We all arrived in due time;—dinner was appointed for five precisely, as Curran always stipulated (wherever he could make so free) for the punctuality of the dinner-bell to a single minute. The very best cheer was provided by our host: at the proper time, the dishes lay basking before the fire, in readiness to receive the several provisions all smoking for the counsellor, &c. The clock, which, to render the cook more punctual, had been that very noon regulated by the sundial, did not on its part vary one second. Its hammer and bell melodiously sounded five, and announced the happy signal for the banquet. All the guests assembled in the dining-room, which was, in honest Thomas’s house, that apartment which the fine people of our day would call a drawing-room—the latter being then by no means regarded as indispensable in the dwelling-house of a moderate gentlemen. The family parlour, in fact, answered its purpose mighty well.
Every guest of the reverend host having now decided on his chair, and turned down his plate, in order to be as near as possible to Counsellor Curran, proceeded to whet his knife against the edge of his neighbour’s, to give it a due keenness for the most tempting side of the luscious sirloin, which by anticipation frizzed upon its pewter dish. Veal, mutton, turkey, ham, duck, and partridge, all “piping hot,” were ready and willing to leap from their pots and spits into their respective dishes, and to take a warm bath each in its proper gravy. The cork-screw was busily employed: the wine-decanters ornamented the four corners of the well-dressed table, and the punch, jugged, and bubbling hot upon the hearth-stone, perfumed the whole room with its aromatic potsheen odour.
Every thing bespoke a most joyous and protracted banquet;—but, meanwhile, where was the great object of the feast?—the wheedler of the petty juries, and the admonisher of the grand ones? Where was the great orator, in consequence of whose brilliant reputation such a company was collected? The fifth hour had long passed, and impatience became visible on every countenance. Each guest, who had a watch, gave his fob no tranquillity, and never were timekeepers kept on harder duty. The first half-hour surprised the company; the next quarter astonished, and the last alarmed it. The clock, by six solemn notes, set the whole party surmising, and the host appeared nearly in a state of stupefaction. Day had departed, and twilight was rapidly following its example, yet no tidings of the orator: never had the like been known with regard to Curran—punctuality at dinner being a portion of his very nature. There are not more days in a leap year than there were different conjectures broached as to the cause of my friend’s non-appearance. The people about the house were sent out on the several roads to reconnoitre. He had been seen, certainly, in the garden at four o’clock, but never after;—yet every now and then a message came in to announce, that “an old man had seen a counsellor, as he verily believed, walking very quick on the road to Carlow.” Another reported that “a woman who was driving home her cow met one of the counsellors going leisurely toward Athy, and that he seemed very melancholy; that she had seen him at the ’sizes that blessed morning, and the people towld her it was the great law preacher that was in it.” Another woman who was bringing home some turf from the bog, declared before the Virgin and all the Saints that she saw “a little man in black with a stick in his hand going toward the Barrow;” and a collough sitting at her own cabin door feeding the childer, positively saw a “black gentleman going down to the river, and soon afterward heard a great splash of water at the said river; whereupon, she went hot-foot to her son, Ned Coyle, to send him thither to see if the gentleman was in the water; but that Ned said, sure enuff nothing natural would be after going at that time of the deep dusk to the place where poor Armstrong’s corpse lay the night he was murthered; and he’d see all the gentlemen in the county to the devil (God bless them!) before he’d go to the said place till morning early.”
The faithful clock now announced seven, and the matter became too serious to admit of any doubt as to poor Curran having met his catastrophe. I was greatly shocked; our only conjectures now being, not whether, but how, he had lost his life. As Curran was known every day to strip naked and wash himself all over with a sponge and cold water, I conjectured, as most rational, that he had, in lieu of his usual ablution, gone to the Barrow to bathe before dinner, and thus unfortunately perished. All agreed in my hypothesis, and hooks and a draw-net were sent for immediately to Carlow, to scour the river for his body. Nobody, whatever might have been their feelings, said a word about dinner. The beef, mutton, and veal, as if in grief, had either turned into broth, or dropped piecemeal from the spit; the poultry fell from their strings, and were seen broiling in the dripping-pan. The cook had forgotten her calling, and gone off to make inquiries. The stable-boy left his horses; indeed, all the domestics, with one accord, dispersed with lanterns to search for Counsellor Curran in the Barrow. The Irish cry was let loose, and the neighbourhood soon collected; and the good-natured parson, our host, literally wept like an infant. I never saw so much confusion at any dinner-table. Such of the guests as were gifted by Nature with keen appetites, suffered all the tortures of hunger, of which, nevertheless, they could not in humanity complain; but a stomachic sympathy of woe was very perceptible in their lamentations for the untimely fate of so great an orator.
It was at length suggested by our reverend host that his great Newfoundland dog, who was equally sagacious, if not more so, with many of the parishioners, and rivalled, in canine proportion, the magnitude of his master, was not unlikely, by diving in the Barrow, to discover where the body lay deposited—and thus direct the efforts of the nets and hookers from Carlow. This idea met with universal approbation; and every body took up his hat, to go down to the river. Mary, a young damsel, the only domestic who remained in the house, was ordered to call Diver, the dog;—but Diver was absent, and did not obey the summons. Every where resounded, “Diver! Diver!” but in vain.
New and multifarious conjectures now crossed the minds of the different persons assembled:—the mystery thickened: all the old speculations went for nothing; it was clear that Curran and Diver had absconded together.
At length, a gentleman in company mentioned the circumstance of a friend of his having been drowned while bathing, whose dog never left his clothes, on the bank, till discovered nearly dead with hunger. The conjecture founded hereon was, however, but momentary, since it soon appeared that such could not be the case with Curran. I knew that he both feared and hated big dogs;[[15]] and besides, there was no acquaintance between him and the one in question. Diver had never seen the counsellor before that day, and therefore could have no personal fondness for him, not to say, that those animals have a sort of instinctive knowledge as to who likes or dislikes them, and it was more probable that Diver, if either, would be an enemy instead of a friend to so great a stranger. But the creature’s absence, at any rate, was unaccountable, and the more so, inasmuch as he never before had wandered from his master’s residence.
[15]. Curran had told me, with infinite humour, of an adventure between him and a mastiff when he was a boy. He had heard somebody say, that any person throwing the skirts of his coat over his head, stooping low, holding out his arms and creeping along backward, might frighten the fiercest dog and put him to flight. He accordingly made the attempt on a miller’s animal in the neighbourhood, who would never let the boys rob the orchard; but found to his sorrow that he had a dog to deal with who did not care which end of a boy went foremost, so as he could get a good bite out of it. “I pursued the instructions,” said Curran; “and, as I had no eyes save those in front, fancied the mastiff was in full retreat: but I was confoundedly mistaken; for at the very moment I thought myself victorious, the enemy attacked my rear, and having got a reasonably good mouthful out of it, was fully prepared to take another before I was rescued. Egad, I thought for a time the beast had devoured my entire centre of gravity, and that I never should go on a steady perpendicular again.” “Upon my word, Curran,” said I, “the mastiff may have left you your centre, but he could not have left much gravity behind him, among the bystanders.”
I had never recollected this story until the affair of Diver at Parson Thomas’s, and I told it that night to the country gentlemen before Curran, and for a moment occasioned a hearty laugh against him; but he soon floored me, in our social converse, which whiled away as convivial an evening as I ever experienced.