II

Dionysius Hogan was a celebrated character in Dublin during the last quarter of the eighteenth century. The Irish capital has always cherished curious characters, for pretty much the same reason that caused badgers to be preserved; any man, or, for that matter, any woman, who was only eccentric enough, could depend on the patronage of the people of Dublin. Dionysius Hogan afforded his fellow-citizens many a laugh on account of his numerous eccentricities. He was a man of about fifty years of age, but his great anxiety was to appear thirty years younger; and he fancied he accomplished this aim by wearing in 1783 the costume of 1750, only in an exaggerated form. His chief hallucination was that several of the best known ladies in society were in love with him, and that it was necessary for him to be very careful lest he should compromise himself by a correspondence with some of those who had husbands.

0186

It need scarcely be said that this idea of his was not greatly discouraged by the undergraduates of Trinity College. It was not their fault if he did not receive every week a letter from some distinguished lady begging the favor of an interview with him. Upon many occasions the communications, which purported to come from married ladies, took the form of verses. These he exhibited with great pride, and only after extorting promises of profound secrecy, to his student friends.

It was immaterial that Dionysius found almost every week that he had been the victim of practical jokes; his belief in his own powers of captivating womankind was superior to every rebuff that he encountered. He exhibited his dapper little figure, crowned with the wig of a macaroni, to the promenaders in all the chief thoroughfares daily, and every evening he had some fresh story to tell of how he had been exerting himself to avoid an assignation that was being urged on him by a lady of quality sojourning not a hundred miles from the Castle.

The scheme which Mr. Blake had suggested to his fellow-students in the Smock Alley tavern found a willing agent for its realisation in Dionysius Hogan. Mrs. Siddons, her beauty and her powers, were, of course, the talk of the town during her first visit to Dublin. It only needed Jimmy Blake to drop a few dark hints in the hearing of Dionysius on the subject of a rumor that was current, to the effect that a certain well-known gentleman in Dublin had attracted the attention of the great actress, to make Dionysius believe that he had made a conquest of the Siddons.

For the remainder of the evening he took to dropping dark hints to this effect, and before he had slept that night there was no doubt on his mind that Sarah Sid-dons was another lady who had succumbed to his attractive exterior. To be sure, he had heard it said that she was as hard as marble; but then she had not seen him until she had come to Dublin. All women, he believed, had their weak moments, and there was no article of his creed more strongly impressed upon him than that the weak moment of many women was when they saw him for the first time.

When, on descending from his bedroom to his little sitting-room in his humble lodgings—for Mr. Hogan's income did not exceed eighty pounds a year—a letter was put into his hand bearing the signature “S. S.,” and when he found that above these initials there was a passionate avowal of affection and a strong appeal to him to be merciful as he was strong, and to pay the writer a visit at her lodgings before the hour of one, “when Mr. S. returns from the theatre, where he goes every forenoon,” poor Dionysius felt that the time had at last come for him to cast discretion to the winds. The beauty of Mrs. Siddons had had a powerful effect upon his susceptible heart when she had first come before his eyes on the stage of the Smock Alley theatre.

0192

On that night he believed that she had kept her eyes fixed upon him while repeating some of the beautiful soliloquies in “Isabella.” The artful suggestions of Jimmy Blake had had their effect upon him, and now he held in his hand a letter that left him no room to doubt—even if he had been inclined that way—the accuracy of the tale that his poor heart had originally told him.

He dressed himself with his accustomed care, and, having deluged his cambric with civet—it had been the favourite scent of thirty years before—he indulged in the unusual luxury of a chair to convey him to the lodgings of the great actress; for he felt that it might seriously jeopardise his prospects to appear in the presence of the lady with soiled shoes.

The house where Mrs. Siddons lodged was not an imposing one. She had arrived in Dublin from Holyhead at two o'clock in the morning, and she was compelled to walk about the streets in a downpour of rain for several hours before she could prevail upon any one to take her in. It is scarcely surprising that she conceived a strong and enduring prejudice against Dublin and its inhabitants.

On enquiring in a whisper and with a confidential smirk for Mrs. Siddons, he learned from the maid servant that the lady was in her room, and that Mr. Siddons had not returned from his morning visit to the theatre. The servant stated, however, that Mrs. Siddons had given the strictest orders to admit no one into her presence.

“Ah, discreet as one might have expected,” murmured Dionysius. “She does not mean to run the chance of disappointing me. Which is her parlour, child?”

“It's the first front, yer honour,” said the girl; “but, Lord save yer honour, she'd murther me if I let ye go up. Oh, it's joking ye are.”

“Hush,” whispered Dionysius, his finger on his lips. “Not so loud, I pray. She is waiting for me.”

“Holy Biddy! waiting for yer?” cried the maid. “Now do n't be afther getting a poor colleen into throuble, sir. I'm telling ye that it's killed entirely I'd be if I let ye go up.”

“Do n't be a fool, girl,” said Dionysius, still speaking in a whisper. “I give you my word of honour as a gentleman that Mrs. Siddons is awaiting me. Zounds! why do I waste time talking to a menial? Out of my way, girl.”

He pushed past the servant, leaving her somewhat awe-stricken at his grand manner and his finery, and when she recovered and made a grab for his coat tails, he was too quick for her. He plucked them out of her reach, and she perceived that he had got such a start of her that pursuit would be useless. In a few moments he was standing before the door of the room on the first floor that faced the street.

His heart was fluttering so that he had scarcely courage to tap upon the panel. He had tapped a second time before that grand contralto, that few persons could hear without emotion, bade him enter. He turned the handle, and stood facing Mrs. Siddons.

0197

She was sitting in a gracefully majestic attitude by the side of a small table on which a desk was placed. Mrs. Siddons never unbent for a moment in private life.

She assumed majestic attitudes in the presence of the lodging-house servant, and spoke in a tragic contralto to the linen-draper's apprentice. She turned her lovely eyes upon Dionysius Hogan as he stood smirking and bowing at the door. There was a vista of tragedy in the delivery of the two words—

“Well, sir?”

It took him some moments to recover from the effect the words produced upon him. He cleared his throat—it was somewhat husky—and with an artificial smirk he piped out:

“Madam—ah, my charmer, I have rushed to clasp my goddess to my bosom! Ah, fair creature, who could resist your appeal?”

He advanced in the mincing gait of the Macaronis. She sprang to her feet. She pointed an eloquent forefinger at a spot on the floor directly in front of him.

“Wretch,” she cried, “advance a step at your peril!” Her eyes were flashing, and her lips were apart.

His mincing ceased abruptly; and only the ghost of a smirk remained upon his patched and painted face. It was in a very fluty falsetto that he said:

“Ah, I see my charmer wants to be wooed. But why should Amanda reproach her Strephon for but obeying her behests? Wherefore so coy, dear nymph? Let these loving arms—”

“Madman—wretch—”

“Nay, chide me not, dear one. 'T is but the ardour of my passion that bids me clasp thee, the fairest of Hebe's train. We shall fly together to some retreat—far from the distractions—”

“Oh, the man is mad—mad!” cried the lady, retreating a step or two as he advanced.

“Only mad with the ardour of my passion,” whispered Dionysius.

“Oh, heaven! that I should live to hear such words spoken in my presence!” cried Mrs. Siddons, with her hands clasped in passionate appeal to a smiling portrait of the landlady's husband that hung over the fireplace. Then she turned upon Dionysius and looked at him.

Her eyes blazed. Their fire consumed the unfortunate man on whom they rested. He felt himself shrivelled up and become crisp as an autumn leaf. He certainly trembled like one, as a terrible voice, but no louder than a whisper, sounded in his ears: “Are you a human being or the monster of a dream, that you dare to speak such words in my hearing? What wretch are you that fancies that Sarah Siddons may be addressed by such as you, and in language that is an insult to a pure wife and mother. I am Sarah Siddons, sir! I am a wife who holds her husband's honour dearer than life itself—I am a mother who will never cause a blush of shame to mantle the brow of one of her children. Wretch, insulter, why are mine eyes not basilisks, with death in their glance to such as you?”

Down went Dionysius on his knees before that terrible figure that stretched out wild quivering hands above his head. Such gestures as hers would have fitted the stage of Drury Lane.

In the lodging-house parlour they were overwhelming.

“For God's sake, spare me, spare me!” he faltered, with his hands clasped and his head bent before that fury.

“Why should I spare such a wretch—why should I not trample such a worm into the dust?”

She took a frantic step toward him. With a short cry of abject terror he fell along the floor, and gasped. It seemed to him that she had trampled the life out of his body.

She stood above him with a heaving bosom beneath her folded arms.

There was a long pause before he heard the door open. A weight seemed lifted off him. He found that he could breathe. In a few moments he ventured to raise his head. He saw a beautiful figure sitting at the desk writing. Even in the scratching of her pen along the paper there was a tone of tragedy.

He crawled backward upon his hands and knees, with his eyes furtively fixed upon that figure at the desk. If, when he had looked up he had found her standing with an arm outstretched tin the direction of the door, he felt that he would have been able to rise to his feet and leave her presence; but Mrs. Siddons' dramatic instinct caused her to produce a deeper impression upon him by simply treating him as if he were dead at her feet—as if she had, indeed, trampled the life out of his body.

He crept away slowly and painfully backward, until he was actually in the lobby. Then by a great effort he sprang to his feet, rushed headlong down the stairs, picked himself up in the hall, and fled wildly through the door, that chanced to be open, into the street. He overthrew a chairman in his wild flight, and as he turned the corner he went with a rush into the arms of a young man, who, with a few others by his side, was sauntering along.

0205

“Zounds, sir! what do you mean by this mode of progression?” cried the young man, holding him fast.

Dionysius grasped him limply, looking at him with wild, staring eyes.

“For God's sake, Mr. Blake, save me from her—do n't let her get hold of me, for the love of all the saints.”

“What do you mean, you fool?” said Jimmy Blake. “Who is anxious to get hold of you?”

But no answer was returned by poor Dionysius. He lay with his head over Blake's shoulder, his arms swaying limply like two pendulums.

“By the powers, he has gone off in a swoon,” said young Blenerhassett. “Let us carry him to the nearest tavern.”

In less than half an hour Dionysius had recovered consciousness; but it required a longer space of time, and the administration of a considerable quantity of whisky, to enable him to tell all his story. He produced the letter signed “S. S.” which he had received in the morning, and explained that he had paid the visit to Mrs. Siddons only with a view of reasoning her out of her infatuation, which, he said with a shadowy simper, he could not encourage.

“I had hardly obtained access to her when she turned upon me in a fury,” said he. “Ah, boys, those eyes of hers!—I feel them still upon me. They made me feel like a poor wretch that's marched out in front of a platoon to be shot before breakfast. And her voice! well, it sounded like the voice of the officer giving the word of command to the platoon to fire. When I lay ready to expire at her feet, every word that she spoke had the effect of a bayonet prod upon my poor body. Oh, Lord! oh, Lord! I'll leave it to yourself, Mr. Blake: was it generous of her to stab me with cold steel after I was riddled with red-hot bullets?”

“I'm sorry to say, Mr. Hogan,” replied Blake, “that I can't take a lenient view of your conduct. We all know what you are, sir. You seek to ingraft the gallantries of the reign of his late Majesty upon the present highly moral age. Mrs. Siddons, sir, is a true wife and mother, besides being a most estimable actress, and you deserved the rebuff from the effects of which you are now suffering. Sir, we leave you to the gnawings of that remorse which I trust you feel acutely.”

Mr. Blake, with his friends, left the tavern room as Dionysius was beginning to whimper.

In the street a roar of laughter burst from the students.

“Mother o' Moses!” cried Moriarty. “'T is a golden guinea I'd give to have been present when the Siddons turned upon the poor devil.”

“Then I 'll give you a chance of being present at a better scene than that,” said Blake.

“What do you mean, Jimmy?” asked Moriarty.

“I mean to bring you with me to pay a visit to Mrs. Siddons this very minute.”

“'T is joking you are, Jimmy?”

“Oh, the devil a joke, ma bouchai! Man alive, can't you see that the fun is only beginning? We'll go to her in a body and make it out that she has insulted a friend of ours by attributing false motives to him, and that her husband must come out to the Park in the morning.”

“That's carrying a joke a bit too far,” said Mr. Blenerhassett. “I'll not join in with you there.”

“Nobody axed ye, sir,” said Blake. “There are three of us here without you, and that's enough for our purpose.”

“If Mr. Siddons kicks you into the street, or if Sally treats you as she did that poor devil in the tavern, 't is served right that you'll be,” said Blenerhassett, walking off.

“We'll have a scene with Sarah Siddons for our trouble, at any rate,” laughed Blake.

The three young men who remained when the more scrupulous youth had departed, went together to Mrs. Siddons' lodgings. They understood more than Dionysius did about the art of obtaining admittance when only a portress stood in the way—a squeeze, a kiss, and a crown combined to make the maid take a lenient view of the consequences of permitting them to go up the stairs.

When, after politely rapping at the door of the parlour, the three entered the room, they found the great actress in precisely the same attitude she had assumed for her last visitor. The dignity of her posture was not without its effect upon the young men. They were not quite so self-confident as they had been outside the door. Each of them looked at the other, so to speak; but somehow none of the three appeared to be fluent. They stood bowing politely, keeping close to the door.

“Who are these persons?” said Mrs. Siddons, as if uttering her thoughts. “Am I in a civilised country or not?”

“Madam,” said Blake, finding his voice, at last, when a slur was cast upon his country. “Madam, Ireland was the home of civilisation when the inhabitants of England were prowling the woods naked, except for a coat of paint.”

Mrs. Siddons sprang to her feet.

“Sir,” she cried, “you are indelicate as well as impertinent. You have no right to intrude upon me without warning.”

“The urgency of our mission is our excuse, madam,” said Blake. “The fact is, madam, to come to the point, the gentleman who visited you just now is our friend.”

“Your friend, sir, is a scoundrel. He grossly insulted me,” said Mrs. Siddons.

“Ah, 't is sorry I am to find you do n't yet understand the impulses of a warmhearted nation, madam,” said Blake, shaking his head. “The gentleman came to compliment you on your acting, and yet you drove him from your door like a hound. That, according to our warmhearted Irish ways, constitutes an offence that must be washed out in blood—ay, blood, madam.”

“What can be your meaning, sir?”

“I only mean, madam, that your husband, whom we all honour on account of the genius—we do n't deny it—the genius and virtue of his wife, will have to meet the most expert swordsman in Ireland in the Phonix Park in the morning, and that Sarah Siddons will be a widow before breakfast time.”

There was a pause before there came a cry of anguish more pitiful than any expression of emotion that the three youths had ever heard.

“My husband!” were the words that sounded like a sob in their ears.

Mrs. Siddons had averted her head. Her face was buried in her hands. The wink in which Jimmy Blake indulged as he gave Moriarty a nudge was anything but natural.

“Why was I ever tempted to come to this country?” cried the lady wildly.

“Madam, we humbly sympathise with you, and with the country,” said Blake. He would not allow any reflection to be cast on his country.

She took a few steps toward the three young men, and faced them with clasped hands. She looked into the three faces in turn, with passionate intreaty in her eyes. “Have you no pity?” she faltered.

“Yes,” said Blake, “that we have; we do pity you heartily, madam.”

“Are you willing to take part in this act of murder—murder?” cried Mrs. Siddons, in a low voice that caused the flesh of at least two of her audience to creep. “Are you blind? Can 't you see the world pointing at you as I point at you, and call you murderers?” She stood before them with her eyes half closed, her right hand pointing to each of them in turn as she prolonged the word, suggesting a thousand voices whispering “murderers!” There was a long pause, during which the spell-bound youths, their jaws fallen, stared at that terrible figure—the awful form of the Muse of Tragedy. Drops of perspiration stood on the forehead of young Moriarty. Blake himself gave a gasp. “Have you no compassion?” Mrs. Sid-dons continued, but in another tone—a tone of such pathos as no human being could hear unmoved. Clasping her hands, she cried: “My poor husband! What harm has he done? Is he to be dragged from these arms—these arms that have cherished him with all the devotion that a too-loving wife can offer? Is he to be dragged away from this true heart to be butchered? Sirs, we have children—tender little blossoms. Oh, cannot you hear their cries? Listen, listen—the wailing of the babes over the mangled body of their father.”

Surely the sound of children's sobbing went around the room.

One of the young men dropped into a chair and burst into tears.

Blake's lips were quivering, as the streaming eyes of the woman were turned upon him.

“For heaven's sake, madam!” he faltered—“for heaven's sake—oh, my God! what have we done?—what have we done? Worse than Herod! the innocent children!—I hear them—I hear them! Oh, God forgive us! God forgive us for this cruel joke.”

He broke down utterly. The room now was certainly filled with wild sobbing and the sound of convulsive weeping.

0217

For several minutes the three emotional Irishmen sat weeping. They were in the power of the woman, who, at the confession of Blake, had become perfectly self-possessed in a moment. She stood watching them, a scornful smile upon her lips. She knew that the magic which she had at her command could enchain them so long as she wished. She was merciful, however.

“If you consider your jest sufficiently successful, gentlemen,” said she, “perhaps you will oblige me by withdrawing. I have letters to write.”

The spell that she had cast around them was withdrawn.

Blake sprang to his feet and drew his handkerchief across his eyes.

“Mrs. Siddons—madam,” said he, “we have behaved like fools—nay, worse, like scoundrels. We are not bold enough to ask your pardon, madam; but believe me, we feel deeply humiliated. You may forgive us, but we shall never forgive ourselves. Madam, you are the greatest actress in the world, and you may expect the finest benefit ever given to an actress in this city.”

But in spite of the fact that Mrs. Siddons' benefit the following night was all that Mr. Blake predicted it would be, she wrote some very hard words about Dublin to her friend, Mr. Whately, of Bath.