To conclude, he fell sick about this time-sick of his debauches, sick, it may be, from recollections of the evil he had done his innocent wife and child, and sick, perhaps, from the remembrance of how he had wasted his life and impaired the prospects of his rightful heir. Ill and sick unto death, with not one loving hand to minister to him, no loving voice to say a word of comfort to him, and dying in a garret, to pay for which the woman who rented it to him had now taken his last coat. His wife was in England, sick herself and living on a small trifle left her by her uncle, now dead; his son, sixteen years of age, had escaped from the custody of a ruffian named O'Rourke, by whom he had been kept closely confined and reported dead, and, of all men, most avoided his unnatural father. What time his brother Robert would not have given him a crust to prolong his life and was indeed looking forward to his death with glee and eager anticipation.
So he died, with none by his pallet but the hag who owned the garret and who was waiting for the breath to be out of his body to send that body to the parish mortuary. So he died, sometimes fancying that he was back in the bagnios he had found so pleasant, sometimes weeping for a sight of his child and for the wrongs he had done that child, sometimes, in his delirium, bellowing forth the profligate songs that such creatures as D'Urfey and Shadwell had made popular amongst the depraved. And sometimes, also, moaning for his Louise to come back and pity him, and forgive him once again in memory of the sweetness of their early love.
Now, therefore, you see how this once handsome lordling-and handsome as Apollo he was in his younger days, I have heard his wife say, though wicked as Satan-was brought so low that, from ruffling it with the best, he came to dying in a filthy garret and being buried at the public expense. Alas, alas! who can help but weep and wring their hands when they think on such a thing, and when they reflect on all the evil that Gerald, Lord St. Amande, wrought in his life and the bitter heritage of woe he left behind to those whom he should, instead, have loved and cherished, and made good provision for.
'Twas a dull November day, in the year of our Lord, 1727, and the first of the reign of our present King George II., that the funeral procession-if so poor and mean an interment as this may be so termed-passed over Essex Bridge on its way to the burying ground where the body was to be deposited. Yet how think you a future peer of the realm should be taken to his last home, how think you one of his rank should be taken farewell of? This man had once held the King's commission, he having carried the colours of his regiment at Donauwerth and been present as a lieutenant at Tirlemont, at both of which the great Marlborough had commanded-therefore upon his coffin there should have been a sword and a sash at least, with, perhaps, a flag. He stood near unto a marquisate, therefore his coffin should have been covered with purple velvet and the plate upon it should have been of silver. Yet there were no such things. His swords, you know by now, were pawned; his sashes had gone the way of his laces, apparel and handsome wigs. The bier on which he was drawn was, therefore, but a common thing on which the bodies of beggars, of Liffey watermen and of coach-drivers were often also drawn; the coffin was a poor, deal encasement with, nailed roughly on it, some black cloth; the name-plate bearing the description of his rank and standing-oh, hollow mockery! – was of tin.
And yet even this was obtained but at the public expense!
A dull November day, with, rolling in from the Channel, great masses of sea fog, damp and wet, that made the dogs in the street creep closer to the house doors for shelter and warmth, and the swine in the streets to huddle themselves together for greater comfort. A day on which those who had no call to be out of doors warmed themselves over fires, or gathered round tavern tables and drank drams of nantz and usquebaugh; a day which no man would care to think should resemble the day on which he would himself be put away into the earth for ever. But the melancholy of the elements and the weather were the only part of the wretched funeral of this man for which he had not been responsible. The gloom and the fog and the damp he could not help, since none, whether king or pauper, can fix the date of their death, or choose to die and go to their last home amidst the shining of the sun and the singing of the birds and the blooming of the flowers, in preference to the miseries of the winter. But all else he might have avoided had he so chosen.
For he might have been borne-not to a beggar's grave, but to the tomb of his own illustrious family in England-amidst pomp and honour had he so willed it; the pomp and honour of a Marquis's heir, the pomp and honour of a gallant officer who had fought under the greatest general that England had ever known, and for his mourners he might have had a loving wife and child weeping for his loss.
Only he would not, and so there was not one that day to shed a tear for him.
CHAPTER II
AN UNPEACEFUL PASSING
So the funeral passed over Essex Bridge and by the French Church, on the steps of which there sat a boy who, on its approach, sprang to his feet and, from behind a pillar of the porch, fixed his eyes firmly on those who attended it.
A boy of between fifteen and sixteen years of age, tall and, thus, looking older, and clad partly in rags and partly in clothes too big for him. To be explicit, his hose was torn and mended and torn again, his shoes were burst and broken and his coat which, though threadbare was sound, hung down nearly to his feet and was roomy enough for a man of twenty, to whom indeed it had once belonged till given in charity to its present owner. By the boy's side there stood a big, burly man with a red, kindly face and a great fell of brown hair, himself dressed in the garb of a butcher, and with at the moment, as though he had but just left the block, his sharpening steel hanging at his side. Also, on the steps of the church were one or two gentlemen arrayed in their college gowns and caps, as if they too had strolled forth at the moment from Trinity and had happened upon the spot, while, around and under the stoops of the neighbouring houses, were gathered together several groups of beggars and ragamuffins and idle ne'er-do-wells.
And now you shall hear a strange thing, for, as the bier with its mean burden came close, so that the features of those who accompanied it might be plainly perceived through the fog, the butcher, turning to the lad dressed as a scarecrow, said, "My lord, stand forth and show thyself. Here come those who have put it about that you have been dead these two years, and who, if they had their will, would soon have you dead now. Show thyself therefore, I say, Lord St. Amande, and prove that thou art alive."
"Ay, ay, do," one of the collegians added. "If the news from London be true, thy uncle, Robert, has already proclaimed himself the new lord, and it is as well that the contrary should be proved."
Thus solemnly adjured, the boy did stand forth and, figure of fun though he looked, gazed fiercely on those who rode behind his father's coffin.
There were but three mourners-if such these ghouls could be called who followed the body to its last resting place, not with any desire to pay a tribute to the dead, but rather with the desire of satisfying themselves, and one other, their master, that it was indeed gone from the world for ever-two men mounted and a woman in a one-horse hackney coach.
All were evil-looking, yet she was the worst, and, as she peered forth from the window, the beggars all about groaned at her while the students regarded her with looks of contempt. She was the German woman who had come to Dublin when the late King had come to London, and was called Madame Baüer, and was now no longer young. That she may once have been comely is to be supposed, since the late Herr Baüer was said to have been a wealthy German gentleman who ruined himself for her-if, indeed, he had ever existed, which many doubted-and also since the dead man now going to his grave had formed a passion for her, while his usurping brother was actually said to be privately married to her. Yet of a certainty, she had no beauty now, her face being of a fiery red, due, it was whispered, to her love of strong waters; her great staring and protuberant eyes were of a watery blue-green hue, and her teeth were too prominent and more like those of an animal. And when the small crowd groaned at her