In a beautiful little bay on the north-east of Innishmore, land-locked
on all sides but the entrance, a handsome schooner yacht dropped her
anchor just as the sun was setting. Amidst the desolate grandeur of
those wild cliffs, against which the sea surged and plashed till the
very rocks were smooth worn, that graceful little craft, with her tall
and taper spars, and all her trim adjuncts, seemed a strange vision. It
was the contrast of civilisation with barbarism; they were the two poles
of what are most separated in life--wealth and poverty.
The owner was a Baronet, a certain Sir Gervais Vyner--one of those
spoiled children of fortune which England alone rears; for while in
other lands high birth and large fortune confer their distinctive
advantages, they do not tend, as they do with us, to great social
eminence, and even political influence. Vyner had got almost every prize
in this world’s lottery; all, indeed, but one; his only child was a
daughter, and this was the drop that sufficed to turn to bitterness much
of that cupful of enjoyment Fate had offered to his lips. He had seen
a good deal of life--done a little of everything--on the turf--in the
hunting-field--on the floor of the House he had what was called “held
his own.” He was, in fact, one of those accomplished, well-mannered,
well-looking people, who, so long as not pushed by any inordinate
ambition into a position of undue importance, invariably get full credit
for all the abilities they possess, and, what is better still, attract
no ill will for the possessing them. As well as having done everything,
he had been everywhere: up the Mediterranean, up the Baltic, into the
Black Sea, up the St. Lawrence--everywhere but to Ireland--and now, in a
dull autumn, when too late for a distant tour, he had induced his friend
Grenfell to accompany him in a short cruise, with the distinct pledge
that they were not to visit Dublin, or any other of those cognate cities
of which Irishmen are vain, but which to Mr. George Grenfell represented
all that was an outrage on good taste, and an insult to civilisation.
Mr. Grenfell, in one word, entertained for Ireland and the Irish
sentiments that wouldn’t have been thought very complimentary if applied
to Fejee islanders, with certain hopeless forebodings as to the future
than even Fejee itself might have resented as unfair.
Nobody knew why these two men were friends, but they were so. They
seemed utterly unsuited in every way. Vyner loved travel, incident,
adventure, strange lands, and strange people; he liked the very
emergencies, the roughings of the road. Grenfell was a Londoner, who
only tolerated, and not very patiently, whatever was beyond an easy
drive of Hyde Park Corner. Vyner was a man of good birth, and had high
connexions on every side--advantages of which he no more dreamed of
being vain, than of the air he breathed. Mr. Grenfell was a nobody,
with the additional disparagement of being a nobody that every one
knew. Grenfell’s Italian warehouse, Grenfell’s potted meats, his pickled
salmon, his caviare, his shrimps, his olives, and his patent maccaroni,
being European in celebrity, and, though the means by which his father
made an enormous fortune, were miseries which poisoned life, rising
spectre-like before him on every dinner-table, and staring at him in
great capitals in every supplement of the _Times_. He would have changed
his name, but he knew well that it would have availed him nothing. The
disguise would only have invited discovery, and the very mention of him
exacted the explanation, “No more a Seymour nor a Villiers than you are;
the fellow is old Grenfell’s son; ‘Grenfell’s Game Sauce,’ and the rest
of it.” A chance resemblance to a fashionable Earl suggested another
expedient, and Mr. George Grenfell got it about--how, it is not easy to
say--that the noble Lord had greatly admired his mother, and paid her
marked attention at Scarborough. Whatever pleasure Mr. George Grenfell
felt in this theory is not easy to explain; nor have we to explain what
we simply narrate as a fact, without the slightest pretension to account
for.
Such were the two men who travelled together, and the yacht also
contained Vyner’s daughter Ada, a little girl of eight, and her
governess, Mademoiselle Heinzleman, a Hanoverian lady, who claimed a
descent from the Hohenzollerns, and had pride enough for a Hapsburg. If
Vyner and Grenfell were not very much alike in tastes, temperament,
and condition, Grenfell and the German governess were positively
antipathies; nor was their war a secret or a smouldering fire, but a
blaze, to which each brought fuel every day, aiding the combustion by
every appliance of skill and ingenuity.
Vyner loved his daughter passionately--not even the disappointment that
she had not been a boy threw any cloud over his affection--and he took
her with him when and wherever he could; and, indeed, the pleasure of
having her for a companion now made this little home tour one of the
most charming of all his excursions, and in her childish delight at new
scenes and new people he renewed all his own memories of early travel.
“Here you are, Sir,” said Mr. Crab, late a sailing-master in the Royal
Navy, but now in command of _The Meteor_--“here you are;” and he pointed
with his finger to a little bay on the outspread chart that covered the
cabin table. “This is about it! It may be either of these two; each of
them looks north--north by east--and each has this large mountain to the
south’ard and west’ard.”
“‘The north islands of Arran,’ read out Vyner, slowly, from a little
MS. note-book. ‘Innishmore, the largest of them, has several good
anchorages, especially on the eastern side, few inhabitants, and all
miserably poor. There is the ruin of an Abbey, and a holy well of great
reputed antiquity, and a strange relic of ancient superstition called
the Judgment-stone, on which he who lays his hand while denouncing a
wrong done him by another, brings down divine vengeance on either his
enemy or himself, according as his allegation is just or unjust. There
is something similar to be found in the Breton laws----’”
“For mercy’s sake don’t give us more of that tiresome little book,
which, from the day we sailed, has never contributed one single hint
as to where we could find anything to eat, or even water fit to drink,”
said Grenfell. “Do you mean to go on shore in this barbarous place?”
“Of course I do. Crab intends us to pass two days here; we have sprung
our for’topmast, and must look to it.”
“Blessed invention a yacht! As a means of locomotion, there’s not a
cripple but could beat it; and as a place to live in, to eat, sleep,
wash, and exercise, there’s not a cell in Brixton is not a palace in
comparison.”
“Mademoiselle wish to say good night, Sare Vyner,” said the governess, a
tall, fair-haired lady, with very light eyes, thick lips, and an immense
lower jaw, a type, but not a flattering type, of German physiognomy.
“Let her come by all means;” and in an instant the door burst open, and
with the spring of a young fawn the little girl was fast locked in her
father’s arms.
“Oh, is it not very soon to go to bed, papa dearest?” cried she; “and it
would be so nice to wait a little and see the moon shining on these big
rocks here.”
“What does Mademoiselle Heinzleman say?” asked Vyner, smiling at the
eager face of the child.
The lady appealed to made no other reply than by the production of a
great silver watch with an enormous dial.
“That is a real curiosity,” cried Grenfell. “Is it permissible to ask a
nearer view of that remarkable clock, Miss Heinzleman?”
“Freilich!” said she, not suspecting the slightest trace of raillery in
the request. “It was made at Wurtzburg, by Jacob Schmelling, year time
1736.”
“And intended, probably, for the Town-hall?”
“No, Saar,” replied she, detecting the covert sneer; “intended for him
whose arms it bear, Gottfried von Heinzleman, Burgomeister of Wurtzburg,
a German noble, who neither made sausages nor sold Swiss cheeses.”
“Good night! good night! my own darling!” said Vyner, kissing his child
affectionately. “You shall have a late evening to-morrow, and a walk in
the moonlight too;” and after a hearty embrace from the little girl,
and a respectful curtsey from the governess, returned with a not less
respectful deference on his own part, Vyner closed the door after them,
and resumed his seat.
“What cursed tempers those Germans have,” said Grenfell, trying to seem
careless and easy; “even that good-natured joke about her watch she must
take amiss.”
“Don’t forget, George,” said Vyner, good humouredly, “that in any little
passage of arms between you, you have the strong position, and hers is
the weak one.”
“I wish _she_ would have the kindness to remember that fact, but she
is an aggressive old damsel, and never looks so satisfied as when she
imagines she has said an impertinence.”
“She is an excellent governess, and Ada is very fond of her.”
“So much the worse for Ada.”
“What do you mean by that?” cried Vyner, with an energy that surprised
the other.
“Simply this; that by a man who professes to believe that objects of
beauty are almost as essential to be presented to the eyes of childhood
as maxims of morality, such a choice in a companion for his daughter is
inexplicable. The woman is ugly, her voice discordant and jarring, her
carriage and bearing atrocious--and will you tell me that all these will
fail to make their impression when associated with every tone and every
incident of childhood?”
“You are not in your happiest mood to-night, George. Was the claret
bad?”
“I drank none of it. I took some of that Moselle cup, and it was
tolerably good. By the way, when and how are we to get some ice? Carter
says we have very little left.”
“Perhaps there may be glaciers in the wild region beside us. Ireland and
Iceland have only a consonant between them. What if we go ashore and
have a look at the place?”
A careless shrug of assent was the answer, and soon afterwards the trim
yawl, manned by four stout fellows, skimmed across the smooth bay, and
landed Vyner and his friend on a little rocky promontory that formed a
natural pier.
It was complete desolation on every side of them: the mountain which
rose from the sea was brown and blue with moss and heather, but not
a human habitation, not an animal, marked its side; a few sea-birds
skimmed fearlessly across the water, or stood perched on peaks of rock
close to the travellers, and a large seal heavily plunged into the depth
as they landed; save these, not a sign of anything living could be seen.
“There is something very depressing in this solitude,” said Grenfell; “I
detest these places where a man is thrown back upon himself.”
“Do you know, then, that at this very moment I was speculating on buying
a patch of land here to build a cottage; a cabin of three or four rooms,
where one might house himself if ever he came this way.”
“But why should he come this way? What on earth should turn any man’s
steps twice in this direction?”
“Come, come, George! You’ll not deny that all this is very fine: that
great mountain rising abruptly from the sea, with that narrow belt of
yellow beach below it; those wild fantastic rocks, with their drooping
seaweed; those solemn caves, wherein the rumbling sea rushes to issue
forth again in some distant cleft,--are all objects of grandeur and
beauty, and, for myself, I feel as if I could linger for days amongst
them unwearied.”
“What was that?” cried Grenfell, as they now gained a crest of the
ridge, and could see a wild irregular valley that lay beneath, the
shades of evening deepening into very blackness the lower portions of
the landscape. “Was that thunder, or the roar of the sea? There it is
again!”
They listened for a few moments, and again there came, borne on the
faint land-breeze, a sound that swelled from a feeble wail to a wild
sustained cry, rising and falling till it died away just as it had
begun. It was indescribably touching, and conveyed a sense of deep
sorrow, almost of despair. It might have been the last cry of a sinking
crew as the waves closed above them; and so indeed did it seem to Vyner,
as he said, “If there had been a storm at sea, I’d have sworn that sound
came from a shipwreck.”
“I suppose it is only some other pleasant adjunct of the charming spot
you would select for a villa,” said Grenfell; “perhaps the seals or the
grampuses are musical.”
“Listen to that!” cried Vyner, laying a hand on his arm; “and see!
yonder--far away to the left--there is a light!”
“Well, if there be inhabitants here, I’m not astonished that they cry
over it.”
“Let us find out what it can mean, George.”
“Have you any arms about you? I have left my revolver behind, and have
nothing but this sword-cane.”
“I have not as much, and feel pretty certain we shall not need it. Every
traveller in Ireland, even in the remotest tracts, bear witness to the
kindness which is extended to the stranger.”
“They who come back from the Rocky Mountains are invariably in love with
the Sioux Indians. The testimony that one wants, is from the fellows who
have been scalped.”
“What an intense prejudice you have against all that is Irish!”
“Say, if you like, that I have a prejudice against all mock cordiality,
mock frankness, mock hospitality, and mock intrepidity.”
“Stay, George! you can’t impugn their courage.”
“I don’t want to impugn anything beyond the inordinate pretensions to
be something better, braver, more amiable, and more gifted than all the
rest of the world. I say, Vyner, I have had quite enough of this sort
of walking; my feet are cut to pieces with these sharp stones, and every
second step is into a puddle. Do you mean to go on?”
“Certainly; I am determined to see what that light means.” “Then I turn
back. I’ll send the boat in again, and tell them to hoist a lantern,
which, if the natives have not done for you in the mean while, you’ll
see on the beach.”
“Come along; don’t be lazy.”
“It’s not laziness. I could walk a Parisian Boulevard for these three
hours; what I object to is, the certainty of a cold, and the casualty
of a sprained ankle. A pleasant journey to you;” and, as he spoke, he
turned abruptly round, and began to retrace his steps.
Vyner looked after him; he called after him too, for a moment, but, as
the other never heeded, he lighted a fresh cigar and continued his way.
The light, which seemed to tremble and flicker at first, shone steadily
and brightly as he drew nearer, and at length he hit upon a sort of
pathway which greatly assisted his advance. The way, too, led gradually
downwards, showing that the glen or valley was far deeper than he at
first supposed it. As he went on, the moon, a faint crescent, came out,
and showed him the gable of an old ruin rising above some stunted trees,
through whose foliage, at times, he fancied he saw the glitter of a
light. These lay in a little cleft that opened to the sea, and on the
shore, drawn up, were two boats, on whose sides the cold moonlight shone
clearly.
“So, there are people who live here!” thought he; “perhaps Grenfell was
right. It might have been as well to have come armed!” He hesitated
to go on. Stories of wreckers, tales of wild and lawless men in remote
untravelled lands, rose to his mind and he half doubted if it were
prudent to proceed farther. Half ashamed of his fears, half dreading
the bantering he was sure to meet from Grenfell, he went forward. The
path led to a small river in which stepping-stones were placed, and
crossing this, the foot track became broader and evidently had
been more travelled. The night was now perfectly still and calm, the
moonlight touched the mountain towards its peak, but all beneath was
in sombre blackness, more especially near the old church, whose ruined
gable his eyes, as they grew familiarised with the darkness, could
clearly distinguish. Not a sound of that strange unearthly dirge that
he first heard was audible; all was silent; so silent, indeed, that he
was startled by the sharp crackling of the tall reeds which grew close
to the path and which he occasionally broke as he pressed forward. His
path stopped abruptly at a stone stile, over which he clambered, and
found himself in a little enclosure planted with potatoes, beyond which
was a dense copse of thorns and hazel, so tangled that the path became
very tortuous and winding. On issuing from this, he found himself in
front of a strong glare of light, which issued from a circular window of
the gable several feet above his head; at the same time that he heard a
sort of low monotonous moaning sound, broken at intervals by a swell of
chorus, which he at length detected was the response of people engaged
in prayer. Creeping stealthily around through dockweeds and nettles, he
at last found a narrow loopholed window to which his hands could just
reach, and to which, after a brief effort, he succeed in lifting
himself. The scene on which he now looked never faded from his memory.
In the long narrow aisle of the old Abbey a company of men and women sat
two deep round the walls, the space in the centre being occupied by a
coffin placed on trestles; rude torches of bog-pine stuck in the walls
threw a red and lurid glare over the faces, and lit up their
expressions with a vivid distinctness. At the head of the coffin sat an
old grey-headed man of stern and forbidding look, and an air of savage
determination, which even grief had not softened; and close beside him,
on a low stool, sat a child, who, overcome by sleep as it seemed, had
laid his head on the old man’s knee, and slept profoundly. From this old
man proceeded the low muttering words which the others answered by a
sort of chant, the only interruption to which was when any one of the
surrounders would rise from his place to deposit some small piece of
money on a plate which stood on the coffin, and was meant to contain the
offerings for the priest.
[Illustration: 038]
If the language they spoke in was strange and unintelligible to Vyner’s
ears, it did not the less convey, as the sound of Irish unfailingly
does to all unaccustomed ears, a something terribly energetic and
passionate--every accent was striking, and every tone full of power--but
far more still was he struck by the faces on every side. He had but seen
the Irish of St. Giles’s; the physiognomy he alone knew was that blended
one of sycophancy and dissipation that a degraded and demoralised class
wear. He had never before seen that fierce vigour and concentrated
earnestness which mark the native face. Still less had he any idea what
its expression could become when heightened by religious fervour. There
were fine features, noble foreheads wide and spacious, calm brows, and
deeply-set eyes, in many around, but in all were the lower jaw and the
mouth coarse and depraved-looking. There was no lack of power, it is
true, but it was a power that could easily adapt itself to violence and
cruelty, and when they spoke, so overmastering seemed this impulse of
their natures, that the eyes lost the gentleness they had worn, and
flashed with an angry and vindictive brilliancy.
Drink was served round at intervals, and freely partaken of, and from
the gestures and vehemence of the old man, Vyner conjectured that
something like toasts were responded to. At moments, too, the prayers
for the dead would seem to be forgotten, and brief snatches of
conversation would occur, and even joke and laughter were heard; when
suddenly, and as though to recal them to the solemn rites of the hour, a
voice, always a woman’s, would burst in with a cry, at first faint, but
gradually rising till it became a wild yell, at one particular cadence
of which--just as one has seen a spaniel howl at a certain note--the
rest would seem unable to control themselves, and break in with a rush
of sound that made the old walls ring again. Dreadful as it had seemed
before, it was far more fearful now, as he stood close by, and could
mark, besides, the highly-wrought expressions--the terribly passionate
faces around.
So fascinated was he by the scene--so completely had its terrible
reality impressed him--that Vyner could not leave the spot, and he gazed
till he knew, and for many a long year after could remember, every face
that was there. More than once was he disposed to venture in amongst
them, and ask, as a stranger, the privilege of joining the solemnity,
but fear withheld him; and as the first pinkish streak or dawn appeared,
he crept cautiously down and alighted on the grass.
By the grey half-light he could now see objects around him, and
perceive that the Abbey was a small structure with little architectural
pretensions, though from the character of the masonry of very great
age. At one end, where a square tower of evidently later date stood,
something like an attempt at a dwelling-house existed--at least, two
windows of unequal size appeared, and a low doorway, the timbers of
which had once formed part of a ship. Passing round the angle of this
humble home, he saw a faint streak of light issue from an open casement,
over which a wild honeysuckle had grown, attaching itself to the iron
bars that guarded the window, and almost succeeding in shutting out
the day. Curious for a glance within this strange dwelling-place, Vyner
stole near and peeped in. A tiny oil-lamp on a table was the only light,
but it threw its glare on the face of a man asleep in a deep armchair--a
pale, careworn, melancholy face it was, with a mass of white hair
unkempt hanging partly across it! Vyner passed his hands across his eyes
as though to satisfy himself that he was awake. He looked again; he even
parted the twigs of the honeysuckle to give him more space, and, as he
gazed, the sleeper turned slightly, so that the full features came to
view.
[Illustration: 042]
“Good God! It is Luttrell!” muttered Vyner, as he quietly stole away and
set out for the beach.
Anxious at his long absence, two of his crew had come in search of him,
and in their company he returned to the shore and went on board.