He had advanced half-way down the court without a soul appearing, when suddenly the enemy poured out on him in two columns, from behind two doorways, and he was borne back, fighting like a hero with his fire-shovel, into one of the doors on his own side of the court.
The two columns of the enemy, headed by Mr. Phelim O'Neill, uniting, poured into the doorway after him, and from the interior of the house arose a hubbub, exactly as though people were fighting on the stairs.
At this point there happened one of those mistakes which so often occur in warfare, which are disastrous at the time, and inexplicable afterwards. Can any one explain why Lord Lucan gave that order at Balaclava? No. Can any one explain to me why, on this occasion, Mr. Phelim O'Neill headed the attack on the staircase in person, leaving his rear struggling in confusion in the court, by reason of their hearing the fun going on inside, and not being able to get at it? I think not. Such was the case, however, and, in the midst of it, Mr. Malone, howling like a demon, and horribly drunk, followed by thirty or forty worse than himself, dashed out of a doorway close by, and before they had time to form line of battle, fell upon them hammer and tongs.
I need not say that after this surprise in the rear, Mr. Phelim O'Neill's party had very much the worst of it. In about ten minutes, however, the two parties were standing opposite one another once more, inactive from sheer fatigue.
At this moment Miss Ophelia Flanigan appeared from the door of No. 8—the very house that poor Charles was so anxious to get to—and slowly and majestically advanced towards the rostrum in front of her own door, and ascending the steps, folded her arms and looked about her.
She was an uncommonly powerful, red-faced Irishwoman; her arms were bare, and she had them akimbo, and was scratching her elbows.
Every schoolboy knows that the lion has a claw at the end of his tail with which he lashes himself into fury. When the experienced hunter sees him doing that, he, so to speak, "hooks it." When Miss Flanigan's enemies saw her scratching her elbows, they generally did the same. She was scratching her elbows now. There was a dead silence.
One woman in that court, and one only, ever offered battle to the terrible Miss Ophelia: that was young Mrs. Phaylim O'Nale. On the present occasion she began slowly walking up and down in front of the expectant hosts. While Miss Flanigan looked on in contemptuous pity, scratching her elbows, Mrs. O'Neill opened her fire.
"Pussey, pussey!" she began, "kitty, kitty, kitty! Miaow, miaow!" (Mr. Malone had accumulated property in the cat's meat business.) "Morraow, ye little tabby divvle, don't come anighst her, my Kitleen Avourneen, or yill be convarted into sassidge mate, and sowld to keep a drunken one-eyed old rapparee, from the county Cark, as had two months for bowling his barrer sharp round the corner of Park Lane over a ould gineral officer, in a white hat and a green silk umbereller; and as married a red-haired woman from the county Waterford, as calls herself by her maiden name, and never feels up to fighting but when the licker's in her, which it most in general is, pussey; and let me see the one of Malone's lot or Moriarty's lot ather, for that matter, as will deny it. Miaow!"