The fair-day had passed over in a little straggling town in the
southeast of Ireland, and was succeeded by a languor proportioned to the
wild excitement it never failed to create. But of all in the village,
its publicans suffered most under the reaction of great bustle. Few of
their houses appeared open at broad noon; and some--the envy of their
competitors--continued closed even after that late hour. Of these
latter, many were of the very humblest kind; little cabins, in fact,
skirting the outlets of the village, or standing alone on the roadside a
good distance beyond it.
About two o'clock upon the day in question, a house of "Entertainment
for Man and Horse," the very last of the description noticed to be found
between the village and the wild tract of mountain country adjacent to
it, was opened by the proprietress, who had that moment arisen from bed.
The cabin consisted of only two apartments, and scarce more than
nominally even of two; for the half-plastered wicker and straw
partition, which professed to cut off a sleeping-nook from the whole
area inclosed by the clay walls, was little higher than a tall man, and
moreover chinky and porous in many places. Let the assumed distinction
be here allowed to stand, however, while the reader casts his eyes
around what was sometimes called the kitchen, sometimes the tap-room,
sometimes the "dancing-flure." Forms which had run by the walls, and
planks by way of tables which had been propped before them, were turned
topsy-turvy, and in some instances broken. Pewter pots and pints,
battered and bruised, or squeezed together and flattened, and fragments
of twisted glass tumblers, lay beside them. The clay floor was scraped
with brogue-nails and indented with the heel of that primitive
foot-gear, in token of the energetic dancing which had lately been
performed upon it. In a corner still appeared (capsized, however) an
empty eight-gallon beer barrel, recently the piper's throne, whence his
bag had blown forth the inspiring storms of jigs and reels, which
prompted to more antics than ever did a bag of the laughing-gas. Among
the yellow turf-ashes of the hearth lay on its side an old blackened tin
kettle, without a spout,--a principal utensil in brewing scalding water
for the manufacture of whisky-punch; and its soft and yet warm bed was
shared by a red cat, who had stolen in from his own orgies, through some
cranny, since day-break. The single four-paned window of the apartment
remained veiled by its rough shutter, that turned on leather hinges; but
down the wide yawning chimney came sufficient light to reveal the
objects here described.
The proprietress opened her back door. She was a woman of about forty;
of a robust, large-boned figure; with broad, rosy visage, dark, handsome
eyes, and well-cut nose: but inheriting a mouth so wide as to proclaim
her pure aboriginal Irish pedigree. After a look abroad, to inhale the
fresh air, and then a remonstrance (ending in a kick) with the hungry
pig, who ran, squeaking and grunting, to demand his long-deferred
breakfast, she settled her cap, rubbed down her _prauskeen_ [coarse
apron], tucked and pinned up her skirts behind, and saying in a loud,
commanding voice, as she spoke into the sleeping-chamber, "Get up now at
once, Jer, I bid you," vigorously if not tidily set about putting her
tavern to rights.
During her bustle the dame would stop an instant, and bend her ear to
listen for a stir inside the partition; but at last losing patience she
resumed:--
"Why, then, my heavy hatred on you, Jer Mulcahy, is it gone into a
_sauvaun_ [pleasant drowsiness] you are, over again? or maybe you stole
out of bed, an' put your hand on one o' them ould good-for-nothing
books, that makes you the laziest man that a poor woman ever had tinder
one roof wid her? ay, an' that sent you out of our dacent shop an'
house, in the heart of the town below, an' banished us here, Jer
Mulcahy, to sell drams o' whisky an' pots o' beer to all the riff-raff
o' the counthry-side, instead o' the nate boots an' shoes you served
your honest time to?"
She entered his, or her chamber, rather, hoping that she might detect
him luxuriantly perusing in bed one of the mutilated books, a love of
which (or more truly a love of indolence, thus manifesting itself) had
indeed chiefly caused his downfall in the world. Her husband, however,
really tired after his unusual bodily efforts of the previous day, only
slumbered, as Mrs. Mulcahy had at first anticipated; and when she had
shaken and aroused him, for the twentieth time that morning, and scolded
him until the spirit-broken blockhead whimpered,--nay, wept, or
pretended to weep,--the dame returned to her household duties.
She did not neglect, however, to keep calling to him every half-minute,
until at last Mr. Jeremiah Mulcahy strode into the kitchen: a tall,
ill-contrived figure, that had once been well fitted out, but that now
wore its old skin, like its old clothes, very loosely; and those old
clothes were a discolored, threadbare, half-polished kerseymere pair of
trousers, and aged superfine black coat, the last relics of his former
Sunday finery,--to which had recently and incongruously been added a
calfskin vest, a pair of coarse sky-blue peasant's stockings, and a pair
of brogues. His hanging cheeks and lips told, together, his present bad
living and domestic subjection; and an eye that had been blinded by the
smallpox wore neither patch nor band, although in better days it used to
be genteelly hidden from remark,--an assumption of consequence now
deemed incompatible with his altered condition in society.
"O Cauth! oh, I had such a dhrame," he said, as he made his appearance.
"An' I'll go bail you had," answered Cauth, "an' when do you ever go
asleep without having one dhrame or another, that pesters me off o' my
legs the livelong day, till the night falls again to let you have
another? Musha, Jer, don't be ever an' always such a fool; an' never
mind the dhrame now, but lend a hand to help me in the work o' the
house. See the pewther there: haive it up, man alive, an' take it out
into the garden, and sit on the big stone in the sun, an' make it look
as well as you can, afther the ill usage it got last night; come, hurry,
Jer--go an' do what I bid you."
He retired in silence to "the garden," a little patch of ground
luxuriant in potatoes and a few cabbages. Mrs. Mulcahy pursued her work
till her own sensations warned her that it was time to prepare her
husband's morning or rather day meal; for by the height of the sun it
should now be many hours past noon. So she put down her pot of potatoes;
and when they were boiled, took out a wooden trencher full of them, and
a mug of sour milk, to Jer, determined not to summon him from his useful
occupation of restoring the pints and quarts to something of their
former shape.
Stepping through the back door, and getting him in view, she stopped
short in silent anger. His back was turned to her, because of the sun;
and while the vessels, huddled about in confusion, seemed little the
better of his latent skill and industry, there he sat on his favorite
round stone, studiously perusing, half aloud to himself, some idle
volume which doubtless he had smuggled into the garden in his pocket.
Laying down her trencher and her mug, Mrs. Mulcahy stole forward on
tiptoe, gained his shoulder without being heard, snatched the imperfect
bundle of soiled pages out of his hand, and hurled it into a neighbor's
cabbage-bed.
Jeremiah complained, in his usual half-crying tone, declaring that "she
never could let him alone, so she couldn't, and he would rather list for
a soger than lade such a life, from year's end to year's end, so
he would."
"Well, an' do then--an' whistle that idle cur off wid you," pointing to
a nondescript puppy, which had lain happily coiled up at his master's
feet until Mrs. Mulcahy's appearance, but that now watched her closely,
his ears half cocked and his eyes wide open, though his position
remained unaltered. "Go along to the divil, you lazy whelp you!"--she
took up a pint in which a few drops of beer remained since the previous
night, and drained it on the puppy's head, who instantly ran off,
jumping sideways, and yelping as loud as if some bodily injury had
really visited him--"Yes, an' now you begin to yowl, like your masther,
for nothing at all, only because a body axes you to stir your idle
legs--hould your tongue, you foolish baste!" she stooped for a
stone--"one would think I scalded you."
"You know you did, once, Cauth, to the backbone; an' small blame for
Shuffle to be afeard o' you ever since," said Jer.
This vindication of his own occasional remonstrances, as well as of
Shuffle's, was founded in truth. When very young, just to keep him from
running against her legs while she was busy over the fire, Mrs. Mulcahy
certainly had emptied a ladleful of boiling potato-water upon the poor
puppy's back; and from that moment it was only necessary to spill a drop
of the coldest possible water, or of any cold liquid, on any part of his
body, and he believed he was again dreadfully scalded, and ran out of
the house screaming in all the fancied theories of torture.
"Will you ate your good dinner, now, Jer Mulcahy, an' promise to do
something to help me, afther it?--Mother o' Saints!"--thus she
interrupted herself, turning towards the place where she had deposited
the eulogized food--"see that yon unlucky bird! May I never do an ill
turn but there's the pig afther spilling the sweet milk, an' now
shoveling the beautiful white-eyes down her throat at a mouthful!"
Jer, really afflicted at this scene, promised to work hard the moment he
got his dinner; and his spouse, first procuring a pitchfork to beat the
pig into her sty, prepared a fresh meal for him, and retired to eat her
own in the house, and then to continue her labor.
In about an hour she thought of paying him another visit of inspection,
when Jeremiah's voice reached her ear, calling out in disturbed accents,
"Cauth! Cauth! _a-vourneen!_ For the love o' heaven, Cauth! where
are you?"
Running to him, she found her husband sitting upright, though not upon
his round stone, amongst the still untouched heap of pots and pints, his
pock-marked face very pale, his single eye staring, his hands clasped
and shaking, and moisture on his forehead.
"What!" she cried, "the pewther just as I left it, over again!"
"O Cauth! Cauth! don't mind that now--but spake to me kind, Cauth, an'
comfort me."
"Why, what ails you, Jer _a-vous neen_?" affectionately taking his hand,
when she saw how really agitated he was.
"O Cauth, oh, I had such a dhrame, now, in earnest, at any rate!"
"A dhrame!" she repeated, letting go his hand, "a dhrame, Jer Mulcahy!
so, afther your good dinner, you go for to fall asleep, Jer Mulcahy,
just to be ready wid a new dhrame for me, instead of the work you came
out here to do, five blessed hours ago!"
"Don't scould me, now, Cauth; don't, a-pet: only listen to me, an' then
say what you like. You know the lonesome little glen between the hills,
on the short cut for man or horse, to Kilbroggan? Well, Cauth, there I
found myself in the dhrame; and I saw two sailors, tired afther a day's
hard walking, sitting before one of the big rocks that stand upright in
the wild place; an' they were ating or dhrinking, I couldn't make out
which; and one was a tall, sthrong, broad-shouldhered man, an' the other
was sthrong, too, but short an' burly; an' while they were talking very
civilly to each other, lo an' behould you, Cauth, I seen the tall man
whip his knife into the little man; an' then they both sthruggled, an'
wrastled, an' schreeched together, till the rocks rung again; but at
last the little man was a corpse; an' may I never see a sight o' glory,
Cauth, but all this was afore me as plain as you are, in this garden!
an' since the hour I was born, Cauth, I never got such a fright;
an'--oh, Cauth! what's that now?"
"What is it, you poor fool, you, but a customer, come at last into the
kitchen--an' time for us to see the face o' one this blessed day. Get up
out o' that, wid your dhrames--don't you hear 'em knocking? I'll stay
here to put one vessel at laste to rights--for I see I must."
Jeremiah arose, groaning, and entered the cabin through the back door.
In a few seconds he hastened to his wife, more terror-stricken than he
had left her, and settling his loins against the low garden wall,
stared at her.
"Why, then, duoul's in you, Jer Mulcahy (saints forgive me for
cursing!)--and what's the matter wid you, at-all at-all?"
"They're in the kitchen," he whispered.
"Well, an' what will they take?"
"I spoke never a word to them, Cauth, nor they to me;--I couldn't--an' I
won't, for a duke's ransom: I only saw them stannin' together, in the
dark that's coming on, behind the dour, an' I knew them at the first
look--the tall one an' the little one."
With a flout at his dreams, and his cowardice, and his
good-for-nothingness, the dame hurried to serve her customers. Jeremiah
heard her loud voice addressing them, and their hoarse tones answering.
She came out again for two pints to draw some beer, and commanded him to
follow her and "discoorse the customers." He remained motionless. She
returned in a short time, and fairly drove him before her into
the house.
He took a seat remote from his guests, with difficulty pronouncing the
ordinary words of "God save ye, genteels," which they bluffly and
heartily answered. His glances towards them were also few; yet enough to
inform him that they conversed together like friends, pledging healths
and shaking hands. The tall sailor abruptly asked him how far it was, by
the short cut, to a village where they proposed to pass the
night--Kilbroggan?--Jeremiah started on his seat, and his wife, after a
glance and a grumble at him, was obliged to speak for her husband. They
finished their beer; paid for it; put up half a loaf and a cut of bad
watery cheese, saying that they might feel more hungry a few miles on
than they now did; and then they arose to leave the cabin. Jeremiah
glanced in great trouble around. His wife had fortunately disappeared;
he snatched up his old hat, and with more energy than he could himself
remember, ran forward to be a short way on the road before them. They
soon approached him; and then, obeying a conscientious impulse, Jeremiah
saluted the smaller of the two, and requested to speak with him apart.
The sailor, in evident surprise, assented. Jer vaguely cautioned him
against going any farther that night, as it would be quite dark by the
time he should get to the mountain pass, on the by-road to Kilbroggan.
His warning was made light of. He grew more earnest, asserting, what was
not the fact, that it was "a bad road," meaning one infested by robbers.
Still the bluff tar paid no attention, and was turning away. "Oh, sir;
oh, stop, sir," resumed Jeremiah, taking great courage, "I have a thing
to tell you;" and he rehearsed his dream, averring that in it he had
distinctly seen the present object of his solicitude set upon and slain
by his colossal companion. The listener paused a moment; first looking
at Jer, and then at the ground, very gravely: but the next moment he
burst into a loud, and Jeremiah thought, frightful laugh, and walked
rapidly to overtake his shipmate. Jeremiah, much oppressed,
returned home.
Towards dawn, next morning, the publican awoke in an ominous panic, and
aroused his wife to listen to a loud knocking, and a clamor of voices at
their door. She insisted that there was no such thing, and scolded him
for disturbing her sleep. A renewal of the noise, however, convinced
even her incredulity, and showed that Jeremiah was right for the first
time in his life, at least. Both arose, and hastened to answer
the summons.
When they unbarred the front door, a gentleman, surrounded by a crowd of
people of the village, stood before it. He had discovered on the by-road
through the hills from Kilbroggan, a dead body, weltering in its gore,
and wearing sailor's clothes; had ridden on in alarm; had raised the
village; and some of its population, recollecting to have seen Mrs.
Mulcahy's visitors of the previous evening, now brought him to her house
to hear what she could say on the subject.
Before she could say anything, her husband fell senseless at her side,
groaning dolefully. While the bystanders raised him, she clapped her
hands, and exalted her voice in ejaculations, as Irishwomen, when
grieved or astonished or vexed, usually do; and now, as proud of
Jeremiah's dreaming capabilities as she had before been impatient of
them, rehearsed his vision of the murder, and authenticated the visit of
the two sailors to her house, almost while he was in the act of making
her the confidant of his prophetic ravings. The auditors stept back in
consternation, crossing themselves, smiting their breasts, and crying
out, "The Lord save us! The Lord have mercy upon us!"
Jeremiah slowly awoke from his swoon. The gentleman who had discovered
the body commanded his attendants back to the lonesome glen, where it
lay. Poor Jeremiah fell on his knees, and with tears streaming down his
cheeks, prayed to be saved from such a trial. His neighbors almost
forced him along.
All soon gained the spot, a narrow pass between slanting piles of
displaced rocks; the hills from which they had tumbled rising brown and
barren and to a great height above and beyond them. And there, indeed,
upon the strip of verdure which formed the winding road through the
defile, lay the corpse of one of the sailors who had visited the
publican's house the evening before.
Again Jeremiah dropt on his knees, at some distance from the body,
exclaiming, "Lord save us!--yes! oh, yes, neighbors, this is the very
place!--only--the saints be good to us again!--'twas the tall sailor I
seen killing the little sailor, and here's the tall sailor murthered by
the little sailor."
"Dhrames go by conthraries, some way or another," observed one of his
neighbors; and Jeremiah's puzzle was resolved.
Two steps were now indispensable to be taken; the county coroner should
be summoned, and the murderer sought after. The crowd parted to engage
in both matters simultaneously. Evening drew on when they again met in
the pass: and the first, who had gone for the coroner, returned with
him, a distance of near twenty miles; but the second party did not prove
so successful. In fact they had discovered no clue to the present
retreat of the supposed assassin.
The coroner impaneled his jury, and held his inquest under a large
upright rock, bedded in the middle of the pass, such as Jeremiah said he
had seen in his dream. A verdict of willful murder against the absent
sailor was quickly agreed upon; but ere it could be recorded, all
hesitated, not knowing how to individualize a man of whose name they
were ignorant.
The summer night had fallen upon their deliberations, and the moon arose
in splendor, shining over the top of one of the high hills that inclosed
the pass, so as fully to illumine the bosom of the other. During their
pause, a man appeared standing upon the line of the hill thus favored by
the moonlight, and every eye turned in that direction. He ran down the
abrupt declivity beneath him; he gained the continued sweep of jumbled
rocks which immediately walled in the little valley, springing from one
to another of them with such agility and certainty that it seemed almost
magical; and a general whisper of fear now attested the fact of his
being dressed in a straw hat, a short jacket, and loose white trousers.
As he jumped from the last rock upon the sward of the pass, the
spectators drew back; but he, not seeming to notice them, walked up to
the corpse, which had not yet been touched; took its hand; turned up
its face into the moonlight, and attentively regarded the features; let
the hand go; pushed his hat upon his forehead; glanced around him;
recognized the person in authority; approached, and stood still before
him, and said "Here I am, Tom Mills, that killed long Harry Holmes, and
there he lies."
The coroner cried out to secure him, now fearing that the man's
sturdiness meant farther harm. "No need," resumed the self-accused;
"here's my bread-and-cheese knife, the only weapon about me;" he threw
it on the ground: "I come back just to ax you, commodore, to order me a
cruise after poor Harry, bless his precious eyes, wherever he is bound."
"You have been pursued hither?"
"No, bless your heart; but I wouldn't pass such another watch as the
last twenty-four hours for all the prize-money won at Trafalgar. 'Tisn't
in regard of not tasting food or wetting my lips ever since I fell foul
of Harry, or of hiding my head like a cursed animal o' the yearth, and
starting if a bird only hopped nigh me: but I cannot go on living on
this tack no longer; that's it; and the least I can say to you, Harry,
my hearty."
"What caused your quarrel with your comrade?"
"There was no jar or jabber betwixt us, d'you see me."
"Not at the time, I understand you to mean; but surely you must have
long owed him a grudge?"
"No, but long loved him; and he me."
"Then, in heaven's name, what put the dreadful thought in your head?"
"The devil, commodore, (the horned lubber!) and another lubber to help
him"--pointing at Jeremiah, who shrank to the skirts of the crowd. "I'll
tell you every word of it, commodore, as true as a log-book. For twenty
long and merry years, Harry and I sailed together, and worked together,
thro' a hard gale sometimes, and thro' hot sun another time; and never a
squally word came between us till last night, and then it all came of
that lubberly swipes-seller, I say again. I thought as how it was a real
awful thing that a strange landsman, before ever he laid eyes on either
of us, should come to have this here dream about us. After falling in
with Harry, when the lubber and I parted company, my old mate saw I was
cast down, and he told me as much in his own gruff, well-meaning way;
upon which I gave him the story, laughing at it. _He_ didn't laugh in
return, but grew glum--glummer than I ever seed him; and I wondered,
and fell to boxing about my thoughts, more and more (deep sea sink that
cursed thinking and thinking, say I!--it sends many an honest fellow out
of his course); and 'It's hard to know the best man's mind,' I thought
to myself. Well, we came on the tack into these rocky parts, and Harry
says to me all on a sudden, 'Tom, try the soundings here, ahead, by
yourself--or let me, by myself.' I axed him why? 'No matter,' says Harry
again, 'but after what you chawed about, I don't like your company any
farther, till we fall in again at the next village.' 'What, Harry,' I
cries, laughing heartier than ever, 'are you afeard of your own mind
with Tom Mills?' 'Pho,' he made answer, walking on before me, and I
followed him.
"'Yes,' I kept saying to myself, 'he _is_ afeard of his own mind with
his old shipmate.' 'Twas a darker night than this, and when I looked
ahead, the devil (for I know 'twas _he_ that boarded me!) made me take
notice what a good spot it was for Harry to fall foul of me. And then I
watched him making way before me, in the dark, and couldn't help
thinking he was the better man of the two--a head and shoulders over me,
and a match for any two of my inches. And then again, I brought to mind
that Harry would be a heavy purse the better of sending me to Davy's
locker, seeing we had both been just paid off, and got a lot of
prize-money to boot;--and at last (the real red devil having fairly got
me helm a-larboard) I argufied with myself that Tom Mills would be as
well alive, with Harry Holmes's luck in his pocket, as he could be dead,
and _his_ in Harry Holmes's; not to say nothing of taking one's own
part, just to keep one's self afloat, if so be Harry let his mind run as
mine was running.
"All this time Harry never gave me no hail, but kept tacking through
these cursed rocks; and that, and his last words, made me doubt him more
and more. At last he stopped nigh where he now lies, and sitting with
his back to that high stone, he calls for my blade to cut the bread and
cheese he had got at the village; and while he spoke I believed he
looked glummer and glummer, and that he wanted the blade, the only one
between us, for some'at else than to cut bread and cheese; though now I
don't believe no such thing howsumdever; but then I did: and so, d'you
see me, commodore, I lost ballast all of a sudden, and when he stretched
out his hand for the blade (hell's fire blazing up in my lubberly
heart!)--'Here it is, Harry,' says I, and I gives it to him in the
side!--once, twice, in the right place!" (the sailor's voice, hitherto
calm, though broken and rugged, now rose into a high, wild
cadence)--"and then how we did grapple! and sing out one to another!
ahoy! yeho! aye; till I thought the whole crew of devils answered our
hail from the hill-tops!--But I hit you again and again, Harry! before
you could master me," continued the sailor, returning to the corpse, and
once more taking its hand--"until at last you struck,--my old
messmate!--And now--nothing remains for Tom Mills--but to man the
yard-arm!"
The narrator stood his trial at the ensuing assizes, and was executed
for this avowed murder of his shipmate; Jeremiah appearing as a
principal witness. Our story may seem drawn either from imagination, or
from mere village gossip: its chief acts rest, however, upon the
authority of members of the Irish bar, since risen to high professional
eminence; and they can even vouch that at least Jeremiah asserted the
truth of "The Publican's Dream."