So dull, so dead in look, so woe begone.
While gazing on him, I thought that if such a man were to “draw my curtains in the dead of night,” he need not cry out “fire!” to appal me.
“Well, Misther Delany,” began Father Connellan, “since you have condescended to appear—(why don’t you make your obeisance, sirrah?—draw back your shovel foot, bob forward your great mop-head, and bow to the lady—soh, that will do)—be plaised to explain how and why I, your spiritual pastor and lawful master, am reduced to half my natural dimensions, ‘clipt of my fair proportions.’ As some one says”——
But ere the priest could proceed with his quotation, I broke in with an exclamation of amazement.
“That spectre—plump, grinning, mutton-headed Jimmy Delany! who used to wish for a gold chain but long enough to encircle the disc of his face twice, and it would be as long as the chain of my lord mayor of Dublin? Impossible! No, no! Reverend father, you may make me believe much; you are a man of mystery and mirth, potent and pleasant; but you will hardly bring me to believe that that shadow represents my plump and good-humoured old acquaintance Jimmy Delany.” “I have my doubts too,” said his reverence.
All this time the ghost-like subject of our observations stood mute and motionless, gazing at me with lack-lustre eyes, in which there was no beam of recognition. Indeed, he seemed dubious of his own identity; for when I refused to acknowledge him, he passed his hand deliberately and cautiously over his face and person, much in the way a blind man would do; and it was a considerable time before he ventured to assert “that he was Jimmy Delany still—if not in flesh and blood, at laist in skin and bone.”
“Alas! and has it come to this with thee, Jimmy? I recognise thy voice, though somewhat tremulous and less stentorian than of old, and I would fain inquire for what unheard of crime has this severe penance been imposed upon thee?—the direst that the dire church can inflict, it must have been! Hast thou made a pilgrimage with unboiled peas in your shoes, my poor, poor Jimmy?”
“Speak, sirrah!” cried the priest.
“Must I tell the thruth, sur?” asked the spectre, reddening, and scratching his head in a dilemma.
At this juncture I perceived that the person appealed to could hardly command gravity to answer the important query addressed to him, and, but that a fit of coughing came to his aid, alas for the decorum of Father Connellan!