great curtains of blackberry bushes, which in autumn bore luscious
fruit. And by Katie's door, if she would sit in the sun, was a
primrose bank, about which the hens stalked and clucked with their
long-legged chickens or much prettier ducklings. Katie did not want
for playmates. She had none of her own kind, but was sociable to the
fowl and the pig in his stye, and the white and red cattle that
browsed in the pastures. She held long colloquies with the creatures
all day, and if it rained would fetch her stool into an out-house
which the hens frequented.
But her grand playmate, the confidant and abettor of all her games,
was a placid motherly cat, which had grown up with Katie. A
good-natured workman had fetched the pretty brindled kitten from the
city, and had made an offering of it at the baby's cradle. Katie with
almost her first words called the cat after him. Pussy Hogan was the
brindle's name to her dying day. When I hear people say that cats have
no attachment for people I always make a mental reservation in Pussy
Hogan's favour. No dog could have shown a more faithful and moving
devotion. Katie's instincts in the direction of cleanliness led her to
wash Pussy Hogan in her kittenish days, till she was come to an age
for performing her own ablutions with the requisite care. Many a time
have I seen the child washing the kitten in soap-suds, and setting her
to dry on the primrose bank, which was in the face of the southern
sun, and there with admirable patience the creature would lie, paws
extended, till her little mistress deemed she was dry enough to get up
from her bleaching.
But Pussy Hogan grew a handsome, stately, well-furred cat, despite her
washings; and it was pretty to see her stalking at the child's heels
everywhere, with much the same responsible air that a serious dog
might assume. For all her gravity, she was not above understanding and
enjoying those games under the hedgerows, when Katie set up house, and
made banquets with broken bits of crockery, to which she entertained
her admiring friend. Even in the winter the cat trotted about over
snow and leaped roaring gullies, in attendance on her hardy little
mistress; as in summer she followed her to the evening milking, where
as a special favour Katie was permitted, with her dimpled fingers, to
draw a few spirts of the sweet-smelling milk.
They were beginning to discuss Katie's schooling when she fell ill.
The grown people thought school would come hard upon her, she had been
so used to a life in the open air. She was very babyish too, even for
her age, though there were many younger than she perched on that
platform of steps in the Convent Infant School--pupils, so little and
drowsy-headed that two or three special couches had to be retained
close by to receive those who from time to time toppled off their
perch. I remember asking if Katie would take the cat to school, after
the manner of Mary and her lamb in the rhyme. I make no doubt Pussy
Hogan would have attempted the Irish mile of distance to the school
every day, if there were not pressure brought to bear to keep her at
home. However, the child was attacked by that horrible dread of
mothers, the croup. She was just the one to succumb, being a little
round ball of soft flesh. She only fought it a day and night, lifting
up her poor little hands to her straining throat incessantly. In less
than thirty-six hours Katie was dead.
Her mother took it in a blank stupor. She scarcely seemed to heed the
friends who came and went, the Sisters of Mercy, in their black
bonnets and cloaks, the priest with his attempts at comfort. Her
husband sat by her those days, his eyes turning from the
heart-breaking face of his wife to the brown baby on the bed, as
piteous as a frozen robin. After the funeral the mother went about her
usual occupations. She milked the cow, fed the hens, churned, swept,
and baked as of old. Yet she did all those things as with a broken
heart, and it would have been less dreadful in a way to see her
sitting with folded hands. She was incessantly weeping in those months
that followed Katie's death. One would have thought that her eyes
would be drained dry, but still the tears followed each other all day
long, and no one seemed able to comfort her. It was wretched enough
for her husband, poor fellow, coming home of an evening from his work,
but he did all unwearying patience could do to comfort her.
The only desire she seemed to have in those days was that she might
keep Katie's pussy with her, but that was not gratified. The cat had
moped and fretted greatly during the child's short illness, and had
cried distressingly about the house when Katie lay dead. Then after
the funeral had gone she had turned her back on the desolate house,
and had walked across the couple of fields that separated it from the
farmhouse. She came into the big airy kitchen that July day with so
evident an intention of remaining that no one disputed her right. Once
she had a sudden impulse to go and seek her little mistress, and went
running and leaping over the long pastures to the low white house.
They said it was the thing that wakened Katie's mother from the first
merciful stupor of her bereavement, the cat running in and moaning
piteously about the empty rooms, and the places where they had played
their jolly games. They said she inspected every possible place where
the child might be hiding, turning again and again, after moments of
disappointed bewilderment, to a new search. At last she gave it up,
and seemed to realise that Katie was gone. She turned then and trotted
back quickly to the farmhouse, from whence no one's coaxing afterwards
could bring her. Every one wanted that the poor mother should have her
as she seemed to crave, but the cat would not; she escaped over and
over from her captors, and at last we gave up trying to constrain her,
though her desertion seemed a new cruelty to the stricken woman across
the fields.
I don't know how many months the mother's weeping went on. It was a
day close upon Christmas when I opened the half-door and went in and
saw, for the first time since the child's death, that her eyes were
dry. She was making bread at a table under the window, and her face
had grown wonderfully calm since I had last seen her. I made no
remark, but she led up to the subject herself, with a pathetic,
wintry smile.
'You remember the poem you read to me one day, miss,' she said, 'about
the dead child that couldn't be glad in heaven because its mother's
crying wet its fine dress?' I remembered perfectly; it was my poor
little way of trying to insinuate some comfort, for like many of her
class in Ireland, she loved poetry. 'Well,' she went on, 'I've been
thinking a power over it since. Who knows but that there might be the
truth behind it?' I nodded assent. 'Now there's Christmas coming,' she
said, 'and I think that would be a fine time for the children in
heaven, so I'm not going to spoil Katie's glory among them.'
She didn't say much more after this curious little bit of confidence,
but it was a comfort to every one when she left off crying. Her
husband was rejoiced at the change. He began to build on it that
presently she would be cheerful once more, and they would be quite
happy again; for a man doesn't miss a child as a woman does, and, dear
as his little Katie was, the love of his boyhood was yet spared to
him, and could still make earth paradise if she would.
However, there was a new cause for apprehension in those latter days.
I remember that the women shook their heads and looked gloomy when it
came to be known that Katie's mother was likely to have a baby in the
spring. She had been very ill before, and after this long interval and
all the trouble things were not likely to go easier with her. I know
the old doctor, who was kind and fatherly, and had been full of sorrow
about Katie, seemed vexed at the new turn of affairs. I heard him
telling a matron much in his confidence that he wouldn't answer for
the woman's life.
She herself plucked up heart from the time she was certain that the
baby was coming. I don't think now that she expected to live through
it. She probably thought that through that gate she would rejoin
Katie. She was very sweet to her husband in those days, very gentle
and considerate to the neighbours, to whom she had often been peevish
and haughty in old times. Many a one changed their former opinion of
her that winter, and her kindness made kindness for her. This
neighbour would often help her at the washing-tub, and that would send
her grown boy in at dinner-time to see if Katie's mother wanted wood
chopped or water carried. I am always glad to think of those four or
five months, when a great calm, as it seems to me, settled down on the
little house in the fields.
The baby was born in April--dead, as people had feared. It was a boy,
and had died in being born. They said the little waxen image bore
traces of a pathetic struggle for life. As for the mother, she never
rallied at all; I think she would not. She passed away quite calmly,
with not a flutter of the eyelids to answer her husband, who prayed
for a parting word from her.
They sleep together, mother and children, in Kilbride, in the shadow
of a great thorn-bush, and not far from St. Brigid's Tower. Lonely and
far as the churchyard is, there is not a Sunday in the year that the
husband and father does not find his way there after mass, trudging
along that solitary way, between bare hedges or blooming, as
faithfully as the day comes round. All those things were over a dozen
years ago, and he is married again, to a spare, unattractive woman,
who looks after his food and clothes, and makes him in her way a very
excellent wife. She was long past middle age when he married her and
took her out of service. But there was no pretence of love-making
about it. She would be the first herself to tell you that her man's
heart was in Kilbride. She said to me once: 'He's a good man to me,
and I'm glad to do my duty by him; but if you talked to him about his
wife he'd think you meant Kitty, God rest her! Men's seconds, miss,
don't count.'
She said it in a simple, open-faced way, but I thought there was a
homely tragedy concealed behind it. I am sure that in the heaven, of
which those Irish peasants think as confidently as of the next room,
he will forget all about poor hard-working Margaret, and will look
with eager eyes for the love of his youth.
X
THE DEATH SPANCEL
High up among the dusty rafters of Aughagree Chapel dangles a thin
shrivelled thing, towards which the people look shudderingly when the
sermon is of the terrors of the Judgment and the everlasting fire. The
woman from whose dead body that was taken chose the death of the soul
in return for a life with the man whom she loved with an unholy
passion. Every man, woman, and child in that chapel amid gray miles of
rock and sea-drift, has heard over and over of the unrepentant
deathbed of Mauryeen Holion. They whisper on winter nights of how
Father Hugh fought with the demons for her soul, how the sweat poured
from his forehead, and he lay on his face in an agony of tears,
beseeching that the sinner whom he had admitted into the fold of
Christ should yet be saved. But of her love and her sin she had no
repentance, and the servants in Rossatorc Castle said that as the
priest lay exhausted from his vain supplications, and the rattle was
in Dark Mauryeen's throat, there were cries of mocking laughter in the
air above the castle, and a strange screaming and flapping of great
wings, like to, but incomparably greater than, the screaming and
flapping of the eagle over Slieve League. That devil's charm up there
in the rafters of Aughagree is the death-spancel by which Dark
Mauryeen bound Sir Robert Molyneux to her love. It is of such power
that no man born of woman can resist it, save by the power of the
Cross, and 'twas little Robert Molyneux of Rossatorc recked of the
sweet Christ who perished that men should live--against whose Cross
the demons of earth and the demons of air, the malevolent spirits that
lurk in water and wind, and all witches and evil doctors, are
powerless. But the thought of the death-spancel must have come
straight from the King of Fiends himself, for who else would harden
the human heart to desecrate a new grave, and to cut from the helpless
dead the strip of skin unbroken from head to heel which is the
death-spancel? Very terrible is the passion of love when it takes full
possession of a human heart, and no surer weapon to the hand of Satan
when he would make a soul his own. And there is the visible sign of a
lost soul, and it had nearly been of two, hanging harmlessly in the
rafters of the holy place. A strange thing to see where the lamp of
the sanctuary burns, and the sea-wind sighs sweetly through the door
ever open for the continual worshippers.
* * * * *
Sir Robert Molyneux was a devil-may-care, sporting squire, with the
sins of his class to his account. He drank, and gambled, and rioted,
and oppressed his people that they might supply his pleasures; nor was
that all, for he had sent the daughter of honest people in shame and
sorrow over the sea. People muttered when they heard he was to marry
Lord Dunlough's daughter, that she would be taking another woman's
place; but it was said yet again that it would be well for his tenants
when he was married, for the lady was so kind and charitable, so
gentle and pure, that her name was loved for many a mile. She had
never heard the shameful story of that forlorn girl sailing away and
away in the sea-mist, with her unborn child, to perish miserably, body
and soul, in the streets of New York. She had the strange love of a
pure woman for a wild liver; and she thought fondly when she caressed
his fine, jolly, handsome face that soon his soul as well as his dear
body would be in her keeping: and what safe keeping it would be.
Sir Robert had ever a free way with women of a class below his own,
and he did not find it easy to relinquish it. When he was with the
Lady Eva he felt that under those innocent, loving eyes a man could
have no desire for a lesser thing than her love; but when he rode
away, the first pretty girl he met on the road he held in chat that
ended with a kiss. He was always for kissing a pretty face, and found
the habit hard to break, though there were times when he stamped and
swore great oaths to himself that he would again kiss no woman's lips
but his wife's--for the man had the germ of good in him.
It was a fortnight to his wedding day, and he had had a hard day's
hunting. From early morning to dewy eve they had been at it, for the
fox was an old one and had led the dogs many a dance before this. He
turned homeward with a friend, splashed and weary, but happy and with
the appetite of a hunter. Well for him if he had never set foot in
that house. As he came down the stairs fresh and shining from his
bath, he caught sight of a girl's dark handsome face on the staircase.
She was one of the servants, and she stood aside to let him pass, but
that was never Robert Molyneux's way with a woman. He flung his arm
round her waist in a way so many poor girls had found irresistible.
For a minute or two he looked in her dark splendid eyes; but then as
he bent lightly to kiss her, she tore herself from him with a cry and
ran away into the darkness.
He slept heavily that night, the dead sleep of a man who has hunted
all day and has drunk deep in the evening. In the morning he awoke
sick and sorry, a strange mood for Robert Molyneux; but from midnight
to dawn he had lain with the death-spancel about his knees. In the
blackness of his mind he had a great longing for the sweet woman, his
love for whom awakened all that was good in him. His horse had fallen
lame, but after breakfast he asked his host to order out a carriage
that he might go to her. Once with her he thought all would be well.
Yet as he stood on the doorstep he had a strange reluctance to go.
It was a drear, gray, miserable day, with sleet pattering against the
carriage windows. Robert Molyneux sat with his head bent almost to his
knees, and his hands clenched. What face was it rose against his mind,
continually blotting out the fair and sweet face of his love? It was
the dark, handsome face of the woman he had met on the stairs last
night. Some sudden passion for her rose as strong as hell-fire in his
breast. There were many long miles between him and Eva, and his desire
for the dark woman raged stronger and ever stronger in him. It was as
if ropes were around his heart dragging it backward. He fell on his
knees in the carriage, and sobbed. If he had known how to pray he
would have prayed, for he was torn in two between the desire of his
heart for the dark woman, and the longing of his soul for the fair
woman. Again and again he started up to call the coachman to turn
back; again and again he flung himself in the bottom of the carriage,
and hid his face and struggled with the curse that had come upon him.
And every mile brought him nearer to Eva and safety.
The coachman drove on in the teeth of the sleet and wondered what Sir
Robert would give him at the drive's end. A half-sovereign would not
be too much for so open-handed a gentleman, and one so near his
wedding; and the coachman, already feeling his hand close upon it,
turned a brave face to the sleet and tried not to think of the warm
fire in the harness-room from which they had called him to drive Sir
Robert.
Half the distance was gone when he heard a voice from the carriage
window calling him. He turned round. 'Back! Back!' said the voice.
'Drive like hell! I will give you a sovereign if you do it under an
hour.' The coachman was amazed, but a sovereign is better than a
half-sovereign. He turned his bewildered horses for home.
Robert Molyneux's struggle was over. Eva's face was gone now
altogether. He only felt a mad joy in yielding, and a wild desire for
the minutes to pass till he had traversed that gray road back. The
coachman drove hard and his horses were flecked with foam, but from
the windows Robert Molyneux kept continually urging him, offering him
greater and greater rewards for his doing the journey with all speed.
Half way up the cypress avenue to his friend's house a woman with a
shawl about her head glided from the shadow and signalled to the
darkly flushed face at the carriage window. Robert Molyneux shouted to
the man to stop. He sprang from the carriage and lifted the woman in.
Then he flung the coachman a handful of gold and silver. 'To
Rossatorc,' he said, and the man turned round and once more whipped up
his tired horses. The woman laughed as Robert Molyneux caught her in
his arms. It was the fierce laughter of the lost. 'I came to meet
you,' she said, 'because I knew you must come.'
From that day, when Robert Molyneux led the woman over the threshold
of his house, he was seen no more in the usual places of his
fellow-men. He refused to see any one who came. His wedding-day passed
by. Lord Dunlough had ridden furiously to have an explanation with the
fellow and to horsewhip him when that was done, but he found the great
door of Rossatorc closed in his face. Every one knew Robert Molyneux
was living in shame with Mauryeen Holion. Lady Eva grew pale and
paler, and drooped and withered in sorrow and shame, and presently her
father took her away, and their house was left to servants. Burly
neighbouring squires rode up and knocked with their riding-whips at
Rossatorc door to remonstrate with Robert Molyneux, for his father's
sake or for his own, but met no answer. All the servants were gone
except a furtive-eyed French valet and a woman he called his wife, and
these were troubled with no notions of respectability. After a time
people gave up trying to interfere. The place got a bad name. The
gardens were neglected and the house was half in ruins. No one ever
saw Mauryeen Holion's face except it might be at a high window of the
castle, when some belated huntsman taking a short-cut across the park
would catch a glimpse of a wild face framed in black hair at an upper
window, the flare of the winter sunset lighting it up, it might be, as
with a radiance from hell. Sir Robert drank, they said, and
rack-rented his people far worse than in the old days. He had put his
business in the hands of a disreputable attorney from a neighbouring
town, and if the rent was not paid to the day the roof was torn off
the cabin, and the people flung out into the ditch to rot.
So the years went, and folk ever looked for a judgment of God on the
pair. And when many years were over, there came to Father Hugh,
wringing her hands, the wife of the Frenchman, with word that the two
were dying, and she dared not let them die in their sins.
But Mauryeen Holion, Dark Mauryeen, as they called her, would not to
her last breath yield up the death-spancel which she had knotted round
her waist, and which held Robert Molyneux's love to her. When the
wicked breath was out of her body they cut it away, and it lay twisted
on the ground like a dead snake. Then on Robert Molyneux, dying in a
distant chamber, came a strange peace. All the years of sin seemed
blotted out, and he was full of a simple repentance such as he had
felt long ago when kneeling by the gown of the good woman whom he had
loved. So Father Hugh absolved him before he died, and went hither and
thither through the great empty rooms shaking his holy water, and
reading from his Latin book.
And lest any in that place, where they have fiery southern blood in
their veins, should so wickedly use philtres or charms, he hung the
death-spancel in Aughagree Chapel for a terrible reminder.
XI
A SOLITARY
There was a difference of twenty years between the brothers, yet, to
look at them, it might have been more. Patrick, the younger, was
florid and hearty; the elder, James, was unpopular--a gray, withered
old churl, who carried written on his face the record of his life's
failure. His conversation, when he made any, was cynical. When he came
into a room where young people were enjoying themselves, playing cards
or dancing, his shadow came before him and lay heavily on the
merry-makers. Fortunately, he did not often so intrude; he was happier
in his room at the top of the fine house, where he had his books and
his carpenter's tools. If one of those young people whom his cynicism
withered could have seen him at his carpentry, how different he would
have seemed! They would have seen him with his grimness relaxed, and
his gray face lit up with interest, and would have been amazed to hear
his low, cheery whistle, full and round as the pipe of a bullfinch; at
night, when his telescope swept the stars, and he trembled with the
delight of the visionary and the student, he was a new man. He was a
clever man, born out of his proper sphere, and with only so much
education as he had contrived to get at during a hard life. What came
to him he assimilated eagerly, and every one of those books in his
cupboard, rare old friends, had been read over a hundred times.
He ought to have had a chance in his youth, but his father was the
last man in the world to encourage out-of-the-way ambitions in his
sons. Father and mother were alike--hard, grasping, and ungracious.
The father, on the whole, was a pleasanter person than the mother,
with her long, pale, horse-face and ready sneer; he was only
uncompromisingly hard and ungenial to all the world.
There were other children besides these two, all long since dead or
scattered. Two of the boys had run away and gone to America; their
first letters home remained unanswered, and after one or two attempts
they ceased to write. The one girl had slipped into a convent, after a
horrified glimpse at the home-life of her parents when she had
returned from her boarding-school. She had been sent away to a convent
in a distant town while still a mere child. She had come and gone in
recurring vacations, still too childish to be more than vaguely
repelled by the unlovely rule of her home. But at sixteen she came
home 'for good'; very much for evil, poor little Eily would have said,
as she realised in its full sordidness the grinding manner of life
which was to be hers. No wonder she wet her pillow night after night
with her tears for the pure and gentle atmosphere of the convent, for
the soft-voiced and mild-eyed nuns, and the life of the spirit which
shone ideally fair by this appalling life of the world. So, after a
time, she had her will and escaped to the convent.