[Sidenote: SOME GARDEN GHOSTS]
There is no ghost in the garden of the Villino. Neither the meek spirit
of Susan nor Tom’s saturnine spectre haunts the peaceful glade where
they lie. ‹Juvenal has planted a “Tree of Heaven” at the head of his
ever-mourned darling and covered the grave with Forget-me-nots!›
* * * * *
My youth ‹these reminiscences are contributed by Loki’s grandmother› was
spent in a large country place in Ireland, and to us children—we were
six then—certain walks, certain dells in the woods, were assuredly
haunted.
The property had long ago belonged to one Lady Tidd, who so adored it
that she had herself buried on a hill overlooking it, her coffin upright
in its tall square tomb. It was Lady Tidd who was popularly supposed to
haunt the fair wooded lands that had come to us. This Dysart Hill, on
the top of which the ruined chapel and the deserted graveyard lay, was a
favourite walk of our childish days. When our short legs had mastered
the difficulties of the slope—and a very stony slope it was, covered
towards the summit with a fine mountain grass, than which no footing is
more slippery—we never failed to wander round to that singular monument,
through the massive granite door of which she who stood in the upright
coffin was supposed to be gazing down upon the distant prospect of our
own home. It was never without an awful sense of horror and mystery that
I pictured those dead eyes, endowed with miraculous vision, piercing
through wood and stone to stare out upon what she still loved. Some
apprehension of the horror and tragedy of bodily death and of the dread
power of the spirit seized hold of my small soul as I contemplated that
grave of human folly and of poor human aspiration. There it was,
perhaps, that an overpowering dislike of graveyards began in me.
* * * * *
Lady Tidd was seen by a gardener of ours, between two Yew trees, in a
dark corner outside the garden wall.
“She riz up out of the ground at me,” he told my mother. And he added,
as a convincing detail, that his hat stood up on his equally rising
hair. “Sure, wasn’t me hat lifted an inch off me head, ma’m?”
My mother, strong-souled creature as she was, laughed with a fine
scepticism. Another kind of spirit had done the mischief, she declared.
But we who heard could not so easily dismiss the agonizingly fascinating
tale. We knew that spot outside the garden wall, in the shadow of the
black Yew trees; and the fear and the darkness that always fell upon us
when we passed it.
* * * * *
Another dreaded place was a certain Primrose dell, beautifully starred
with blossoms, beautifully green, beautifully shaded; the very place for
happy children, it would seem, and for long hours of flower-picking
gipsy teas and endless games. It was quite lost in the woods that banded
the property, away from intrusions of nurse or governess—and yet, how
haunted! Never shall I forget—I feel it now as I write—the profound
misery that would seize upon me at the very entrance to the laughing
glade.
I am not sure, however, that there was not a tangible reason for this
depression, connected with the disappearance of a fondly-loved
four-footed playfellow. A darling dog he was: one of the jocose,
high-spirited kind; his open mouth and hanging tongue seemed to show him
a partaker in human mirth, with a waggish humour all his own. ‹No pun is
intended!› He had a rough tangled coat, black and white, a flag of a
tail, flopping ears. He was the swiftest, gayest, most romping creature
that has ever shared the play of children. We adored him. His name was
Carlo. I don’t know of what breed he was, if of any.... Alas! he hunted
the sheep! He disappeared! No one knew what had become of him. We
children never ascertained anything, but there was a rumour—a dark,
untraceable, yet most convincing rumour—that somebody had seen the
small, rough corpse hanging from a tree-trunk, not far from the Primrose
dell. Was it not that, perhaps, which haunted the dell for me?
[Sidenote: THE LOATHELY HERD]
We suspected the herd. A large, fat, round-faced, smiling man, this;
with an unctuous, creeping voice that seemed to gurgle up like a slow
oil-bubble from inner recesses of obesity. A man who at intervals would
remark, seeing us grouped about our mother, “You’ve a lovely lot of
ladies, ma’m, God bless them!”—as if we were little pigs or calves.
He had a sinister reputation with us already on account of his
periodical dealings with sheep, which we, tender-hearted and
impressionable children, scarcely as much as hinted to each other; and
certainly never really associated with the roast mutton that appeared
twice a week.
No, we did not like Green, the herd; and I, the smallest of the “lovely
lot,” would cling to my mother’s skirts when his little twinkling eye
turned in my direction.
* * * * *
For a long time he was associated in my mind with the horror of a
conversation which passed between him and my mother. How well I remember
that day! We were walking through one of the upper fields towards a
village called Hop Hall, which also belonged to the estate. It was a
lovely meadow with a curious little wood in the middle of it, ringed
like a moat by a streamlet in which the cattle drank. This wood was full
of wild Crab-apples; the blossom of it hung over the water and was
mirrored therein. The field caught the sweep of wind that blew from the
top of the hill with the breath of the Pine-trees. It was a carpet of
Cowslips in the right season.
Well, as we walked, my mother and four little girls and one little boy,
the herd stumping along with a stick—he had a lame leg—his ragged dog
behind him, there came the following interchange of remarks, which set a
seal of terror on my young mind. My mother mentioned her intention of
visiting Hop Hall, and then inquired how a certain old woman might be
who dwelt there. She had been long bedridden.
“Troth, and she’s the same as ever!”
“My goodness,” exclaimed my mother, “why, she must be nearly a hundred!”
“She must be that, me lady.—Begorra, she’ll have to be shot!”
My mother laughed, and so did the herd. The anguish of the small
listener passes description; and there ensued a veritable haunting. The
herd she could understand, she knew him to be a criminal of the deepest
dye. But her mother!...
It was months before a benevolent governess discovered the hidden sore,
and explained and consoled. It was only a joke! It left a rankling
tenderness. I could see no humour in it.
* * * * *
It is no wonder that Irish children should be fanciful, surrounded as
they are, or were in my day, with the quaint, superstitious beliefs of
servants and peasantry. Our chief nursery comfort and most beloved
companion was the old housekeeper, who had begun her life in the service
of our mother’s grandmother. That takes one back! Whenever we had a free
moment we trotted into her sitting-room for pleasant conversation and,
maybe, a biscuit, a bit of chocolate or candy. She had the key of the
stores.
“I declare if I was made of sugar, you’d have me eaten!” she would say;
a cannibalistic possibility I made it a point of earnestly disclaiming.
[Sidenote: THE THREE KINGS AND THE STAR]
The linen room was where she sat, in a quaint, painted, high-backed
armchair by the window. She gazed straight out across a yard to a
shrubbery dominated by three large Fir trees over which the evening star
would peep, a tremulous yellow. She called those Fir trees her Three
Kings, and never failed to lift her hands in wonder and gratitude over
the beauty of the star. Poetry goes deep into the hearts of the Irish.
* * * * *
I can see that room now. The whole of one side was filled with
cupboards—presses, we called them—where, behind buff wire gratings and
beautifully fluted bright pink calico, the linen was stored. A few
nursery groceries, biscuit and dessert oddments were kept in a cupboard
just at the entrance; and there was always a faint fragrance of raisins
and spice in the atmosphere. I can see the dear occupant of the room
too; the picture of beautiful old age, with banded silver hair beneath
the snow-white cap which was tied with muslin strings under her chin. I
can see her apple-blossom cheeks and her blue eyes, clear and innocent
as a child’s, yet so wise! She had a white starched kerchief folded
across her black bodice, and her black skirt was gathered with a great
many pleats round the comfortable rotundity of her figure. We used to
find her sitting by the casement in the twilight, gazing out. If the
mood took me, I would sit on her knee and stare out too. Every few
minutes or so she would sigh, not with sadness, but gently, as the woods
sigh, with scarcely perceptible movement on a still night. But though I
knew it to be no sigh of distress, it nevertheless troubled me. I would
ask anxiously:
“Why do you sigh, Mobie?”
Her answer was always the same:
“Old age, Alanna!”
Her name was Mrs. O’Brien, which was interpreted Mobie by our baby lips.
In same fashion the first nurse, whom I only vaguely remember, erect,
small, severe, and kind, had degenerated from Mrs. Hughes into Shuzzie;
and the queer, tiny head housemaid, baptized Bridget, was Dadgie. A
unique personage this, minute as she was active, with bobbing bunches of
grey curls on each side of her grey net cap with purple ribbons which
were tied under her chin. Upon the rare occasions when some damage
occurred to the china or glass under her hands, she would trot into my
mother with the announcement:
“Oh, ma’am, I’ve made a ‘_foo pas_!’”
No one knew where she had picked up this inappropriate bit of French.
Dear, quaint, pathetic, busy little creature, buzzing about the house
with a flapping duster! I have a vision of her too, as I write: her huge
poke bonnet overshadowing the small, important face; her bobbing curls
as she fluttered in to confession in the oratory on those monthly
occasions when the old parish priest—another figure out of long past
times, he too, with his white head, his black stockings and buckle
shoes, his full-skirted coat—came out from the little country town to
“hear” the household.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: THE FAIRIES]
My mother used to call the three old women servants her three duchesses.
Alas! two of these dignitaries passed away very early in my
recollection. Fortunately, Mobie, the best beloved, was left to us till
later years. It is to her that my thoughts most readily return.
[Illustration: profile of old woman]
She was a store-house of anecdotes and legends. Never would she speak,
nor allow anyone to speak before her, of the fairies otherwise than as
“the good people”; and then it was with bated breath. It was established
as a fact among us that in her girlhood she had had communication with
them. Certainly, we believed, she had seen them one evening dancing in a
ring; but never could she be got to tell us in detail anything about
these experiences. The very mystery of her silence confirmed our theory.
What a delightful volume one could have made out of the tales that fell
from her lips upon our small listening ears by the nursery fire; or in
the linen room with its uncurtained window and its vision of the Three
Kings and the Star.
From many memories one floats back to me. It made a great impression:
“... And when Tim Brenahan was on his way home that evening, wasn’t it
round by the wall he went, and didn’t he see two great cats sitting on
the top of it with their tails hanging over? And didn’t one cat say to
the other, as plain as can be, and didn’t he hear it, just as you do be
hearing me:
“Says one, ‘And what’s the news this evening?’ And says the other, ‘No
news at all,’ says he. ‘Only that the widdie Moloney’s old tabby’s gone
at last,’ says he, ‘and it’s the great funeral will be to-night,’ says
he.
“And when Tim Brenahan came home to his wife, says she to him, ‘And
what’s the news this evening, Tim, asthore?’
[Illustration: two cats sitting on a wall]
“And says he to her, ‘Faith, no news at all,’ says he, ‘save as I was
coming home by the long wall beyont, there was two great fellers of cats
sitting on the top of it. And says one to the other, “The widdie
Moloney’s tabb’s goney at last,” says he, “and it’s the grand burying on
her there’ll be to-night.”’
“And no sooner were the words out of his mouth when his own tom-cat ups
with him and shakes himself where he was sittin’ starin’ at the turf,
and says he ‘Then it’s time for me to be off,’ says he, ‘or I’ll be late
for the funeral.’ And out of the door with him, with his tail all of a
bristle....”
I was rather awed by that story, which, to my infant mind, bore the
stamp of unmistakable veracity; but nothing that proceeded from the
linen room ever really distressed me. Its ruling spirit was too benign
and too perfectly in harmony with us.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: AN OLD IRISH NURSE]
The terror of those days to me was the fragile-looking, soft-voiced,
mincing widow who became our nurse after the death of the fine old
martinet by whom we had been ruled before. It was not surprising that
our mother should have imagined she was passing us over to a much
gentler authority; but as a matter of fact—indolent, ignorant,
peevish—the new nursery autocrat was given to enforcing her orders by
threats of a ghastly and impossible description.
“I’ll cut your tongue out,” was a favourite menace, which, if defied,
would be supplemented by—“Wait, now, till I run and get my scissors.”
Stronger of body, more enlightened in mind, my co-nurseryites treated
these remarks with the scorn they deserved. But I cannot describe the
agony with which they pressed upon me. It is peculiar to all children
that these terrors are never communicated to others. Not even to my
brothers and sisters would I breathe one word of my apprehensions. But
the misery took shape in horrible dreams and sleepless nights. And when
matters became too intolerable, I would creep out of my little bed, and
patter across the bare boards into the adjoining room where the
housekeeper slept. On no single occasion did she show the smallest
severity or even annoyance at being disturbed.
[Illustration: little girl]
“Mobie,” I would pipe, “I’m afraid!... May I get into your bed?”
“Come in, Alanna,” was the invariable response.
Oh! the comfort of snuggling against her!
Whether she promptly fell asleep again, or whether she watched and
talked loving nonsense one felt equally safe, equally blessedly happy.
If she slept, it was lightly enough, like all old people; and each time
she turned or moved in the bed, the small bed-fellow would hear her
murmur:
“The Lord have mercy on me!”
It was not a deliberate prayer, scarcely even a conscious thought, but
the natural movement of the soul.
Little wonder that, being what she was, she who had lain down every
night, as it were, in the very arms of Providence, should pass to her
last sleep as simply and fearlessly.
“Are you frightened, mother?” cried her daughter, bending over her at
the very end. She opened her eyes and smiled.
“Frightened? How could I be frightened? Am I not going to my best
friend?”
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