asylum and crossed the mountains and went on.
Four little nights and four long days they were walking; slow it was
for they were oldish men and lost they were, but the journey was kind
and the weather was good weather. On the fourth day Tom Tool said to
him: “The Dear knows what way you’d be taking me! Blind it seems, and
dazed I am. I could do with a skillet of good soup to steady me and to
soothe me.”
“Hard it is, and hungry it is,” sighed the Man; “starved daft I am for
a taste of nourishment, a blind man’s dog would pity me. If I see a cat
I’ll eat it; I could bite the nose off a duck.”
They did not converse any more for a time, not until Tom Tool asked him
what was the name of his grand cousin, and then the Man from Kilsheelan
was in a bedazement, and he was confused.
“I declare, on my soul, I’ve forgot his little name. Wait now while I
think of it.”
“Was it McInerney then?”
“No, not it at all.”
“Kavanagh? the Grogans? or the Duffys?”
“Wait, wait while I think of it now.”
Tom Tool waited; he waited and all until he thought he would burst.
“Ah, what’s astray wid you? Was it Phelan—or O’Hara—or Clancy—or Peter
Mew?”
“No, not it at all.”
“The Murphys. The Sweeneys. The Moores.”
“Divil a one. Wait while I think of it now.”
And the Man from Kilsheelan sat holding his face as if it hurt him,
and his comrade kept saying at him: “Duhy, then? Coman? McGrath?” and
driving him distracted with his O this and O that, his Mc he—s and Mc
she—s.
Well, he could not think of it; but when they walked on they had not
far to go, for they came over a twist of the hills and there was the
ocean, and the neat little town of Ballygoveen in a bay of it below,
with the wreck of a ship lying sunk near the strand. There was a
sharp cliff at either horn of the bay, and between them some bullocks
stravaiging on the beach.
“Truth is a fortune,” cried the Man from Kilsheelan, “this it is.”
They went down the hill to the strand near the wreck, and just on the
wing of the town they saw a paddock full of hemp stretched drying, and
a house near it, and a man weaving a rope. He had a great cast of hemp
around his loins, and a green apron. He walked backwards to the sea,
and a young girl stood turning a little wheel as he went away from her.
“God save you,” said Tom Tool to her, “for who are you weaving this
rope?”
“For none but God himself and the hangman,” said she.
Turning the wheel she was, and the man going away from it backwards,
and the dead wreck in the rocky bay; a fine sweet girl of good dispose
and no ways drifty.
“Long life to you then, young woman,” says he. “But that’s a strong
word, and a sour word, the Lord spare us all.”
At that the rope walker let a shout to her to stop the wheel; then he
cut the rope at the end and tied it to a black post. After that he came
throwing off his green apron and said he was hungry.
“Denis, avick!” cried the girl. “Come, and I’ll get your food.” And the
two of them went away into the house.
“Brother and sister they are,” said the Man from Kilsheelan, “a good
appetite to them.”
“Very neat she is, and clean she is, and good and sweet and tidy she
is,” said Tom Tool. They stood in the yard watching some white fowls
parading and feeding and conversing in the grass; scratch, peck, peck,
ruffle, quarrel, scratch, peck, peck, cock a doodle doo.
“What will we do now, Tom Tool? My belly has a scroop and a screech in
it. I could eat the full of Isknagahiny Lake and gape for more, or the
Hill of Bawn and not get my enough.”
Beyond them was the paddock with the hemp drying across it, long
heavy strands, and two big stacks of it beside, dark and sodden, like
seaweed. The girl came to the door and called: “Will ye take a bite?”
They said they would, and that she should eat with spoons of gold in
the heaven of God and Mary. “You’re welcome,” she said, but no more she
said, for while they ate she was sad and silent.
The young man Denis let on that their father, one Horan, was away on
his journeys peddling a load of ropes, a long journey, days he had been
gone, and he might be back to-day, or to-morrow, or the day after.
“A great strew of hemp you have,” said the Man from Kilsheelan. The
young man cast down his eyes; and the young girl cried out: “’Tis foul
hemp, God preserve us all!”
“Do you tell me of that now,” he asked; but she would not, and her
brother said: “I will tell you. It’s a great misfortune, mister man.
’Tis from the wreck in the bay beyant, a good stout ship, but burst on
the rocks one dark terror of a night and all the poor sailors tipped in
the sea. But the tide was low and they got ashore, ten strong sailor
men, with a bird in a cage that was dead drowned.”
“The Dear rest its soul,” said Tom Tool.
“There was no rest in the ocean for a week, the bay was full of storms,
and the vessel burst, and the big bales split, and the hemp was
scattered and torn and tangled on the rocks, or it did drift. But at
last it soothed, and we gathered it and brought it to the field here.
We brought it, and my father did buy it of the salvage man for a price;
a Mexican valuer he was, but the deal was bad, and it lies there; going
rotten it is, the rain wears it, and the sun’s astray, and the wind is
gone.”
“That’s a great misfortune. What is on it?” said the Man from
Kilsheelan.
“It is a great misfortune, mister man. Laid out it is, turned it is,
hackled it is, but faith it will not dry or sweeten, never a hank of it
worth a pig’s eye.”
“’Tis the devil and all his injury,” said Kilsheelan.
The young girl, her name it was Christine, sat grieving. One of her
beautiful long hands rested on her knee, and she kept beating it with
the other. Then she began to speak.
“The captain of that ship lodged in this house with us while the hemp
was recovered and sold; a fine handsome sport he was, but fond of the
drink, and very friendly with the Mexican man, very hearty they were,
a great greasy man with his hands covered with rings that you’d not
believe. Covered! My father had been gone travelling a week or a few
days when a dark raging gale came off the bay one night till the hemp
was lifted all over the field.”
“It would have lifted a bullock,” said Denis, “great lumps of it, like
trees.”
“And we sat waiting the captain, but he didn’t come home and we went
sleeping. But in the morning the Mexican man was found dead murdered
on the strand below, struck in the skull, and the two hands of him
gone. ’Twas not long when they came to the house and said he was last
seen with the captain, drunk quarrelling; and where was he? I said to
them that he didn’t come home at all and was away from it. ‘We’ll take
a peep at his bed,’ they said, and I brought them there, and my heart
gave a strong twist in me when I see’d the captain stretched on it,
snoring to the world and his face and hands smeared with the blood.
So he was brought away and searched, and in his pocket they found one
of the poor Mexican’s hands, just the one, but none of the riches.
Everything to be so black against him and the assizes just coming on in
Cork! So they took him there before the judge, and he judged him and
said it’s to hang he was. And if they asked the captain how he did it,
he said he did not do it at all.”
“But there was a bit of iron pipe beside the body,” said Denis.
“And if they asked him where was the other hand, the one with the rings
and the mighty jewels on them, and his budget of riches, he said he
knew nothing of that nor how the one hand got into his pocket. Placed
there it was by some schemer. It was all he could say, for the drink
was on him and nothing he knew.
“‘You to be so drunk,’ they said, ‘how did you get home to your bed and
nothing heard?’
“‘I don’t know,’ says he. Good sakes, the poor lamb, a gallant strong
sailor he was! His mind was a blank, he said. ‘’Tis blank,’ said the
judge, ‘if it’s as blank as the head of himself with a gap like that in
it, God rest him!’”
“You could have put a pound of cheese in it,” said Denis.
“And Peter Corcoran cried like a loony man, for his courage was gone,
like a stream of water. To hang him, the judge said, and to hang him
well, was their intention. It was a pity, the judge said, to rob a man
because he was foreign, and destroy him for riches and the drink on
him. And Peter Corcoran swore he was innocent of this crime. ‘Put a
clean shirt to me back,’ says he, ‘for it’s to heaven I’m going.’”
“And,” added Denis, “the peeler at the door said ‘Amen.’”
“That was a week ago,” said Christine, “and in another he’ll be
stretched. A handsome sporting sailor boy.”
“What ... what did you say was the name of him?” gasped the Man from
Kilsheelan.
“Peter Corcoran, the poor lamb,” said Christine.
“Begod,” he cried out as if he was choking, “’tis me grand cousin from
Ameriky!”
True it was, and the grief on him so great that Denis was after giving
the two of them a lodge till the execution was over. “Rest here, my
dad’s away,” said he, “and he knowing nothing of the murder, or the
robbery, or the hanging that’s coming, nothing. Ah, what will we tell
him an’ all? ’Tis a black story on this house.”
“The blessing of God and Mary on you,” said Tom Tool. “Maybe we
could do a hand’s turn for you; me comrade’s a great wonder with the
miracles, maybe he could do a stroke would free an innocent man.”
“Is it joking you are?” asked Christine sternly.
“God deliver him, how would I joke on a man going to his doom and
destruction?”
The next day the young girl gave them jobs to do, but the Man from
Kilsheelan was destroyed with trouble and he shook like water when a
pan of it is struck.
“What is on you?” said Tom Tool.
“Vexed and waxy I am,” says he, “in regard of the great journey we’s
took, and sorra a help in the end of it. Why couldn’t he do his bloody
murder after we had done with him?”
“Maybe he didn’t do it at all.”
“Ah, what are you saying now, Tom Tool? Wouldn’t anyone do it, a nice,
easy, innocent crime. The cranky gossoon to get himself stretched on
the head of it, ’tis the drink destroyed him! Sure’s there’s no more
justice in the world than you’d find in the craw of a sick pullet.
Vexed and waxy I am for me careless cousin. Do it! Who wouldn’t do it?”
He went up to the rope that Denis and Christine were weaving together
and he put his finger on it.
“Is that the rope,” says he, “that will hang my grand cousin?”
“No,” said Denis, “it is not. His rope came through the post office
yesterday. For the prison master it was, a long new rope—saints
preserve us—and Jimmy Fallon the postman getting roaring drunk showing
it to the scores of creatures would give him a drink for the sight
of it. Just coiled it was, and no way hidden, with a label on it,
‘O.H.M.S.’”
“The wind’s rising, you,” said Christine. “Take a couple of forks now,
and turn the hemp in the field. Maybe ’twill scour the Satan out of it.”
“Stormy it does be, and the bay has darkened in broad noon,” said Tom
Tool.
“Why wouldn’t the whole world be dark and a man to be hung?” said she.
They went to the hemp so knotted and stinking, and begun raking it
and raking it. The wind was roaring from the bay, the hulk twitching
and tottering; the gulls came off the wave, and Christine’s clothes
stretched out from her like the wings of a bird. The hemp heaved upon
the paddock like a great beast bursting a snare that was on it, and a
strong blast drove a heap of it upon the Man from Kilsheelan, twisting
and binding him in its clasp till he thought he would not escape from
it and he went falling and yelping. Tom Tool unwound him, and sat him
in the lew of the stack till he got his strength again, and then he
began to moan of his misfortune.
“Stint your shouting,” said Tom Tool, “isn’t it as hard to cure as a
wart on the back of a hedgehog?”
But he wouldn’t stint it. “’Tis large and splendid talk I get from
you, Tom Tool, but divil a deed of strength. Vexed and waxy I am. Why
couldn’t he do his murder after we’d done with him. What a cranky
cousin. What a foolish creature. What a silly man, the devil take him!”
“Let you be aisy,” the other said, “to heaven he is going.”
“And what’s the gain of it, he to go with his neck stretched?”
“Indeed, I did know a man went to heaven once,” began Tom Tool, “but he
did not care for it.”
“That’s queer,” said the Man, “for it couldn’t be anything you’d not
want, indeed to glory.”
“Well, he came back to Ireland on the head of it. I forget what was his
name.”
“Was it Corcoran, or Tool, or Horan?”
“No, none of those names. He let on it was a lonely place, not fit for
living people or dead people, he said; nothing but trees and streams
and beasts and birds.”
“What beasts and birds?”
“Rabbits and badgers, the elephant, the dromedary, and all those
ancient races; eagles and hawks and cuckoos and magpies. He wandered in
a thick forest for nights and days like a flea in a great beard, and
the beasts and the birds setting traps and hooks and dangers for a poor
feller; the worst villains of all was the sheep.”
“The sheep! What could a sheep do then?” asked Kilsheelan.
“I don’t know the right of it, but you’d not believe me if I told you
at all. If you went for the little swim you was not seen again.”
“I never heard the like of that in Roscommon.”
“Not another holy soul was in it but himself, and if he was taken with
the thirst he would dip his hand in a stream that flowed with rich
wine and put it to his lips, but if he did it turned into air at once
and twisted up in a blue cloud. But grand wine to look at, he said. If
he took oranges from a tree he could not bite them, they were chiny
oranges, hard as a plate. But beautiful oranges to look at they were.
To pick a flower it burst on you like a gun. What was cold was too cold
to touch, and what was warm was too warm to swallow, you must throw it
up, or die.”
“Faith, it’s no region for a Christian soul, Tom Tool. Where is it at
all?”
“High it may be, low it may be, it may be here, it may be there.”
“What could the like of a sheep do? A sheep!”
“A devouring savage creature it is there, the most hard to come at, the
most difficult to conquer, with the teeth of a lion and a tiger, the
strength of a bear and a half, the deceit of two foxes, the run of a
deer, the...”
“Is it heaven you call it! I’d not look twice at a place the like of
that.”
“No, you would not, no.”
“Ah, but wait now,” said Kilsheelan, “wait till the day of Judgment.”
“Well, I will not wait then,” said Tom Tool sternly. “When the sinners
of the world are called to their judgment, scatter they will all over
the face of the earth, running like hares till they come to the sea,
and there they will perish.”
“Ah, the love of God on the world!”
They went raking and raking, till they came to a great stiff hump of it
that rolled over, and they could see sticking from the end of it two
boots.
“O, what is it, in the name of God?” asks Kilsheelan.
“Sorra and all, but I’d not like to look,” says Tom Tool, and they
called the girl to come see what was it.
“A dead man!” says Christine, in a thin voice with a great tremble
coming on her, and she white as a tooth. “Unwind him now.” They began
to unwind him like a tailor with a bale of tweed, and at last they came
to a man black in the face. Strangled he was. The girl let a great
cry out of her. “Queen of heaven, ’tis my dad; choked he is, the long
strands have choked him, my good pleasant dad!” and she went with a run
to the house crying.
“What has he there in his hand?” asked Kilsheelan.
“’Tis a chopper,” says he.
“Do you see what is on it, Tom Tool?”
“Sure I see, and you see, what is on it; blood is on it, and murder is
on it. Go fetch a peeler, and I’ll wait while you bring him.”
When his friend was gone for the police Tom Tool took a little squint
around him and slid his hand into the dead man’s pocket. But if he did
he was nearly struck mad from his senses, for he pulled out a loose
dead hand that had been chopped off as neat as the foot of a pig. He
looked at the dead man’s arms, and there was a hand to each; so he
looked at the hand again. The fingers were covered with the rings of
gold and diamonds. Covered!
“Glory be to God!” said Tom Tool, and he put his hand in another pocket
and fetched a budget full of papers and banknotes.
“Glory be to God!” he said again, and put the hand and the budget back
in the pockets, and turned his back and said prayers until the peelers
came and took them all off to the court.
It was not long, two days or three, until an inquiry was held; grand it
was and its judgment was good. And the big-Wig asked: “Where is the
man that found the body?”
“There are two of him,” says the peeler.
“Swear ’em,” says he, and Kilsheelan stepped up to a great murdering
joker of a clerk, who gave him a book in his hand and roared at him: “I
swear by Almighty God....”
“Yes,” says Kilsheelan.
“Swear it,” says the clerk.
“Indeed I do.”
“You must repeat it,” says the clerk.
“I will, sir.”
“Well, repeat it then,” says he.
“And what will I repeat?”
So he told him again and he repeated it. Then the clerk goes on: “...
that the evidence I give....”
“Yes,” says Kilsheelan.
“Say those words, if you please.”
“The words! Och, give me the head of ’em again!”
So he told him again and he repeated it. Then the clerk goes on: “ ...
shall be the truth....”
“It will,” says Kilsheelan.
“ ... and nothing but the truth....”
“Yes, begod, indeed!”
“Say ‘nothing but the truth,’” roared the clerk.
“No!” says Kilsheelan.
“Say ‘nothing.’”
“All right,” says Kilsheelan.
“Can’t you say ’nothing but the truth'?”
“Yes,” he says.
“Well, say it!”
“I will, so,” says he, “the scrapings of sense on it all!”
So they swore them both, and their evidence they gave.
“Very good,” his lordship said, “a most important and opportune
discovery, in the nick of time, by the tracing of God. There is a
reward of fifty pounds offered for the finding of this property and
jewels: fifty pounds you will get in due course.”
They said they were obliged to him, though sorrow a one of them knew
what he meant by a due course, nor where it was.
Then a lawyer man got the rights of the whole case; he was the
cunningest man ever lived in the city of Cork; no one could match him,
and he made it straight and he made it clear.
Old Horan must have returned from his journey unbeknown on the night
of the gale when the deed was done. Perhaps he had made a poor profit
on his toil, for there was little of his own coin found on his body.
He saw the two drunks staggering along the bay—he clove in the head
of the one with a bit of pipe—he hit the other a good whack to still
or stiffen him—he got an axe from the yard—he shore off the Mexican’s
two hands, for the rings were grown tight and wouldn’t be drawn from
his fat fingers. Perhaps he dragged the captain home to his bed—you
couldn’t be sure of that—but put the hand in the captain’s pocket he
did, and then went to the paddock to bury the treasure. But a blast of
wind whipped and wove some of the hemp strand around his limbs, binding
him sudden. He was all huffled and hogled and went mad with the fear
struggling, the hemp rolling him and binding him till he was strangled
or smothered.
And that is what happened him, believe it or no, but believe it you
should. It was the tracing of God on him for his dark crime.
Within a week of it Peter Corcoran was away out of gaol, a stout
walking man again, free in Ballygoveen. But on the day of his release
he did not go near the ropewalker’s house. The Horans were there
waiting, and the two old silly men, but he did not go next or near
them. The next day Kilsheelan said to her: “Strange it is my cousin not
to seek you, and he a sneezer for gallantry.”
“’Tis no wonder at all,” replied Christine, “and he with his picture in
all the papers.”
“But he had a right to have come now and you caring him in his black
misfortune,” said Tom Tool.
“Well, he will not come then,” Christine said in her soft voice, “in
regard of the red murder on the soul of my dad. And why should he put a
mark on his family, and he the captain of a ship.”
In the afternoon Tom Tool and the other went walking to try if they
should see him, and they did see him at a hotel, but he was hurrying
from it; he had a frieze coat on him and a bag in his hand.
“Well, who are you at all?” asks Peter Corcoran.
“You are my cousin from Ameriky,” says Kilsheelan.
“Is that so? And I never heard it,” says Peter. “What’s your name?”
The Man from Kilsheelan hung down his old head and couldn’t answer him,
but Tom Tool said: “Drifty he is, sir, he forgets his little name.”
“Astray is he? My mother said I’ve cousins in Roscommon, d’ye know ’em?
the Twingeings....”
“Twingeing! Owen Twingeing it is!” roared Kilsheelan. “’Tis my name!
’Tis my name! ’Tis my name!” and he danced about squawking like a
parrot in a frenzy.
“If it’s Owen Twingeing you are, I’ll bring you to my mother in
Manhattan.” The captain grabbed up his bag. “Haste now, come along out
of it. I’m going from the cunning town this minute, bad sleep to it for
ever and a month! There’s a cart waiting to catch me the boat train to
Queenstown. Will you go? Now?”
“Holy God contrive it,” said Kilsheelan; his voice was wheezy as an
old goat, and he made to go off with him. “Good-day to you, Tom Tool,
you’ll get all the reward and endure a rich life from this out, fortune
on it all, a fortune on it all!”
And the two of them were gone in a twink.
Tom Tool went back to the Horans then; night was beginning to dusk and
to darken. As he went up the ropewalk Christine came to him from her
potato gardens and gave him signs, he to be quiet and follow her down
to the strand. So he followed her down to the strand and told her all
that happened, till she was vexed and full of tender words for the old
fool.
“Aren’t you the spit of misfortune? It would daunt a saint, so it
would, and scrape a tear from silky Satan’s eye. Those two deluderers,
they’ve but the drainings of half a heart between ’em. And he not
willing to lift the feather of a thought on me? I’d not forget him till
there’s ten days in a week and every one of ’em lucky. But ... but ...
isn’t Peter Corcoran the nice name for a captain man, the very pattern?”
She gave him a little bundle into his hands. “There’s a loaf and a cut
of meat. You’d best be stirring from here.”
“Yes,” he said, and stood looking stupid, for his mind was in a dream.
The rock at one horn of the bay had a red glow on it like the shawl on
the neck of a lady, but the other was black now. A man was dragging a
turf boat up the beach.
“Listen, you,” said Christine. “There’s two upstart men in the house
now, seeking you and the other. There’s trouble and damage on the head
of it. From the asylum they are. To the police they have been, to put
an embargo on the reward, and sorra a sixpence you’ll receive of the
fifty pounds of it: to the expenses of the asylum it must go, they say.
The treachery! Devil and all, the blood sweating on every coin of it
would rot the palm of a nigger. Do you hear me at all?”
She gave him a little shaking for he was standing stupid, gazing at
the bay which was dying into grave darkness except for the wash of its
broken waves.
“Do you hear me at all? It’s quit now you should, my little old man, or
they’ll be taking you.”
“Ah, yes, sure, I hear you, Christine; thank you kindly. Just looking
and listening I was. I’ll be stirring from it now, and I’ll get on and
I’ll go. Just looking and listening I was, just a wee look.”
“Then good-bye to you, Mr. Tool,” said Christine Horan, and turning
from him she left him in the darkness and went running up the ropewalk
to her home.
_Tribute_
Two honest young men lived in Braddle, worked together at the spinning
mills at Braddle, and courted the same girl in the town of Braddle,
a girl named Patience who was poor and pretty. One of them, Nathan
Regent, who wore cloth uppers to his best boots, was steady, silent,
and dignified, but Tony Vassall, the other, was such a happy-go-lucky
fellow that he soon carried the good will of Patience in his heart, in
his handsome face, in his pocket at the end of his nickel watch chain,
or wherever the sign of requited love is carried by the happy lover.
The virtue of steadiness, you see, can be measured only by the years,
and this Tony had put such a hurry into the tender bosom of Patience:
silence may very well be golden, but it is a currency not easy to
negotiate in the kingdom of courtship; dignity is so much less than
simple faith that it is unable to move even one mountain, it charms the
hearts only of bank managers and bishops.
So Patience married Tony Vassall and Nathan turned his attention to
other things, among them to a girl who had a neat little fortune—and
Nathan married that.