Doane had a wife in Mablethorpe. He married her when she was but
sixteen,--a child. But she was afraid of her father's anger, and her
husband soon after went abroad, became one of Prince Charlie's men, and
she's never seen him since. She never really loved him, but she never
forgot that she was his wife; and she always dreaded his coming back; as
well she might, for you see what happened when he did come. I pitied
her, dear Cousin Dick, with all my heart; and when Tom Doane died on
the field of battle in Holland last year, I wept with her and prayed for
her. And you would have wept too, man though you are, if you had seen
how grateful she was that he died in honourable fighting, and not in a
smuggler's cave at Theddlethorpe. She blessed you for that, and she
never ceases to work with me for the King's pardon for you.
There is no more to say now, dear Cousin Dick, save that I would have
you know I think of you with great desire of heart for your well-being,
and I pray God for your safe return some day to the good country which,
pardoning you, will cast you out no more.
I am, dear Cousin Dick,
Thy most affectionate Cousin,
FANNY.
P.S.--Dear Dick, my heart bursts for joy. Enclosed here is thy pardon,
sent by the good Earl Fitzwilliam last night. I could serve him on my
knees forever. Dick, she that was Tom Doane's wife, she loves thee. Wilt
thou not come back to her? In truth, she always loved thee. She was thy
cousin; she is thy Fanny. Now thou knowest all.
THE PATH OF MURTOGH
BY
HAROLD FREDERIC
THE PATH OF MURTOGH
A curse is laid on one long narrow strip of the sea, down in front of
Dunlogher.
No matter how lifeless the sunlit air may hang above; no matter how
silken-smooth the face of the waters nearest by, lifting themselves
without a ripple in the most indolent summer swell,--an angry churning
goes always forward here. Disordered currents will never tire of their
coiling and writhing somewhere underneath: the surface is streaked with
sinister markings like black shadows, which yet are no shadows at all;
and these glide without ceasing out and in among the twisted lines of
grey-white scum, and everything moves and nothing changes, till Judgment
Day. It has the name of the _Slighe Mhuircheartaigh_ (spoken Shlee
Vurharthee), or the Path of Murtogh.
Though 'tis well known that the grandest ling and turbot and wonderful
other big fishes lie swaying themselves in the depths of this wicked
water, with giant crayfish and crabs to bear them company, the fishermen
of Dunmanus and Goleen and Crookhaven, and even the strangers from Cape
Clear, would not buy a soul from Purgatory at the price of drawing a net
through it. They have a great wish to please the buyers in the English
ships, and the Scotch and Manx, O yes,--but a creel of gold would not
tempt them to meddle in 'Murty's Path.' They steer their boats far to
one side, and bless themselves as they pass, in the manner of their
fathers and grandfathers before them.
These poor men, having not much of the Irish now, and not rightly
understanding what their elders may have heard the truth of, say that
this snake-like forbidding stretch wears its name from Murty _Oge_
O'Sullivan. Their thought is that the uncanny boiling began in the wake
of the English _Speedwell_, as the corpse of the vanquished privateer
spun and twirled at her keel through the foam, on its savage last
journey from Castletown to Cork. But it is enough to look down at this
evil place, to see that the malediction upon it must be older than Murty
_Oge's_ time, which, in the sight of Dunlogher, was as yesterday. Why,
men are living this year who talked with men who saw his head spiked
over South gate. There were no great curses left unused in Ireland at so
late a day as his. And again, would it be the waters of Dunlogher that
would tear themselves for an O'Sullivan?
[Illustration: _Saw his head spiked over South Gate._]
No, the curse threads back a dozen lives behind poor Murty _Oge_. The
strange currents weave and twine, and the greasy foam spreads and
gathers, gathers and spreads, in the path of another, whose birthright
it was that they should baptise him. The true tale is of Murty the
Proud, or if you will have his style from the Book of Schull,--Murtogh
_Mordha_ O'Mahony, chief in Dunlogher. And his time is not so distant,
in one way, as men take account of years. But in another it is too
remote for any clear vision, because the 'little people' of the old,
fearful kind had left every other part of Ireland, and they were just
halting together for a farewell pause in Dunlogher, by reason of its
being the last end of the land, and their enchantments fanned up a
vapour about Murty _Mordha_ to his undoing. And it is as if that mist
still rose between us and his story.
I
When the sun began to sink out of sight, down behind the sea, two men
stood on the edge of the great cliff of Dunlogher, their faces turned to
the west.
The yellow flame from the sky shone full in the eyes of Murtogh, and he
held his huge, bare head erect with boldness, and stared back at it
without blinking. His companion, a little, shrivelled old man, whom he
held by the arm, had the glowing light on his countenance as well, but
his eyelids were shut. He bent himself against his chief's thick
shoulder and trembled.
'Are we to the brink itself?' he asked; his aged voice shook when he
spoke.
'Here, where I stand, when I would grip you, and hold you forth at the
length of my arm, and open my hand, you would fall a hundred fathoms in
the air.' Murtogh's free arm and hand made the terrible gesture to fit
his words, but he tightened his protecting clasp upon the other, and led
him back a few paces. The old man groaned his sigh of relief.
'It is you who are the brave nobleman, Murty,' he whispered, admiringly.
'There is none to equal your strength, or your grand courage, in all the
land. And the heart of pure gold along with it!'
Murtogh tossed his big head, to shake the twisted forelock of his hair
to one side. 'I looked straight into the sun at noon on St. John's Day,'
he said, quietly, with the pride of a child. 'If it were a hundred times
as bright, I would look at it, and never fear for my eyes. I would hold
my own son out here, stretched over the abyss, and he would be no safer
in his bed. Whatever I wished to do, I would do it.'
'You would--O, you would!' assented the old man, in tones of entire
sincerity.
The chieftain kept his eyes on the skyline, beneath which, as the
radiance above deepened, the waters grew ashen and coldly dark. Musing,
he held his silence for a time. Then, with abruptness, he asked:--
'What age were you, Owny Hea, when the McSwineys put out your eyes? Were
you strong enough to remember the sun well?'
'I was of no strength at all,' the other whimpered, the tragedy of his
childhood affecting his speech on the instant. 'I was in my mother's
arms. There were the men breaking in through the wall, and the kine
bellowing outside, and my father cut down; and then it was like my
mother drew her cloak tight over my head,--and no one came ever to take
it off again. I forget the sun.'
Murtogh nodded his head. 'I will go to Muskerry some day,' he said, in a
kindly way. 'I cannot tell when, just now; but I will go, and I will
burn and desolate everything for six miles around, and you shall have a
bag for your harp made of eyelids of the McSwineys.'
Old Owny lifted his sightless face toward his master, and smiled with
wistful affection. 'Ah, Murty, dear,' he expostulated, mildly, 'it is
you who have the grand nature; but think, Murty,--I am a very old man,
and no kin of yours. It is fifty years since the last man who took my
eyes drew breath. If you went now, no living soul could tell what you
came for, or why the great suffering was put upon them. And, moreover,
the O'Mahonys Carbery have wives from the McSwineys these three
generations. No feud lies now.'
The lord of Dunlogher growled sharply between his teeth, and Owny shrank
further back.
'How long will you be learning,' Murtogh demanded, with an arrogant note
in his voice, 'that I have no concern in the O'Mahonys Carbery, or the
O'Mahonys _Fonn-Iartarach_, or any other? I do not take heed of Conogher
of Ardintenant, or Teige of Rosbrin, or Donogh of Dunmanus, or Donal of
Leamcon. I will give them all my bidding to do, and they will do it, or
I will kill them, and spoil their castles. You could not behold it, but
you have your song from the words of others: how last year I fell upon
Diarmaid _Bhade_, and crushed him and his house, and slew his son, and
brought away his herds. His father's father and mine were brothers. He
is nearer to me in blood than the rest, yet I would not spare him. I
made his Ballydevlin a nest for owls and bats. Let the others observe
what I did. I am in Dunlogher, and I am the O'Mahony here, and I look
the sun in the face like an eagle. Put that to your song!'
The sound came to them, from the walled bawn and gateways beyond the
Three Castles, a hundred yards behind, of voices in commotion. The old
bard lifted his head, and his brow scored itself in lines of listening
attention. If Murtogh heard, he gave no sign, but gazed again in
meditation out upon the vast waste of waters, blackening now as the
purple reflections of the twilight waned.
'Blind men have senses that others lack,' he remarked at last. 'Tell me,
you, does the earth we stand on seem ever to you to be turning round?'
Owny shuddered a little at the thought which came to him. 'When you led
me out beyond here, and I felt the big round sea-pinks under my feet,
and remembered they grew only on the very edge--' he began.
'Not that,' the chief broke in, ''tis not my meaning. But at Rosbrin
there was a book written by Fineen the son of Diarmaid, an uncle to my
father's father, and my father heard it read from this book that the
world turned round one way, like a duck on a spit, and the sun turned
round the other way, and that was why they were apart all night. And
often I come here, and I swear there is a movement under my feet. But
elsewhere there is none, not in the bawn, or in the towers, or anywhere
else but just here.'
The old man inclined his face, as if he could see the ground he stood
upon, but shook his head after a moment's waiting. 'It would not be
true, Murty,' he suggested. 'Old Fineen had a mighty scholarship, as I
have heard, and he made an end to edify the angels, but--but--'
Murtogh did not wait for the hesitating conclusion. 'I saw his tomb
when I was a lad, in the chapel at Rosbrin. He was laid at his own
desire under a weight of stone like my wall here. I saw even then how
foolish it was. These landsmen have no proper sense. How will they rise
at the blessed Resurrection, with all that burden of stone to hold them
down? I have a better understanding than that. I buried my father, as he
buried his father, out yonder in the sea. And I will be buried there,
too, and my son after me--and if I have other children--' he stole a
swift glance at the old man's withered face as he spoke--'if I have
others, I say, it will be my command that they shall follow me there,
when their time comes. I make you witness to that wish, Owny Hea.'
The bard hung his head. 'As if my time would not come first!' he said,
for the mere sake of saying something. Then, gathering courage, he
pulled upon the strong arm which was still locked in his, and raised
his head to speak softly in the O'Mahony's ear.
'If only the desire of your heart were given you, Murty,' he murmured;
'if only once I could hold a babe of yours to my breast, and put its
pretty little hands in my beard,--I'd be fit to pray for the men who
took my eyes from me. And Murty dear,'--his voice rose in tremulous
entreaty as he went on,--'tell me, Murty,--I'm of an age to be your
father's father, and I've no eyesight to shame you,--is she--is your
holy wife coming to see her duty differently? Have you hope
that--that--?'
Murtogh turned abruptly on his heel, swinging his companion round with
him. They walked a dozen paces towards the sea-gate of the castles,
before he spoke. 'You have never seen her, Owny!' he said, gravely. 'You
do not know at all how beautiful she is. It is not in the power of your
mind to imagine it. There is no one like her in all the world. She is
not just flesh and blood like you, Owny, or even like me. I am a great
lord among men, Owny, and I am not afraid of any man. I would put the
MacCarthy, or even the Earl of Desmond, over my cliff like a rat, if he
came to me here, and would not do me honour. But whenever I come where
she sits, I am like a little dirty boy, frightened before a great shrine
of our Blessed Lady, all with jewels and lights and incense. I take
shame to myself when she looks at me, that there are such things in my
heart for her to see.'
Owny sighed deeply. 'The grandest princess in the world might be proud
to be mated to you, Murty,' he urged.
'True enough,' responded Murtogh, with candour. 'But she is not a
princess,--or any mere woman at all. She is a saint. Perhaps she is more
still. Listen, Owny. Do you remember how I took her,--how I swam for her
through the breakers--and snapped the bone of my arm to keep the mast of
their wreck from crushing her when the wave flung it upon us, and still
made land with her head on my neck, and hung to the bare rock against
all the devils of the sea sucking to pull me down--?'
'Is it not all in my song?' said Owny, with gentle reproach.
'Owny, man, listen!' said Murtogh, halting and giving new impressiveness
to his tone. 'I took her from the water. Her companions were gone; their
vessel was gone. Did we ever see sign of them afterward? And her
family,--the Sigersons of that island beyond Tiobrad,--when men of mine
sailed thither, and asked for Hugh, son of Art, were they not told that
the O'Flaherty had passed over the island, and left nothing alive on it
the size of a mussel shell? Draw nearer to me, Owny. You will be
thinking the more without your eyes. Have you thought that it may be
she--whisper now!--that she may belong to the water?'
They stood motionless in the gathering twilight, and the bard turned the
problem over deliberately. At last he seemed to shake his head. '_They_
would not be displaying such piety, as the old stories of them go,' he
suggested, 'or--I mean it well to you, Murty--or breaking husbands'
hearts with vows of celibacy.'
The O'Mahony pushed the old man from him. 'Then if she be a saint,' he
cried, 'why then it were better for me to make ten thousand more blind
men like you, and tear my own eyes out, and lead you all headlong over
the cliff there, than risk the littlest offence to her pure soul!'
The old bard held out a warning hand. 'People are coming!' he said. Then
gliding towards his chief, he seized the protecting arm again, and
patted it, and fawned against it. 'Where you go, Murty,' he said
eagerly, 'I follow. What you say, I say.'
Some dancing lights had suddenly revealed themselves at the corner of
the nearest castle wall. Murtogh had not realised before that it was
dusk. 'They will be looking for me,' he said, and moved forward,
guiding his companion's steps. The thought that with Owny it was always
dark rose in him, and drove other things away.
Three men with torches came up,--rough men with bare legs and a single
skirt-like tunic of yellow woollen cloth, and uncovered heads with
tangled and matted shocks of black hair. The lights they bore gleamed
again in the fierce eyes which looked out from under their forelocks.
'O'Mahony,' one of them said, 'the _liathan_ priest is at the
gate,--young Donogh, son of Donogh _Bhade_ who fled to Spain. He is
called Father Donatus now.'
'What will he want here?' growled Murtogh. 'I have beaten his father; if
I have the mind, his tonsure will not hold me from beating him also.'
'He has brought a foreign Spaniard, a young man with breeches and a
sword, who comes to you from the King of Spain.'
Murtogh straightened himself, and disengaged the arm of the blind man.
'Run forward, you two,' he ordered sharply, 'and call all the men from
the bawns and the cattle and the boats, and I will have them light
torches, and stand in a line from the second tower to the postern, and
show their spears well in front, and be silent. I will not have any man
talk but myself, or thrust himself into notice. We were Kings of
Rathlin, and we have our own matters to discuss with the Kings of
Spain.'
II
Three score fighting men, some bearing lights, and all showing shields,
and spears, or javelins, or long hooked axes, crowded in the semblance
of a line along the narrow way to the large keep--and behind them packed
four times their number of women and children--watched Murtogh when he
brought his guests past from the gate.
He moved proudly up the boreen, with a slow step, and the gleam of a
high nature in his eyes. His own people saw afresh how great was his
right to be proud. The broad hard muscles of his legs, straining to
burst their twisted leather thongs as he walked; the vast weight and
thickness of the breast and shoulders, under the thin summer cloak of
cloth from the Low Countries which he held wrapped tight about them; the
corded sinews of his big bare neck; above all, the lion-like head, with
its dauntless regard and its splendid brown-black mane, and the sparkle
of gold in the bushing glibb on his brow,--where else in all Ireland
would their match be found? But for that strange injunction to silence,
the fighters of the sept would be splitting the air with yells for their
chieftain. They struck their weapons together, and made the gaze they
bent upon him burn with meaning, and he, without looking, read it, and
bore himself more nobly yet; and the mothers and wives and little ones,
huddled behind in the darkness, groaned aloud with the pain of their
joy in Murty _mordha_.
It swelled the greatness of Murtogh when they looked upon those who
followed him. 'It is the _soggarth liathan_,' they whispered, at view of
the young priest, with his pointed face and untimely whitened hair. He
would not turn his ferret glance to right or left, as he followed close
in his cousin's lordly footsteps, for the reason that these sea-wolves
of Dunlogher had ravaged and burnt his father's country within the year,
and slain his brother, and gnashed their teeth now, even as he passed,
for rage at the sight of him.
And the messenger who came to speak to Murty the words of the King of
Spain! They grinned as they stared upon him. An eel-fly, a lame
fledgeling gull, a young crab that has lost its shell,--thus they
murmured of him. His legs were scarce the bigness of a Cape woman's
arms, and were clad in red silken cloth stretched as close as skin. He
had foolish little feet, with boots of yellow leather rising to the
knee, and from the mid-thigh to the waist were unseemly bulging
breeches, blown out like a buoy, and gashed downwise with stripes of
glowing colours, repeated again in his flowing sleeves. His burnished
steel corslet and long reed-like sword would be toys for children in
Dunlogher. His face, under its wide plumed hat of drab felt, was that of
no soldier at all,--a thin smooth rounded face of a strange smoky
darkness of hue, with tiny upturned moustachios, and delicately bended
nose. And the eyes of him! They seemed to be the half of his countenance
in size, what with their great dusky-white balls, and sloe black
centres, and their thick raven fringes and brows that joined each other.
The armed kernes who stood nearest took not much heed of these eyes, but
the older women, peeping between their shoulders, saw little else, and
they made the sign of the cross at the sight.
When two hours had passed, the baser folk of Dunlogher knew roughly
what was in the wind. Two wayfaring men of humble station had come in
the train of the Spaniard, and though they had no Irish, their story
somehow made itself told. A ship from Spain, which indeed Dunlogher had
seen pass a week before, had put in at Dingle, on the Kerry coast, and
had landed James Fitzmaurice, the Papal legate Sanders, some other
clergy, and a score and more Spanish gentlemen or men at arms, with a
banner blessed by the Holy Father. A great army from Spain and Italy
would follow in their wake. But, meantime, the first comers were
building a fort at Smerwick, and the clan of Fitzgerald was up, and
messengers were flying through the length and breadth of Munster and
Connaught, passing the word to the Catholic chiefs that the hour of
driving the English into the sea was at hand.
The lower floors of the castle and the pleasant grassy bawns outside,
cool with the soft sea wind of the summer night, were stirred to a
common fervour by these tidings. The other O'Mahonys, the chiefs of
Dunmanus and Dunbeacon to the north, of Ballydevlin, Leamcon,
Ardintenant, and Rosbrin to the south, and elsewhere in Desmond the
O'Sullivans, MacCarthys, O'Driscolls and the rest, were clashing their
shields. Ah, when they should see Murty striding into the field!
In the big hall overhead, where--after three courses of stone stairs
were climbed, so narrow that a man in armour must needs walk
sideways--the abode of the chieftain and his own blood began, Murtogh
was ready to hear the message of the King of Spain.
The broad rough-hewn table, with its dishes of half-cleaned bones and
broken cheeses and bread, its drinking horns and flagons, and litter of
knives and spoons, had been given over to the master's greyhounds, who
stood with forepaws on the board and insinuated their long necks and
muzzles noiselessly here and there among the remains of the meal. A
clump of reeds, immersed in a brazier of fish oil, burned smokily among
the dishes for light.
When, at the finish of the eating, Murtogh had given the signal for
departure to the dozen strong men nearest akin to him, or in his best
favour, there were left only his son, a slow, good lad born of a first
wife long since dead, the blind Owny, the Spaniard and the _liathan_ (or
prematurely grey) young priest.
Then Murtogh said to this last man: 'Donogh, son of Donogh _Bhade_, I
have not frowned on you nor struck you, for the reason that you are my
guest. But because my hand is open to you, it is no reason that I should
lie, and pretend that I am your friend or you mine. Your brother,
Diarmaid, the one I could not get to kill, calls himself my heir, and
twice has sought to take the life of my son here, my Donogh _baoth_.
Therefore, I will have you go now, and sit below with the others, or
read your prayers in your chamber where you are to sleep, because I will
hear now what the King of Spain says to me, and that is not meant for
your ears.'
The priest stood on his feet. 'Your pride does not become you, Murty
_Mordha_' he said, 'when I am come to you for your soul's sake and the
glory of religion.' His voice was thin and high-pitched, but there was
no fear in it.
'I will not be taking trouble for my soul just now,' replied Murty;
'that will be for another time, when I am like to die. And then I will
have my own confessor, and not you, nor anyone like you. So you will go
now, as I bid you.'
Father Donatus, standing still, curled his lips in a hard smile. 'You
are a great man, Murty! You could dishonour my father, and slay my
brother like the headstrong bullock that you are; but there are things
you cannot do. You cannot lay your finger to me because I come on the
business of God.'
'It is the business of the King of Spain that I will be thinking of,'
said Murty, with curtness.
'They are the same,' rejoined the young priest. 'And you are wrong to
say what you will be thinking of, because you have not a mind to think
at all. If you could think, you would know that you cannot have the
words of the King of Spain except when I interpret them to you. This
noble gentleman who comes with me speaks more tongues than one, but he
has no Irish, and you,--it is well known that you have nothing else. Don
Tello has sat at your side for two hours, and you have not observed that
each word between him and you came and went through me. Oh, yes; you are
a great man, Murty, but your mind is not of a high order.'