he tried to
conceal;--that knowing there was an _odd story in the family_, she did
her best to come at it, and even went to Biddy Brannigan’s, (the medical
Sybil before mentioned), to find out the rights of it; but Biddy only
shook her head, filled her pipe, uttered some words she did not
understand, and smoked on;--that it was but two evenings before his
honor _was struck_, (_i. e._ took ill), she was standing at the door of
the court, (which had once been surrounded by stables, pigeon-house, and
all the usual etceteras of a gentleman’s residence, but now presented
only a ruinous range of dismantled out-offices, thatched with thistles,
and tenanted by pigs), when his honor called to her to lock the door,
(his honor was always _keen_ about locking the doors early); she was
hastening to do so, when he snatched the key from her, swearing at her,
(for he was always very keen about locking the doors, though the locks
were so bad, and the keys so rusty, that it was always like _the cry of
the dead_ in the house when the keys were turned);--that she stood aside
for a minute, seeing he was angry, and gave him the key, when she heard
him utter a scream, and saw him fall across the door-way;--that she
hurried to raise him, _hoping_ it was a fit;--that she found him stiff
and stretched out, and called for help to lift him up;--that then people
came from the kitchen to assist;--that she was so bewildered and
terrified, she hardly knew what was done or said; but with all her
terror remembered, that as they raised him up, the first sign of life he
gave was lifting up his arm, and pointing it towards the court, and at
that moment she saw the figure of a tall man cross the court, and go out
of the court, she knew not where or how, for the outer gate was locked,
and had not been opened for years, and they were all gathered round his
honor at the other door;--she saw the figure,--she saw the shadow on the
wall,--she saw him walk slowly through the court, and in her terror
cried, “Stop him,” but nobody minded her, all being busy about her
master; and when he was brought to his room, nobody thought but of
getting him to himself again. And further she could not tell. His honor
(young Melmoth) knew as much as she,--he had witnessed his last illness,
had heard his last words, he saw him die,--how could she know more than
his honor.”

“True,” said Melmoth, “I certainly saw him die; but--you say _there was
an odd story in the family_, do you know any thing about it?” “Not a
word, it was long before my time, as old as I am.” “Certainly it must
have been so; but, was my uncle ever superstitious, fanciful?”--and
Melmoth was compelled to use many synonymous expressions, before he
could make himself understood. When he did, the answer was plain and
decisive, “No, never, never. When his honor sat in the kitchen in
winter, to save a fire in his own room, he could never bear the talk of
the old women that came in to light their pipes _betimes_, (from time to
time). He used to shew such impatience of their superstitious nonsense,
that they were fain to smoke them in silence, without the consolatory
accompaniment of one whisper about a child that the evil eye had looked
on, or another, that though apparently a mewling, peevish, crippled brat
all day, went regularly out at night to dance with the _good people_ on
the top of a neighbouring mountain, summoned thereto by the sound of a
bag-pipe, which was unfailingly heard at the cabin door every night.”
Melmoth’s thoughts began to take somewhat of a darker hue at this
account. If his uncle was not superstitious, might he not have been
guilty, and might not his strange and sudden death, and even the
terrible visitation that preceded it, have been owing to some wrong that
his rapacity had done the widow and the fatherless. He questioned the
old woman indirectly and cautiously on the subject,--her answer
completely justified the deceased. “He was a man,” she said, “of a hard
hand, and a hard heart, but he was as jealous of another’s right as of
his own. He would have starved all the world, but he would not have
wronged it of a farthing.”

Melmoth’s last resource was to send for Biddy Brannigan, who was still
in the house, and from whom he at least hoped to hear the odd story that
the old woman confessed was in the family. She came, and, on her
introduction to Melmoth, it was curious to observe the mingled look of
servility and command, the result of the habits of her life, which was
alternately one of abject mendicity, and of arrogant but clever
imposture.