As he spoke he showed the lines to Melmoth, who immediately recognized his uncle’s hand (that perpendicular and penurious hand, that seems determined to make the most of the very paper, thriftily abridging every word, and leaving scarce an atom of margin), and read, not without some emotion, the following words: “I enjoin my nephew and heir, John Melmoth, to remove, destroy, or cause to be destroyed, the portrait inscribed J. Melmoth, 1646, hanging in my closet. I also enjoin him to search for a manuscript, which I think he will find in the third and lowest left-hand drawer of the mahogany chest standing under that portrait—it is among some papers of no value, such as manuscript sermons, and pamphlets on the improvement of Ireland, and such stuff; he will distinguish it by its being tied round with a black tape, and the paper being very mouldy and discoloured. He may read it if he will;—I think he had better not. At all events, I adjure him, if there be any power in the adjuration of a dying man, to burn it.”
After reading this singular memorandum, the business of the meeting was again resumed; and as old Melmoth’s will was very clear and legally worded, all was soon settled, the party dispersed, and John Melmoth was left alone.
We should have mentioned, that his guardians appointed by the will (for he was not yet of age) advised him to return to College, and complete his education as soon as proper; but John urged the expediency of paying the respect due to his uncle’s memory, by remaining a decent time in the house after his decease. This was not his real motive. Curiosity, or something that perhaps deserves a better name, the wild and awful pursuit of an indefinite object, had taken strong hold of his mind. His guardians (who were men of respectability and property in the neighbourhood, and in whose eyes John’s consequence had risen rapidly since the reading of the will), pressed him to accept of a temporary residence in their respective houses, till his return to Dublin. This was declined gratefully, but steadily. They called for their horses, shook hands with the heir, and rode off—Melmoth was left alone.
The remainder of the day was passed in gloomy and anxious deliberation—in traversing his late uncle’s room—approaching the door of the closet, and then retreating from it—in watching the clouds, and listening to the wind, as if the gloom of the one, or the murmurs of the other, relieved instead of increasing the weight that pressed on his mind. Finally, towards evening, he summoned the old woman, from whom he expected something like an explanation of the extraordinary circumstances he had witnessed since his arrival at his uncle’s. The old woman, proud of the summons, readily attended, but she had very little to tell—her communication was nearly in the following words: (We spare the reader her endless circumlocutions, her Irishisms, and the frequent interruptions arising from her applications to her snuffbox, and to the glass of whiskey punch with which Melmoth took care to have her supplied).
The old woman deposed, “That his honor (as she always called the deceased) was always intent upon the little room inside his bedchamber, and reading there, within the last two years;—that people, knowing his honor had money, and thinking it must be there, had broke into that room (in other words, there was a robbery attempted there), but finding nothing but some papers, they had retired;—that he was so frightened, he had bricked up the window; but she thought there was more in it than that, for when his honor missed but a halfpenny, he would make the house ring about it, but that, when the closet was bricked up, he never said a word;—that afterwards his honor used to lock himself up in his own room, and though he was never fond of reading, was always found, when his dinner was brought him, hanging over a paper, which he hid the moment anyone came into the room, and once there was a great bustle about a picture that he tried to conceal;—that knowing there was an ‘odd story in the family,’ she did her best to come at it, and even went to Biddy Brannigan’s (the medical Sybil before mentioned), to find out the rights of it; but Biddy only shook her head, filled her pipe, uttered some words she did not understand, and smoked on;—that it was but two evenings before his honor ‘was struck’ (i.e. took ill), she was standing at the door of the court (which had once been surrounded by stables, pigeon-house, and all the usual etceteras of a gentleman’s residence, but now presented only a ruinous range of dismantled out-offices, thatched with thistles, and tenanted by pigs), when his honor called to her to lock the door (his honor was always keen about locking the doors early); she was hastening to do so, when he snatched the key from her, swearing at her (for he was always very keen about locking the doors, though the locks were so bad, and the keys so rusty, that it was always like ‘the cry of the dead’ in the house when the keys were turned);—that she stood aside for a minute, seeing he was angry, and gave him the key, when she heard him utter a scream, and saw him fall across the doorway;—that she hurried to raise him, hoping it was a fit;—that she found him stiff and stretched out, and called for help to lift him up;—that then people came from the kitchen to assist;—that she was so bewildered and terrified, she hardly knew what was done or said; but with all her terror remembered, that as they raised him up, the first sign of life he gave was lifting up his arm, and pointing it
