[Illustration: RANDUFF OF CUMANAC]
[Illustration: Coulin]
[Music: _Fourteenth Century._]
RANDUFF OF CUMANAC
Such is the record of Kearmit;
—Kearmit the holy of Cumanac,
Truthful the word he has written
Truthful the warning.
This is the warning to pass through all lives to our people:
Leave all unchristened the axe arm of Erinn forever!
From Archibald T. De Nise, Attorney-at-Law.
To Major Matthew Forbes.
_My dear Major_:—A week ago when we ended our after-dinner talk (in
the small hours of the morning), I little thought that I should
so soon have evidence on your side of the argument concerning the
shadowy other life in our midst. I can’t say that the new evidence
has convinced me, but it certainly has me rattled.
I am sending you brief excerpts from a curious old Irish volume I am
eager to have you see, and also, a verbatim copy of the letter which
came with it. I recall that your family was of the last hereditary
historians of Ireland in the seventeenth century, and with your
bookish tendencies, added to your predisposition to delve into the
uncanny, it gives me a hope that your inheritance of knowledge may
help me to a glimmer of light in this case.
I am sure that in reading the letter I enclose, you will not fail
to recollect the statement of your friend Dartan, whose portrait of
“Girl with the Hound,” was in the spring exhibition. He told us that
the addition of the hound to that picture was at his suggestion, and
that it required considerable time and trouble to find the right
type of hound for the desired composition. By this you will note that
the hound did not enter that family through any special desire of any
member of that family.
It is easy to decide that an impressionable mind, under the influence
of powerful inherited tradition of brutal ages, could work itself
into a state of self-hypnosis wherein the dream became the fact. I
tell myself that such is the reasonable solution of the mystery.
I work it out beautifully along those lines as I would a theoretical
game of chess—and then that red-eyed hound of the picture walks
across the board, and makes chaos of my chess men!
You know how much the unusual personality of the boy has
interested me from the beginning. The excitement over him has been
tremendous—the absolute lack of motive—her beauty, and his youth (he
is not yet twenty-three)—all this would be enough to make the affair
celebrated even without the very important financial position held by
his brother.
I have begged the boy to help me clear up the mystery of it all, and
he evidently thinks he has really given me that help in the letter I
enclose, but to my mind it furnishes two mysteries instead of one.
When you have read it I want you to call me up, no matter what hour
of the day or night it is, and then come and talk it over—if ever a
friend needed a lifeline in the strange sea of the uncanny, I am that
friend. I worked personally all night on the copy I send you—it could
not be given to a copyist.
There are many who are confident that he is not the guilty one, but
that his finding her there, in that condition, shocked him out of
sanity. He gave himself up at once and accused himself without any
excitement whatever. He has steadily refused to tell his motive for
the act, and has made not the slightest attempt to vindicate himself
at any time—not even soliciting the help of an attorney.
When I offered him the services of my office he only said: “It is
a kindness of you to give help at this time, and there is money in
plenty to pay you, Mr. De Nise, but the work is not worth the doing,
and it is I am telling you it.”
More than that he has not said, and his speech has the unusual
quality of fineness in it, at the same time that he uses curious
phrasing suggestive of a brogue, though it is not a brogue. Perhaps
it is that Irish music in his voice makes him fascinating. I have
heard nothing quite like it. I hope you remember that in our former
talk I spoke to you of it, and you said that prior to Elizabethan
days, much learning and most of the music of England had been
borrowed from the Irish scholars who took the brogue with them across
the Irish Sea and made it fashionable. I assure you this lad’s manner
would become fashionable if it could be easily imitated. It belongs
to a world older than our day. That is the baffling impression given
when he speaks. It is not the words alone—it is a certain lilt in
intonation as if he had been trained in rhythmic chants. Strangely
enough his half-brother, who is old enough to be his father, and has
had much the same educational advantages, has not a particle of this
manner. He is a plain, practical, very well-to-do Anglo-Irishman,
interested in certain American mines, and is a local bank director.
You will think me obsessed by this matter of a personality individual
and strange—but I am only impressing on you the fact that I spoke
to you a week ago of that baffling fascination in him. I want you
to remember it, otherwise we should both fancy that my present
impressions are merely borrowed from the book and letter I send you.
Yesterday, in desperation over having the case called for next week
and not a single word or suggestion of help from him, I repeated what
I have said to him so often:
“Fergal, since you have promptly accused yourself and implicated
no one but yourself, why—why in the name of all that’s holy, do
you not tell to me, your lawyer, and your friend, at least the
cause of the crime you have confessed? Why will you not give me
something substantial to work on? As it is, I have nothing but absurd
theories—shadows to pit against a prosecution.”
He looked at me with the quiet, unyouthful gray eyes, which look
black under jet lashes. Then he stretched his arms drowsily as if I
had fairly beaten him into speech.
“Aye, Mr. De Nise,” he said, and shook his head with its purple-black
wave of hair, like nothing so much as a crow’s wing, except that a
crow has no curls to its feathers. “Mr. De Nise, the wonder is on
me, sir, as to what you would be saying if you heard in truth of the
shadow I have fought in this—and the shadow I feared long—and the
shadow by which I was overcome. I am not the one saying to you that
shadows are little things to fight.”
“You try me and see what I would say,” I suggested. “Tell me every
word and every thought you have on this matter; that is the right
thing to do for me as well as for you.” I was only too keen to
encourage him, for it was the first time he had shown even a sign of
sympathy toward my solicitations.
“And you would not be thinking it moonshine from some Irish rath
of the fairies? And you will not be having your laugh with the
councilors and the judges over the crazed Irish head of me, after I
have gone the Way?” he asked.
I assured him it was too weighty an affair for laughter, and that I
was convinced that his head had the usual requisites for a head. He
appeared to consider that statement thoughtfully, but finally he said:
“No—no, it has lived with me so long in silence that no words come to
me for the telling. No—it will not be spoken.”
I saw that he was actually striving to nerve himself for some ordeal,
and I kept silence, looking over some notes I had made for the
defense: few and shadowy they are, too! My presence without speech
must have got on his nerves, for as if to get rid of me he spoke at
last.
“I may write it as the other records of our home were written—I—may
do that. Yes—that is where it would be having the right place—in the
record of the clan, for it is the ending of it—yes—and the right
ending.”
I knew I could make nothing for his defense out of that sort of
statement, so I ignored it, and left the jail after sending for
paper, pen, and ink. I looked back through the bars and he was seated
again, his head on his hands. I should not have been surprised to
learn that he had forgotten the pen and paper were there. I have not
seen him since.
But this morning there came to the office his half-brother, Raymond
E. Brennan, from whom this crime has separated him beyond hope
of reconciliation. Now that I think of it, they are not exactly
half-brothers but by courtesy, since Brennan’s father married the
mother of Fergal some years after he was born, and she a widow.
In his hand he carried a small square package.
“It is the book—” he said, “the book done by Kearmit the monk in a
past century. I brought it myself, for the boy asked that you be let
read it. It is a treasure of his house. He knew it by heart, and
thought it a great treasure—as I fancy it may be, as such things go.”
His tone indicated that such things did not go far with him, though
he was tolerant.
“Is it something concerning the case?” I asked.
“Not at all,” he said. “It is a collection of legends and songs of
his mother’s house, done by a kinsman of theirs who was a monk. It is
a very ancient house, Mr. De Nise. According to the records, there
were princes and abbots among them when Ireland was in her glory. The
work on the book is of the finest and worth seeing.”
“But I have made no request for the book, nor ever heard of it,” I
said, for as the wrapper was taken off and I saw the richness and
value of it, I hesitated to keep it. He looked at me in surprise.
“No? That is strange,” he said. “Ah, the poor lad; his head is wrong;
that is it.”
“Did he tell you I wanted it?” I asked. “Please repeat to me exactly
what he said; I am much interested in his case, and he speaks so
little that every word is precious, as it may help to reveal hidden
things.”
“I know that, and am glad he has a good friend in you. I cannot be
that. I feel that it is his head is wrong, for he was ever a strange
lad, delving in ancient records, and at home with thoughts too old
for his years. His mother was a safe, natural woman and there were
times he seemed ‘fey’ to her. He was born the night his father died,
but he was like neither father nor mother. She told me that when she
followed my father, and asked me to care for the lad. I did my best
while I could, but I do not want ever to hear the old Irish of his
voice again, or touch his hand again while I live.”
“What do you mean by the ‘old’ Irish of his voice?” I asked, and he
looked at me with a little frown of perplexity.
“Do you know, Mr. De Nise, that is a hard question to answer to a man
who has not heard the Gaelic about him. That lad was not brought up
to the Gaelic speech, nor his parents before him, nor their parents,
yet when he spoke first—English words, mind you—he spoke it with the
sound on his tongue of the old Irish. That is not because he has not
gone about and heard other speech: three years he was in France and
in Spain. There was an old branch of his people came to Galway from
Spain in the very old times. His mother said he came by the blackness
of his hair from the Spanish kindred, for her people were fair
always. But, as I was saying, no travel took the touch of the old
tongue off him. You must have noticed, sir, yourself; it is as if he
speaks in English but thinks in the old Irish.”
Now that explained exactly that baffling music of his intonation, and
I was glad to have it cleared up for me; if cleared up it is!
“Yes—he has always been strange, but he was a lovable lad at that,”
said Brennan. “I know it was his head went wrong all in a flash, and
I hope the court so decides. But when I try to think kindly of him,
there comes again before my eyes that awful sight of—ah—I cannot even
speak of it yet.”
He walked to the window and stood with his back to me. I could see he
was much agitated.
“Do not try to speak of it,” I said, “only try to tell me the word he
sent concerning the book.”
Brennan gave me a letter from his pocket and walked again to the
window while I read it.
There was no heading to the letter; it began abruptly in clear,
decided penmanship.
“I know the sorrow of you—yet it may be there is a deeper sorrow
I am now hiding. I know the hate of your heart for me—and all the
world is with you in that.
“I am not sending to you in any complaining, for things are
written, and the reasons are not shown to mortals, yet we must
abide by that writing.
“I am sending to ask a favor for the man who would save—if he
can—the last of my family, which he cannot. I would have lent to
him for his reading, the book of the annals of our house. Not the
genealogy in Gaelic with its translation, but the smaller book
with the ivory cover and the silver clasps. It is the legends and
songs of our bards in the other days before the harps of Ireland
were broken by the mailed fist of the enemy. The man I want to
have read it is a lover of books, and nothing like the ‘Book of
Kearmit’ has he seen; not but what kindred clans had jewels of
books, and more of them than in other lands, but the Saxon, like
the Dane, in their plunderings, stripped them of the precious
coverings, and left the vellum to rot or burn. They are few and
rare at this day.
“The sorrow is with me for the reason that your life is in
shadow. Always first in my heart was held my love of you. I am
proud now to be knowing that, and on a day to be ... you will
know it!
“On that day I may again call you brother—and the waiting for it
is long to me.
“FERGAL.”
“That is the first word he has ever sent me, since that night,” said
Brennan, “so I brought the book at once. I would do much more to be
of use to any mortal in misery, but hear him, or see him, I hope I
shall never.”
While he spoke a messenger came in with a package for me. I still
held Brennan’s letter in my hand. As I glanced at the envelope
just received I saw that the writing was the same—it was the first
communication I had ever received from Fergal.
I opened it quickly, and found many large pages closely written;
folded around them was a note. It said:
“Good Friend—
“A book of old Irish legends will be brought to your hand this
day. Before reading the letter I send in this, I will ask you to
read the book. There is one tale of the olden days I would have
you reading. It is called _Randuff and White Enora_.”
I turned to Brennan. “I should like after all to look at the book,” I
said. “Fergal will no doubt tell me why he wishes me to see it.”
Then thanking him for coming with it personally, I let him out as
expeditiously as possible in my eagerness to see what the boy had
sent me. It was a great temptation to read the letter first, but I
put it aside and opened the book.
[Illustration: Decorative separator]
It is a curiosity in book-making and binding. The ivory panels of the
back with their scroll work of silver were done by no prentice hand,
and the lettering on the vellum is so fine I had to use a magnifying
glass to get all the beauty of line in the illuminated initials. How
the deuce did those Irish monks of the old days do such work with
quill pens and no glasses? Whoever “Kearmit of Clan Cumanac” might
have been, his work was that of an artist, as you will see when you
come.
I did not linger long over the artistic binding or ornamental pen
work, but turned at once to the story Fergal had mentioned. It was
called _The Sad Tale of Randuff and White Enora_. It was written in
verse, as many others were. I find that Randuff means “The Dark,
Handsome One.”
[Illustration: Decorative separator]
In Tormond, north of the Shannon, dwelt the clans of Cumanac before
the foot of the invader brought the curse on the land, and sent
westward their mercenaries to wall themselves in, and to carve
prayers in the stone over the gates, that the sons of the land
might not rise in their vengeance and make ashes of their women and
children as have the Saxons with the “mere Irish.”
But Brian is dust in Dunpatrick, and Cormac the wise has been dust a
thousand years in Rosnaree, and besides them no king has arisen in
strength to hold together the tribes, and strong to do righteousness
on the adventurers who have their hirelings in mail to help them make
profits off the land.
And of the last law of Edward’s councilors has come the evil of the
death of Randuff—the sweetly dark one, cried now by the woman, and
mourned by the very trees of the forests he had love for! Randuff of
the princes of Cumanac, Randuff of the sweet voice, and that voice
chanting the glories above all sweetness of mortal: Grief on the loss
of that one!
Her name was Enora of the Saxons, and when she spread her net, and
looked on him, it was a drug to his soul. The robe of a scholar he
forgot, and holiness he forgot, and only marriage with her was the
dream walking with him all the night. To his brothers in kindred
he told his love and it needed not the telling, for all could read
the wonder of it in his eyes—shadowed eyes the women of Cumanac are
wailing!
The new law of the invader forbids bonds of marriage between their
Saxon men and our Irish women—and much more is the strength of the
law against daughters of English taking a name from an Irish clan,
even though it be a princely clan. Grief on that day!
So it stands, and what is one man, even the youth Randuff, to do
against that? What is one man to do with the pride of his clan like
a black rage back of him? And their friendship and their love hidden
from him? And their rule hard against him for that he would not tear
the face of her out of his breast; and would not forget the White
Enora of the sea-blue eyes?
Sons of lords of Spain sailed into the Shannon mouth. In their own
ship they came, and young they came, and they were his kindred. Love
in their own hearts made them brothers to Randuff, and they alone
knew of the stolen nights of him in her secret chamber. Only they
knew that he fared forth as a _duine_—leading the steed of her father
... as a servant unknown walked Randuff, son of princes, to follow
the white feet of the woman of the other shore. Grief on that day!
None but the sons of the lords of Spain knew it, and they knew it.
Sweet the plot for love was the plot of Randuff and the sons of the
lords of Spain—and sweet the sailing to be when the bird of love flew
south with them, for that was their dream!
But the maid of the secret nights had a long look in the blue eyes of
her, and the look was long for a man who could put her near to the
throne in the court of Edward. Such was her look, and such was the
hope, and that was not in power of Randuff, son of prince of Cumanac,
nor of any other of Erinn’s princes, and she grew in fear of the
love-nights she had loved so rashly, and in fear of the lover who had
dared much, and would dare more.
The Night of nights came when the sails were loosed, and horses were
under the wall, and the lover in the secret door for the last time.
And in fear of his wrath when she should say to him “No,” and in fear
of her own kindred if they thought the truth of her—she took by her
side a wolfhound of her knowing, and a keen knife to give help to the
last. Grief on the night!
With fair treacherous words, and sad words, she told him the will of
her kinsmen was heavy on her, and the fear on her was a great fear,
and never again could the moon light their love-nights. Her beauty
had been coveted by an earl of England, and her parting from wild
Ireland would be a long parting.
So it was, and when in love his arms went around her, the wolfhound
leaped to his throat, and her knife found the way to his heart. Grief
on that night!
The cries of her were the cries of a child in fright, and her words
were of terror, and these were her words: That to save herself pure
from a man of the Irish wilds, she had used the knife, and she stood
there holding back the hound from the blood of Randuff, and told this
thing, and the eyes of Randuff on her, and the breath of life going
from him!
Her kinsmen came there—and their rage was a great and terrible rage,
and above all the rage was that of Alwynn, a priest of her blood,
and it may be he is druid, too, for he is not christian surely; and
it was the curse of curses he put on the youth there, not alone that
he should die unshriven, but that no sons should ever again be born
to the name, and the pride of the race, and its fruitfulness should
die out even as the youth’s blood was flowing from the heart of him.
Grief on that night!
And the strength of that hate, and the words of it, wakened Randuff
out of the death spell, and in a great slowness he spoke again, and
the people who heard it went cold, and the wanton white thing fell
swooning, and none of them are forgetting it, and this is what he
said there:
“When the last of our clan’s blood is gone from this life,
Will but be when Enora finds death by this knife.
If no sons shall be born to keep honored our name,
From the grave one will rise to give death for this shame.
And you err, White Enora, at thought that the moon
Will no more light our meetings: a vision—a swoon
Comes gray on my senses, yet through it I see
Another life living for you—and for me!”
Death took him, and no mortal is knowing what meaning was in his
words. The Spanish kinsmen told their tale, and sailed for the south,
and earth glory and sinful glory are the portion of Enora of the
wolfhound. She is near the throne surely, and the children of her are
honored by her own name forever by the royal will.
This is the tale of Randuff and White Enora. It is put down by the
hand of Kearmit of Cumanac as a sign against that family forever. No
honor, no friendship, is ever to be taken by gift or grace of the
people of her blood, and no other thing forever but war should be
with that people. As White Enora with her wolfhound, and her knife
for the lover, so is that blood to the blood of the tribes whose land
they have coveted, and have left ravaged. May memory be with our
people in the Day of days!
“By the Elements, and the Father, and Son, and Sanctified Spirit.”
[Illustration: Decorative separator]
In a different but clear hand two pages were added:
Such is the record of Kearmit, Kearmit, the holy of Cumanac,
Truthful the word he has written—blessed the writing!
Truthful the warning to tribes of the Cumanac,
Truthful that warning!
Against Alba whose own sons they sold in the market,
and they not in hunger,
Against that people whose daughters were coming like calves
and sold like the cattle,
Against that land whose mothers were sold
and they with the unborn!—
They are the men lacking blood but the blood of the liver,
They are the men. The diolamhan fight all their battles.
Loud is their laugh that Brabanters are fighting their battles,
loud in their mocking!
Evil was ours in the buying of children and mothers,
evil in bringing that breed.
Shadow to us for that breeding:
treacheries born from the blood of their daughters.
Weakness of heart in our clans buying slaves out of Alba.
Slaves have been made of that buying;—slaves are our princes!
Sad forever the purchase—Erinn in shadow is witness!
Sing death forever ’gainst compact or truce with that people.
Leave us forever unchristened one hand of our clansmen:
The axe hand of battle for these who have sold us their daughters.
Watch you forever ’gainst smiles, or sweet words, or hand
claspings.
Think on their mothers once sold to our men for our usage,
Swearing of friends’ oath with them! Unchristened the axe arm of
Erinn.
Unchristened the axe arm forever to use in the cleaving
Of tribes who would barter a friend as they sold their own
daughters.
This is the warning to pass through all lives to our people,
This, and the maid of the wolfhound, and she with the dagger.
That is the soul out of Alba—the white maid Enora!
Leave all unchristened the axe arm of Erinn forever!
* * * * *
I finished the old chronicles, wondering why I had been asked to read
of the intensity of the ancient hates, though I acknowledge that the
form of the original is better than my faulty translation from the
Latin. Then I opened his letter of which I send you an exact copy. I
can’t let the original go—yet I want you to be entirely acquainted
with all the evidence of which I am possessed. Call me up soon as you
read it. Here is the letter:
My Good Friend—
Now that I have put my hand to it, you shall have your wish. To
tell you will lighten the heart of me, and now that the end is so
near I can see no harm coming from the truth. No man with the
cleverness of you would take into court a letter such as this
must be, and you will not tell the one man it would hurt—that you
could not do; the worst you will do is to think me mad.
If it is so now, then I was mad at birth. Yet no one thought it.
I was different but no worse than that, and I will tell it you.