there lies a district of two or three miles in length, which is rendered
interesting by the fact that it is one of the very few spots throughout
this country in which some vestiges of aboriginal forests still remain.
It has little or none of the lordly character of the American forest,
for the axe has felled its oldest and its grandest trees; but in the
close wood which survives live all the wild and pleasing peculiarities
of nature: its complete irregularity, its vistas, in whose perspective
the quiet cattle are browsing; its refreshing glades, where the grey
rocks arise from amid the nodding fern; the silvery shafts of the old
birch-trees; the knotted trunks of the hoary oak, the grotesque but
graceful branches which never shed their honours under the tyrant
pruning-hook; the soft green sward; the chequered light and shade;
the wild luxuriant weeds; the lichen and the moss--all are beautiful
alike in the green freshness of spring or in the sadness and sere of
autumn. Their beauty is of that kind which makes the heart full with
joy--appealing to the affections with a power which belongs to nature
only. This wood runs up, from below the base, to the ridge of a long
line of irregular hills, having perhaps, in primitive times, formed but
the skirting of some mighty forest which occupied the level below.
But now, alas! whither have we drifted? whither has the tide of
civilization borne us? It has passed over a land unprepared for it--it
has left nakedness behind it; we have lost our forests, but our
marauders remain; we have destroyed all that is picturesque, while we
have retained everything that is revolting in barbarism. Through the
midst of this woodland there runs a deep gully or glen, where the
stillness of the scene is broken in upon by the brawling of a
mountain-stream, which, however, in the winter season, swells into
a rapid and formidable torrent.
There is one point at which the glen becomes extremely deep and narrow;
the sides descend to the depth of some hundred feet, and are so steep
as to be nearly perpendicular. The wild trees which have taken root in
the crannies and chasms of the rock are so intersected and entangled,
that one can with difficulty catch a glimpse of the stream which wheels,
flashes, and foams below, as if exulting in the surrounding silence and
solitude.
This spot was not unwisely chosen, as a point of no ordinary strength,
for the erection of a massive square tower or keep, one side of which
rises as if in continuation of the precipitous cliff on which it is
based. Originally, the only mode of ingress was by a narrow portal in
the very wall which overtopped the precipice, opening upon a ledge of
rock which afforded a precarious pathway, cautiously intersected,
however, by a deep trench cut out with great labour in the living rock;
so that, in its pristine state, and before the introduction of artillery
into the art of war, this tower might have been pronounced, and that not
presumptuously, impregnable.
The progress of improvement and the increasing security of the times
had, however, tempted its successive proprietors, if not to adorn, at
least to enlarge their premises, and about the middle of the last
century, when the castle was last inhabited, the original square tower
formed but a small part of the edifice.
The castle, and a wide tract of the surrounding country, had from time
immemorial belonged to a family which, for distinctness, we shall call
by the name of Ardagh; and owing to the associations which, in Ireland,
almost always attach to scenes which have long witnessed alike the
exercise of stern feudal authority, and of that savage hospitality which
distinguished the good old times, this building has become the subject
and the scene of many wild and extraordinary traditions. One of them I
have been enabled, by a personal acquaintance with an eye-witness of the
events, to trace to its origin; and yet it is hard to say whether the
events which I am about to record appear more strange and improbable as
seen through the distorting medium of tradition, or in the appalling
dimness of uncertainty which surrounds the reality.
Tradition says that, sometime in the last century, Sir Robert Ardagh, a
young man, and the last heir of that family, went abroad and served in
foreign armies; and that, having acquired considerable honour and
emolument, he settled at Castle Ardagh, the building we have just now
attempted to describe. He was what the country people call a _dark_ man;
that is, he was considered morose, reserved, and ill-tempered; and, as
it was supposed from the utter solitude of his life, was upon no terms
of cordiality with the other members of his family.
The only occasion upon which he broke through the solitary monotony
of his life was during the continuance of the racing season, and
immediately subsequent to it; at which time he was to be seen among
the busiest upon the course, betting deeply and unhesitatingly, and
invariably with success. Sir Robert was, however, too well known as a
man of honour, and of too high a family, to be suspected of any unfair
dealing. He was, moreover, a soldier, and a man of intrepid as well as
of a haughty character; and no one cared to hazard a surmise, the
consequences of which would be felt most probably by its originator
only.
Gossip, however, was not silent; it was remarked that Sir Robert never
appeared at the race-ground, which was the only place of public resort
which he frequented, except in company with a certain strange-looking
person, who was never seen elsewhere, or under other circumstances. It
was remarked, too, that this man, whose relation to Sir Robert was never
distinctly ascertained, was the only person to whom he seemed to speak
unnecessarily; it was observed that while with the country gentry he
exchanged no further communication than what was unavoidable in
arranging his sporting transactions, with this person he would converse
earnestly and frequently. Tradition asserts that, to enhance the
curiosity which this unaccountable and exclusive preference excited,
the stranger possessed some striking and unpleasant peculiarities of
person and of garb--though it is not stated, however, what these
were--but they, in conjunction with Sir Robert's secluded habits and
extraordinary run of luck--a success which was supposed to result from
the suggestions and immediate advice of the unknown--were sufficient to
warrant report in pronouncing that there was something _queer_ in the
wind, and in surmising that Sir Robert was playing a fearful and a
hazardous game, and that, in short, his strange companion was little
better than the Devil himself.
Years rolled quietly away, and nothing very novel occurred in the
arrangements of Castle Ardagh, excepting that Sir Robert parted with his
odd companion, but as nobody could tell whence he came, so nobody could
say whither he had gone. Sir Robert's habits, however, underwent no
consequent change; he continued regularly to frequent the race meetings,
without mixing at all in the convivialities of the gentry, and
immediately afterwards to relapse into the secluded monotony of his
ordinary life.
It was said that he had accumulated vast sums of money--and, as his bets
were always successful and always large, such must have been the case.
He did not suffer the acquisition of wealth, however, to influence his
hospitality or his house-keeping--he neither purchased land, nor
extended his establishment; and his mode of enjoying his money must have
been altogether that of the miser--consisting merely in the pleasure of
touching and telling his gold, and in the consciousness of wealth.
Sir Robert's temper, so far from improving, became more than ever gloomy
and morose. He sometimes carried the indulgence of his evil dispositions
to such a height that it bordered upon insanity. During these paroxysms
he would neither eat, drink, nor sleep. On such occasions he insisted on
perfect privacy, even from the intrusion of his most trusted servants;
his voice was frequently heard, sometimes in earnest supplication,
sometimes raised, as if in loud and angry altercation with some unknown
visitant. Sometimes he would for hours together walk to and fro
throughout the long oak-wainscoted apartment which he generally
occupied, with wild gesticulations and agitated pace, in the manner of
one who has been roused to a state of unnatural excitement by some
sudden and appalling intimation.
These paroxysms of apparent lunacy were so frightful, that during their
continuance even his oldest and most faithful domestics dared not
approach him; consequently his hours of agony were never intruded upon,
and the mysterious causes of his sufferings appeared likely to remain
hidden for ever.
On one occasion a fit of this kind continued for an unusual time; the
ordinary term of their duration--about two days--had been long past,
and the old servant who generally waited upon Sir Robert after these
visitations, having in vain listened for the well-known tinkle of his
master's hand-bell, began to feel extremely anxious; he feared that his
master might have died from sheer exhaustion, or perhaps put an end to
his own existence during his miserable depression. These fears at length
became so strong, that having in vain urged some of his brother servants
to accompany him, he determined to go up alone, and himself see whether
any accident had befallen Sir Robert.
He traversed the several passages which conducted from the new to the
more ancient parts of the mansion, and having arrived in the old hall
of the castle, the utter silence of the hour--for it was very late in
the night--the idea of the nature of the enterprise in which he was
engaging himself, a sensation of remoteness from anything like human
companionship, but, more than all, the vivid but undefined anticipation
of something horrible, came upon him with such oppressive weight that
he hesitated as to whether he should proceed. Real uneasiness, however,
respecting the fate of his master, for whom he felt that kind of
attachment which the force of habitual intercourse not unfrequently
engenders respecting objects not in themselves amiable, and also a
latent unwillingness to expose his weakness to the ridicule of his
fellow-servants, combined to overcome his reluctance; and he had just
placed his foot upon the first step of the staircase which conducted to
his master's chamber, when his attention was arrested by a low but
distinct knocking at the hall-door. Not, perhaps, very sorry at finding
thus an excuse even for deferring his intended expedition, he placed
the candle upon a stone block which lay in the hall and approached the
door, uncertain whether his ears had not deceived him. This doubt was
justified by the circumstance that the hall entrance had been for nearly
fifty years disused as a mode of ingress to the castle. The situation of
this gate also, which we have endeavoured to describe, opening upon a
narrow ledge of rock which overhangs a perilous cliff, rendered it at
all times, but particularly at night, a dangerous entrance. This
shelving platform of rock, which formed the only avenue to the door, was
divided, as I have already stated, by a broad chasm, the planks across
which had long disappeared, by decay or otherwise; so that it seemed at
least highly improbable that any man could have found his way across the
passage in safety to the door, more particularly on a night like this,
of singular darkness. The old man, therefore, listened attentively, to
ascertain whether the first application should be followed by another.
He had not long to wait. The same low but singularly distinct knocking
was repeated; so low that it seemed as if the applicant had employed
no harder or heavier instrument than his hand, and yet, despite the
immense thickness of the door, with such strength that the sound was
distinctly audible.
The knock was repeated a third time, without any increase of loudness;
and the old man, obeying an impulse for which to his dying hour he could
never account, proceeded to remove, one by one, the three great oaken
bars which secured the door. Time and damp had effectually corroded the
iron chambers of the lock, so that it afforded little resistance. With
some effort, as he believed, assisted from without, the old servant
succeeded in opening the door; and a low, square-built figure,
apparently that of a man wrapped in a large black cloak, entered
the hall. The servant could not see much of this visitor with any
distinctness; his dress appeared foreign, the skirt of his ample cloak
was thrown over one shoulder; he wore a large felt hat, with a very
heavy leaf, from under which escaped what appeared to be a mass of long
sooty-black hair; his feet were cased in heavy riding-boots. Such were
the few particulars which the servant had time and light to observe. The
stranger desired him to let his master know instantly that a friend had
come, by appointment, to settle some business with him. The servant
hesitated, but a slight motion on the part of his visitor, as if to
possess himself of the candle, determined him; so, taking it in his
hand, he ascended the castle stairs, leaving the guest in the hall.
[Illustration: HE PAUSED, BUT THERE WAS NO SOUND.]
On reaching the apartment which opened upon the oak-chamber he was
surprised to observe the door of that room partly open, and the room
itself lit up. He paused, but there was no sound; he looked in, and saw
Sir Robert, his head and the upper part of his body reclining on a
table, upon which two candles burned; his arms were stretched forward on
either side, and perfectly motionless; it appeared that, having been
sitting at the table, he had thus sunk forward, either dead or in a
swoon. There was no sound of breathing; all was silent, except the
sharp ticking of a watch, which lay beside the lamp. The servant coughed
twice or thrice, but with no effect; his fears now almost amounted to
certainty, and he was approaching the table on which his master partly
lay, to satisfy himself of his death, when Sir Robert slowly raised his
head, and, throwing himself back in his chair, fixed his eyes in a
ghastly and uncertain gaze upon his attendant. At length he said, slowly
and painfully, as if he dreaded the answer,--
"In God's name, what are you?"
"Sir," said the servant, "a strange gentleman wants to see you below."
At this intimation Sir Robert, starting to his feet and tossing his arms
wildly upwards, uttered a shriek of such appalling and despairing terror
that it was almost too fearful for human endurance; and long after the
sound had ceased it seemed to the terrified imagination of the old
servant to roll through the deserted passages in bursts of unnatural
laughter. After a few moments Sir Robert said,--
"Can't you send him away? Why does he come so soon? O Merciful Powers!
let him leave me for an hour; a little time. I can't see him now; try to
get him away. You see I can't go down now; I have not strength. O God!
O God! let him come back in an hour; it is not long to wait. He cannot
lose anything by it; nothing, nothing, nothing. Tell him that! Say
anything to him."
The servant went down. In his own words, he did not feel the stairs
under him till he got to the hall. The figure stood exactly as he had
left it. He delivered his master's message as coherently as he could.
The stranger replied in a careless tone:
"If Sir Robert will not come down to me; I must go up to him."
The man returned, and to his surprise he found his master much more
composed in manner. He listened to the message, and though the cold
perspiration rose in drops upon his forehead faster than he could wipe
it away, his manner had lost the dreadful agitation which had marked it
before. He rose feebly, and casting a last look of agony behind him,
passed from the room to the lobby, where he signed to his attendant not
to follow him. The man moved as far as the head of the staircase, from
whence he had a tolerably distinct view of the hall, which was
imperfectly lighted by the candle he had left there.
He saw his master reel, rather than walk, down the stairs, clinging all
the way to the banisters. He walked on, as if about to sink every moment
from weakness. The figure advanced as if to meet him, and in passing
struck down the light. The servant could see no more; but there was
a sound of struggling, renewed at intervals with silent but fearful
energy. It was evident, however, that the parties were approaching the
door, for he heard the solid oak sound twice or thrice, as the feet of
the combatants, in shuffling hither and thither over the floor, struck
upon it. After a slight pause, he heard the door thrown open with such
violence that the leaf seemed to strike the side-wall of the hall, for
it was so dark without that this could only be surmised by the sound.
The struggle was renewed with an agony and intenseness of energy that
betrayed itself in deep-drawn gasps. One desperate effort, which
terminated in the breaking of some part of the door, producing a sound
as if the door-post was wrenched from its position, was followed by
another wrestle, evidently upon the narrow ledge which ran outside the
door, overtopping the precipice. This proved to be the final struggle;
it was followed by a crashing sound as if some heavy body had fallen
over, and was rushing down the precipice through the light boughs that
crossed near the top. All then became still as the grave, except when
the moan of the night-wind sighed up the wooded glen.
The old servant had not nerve to return through the hall, and to him the
darkness seemed all but endless; but morning at length came, and with
it the disclosure of the events of the night. Near the door, upon the
ground, lay Sir Robert's sword-belt, which had given way in the scuffle.
A huge splinter from the massive door-post had been wrenched off by
an almost superhuman effort--one which nothing but the gripe of a
despairing man could have severed--and on the rocks outside were left
the marks of the slipping and sliding of feet.
[Illustration: AT THE FOOT OF THE PRECIPICE.]
At the foot of the precipice, not immediately under the castle, but
dragged some way up the glen, were found the remains of Sir Robert,
with hardly a vestige of a limb or feature left distinguishable. The
right hand, however, was uninjured, and in its fingers were clutched,
with the fixedness of death, a long lock of coarse sooty hair--the only
direct circumstantial evidence of the presence of a second person.
[Illustration]
The Dream.
Dreams! What age, or what country of the world, has not felt and
acknowledged the mystery of their origin and end? I have thought not a
little upon the subject, seeing it is one which has been often forced
upon my attention, and sometimes strangely enough; and yet I have never
arrived at anything which at all appeared a satisfactory conclusion. It
does appear that a mental phenomenon so extraordinary cannot be wholly
without its use. We know, indeed, that in the olden times it has been
made the organ of communication between the Deity and His creatures;
and when a dream produces upon a mind, to all appearance hopelessly
reprobate and depraved, an effect so powerful and so lasting as to break
down the inveterate habits, and to reform the life of an abandoned
sinner, we see in the result, in the reformation of morals which
appeared incorrigible, in the reclamation of a human soul which seemed
to be irretrievably lost, something more than could be produced by a
mere chimera of the slumbering fancy, something more than could arise
from the capricious images of a terrified imagination. And while Reason
rejects as absurd the superstition which will read a prophecy in every
dream, she may, without violence to herself, recognize, even in the
wildest and most incongruous of the wanderings of a slumbering
intellect, the evidences and the fragments of a language which may be
spoken, which _has_ been spoken, to terrify, to warn and to command. We
have reason to believe too, by the promptness of action which in the
age of the prophets followed all intimations of this kind, and by the
strength of conviction and strange permanence of the effects resulting
from certain dreams in latter times--which effects we ourselves may have
witnessed--that when this medium of communication has been employed
by the Deity, the evidences of His presence have been unequivocal. My
thoughts were directed to this subject in a manner to leave a lasting
impression upon my mind, by the events which I shall now relate, the
statement of which, however extraordinary, is nevertheless accurate.
About the year 17--, having been appointed to the living of C----h, I
rented a small house in the town which bears the same name: one morning
in the month of November, I was awakened before my usual time by my
servant, who bustled into my bedroom for the purpose of announcing a
sick call. As the Catholic Church holds her last rites to be totally
indispensable to the safety of the departing sinner, no conscientious
clergyman can afford a moment's unnecessary delay, and in little more
than five minutes I stood ready, cloaked and booted for the road, in the
small front parlour in which the messenger, who was to act as my guide,
awaited my coming. I found a poor little girl crying piteously near the
door, and after some slight difficulty I ascertained that her father was
either dead or just dying.
"And what may be your father's name, my poor child?" said I. She held
down her head as if ashamed. I repeated the question, and the wretched
little creature burst into floods of tears still more bitter than she
had shed before. At length, almost angered by conduct which appeared to
me so unreasonable, I began to lose patience, and I said rather
harshly,--
"If you will not tell me the name of the person to whom you would lead
me, your silence can arise from no good motive, and I might be justified
in refusing to go with you at all."
"Oh, don't say that--don't say that!" cried she. "Oh, sir, it was that
I was afeard of when I would not tell you--I was afeard, when you heard
his name, you would not come with me; but it is no use hidin' it
now--it's Pat Connell, the carpenter, your honour."
She looked in my face with the most earnest anxiety, as if her very
existence depended upon what she should read there. I relieved the child
at once. The name, indeed, was most unpleasantly familiar to me; but,
however fruitless my visits and advice might have been at another time,
the present was too fearful an occasion to suffer my doubts of their
utility, or my reluctance to re-attempting what appeared a hopeless
task, to weigh even against the lightest chance that a consciousness of
his imminent danger might produce in him a more docile and tractable
disposition. Accordingly I told the child to lead the way, and followed
her in silence. She hurried rapidly through the long narrow street which
forms the great thoroughfare of the town. The darkness of the hour,
rendered still deeper by the close approach of the old-fashioned houses,
which lowered in tall obscurity on either side of the way; the damp,
dreary chill which renders the advance of morning peculiarly cheerless,
combined with the object of my walk--to visit the death-bed of a
presumptuous sinner, to endeavour, almost against my own conviction,
to infuse a hope into the heart of a dying reprobate--a drunkard but
too probably perishing under the consequences of some mad fit of
intoxication; all these circumstances served to enhance the gloom and
solemnity of my feelings, as I silently followed my little guide, who
with quick steps traversed the uneven pavement of the Main Street. After
a walk of about five minutes, she turned off into a narrow lane, of that
obscure and comfortless class which is to be found in almost all small
old-fashioned towns, chill, without ventilation, reeking with all manner
of offensive effluviæ, and lined by dingy, smoky, sickly and pent-up
buildings, frequently not only in a wretched but in a dangerous
condition.
"Your father has changed his abode since I last visited him, and, I am
afraid, much for the worse," said I.