THE GHOST CARRIAGE
The boy stood staring at the apparition before him, unable to speak,
then he came towards the window; Con was beckoning to him.
“What is it?” said Patsy, speaking close up to the window and in a low
voice. “Go away with you, or it’s ruined I’ll be.”
“Faith, it’s worse ruined you’ll be if you don’t open the window,”
replied Con’s voice, muffled by its passage through the sash. “Open the
window, I want to talk to you. Where’s your respect for your uncle, you
spalpeen, to keep him talkin’ to you through a closed window? Up with
the sash, and not another word out of your head, or it’s I that will
teach you your manners with the end of me blackthorn stick.”
Patsy, trembling all over, undid the latch. Con, as I have said before,
had a great hold over him—the hold that wicked people often have over
others. Patsy raised the sash, and Con thrust his ugly head into the
room.
“Who told you I was here?” said Patsy, his teeth chattering, half from
the effect of the cold night wind that entered, making the candle gutter
in its socket, half from fear of his uncle.
“Who told me?” replied Con. “Why, who else but Micky Finnegan.”
“I might a’ known the blackguard would serve me that trick,” muttered
Patsy. “Bad cess’ to him and his goose, but I’ll be even with him yet”!
Con made no reply; having glanced round the room, he was leaning now on
the window-sill with his arms crossed, and his eyes fixed on his nephew
with an amused and critical stare.
“Will yiz look at the buttons on him?” said he, as though he were
addressing some invisible third person; “and the stripes down his legs
like the side of a haddock?” Then suddenly and ferociously: “Aren’t y’
ashamed of yourself for disgracin’ your fam’ly?”
“Disgracin’ me which? Sure, what have I been doin’?” asked Patsy.
“Doin’! You ax me that question, and you standin’ before me all over
buttons and stripes. Doin! Cleanin’ dishes and knives is what you’ve
been doin’, and you a Rooney, and me a Cogan; going into sarvice, that’s
what you’ve been doin’——”
Mr Cogan’s anger suddenly blazed forth, and he made a stretch over the
window-sill and tried to land his nephew a “skelp” with the famous
blackthorn stick, and fortunately failed.
His anger was not in the least simulated. The Cogans and the Rooneys had
always held their heads very high, some of them as high as the gibbet
arm of Tullagh, but whatever their history had been it showed no record
of menial service. Patsy’s father, by accepting the post of gamekeeper
at the Big House, had lowered the family prestige somewhat; but he was
forgiven, for a gamekeeper, though he works for his living as a servant,
does not wear livery; besides, he is a useful enough sort of relative,
when your own living is half gained by poaching.
Con having failed to reach his nephew drew back his stick, smothered his
wrath, and resumed his attitude, leaning with his arms crossed on the
window-ledge.
He had come to fetch his nephew out of the house for a purpose we will
presently see; but if you were to imagine Con doing anything he set
about in a straightforward and business-like manner, you would be
imagining the impossible.
In the old days, when he had the blacksmith’s shop in Castle Knock, it
would take him three times as long to make a horse-shoe or shoe a horse
as it would take any other blacksmith in the country.
He would lean on his hammer and discourse on the colour of the horse, on
the state of the weather, on anything at all so long as he could hold
you in talk, and stave off for a moment doing the work he had before
him. He was, like most idle and useless people, as inquisitive as a
magpie.
He leaned now on the window-ledge, looking leisurely about him, whilst
Patsy, who had skipped into the furthest corner of the room, stood
looking at his uncle and shivering, and wishing he would go.
“What’s in them chest of drawers?” said Con, nodding at the old deal
chest of drawers on which the candle was burning.
“Nothing,” replied Patsy; “only me ould clothes and a shirt or two Mrs
Kinsella has given me.”
“Open the drawer and take out your clothes,” commanded his uncle.
Patsy did as he was bid.
“Now,” said the other, “off with them buttons and stripes and on with
the ould things, so that I may forget I’m talkin’ to the disgrace of the
fam’ly.”
Patsy did as he was bid, and whilst he was changing Con continued his
conversation.
“I suppose,” said he, “there be great preparings going on for the
quality.”
“Ay, is there,” replied Patsy, whose mind was much perturbed by the
thought of what Con could be “afther,” for he well knew that his uncle
had come for some other purpose than simply to stand at the window and
talk upon general subjects.
“Pies and puddin’s and all,” went on Con.
“And sham-pane,” added Patsy.
“What’s that?” asked his uncle.
“Stuff in bottles wid gold tops to thim that let’s off like a gun. The
ould missis drinks it for dinner every night in her life. Mr James give
me a glass of it from the lavin’s of the bottle, and I’d no sooner drunk
it than I tumbled down the stairs wid a tray of glasses and smashed
every mother’s son of thim.”
“How many bottles does she drink of it?” asked Con, whose estimation of
Lady Seagrave rose considerably at this graphic description of her
favourite beverage.
“She doesn’t have more than a glass,” replied Patsy; “and she mixes it
with Siltzer water.”
“What’s that?”
“It’s water that tastes as if it was full of pins and needles.”
Con mused for a moment on the strange habits of the high and mighty,
whilst Patsy, who had changed his clothes, stood waiting for what was to
follow. He had not long to wait.
“Come here,” said his uncle, “till I button your coat for you.”
“Sure, it is buttoned,” replied Patsy, who was none too eager to come
within reach.
“Come here, till I button it proper, or it’s into the room I’ll be
gettin’ to make your tylet for you,” said Con, putting one leg over the
window-sill.
Now Con was the biggest coward on earth, and he had all sorts of strange
ideas about the law. He would help in a burglary as long as he could do
so safely; that is to say, he would urge another man on and give advice,
and help to dispose of the plunder, but he was far too careful of his
skin to enter a house or take an active part in the matter.
Even now, though he put his leg over the sill of the window, he would
not have dared to enter the room, for that would have been
housebreaking; but nothing could be done to a man for simply standing at
a window and “colloguing” with his nephew. If Mrs Kinsella had appeared
armed with a broom he would have run like a scared rabbit; but Patsy did
not know this, Patsy took his uncle on his face value, and certainly
Con’s face was of more value to him in affairs of this sort than his
heart, for his face was the face of a formidable and villainous-looking
rogue. Scaring old women and children, sucking eggs, stealing turnips,
milking stray cows and trapping rabbits, that was his way of life. Yet
he had the appearance of a brigand chief. There are many people in the
world like Con.
Patsy took a step towards his uncle; he seemed fascinated, just as a
mouse is fascinated by a cat.
“Come on.” said Con, “before I put my other leg over.”
“Sure, what do you want of me at all, at all?” said the unfortunate
Patsy, advancing against his will; “what harm have I done you?—what
ails—ouch!”
Con had suddenly seized him by the collar of his jacket and dragged him
through the window.
“Speak a word, and you’re dead,” said his uncle.
They were in the midst of a clump of laurel bushes that grew almost up
to the window.
“Come on now,” whispered Patsy’s uncle, dragging him along by the
collar; “I’m not goin’ to hurt a feather of you, but if you scream it’s
killed you’ll be. I’ve left the candle burnin’ on the chest o’ drawers,
sure it’ll burn itself out. Come on now, and tread gentle.”
They took a path that led them round by the side of the house to the
terrace in front.
It was a starlight night, brilliant almost, as if lit by the moon.
Con led the way down the terrace steps, and then, striking across the
park, made for the beech woods on the right.
Patsy followed him. They entered the long drive that cut through the
woods in the direction of Castle Knock. They had gone scarcely a quarter
of a mile down it when a faint, flickering glow amidst the trees on the
right became visible, and Patsy, clutching at his uncle’s coat-tail,
hung back.
He had heard often enough that the witches had a habit of meeting by
night in the woods here about. They would light a fire and make soup in
a big pot, and whilst it was boiling they would all sit round and make
jokes and tell stories, and their laughter—so the tale went—was enough
to turn a man’s hair grey.
“Come on,” said Con; “what are you afeared of?”
“It’s the witches,” said Patsy, in a terrified voice. “Sure, Uncle Con,
where’s your eyes that you can’t see the light of their fire, and they
sittin’ round it biling babies in pots——”
Con, without answering, seized his nephew by the ear and dragged him
along through the trees in the direction of the light. The boy did not
mind the pain; it was almost a relief, for it helped to drive the
witches from his mind.
A moment later they broke into a little clearing in the midst of which a
fire of holly sticks was burning brightly. By the fire sat something as
bad, or maybe worse, than a company of witches.
It was Paddy Murphy. He was sitting on a bundle of dried ferns toasting
his toes at the burning logs, his old hat without a brim was on the back
of his head, and he held a big stick in his hand with which every now
and then he gave the burning embers a prod.
“So you’ve brought him,” said Paddy, looking up as Con, leading his
nephew by the ear, broke out of the wood into the zone of firelight;
“you’ve cocht him alive-o. Faith, but it’s well he’s looking; but what’s
become of his buttons and stripes?”
“Faith, he’s left them behind him,” said Con making his nephew sit down
on the ground, and sitting down beside him.
“I can’t supply him with buttons,” said Mr Murphy, “but I’ve a large
supply of stripes, and I’ll be after dealin’ them out to him right
handed if he so much as opens his mouth, or stirs a finger, or does
anythin’ but keep his ears wide and listens to my directions. Are yiz
listenin’ to me, Patsy Rooney?”
“I am,” said Patsy.
“Well, keep on listenin’ and answer me questions. First and foremost,
when’s the quality coming to the Big House?”
“Day after to-morrow,” replied Patsy.
“How many is there?” went on Mr Murphy, prodding the fire meditatively
with his stick.
“Dozens of them. I heard Mrs Kinsella sayin’ that a lot of thim was
comin’ by spicial train to Tullagh station.”
Tullagh was the nearest railway station to Glen Druid Park, and it was
fifteen miles away.
“Did you hear tell of anything else about them?” asked Mr Murphy.
“I heard Mrs Kinsella say——” began Patsy, then he stopped.
“What did you hear her say?”
“Ohone!” wailed Patsy, “sure, I oughtn’t to be tellin’ you——”
Mr Murphy drew a clasp-knife from his pocket, opened it, tried the point
on his thumb to see if it were sharp, then, holding Patsy down with one
big hand on his chest, he approached the point of the knife to his
throat.
“Don’t do it, Paddy!” cried Con, pretending to be alarmed.
“I’ve made up me mind,” said Mr Murphy, “I’ve made up me mind to see the
colour of his blood, there’s no use in tryin’ to stop me. I’ve made up
me mind to see the colour of his blood.”
At this awful threat Patsy made sure that his last moment had come. He
was too frightened to speak or cry out, he just lay staring at the
broad, red face of his executioner, or as much as he could see of it,
for Mr Murphy’s back was half turned on the fire.
“Tell him, Patsy,” implored Con, “or he’ll have your life.”
Patsy felt the point of the knife tickling his throat.
“It’s the jewels!” shrieked Patsy.
“Which jewels?” asked Mr Murphy. “Quick now, or the knife goes into
you.”
“The jewels ould Lady Molyneux’s bringin’ with her worth hundredths of
thousands of pounds.”
“Who told you of them?” went on Mr Murphy.
“Mrs Kinsella, no less; she tould the maids and I was listenin’. Ohone!
sure, it’s ruined I am!”
“Faith, you never said a truer word, if you don’t tell all you know. Out
with it all, before I slits your wizzind.”
“Dimonds and em’ralds and all,” cried Patsy. “They say she do be wearin’
them wherever she goes, and she ould enough to be Mrs Kinsella’s
mother.”
“Where does she keep them at night?”
“In a box on her dressin’ table. Mrs Kinsella says she wonders the ould
lady hasn’t been robbed before this.”
“Faith, she won’t be wondering that long,” said Mr Murphy, who now
having got the information he required, closed his knife and put it in
his pocket. “Have you been listenin’ to what your nevy told me, Con
Cogan?”
“I have,” said Con.
“Now,” said Mr Murphy, turning to Patsy, whom he had released, and who
was sitting up with his hair all towsled and a scared look on his
face—“now listen to me, for I’m goin’ to talk bizness. Who locks the big
front door at night?”
“Mr James, the butler,” replied Patsy.
“What’s he do with the key?”
“Gives it to the ould missis—her ladyship, I mean, and she puts it under
her pilla’.”
“Bad cess to her and her pilla’!” grumbled Mr Murphy; “what makes her go
mistrustin’ people like that for? Well, now, the windy’s in front of the
house: could you be afther openin’ the latch of one of them for me if I
chanst to call some night soon afther the family was in bed to inspict
the drains?”
“Sure, every windy in the front of the house is fixed up with wires,”
replied Patsy, “so that if you raised one you’d ring a bell and a gun
would go off, and you’d be cocht as sure as sartin.”
“Think o’ that now,” said Mr Murphy. He gazed into the fire without
speaking whilst Patsy ransacked his mind for more ideas. The front door
of Glen Druid was left at night, like most other front doors, bolted and
chained with the key in the lock, any one could have opened it from the
inside; there were no wires on the front windows except in Patsy’s
imagination. Patsy often made blunders in household duties, but he was
by no means a fool.
“Think o’ that now,” said Mr Murphy, “the suspicions of thim; faith, you
might think there were no honest men in the world at all, at all, by the
way some people go on. Now, how about the little scullery window?”
“That’s been screwed up,” said Patsy, “wid screws the length of your
arm.”
“Paddy Murphy,” suddenly put in Con, who had been listening to the
foregoing.
“What is it, Con Cogan?”
“It’s a fool you are.”
“Howsome, which way?” asked Mr Murphy.
“Can’t we get into the house the same way I got Patsy out to-night?”
“And how was that?”
“Through his bedroom window; it’s on the floor be the ground, and
there’s no locks or screws to it, for he opened it to-night for me with
a turn of his wrist.”
“Faith, and that simplificates matters,” said Mr Murphy. “And now I’ll
draw up me plan of campaign. Patsy Rooney!”
“Yes, Mr Murphy.”
“You be all ears like an elephant whilst I tell you what you’re to be
doin’. First and foremost, whin the company arrives you’re to spot the
ould lady who has the big jewels. What do you say was her name?”
“Lady Molyneux,” replied Patsy.
“Having spotted her, you’re to find out where she sleeps. Are yiz
listenin’?”
“Yes, Mr Murphy.”
“You’re to lie awake every night till the clock strikes twelve. One
night in a day or two you’ll hear a tap at your bedroom windy, you’ll
open the windy and I’ll come in; then you’ll go foreninst me and lead me
to the ould lady’s bedroom. Don’t be thinking it’s her jewels I’m
afther, I am only wishful to read tracts to her and see if she’s said
her prayers. Now do you understand clear what you’ve got to do?”
“Yes, Mr Murphy.”
“Will yiz swear to do it?”
“Yes, Mr Murphy.”
“Well, then, repeat the form of the oath I’m going to tell you; say it
after me sintince by sintince. Are yiz ready?”
“Yes, Mr Murphy.”
“I, Patsy Rooney,” began the other, beating time with his stick, whilst
Patsy followed him sentence by sentence, “bein’ in me sound mind and
body, hereby swears to do all Mr Murphy bids me to do the uttermost
farthin’ wid diligence and despatch. And if I don’t, may me eyes pop out
of me head like burnin’ ches’nuts off a hob; may me tongue hang down to
me heels and thrail in the dust and be dry ever after for want of a
drink, and may me hair turn grey as a badger and fall off, leaving the
head of me bald as a coot. May me lift hand be turned into me right
hand, me feet twisted backwards, me legs stuck where me arms be, and the
nose of me turned to the snout of a pig.”
“Ohone!” wailed Patsy, when he had finished this oath, “sure, it’s
ruined I am entirely!” The mental picture of the figure he would cut,
should he fail to carry out Mr Murphy’s biddings, stood before his
mind’s eye with horrible distinctness.
No other form of oath, perhaps, could have had a more powerful effect on
the half-savage mind of the boy.
“That’s what you’ll be if you do a hair’s-breadth beyond what I tell
you,” said Mr Murphy. “You’ve swore to it now, and you’ll have to stick
to it, or eat ever after out of a trough. And now I’m goin’ to brand you
and make a freemason of you, so that you’ll know what’s in store for you
if you fails to keep your oath.”
Mr Murphy was not joking in the least; he knew well the effect physical
pain has in fixing an impression on the mind. He pulled Patsy’s sleeve
up and was in the act of seizing a burning stick from the fire when Con
Cogan, who was looking on and grinning, suddenly held up his hand and
said:
“Whisht!”
The little clearing in which they were seated was quite close to the
broad drive; one could see between the tree-boles anything passing along
the drive, and something was coming now.
I have said before that Glen Druid Park was haunted, or reputed so to
be. The apparition took the form of a hearse driven by a man without a
head. He carried his head under his arm, so the story ran, and, if the
head caught sight of any one, straight the driver would make for him,
bundle him into the vehicle, drive off with him, and then he would never
be seen again.
Several people had seen this terrible thing. Mrs Finnegan’s first
husband had been coming across the park one night when he had spied the
vehicle in the distance; it was travelling in the opposite direction to
that in which he was going, but directly the driver sighted him he had
turned, whipped up the horses and started in pursuit. Mr Finnegan ran.
He arrived at Castle Knock all covered with mud, and without the bottle
of whisky he had been carrying when he started.
He had thrown it away, so he said, and his escape was put down to that
fact, as no doubt the driver of the ghostly vehicle had stopped to pick
it up. Some people objected that a bottle of whisky could be of no use
to a man without a head, but they were overruled by the fact that the
bottle was found in the park empty. That clinched the matter.
“Whisht!” said Con, raising his hand.
Mr Murphy paused in his operations, and Patsy, who had just been on the
point of crying out, held his breath and listened.
Something was coming along the drive.
Now the sound was more distinct, the foot-falls of a horse and the
creakings of a vehicle of some sort could be made out. The thing was
coming along slowly.
“It’s the ‘carriage,’” said Con, whose white face had become simply
ghastly, “it’s the ‘hearse.’ I just caught a glimpse of the plumes of it
away beyant there between the trees; it’s comin’ this way.”
“Lord save us!” said Mr Murphy, whose crimson visage had become mottled
with white. “What’s that you’re saying, Con Cogan? Sure, the ghost
carriage wouldn’t be makin’ all that nise.”
“Wouldn’t it?” replied Con, whose teeth were chattering. “Tim Finnegan,
’fore he died, told me it rattled like a dunkey-cart when it was chasin’
him, and the fellow that drove it was peltin’ him all the time wid
skulls an’ crossbones.”
“I’ve heerd tell he has no power over childer; and if one keeps one’s
eyes tight shut, he don’t see you as long as you don’t see him,” said Mr
Murphy, “so I’m goin’ to shut me eyes.”
“So’m I,” said Con.
“Patsy, avick,” said Mr Murphy in a softened tone, but without leaving
hold of the boy.
“What is it, Mr Murphy?” asked Patsy.
“Keep your eyes wide open and tell us what you see, for he has no power
over childer, and he can’t see thim, by the same token, for Father
O’Hara tould me so.”
“I will, Mr Murphy.”
Now Patsy, who was half a savage, had a savage’s acute sense of hearing,
and, more than that, of knowing what it was he heard. He could tell the
movements of a stoat from those of a rabbit. He knew every cart and
carriage for miles round by the sound it made, and he knew now quite
well that the thing coming along the drive was no ghost carriage, but
Tim Brady’s dung-cart, for the left wheel had a squeak of its own that
was quite unmistakable.
Mr Brady’s business in life was to collect manure and sell it, and as he
had the habit of stopping at public-houses and places on the way home,
he was often late in his peregrinations.
“Are your eyes open, Patsy?” said Mr Murphy, who still had a tight hold
of the boy.
“They are,” said Patsy, pretending to chatter his teeth; “but it’s
tirrified I am, now I see it through the trees. Musha! musha! it’s the
‘carriage’ sure enough, wid the great black plumes of it wavin’, and the
chap on the box without a head on his shoulders.”
“Ave Maria, ave Maria, ave Maria!” muttered Mr Murphy, who was a devout
Catholic when he was frightened. “Con Cogan, y’ divil, be sayin’ your
prayers, or it’s a clip I’ll land you with me stick. Ora pro nobis, save
us an’ sanctify us—Patsy, what’s he afther now?”
“I see his head under his arm,” said Patsy, “and the eyes of it glowin’
like the eyes of a moth.”
“I’ve robbed and I’ve stole,” mumbled Mr Murphy. “I’ve treated me wife
cruel, I ain’t fit to be—what’s he afther now, Patsy?”
Mr Brady, seeing the glow of the fire amidst the trees, had stopped his
cart to inspect.
“He’s stopped the carriage and he’s holdin’ his head up, and the eyes of
it glowin’ like lamps.”
“Keep your eyes tight shut, Con,” said Mr Murphy, “and confess your sins
same as I’m doin’. Ora pro nobis—I killed M’Carthy wid a clip of a
stick, though the crowner’s jury brought it in appeplexy whin they found
him in the ditch wid the heels of him stickin’ in the air, but I didn’t
_mane_ to do it; I only wanted to rob him. Ora pro nobis—I shot old
Mullins in the small o’ the back so that the back buttons of his coat
was blown through his wistcoat, but I didn’t _mane_ to do it, for the
gun wint off before I could club him on the head with the butt of it.
Ora pro nobis, save us and sanctify us! Then there’s the man I kilt at
Tullagh fair, and I don’t know his name at all, at all, for there was
nothin’ in his purse to identify him by, only two pound and a sheep-dip
tablet which I ’et in mistake for a cough drop and nearly burnt a hole
in me tongue—bad cess to him! Then there’s the man—what’s he afther now,
Patsy?”
“He’s after us!” yelled Patsy, springing to his feet, and shaking
himself free from Mr Murphy’s clutch. “Run for your lives—here he
comes!”
Next moment Patsy, Mr Murphy and Con were running through the woods,
each in a different direction. Patsy could hear the terrified shouts of
the others, and he stopped and held on to the trunk of a small beech
tree and laughed till the tree shook.
Then he resumed his way back to the Big House at a “sweep’s trot” under
the light of the moon that was just rising over the distant hills. His
window was still open and the candle had burnt itself out, but the moon
gave light enough to get into bed by. Still laughing and chuckling to
himself, he got between the sheets.
Suddenly the laughing and the chuckling ceased, for the remembrance of
his oath came back to him. He had sworn to open the window for Paddy
Murphy, and he well knew that, though Paddy might be frightened enough
to-night, all the ghost carriages in the world would not stop him from
coming if he had made up his mind to steal the jewels.
When the knock came to the window he would have to open it or go about
for ever with the snout of a pig, his legs where his arms were, and his
face where the back of his head ought to be. It seems incredible that he
should firmly believe in such a happening, yet he did, for he had the
Celtic aptitude for belief, and his head was filled with the most
wonderful and wild superstitions.
He believed that the holy well at Tullagh would cure warts if you placed
your hand in the water. He believed that holy water would drive away
devils, and he believed that old Widow Finnegan could think a sick
person well if she set her mind to it. He believed in witches and ghosts
and banshees and cluricaunes. So it is not, after all, to be wondered at
that he believed the oath he had solemnly taken would “fly back on him”
if he broke it.
Yet for all his youth and simplicity, Patsy had a quickness of
intelligence that many a grown man might have envied. Though he made
mistakes at times, a week had converted him into a fairly efficient
page-boy; and he could have held his own, with his tongue, against any
fish-woman on the quays of the Liffey.
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