Part 13
“It might as well ha’ been caught in a rat-trap the way she held on,” said Peter. “I give you me word me hair’s standin’ on end yet, fit to rise me hat off the roof of me head. What wid that and the onnathural screeches she let, I won’er you didn’t hear them here. And it’s my belief she set off leggin’ after us—goodness preserve us—on’y I was afraid of me life to look round and see.”
These tidings spread general consternation among the company, as under the circumstances they well might do. For only a few hundred yards down the loaning lay an ancient burying-ground, with its ruined chapel and weed-entangled tombstones, a place whose ghostly reputation had long been established at Killymeen. In particular the wraith of a little old woman was often to be seen of an evening peering out through the rusty gate-bars, and sometimes stretching forth a fearsome hand to pluck at the unwary passer-by. But her appearance out on the roadside was a new development, and one which made Peter and Ned’s report unpleasant hearing for people who would presently be obliged to take that route home. The dance came to a standstill, and in its stead a series of dismal ghost-stories began to circle round the room. Perhaps the most gruesome of them was Nick Carolan’s. He related how he had once lived in a place where there was in the middle of the yard a deep well, out of which on certain moon-lit nights a dark figure would emerge and go gliding round and round it, making a wider and wider circuit, until she reached the house, at whose door she rapped loudly as she passed by. And whenever that happened there would be a death in the family before the twelve-month was out as sure as fate. A general shudder followed this _dénouement_, and old Mrs Linders made a particular application of it by remarking gloomily that it was a poor case to have the likes of such crathurs about; but Mrs Coleman, a comely matron, who continued to sit by the fire unperturbed, said placidly in a pause, “Sorra a bit of harm there’s in it this night I’m a-thinkin’. If the lads seen anythin’, it’s apt to ha’ just been some poor body after missin’ her way in the snow.”
“Troth and bedad, then it was the quare body altogether,” Peter asseverated, “and the hair of me head, as I was tellin’ you, bristlin’ straight wid the dhread of her the first minyit I come nigh the place.”
“Ah, sure, some people’s as ready at that as a dog at cockin’ his ears,” said Joey Nolan. “Maybe we’d a right to go look is there e’er a one in it. Some crathur might be strayin’ about perishin’, and it snowin’ again as thick as sheep’s wool.”
“Begor you won’t persuade me to go foolin’ along wid you,” said Peter; “I couldn’t be gettin’ my heels out of it fast enough. May the saints have me sowl, but I thought I’d lose me life afore ever I landed inside—and here I’ll stop. Nobody need be axin’ me, for divil a fut I’ll stir.”
“Good people are scarce,” Joe observed sarcastically; but Peter went on in a half-complacent tone, “One while it’ll be afore I’m the better of that frightenin’ I got. Every mortal bit of me’s in a thrimble wid it yet.”
“Musha, then, you gaby, can’t you whisht about it, instead of to be tellin’ everybody the sort of ould polthroon you are?” Rose Casey whispered to him fiercely, ready to cry with mortification as she saw significant smiles passing round at the expense of her happily unconscious betrothed.
As she spoke, the door resounded with a heavy thump, which made those who were standing next it hop back with a scarcely dignified haste. Some of them tried to carry it off by pretending that they were merely getting out of one another’s way, while some shrieked unfeignedly, and above all ejaculations rose Peter O’Donoghue’s voice, shrill with undissembled terror, saying: “Oh to goodness, don’t open it for your lives. Run that other form again it, you that are widin raich. Mercy be among us, she’s apt to have us all destroyed.”
“Arrah, now, will you be lettin’ us in out of that, you jackasses, you?” shouted a voice reassuringly familiar and irate. It was young Larry Sullivan, who had slipped out through the back door a few minutes before, and whose impatience at being kept waiting had nothing supernatural about it. Despite Peter’s remonstrances, the door was thrown open, and disclosed Larry, standing tall against a background of glimmering white, in a gloom which, when you looked into it anywhere steadily, grew full of wandering flakes like scattered bread-crumbs. Beside him appeared a smaller figure, whom he pulled indoors along with him before anybody well had time for terrific surmises, and whom the firelight showed to be a little old woman, wrapped up in a powdered brown shawl. She was breathless and bewildered and forlorn-looking, as she peered round from face to face, all strange, all comfortless—but no! for the moment Bridget Doran set eyes on her she sprang at her and caught her in a great hug—
“Why, granny darlint, and is it yourself?” she said. “And how at all did you come this night in the snow? It’s kilt you are entirely. You can’t ever ha’ come wid ould Bill Molloy?”
“Ah, honey, I thramped it,” said old Mrs Doran. “Sure I couldn’t rest aisy, thinkin’ me little Biddy was took that bad away all her lone among the strange people. But finely you’re looking, glory be to goodness. ’Deed now me heart’s been fit to break frettin’ ever since I got the letter this mornin’, sayin’ that belike you wouldn’t get over it.”
“An’ I to be dancin’ round like a zany bewitched, and you all the while streelin’ through the snow,” said Bridget, with acute remorse. “It’s sorry I am that I let anybody send you such owld lies. But”—looking indignantly at Rose—“I only said to say that I had a cowld.”
“And I lost me way in the dark,” went on Mrs Doran plaintively, “and what at all I’d ha’ done I dunno, on’y for the dacint boy coming by, for nought else the other two’d do but let yells at me, and run away like scared turkeys.”
“Creepin’ along under the high bank she was, the crathur, when I met her,” Larry meanwhile was telling the others, “and scarce able to contind wid the blasts of the win’. And sez she to me, ‘For the love of God, just stop to tell me am I anywhere near the Casey’s house?’ And sez I to her, ‘Is it the Quarry Farm you’re wantin’?’ And sez she to me, ‘Ay, it’s where my poor Katey’s little daughter Bridget Doran’s in service, and dyin’ wid some manner of outlandish sickness: It’s to her, I’m goin’,’ sez she. So sez I to her, if it was Bridget Doran she was wantin’, I’d seen the girl three minyits ago, and ne’er a sign of dyin’ on her whatsome’er, and I just brought her along here. It’s perished and stupid the crathur is wid the cowld. You’d a right to get her a cup of hot tay, and a warm at the fire,” concluded Larry, thereupon bestirring himself to superintend the carrying out of this prescription. And a little later he prompted his mother to offer Mrs Doran a night’s lodging at their house close by, thus entailing upon themselves more hospitality than they had foreseen.
For of the Surree at Mahon’s all’s well that ends well could not quite be said, as some of the guests were disposed to say prematurely when the assembly was breaking up. To begin with, old Mrs Doran had caught a very bad chill during her snowy wanderings, and now had a severe illness which endangered her life, and obliged Bridget to pay many an anxious and conscience-stricken hour as a fee for her deceptive letter, while a difference which she had next morning with Rose Casey about the unauthorised mendacity of its contents led to a permanent cooling down of their friendship. Moreover, Rose, on the very same day, spoke in such scathing terms to Peter O’Donoghue with reference to his panic on the night before, that even his impenetrable self-satisfaction was touched, and a violent falling out ensued. The consequence was that no wedding took place at Shrovetide; and the last time I had news from Killymeen “there was no talk of it at all, at all,” so the breach may be considered final. In fact, it is commonly supposed that he has some notion of transferring his attentions to Bridget Doran. But I happen to know that the only one among the boys she thinks anything of is Larry Sullivan, whom she always remembers gratefully as the rescuer of her grandmother. Whereas, if Larry fancies anyone, it is Kate Duffy.
Whence it appears that some rather complicated cross currents in the stream of life flowing through Killymeen have started from this Surree at Mahon’s.
THE SHORTEST WAY
THE SHORTEST WAY
District-Inspector Rochfort had risen very early on that wet August morning, to go trout-fishing along the Feltragh River. He hoped to get a couple of hours at it before breakfast; so he was not best pleased when Hugh Christie accosted him as he crossed the Ivy Bridge. Hugh was looking over the wreathed parapet up the river, and did not take his eyes off it; only put out a hand as Mr Rochfort passed, and stopped him with a touch on the arm. Undoubtedly Hugh had queer ways. His neighbours pronounced him to be “not all there,” which seemed an inappropriate description of his peculiarities, as rather there was more of him than of other people. But the more was something uncanny. He now said, still watching the water: “I was thinkin’ the Sargint might come by; howsome’er, sir, you’ll do as well.”
“That I won’t, my man,” said Mr Rochfort, “unless it can be done uncommonly smart, for I’ve no time to waste.”
“It’s as short as it’s long,” said Hugh. “But you needn’t mind about _thim_”—he pointed to the young man’s rod and creel—“there’ll be none of that work till it’s gone down, and risin’ it’ll be yet awhile.”
Mr Rochfort looked where Hugh was looking, and had reluctantly to admit the truth of this. The river ran far below them, down in a narrow steep-walled little glen, one of the many cracks that fissure Lisvaughan’s wind-swept, limestone plain. Almost each of these ravines has a stream in it, with a remnant of trees huddled together for shelter from the storms, whose stress they dare not meet in the open, and with ferns venturing out of the rock-clefts to droop ample fronds over the boulders on the margin. It is thus with Feltragh River, which rises in the moorland towards Shrole, and here, at the Ivy Bridge, comes round a sharp turn down a very stony stair. On the other side of the arch it broadens slightly, and a somewhat longer reach of it is in view; but Hugh Christie was staring up-stream, where the water rushed into sight abruptly within a pebble’s cast of his station. Swirling and tumbling it came, thrusting thick glassy strands between the boulders, or seething over the tallest of them in creamy fleeces. A roar ascended from those rapids hollowly and fitfully, so that the District-Inspector looked up and down the road occasionally, thinking a heavy cart must be lumbering along.
“There’s a strong current in it now,” said Hugh. “Man nor mortal couldn’t stand agin it. ’Twould lift a dead cow, let alone—anything else.”
“You’ve chosen a good place for a drenching,” said the District-Inspector, for the wind was driving its cold spray into their faces; “but I don’t see what else is to be got by staying in it.” And he was moving on, when Hugh said—
“Just wait a bit, till I tell you.”
Hugh’s clothes had a sodden appearance, as if they had given up trying to get any wetter, and his brown beard was all in a silvery mist of tiny drops; therefore he was not sensitive about the dampness of the weather. But what he said, though the District-Inspector did wait, was nothing more to the purpose than: “Last night was powerful dark; but it didn’t settle to rain till goin’ on for one o’clock—not to spake of, any way.”
“Well, it’s making up for lost time now, at all events,” said the District-Inspector, and had to be stopped again.
“See here, Mr Rochfort, you’re newish to the place; but ax anybody—ax his Riverence, or Mr Lennon at the public, or Sargint Moore—and every one of them’ll say I was niver known to raise a hand to do murdher on man or woman—or I might say child,” Hugh added after a pause, as if he felt that he was making large demands upon credulity.
“If I were you, Christie, I’d go home, out of the rain,” replied the District-Inspector.
“Och, no matther for that. I was goin’ to ax you, sir, did you remember the McAuliffes—the widdy and her daughter: that was all of them was in it, ever since you come to Lisvaughan.”
“Who lived at Brierly’s cottages over yonder?” the District-Inspector said, pointing towards the smooth-faced crag whose jut prevented them from seeing any farther up the Feltragh River. “I believe I do remember the old woman creeping to Mass—a little lame body; didn’t she die the other day?”
“Ay did she, last Friday week in Shrole Union; for the daughter that kep’ her out of it went wid the fever in the spring, and her son Dan that ped their rint in ’Sthralia, was niver sendin’ her a word iver since. So she made up her mind he was dead too, and she didn’t care what become of her after that; and she broke her heart fretting in the Infirm’ry. But last night Dan landed home lookin’ for her, as plased as anythin’.”
“The unlucky devil,” said the District-Inspector.
“You may say that,” said Hugh; “but there’s unluckier. Sure it was meself met him a trifle down the road, and on’y for that, ’twould ha’ been nobody’s doin’, and done all the same. And if it hadn’t been that outrageous dark, I’d never ha’ seen a sight of him. But sure up agin ourselves we foosthered on the path, and I wasn’t long then doubtin’ who had the discourse out of him about the Divil and such. So: ‘Is it after desthroyin’ you, I am, Dan?’ sez I. And sez he, ‘To your sowl, if it’s yourself, Hughey Christie,’ he sez, for he and I did be as thick as thieves in the ould times. And ‘Come a step along wid me,’ sez he, ‘for I can’t be delayin’.’ ‘Sure where’s the hurry at all?’ sez I, misdoubtin’ what might be in his mind, if he knew no betther or worser. ‘Why, man,’ sez he, ‘isn’t it goin’ on for ten year since I was at home? And like a living dhrame to me now I’m thinkin’ I’m that near her agin.’ So sez I to myself, ‘The Divil’s in it’; and sez I to himself, ‘Take care it isn’t too soon you’ll be gettin’ there, since you couldn’t conthrive it any sooner.’ Sure now, you’d ha’ supposed he’d ha’ had the wit to git a fright at that. But all he said was, ‘Ah,—the sisther, poor Lizzie, the crathur; ’deed, then, that was the great pity entirely, and a cruel loss to her for sartin. But sure that’s the raisin of me comin’ home at all, thinkin’ me mother’d be left too lonesome altogether. And what wid th’ ould stame-boat bustin’ up in her ingines,’ sez he, ‘and meself takin’ bad where they stopped for repeers, I’ve been twyste the time I’d a right to on the way. She’ll be in dhread there’s somethin’ happint me. Howane’er, sorra a much fear of that is there now, Hughey man, and me, so to spake, at the door goin’ in to her, thanks be to goodness,’ sez he.
“And niver a word out of me head to that. But I declare to you, sir, you might ha’ thought the river itself, that’s a dumb crathur, was thryin’ its best to tell him, accordin’ to the quare mutterin’ like it kep’ on wid down below. For stumpin’ up the Quarry Lane he was, that’s the nearest road to his house; ’twas just turnin’ into it I met him. Nor aisy it wouldn’t ha’ been any ways to git a word into the talk he had, and it mostly all about what he’d saved in ’Sthralia, and the fine counthry it was, and the grand thing to ha’ got away out of it. ‘But,’ sez he, ‘maybe I’d ha’ sted in it a while longer, if I hadn’t been afeard me ould woman here’d get mopin’ and frettin’ left all to herself, which I couldn’t abide the thoughts of. For right well I was doin’ out there,’ sez he, ‘and in another couple of years I’d ha’ had a goodish bit more to be bringin’ home wid me.’ And, bedad, you could see the truth of that, because every glimmer of light in the black of the night was shinin’ on the len’ths of the gould watch-chain he had wearin’ on his weskit. ‘Howiver,’ he sez, ‘I’ve plinty to be keepin’ her iligant, and what great matther about anythin’ more, when herself’s the on’y mortal crathur I have belongin’ to me in the width of the world? Sure, if I hadn’t her to be spendin’ it on,’ sez he, ‘I’d as lief be slingin’ ivery blamed ould pinny I own over the bank there into the rowlin’ river, and meself after it—faix would I, the Lord knows.’
“Well now, sir, after his sayin’ that, wouldn’t tellin’ him ha’ been as good as biddin’ him go dhrownd himself? I put it to you: wouldn’t it now?”
“It’s hard to say,” said the District-Inspector: “but what _did_ you do?”
“Stumpin’ along wid him I was, lettin’ on I was listenin’ to him, and all the while I was makin’ no more sinse of it than if he’d been a bullock I had dhrivin’ to market, that would be lettin’ a roar now and agin, at the mischief knows what. For thinkin’ to meself I was that unless I quitted foolin’ him, he’d be very prisintly walkin’ up to his door, and one of the Duggans, that he niver set eyes on in his life, shoutin’ to know who he was, and what he wanted, and tellin’ him the Union was after buryin’ his mother on him. So at last I’d twisted up me mind wid the notion I’d spake out the next time he said anythin’, and if I did, that minyit he hit me a clout on the back, and, ‘Och, Hughey, you bosthoon,’ sez he, ‘herself’ll be sittin’ this instiant of time be the fire in there, and niver thinkin’ I’m comin’ along a few perch down the ould road.’
“And sez I, ‘Tubbe sure, Dan, she’s thinkin’ no such thing at all’; and, for that matther, what truer could I ha’ said? And as sure as I’m alive, I’d ha’ gone on wid it, I would so, on’y ’twas just then we come round the turn opposite them Brierly Cottages. You know, sir, where they’re cocked up, across the river, fornint Fitzsimmons’ lime-kiln, wid ne’er a handy way of gittin’ at them except be the bridge; the next one above this it is—a wooden fut-bridge wid a hand-rail. But not a sight of it could we see in the dark, or anythin’ else, on’y the light burnin’ in the Duggans’ windy, the way it used to be afore they come there.
“And when Dan seen that, he let a sort of yell, and sez he, ‘There it is—there’s her ould bit of a lamp lightin’ the same as it was ever, and meself beholdin’ it agin—_glory be to God_.’ The Divil’s in it,” Hugh said, with a fierce clutch at the dripping ivy-sprays. “If the crathur hadn’t been so ready to be gloryin’ God, I’d ha’ found it in me heart to ha’ tould him the whole thing straight out—goodness help him!—but instead of that, I thought to be comin’ at it gradial. So I sez to him, lettin’ on I wasn’t mindin’ what he’d said, ‘Is it a star you’re lookin’ at?’ And sez he to me, ‘Musha, not at all, man; it’s somethin’ a dale nearer than a one of thim.’ And, ‘There’s things farther off than stars,’ sez I; and, ‘Belike there is,’ sez he, ‘but I’m not apt to be throublin’ me head about them when me ould woman’s waitin’ for me unbeknownst just across the sthrame. So I’ll be sayin’ good-night to you kindly, Hughey, and skytin’ over. Where at all’s the bridge? I can’t make out a stim before me. Ah, here it is!’ sez he, ‘right enough in its own place.’
“And it’s the truth I’m tellin’ you, Mr Rochfort, the truth I’m tellin’ you: not till the man was grabbin’ the rail wid one hand and mine wid the other, biddin’ me good-night, did the recollection come into me mind of anythin’ amiss. And then I dunno rightly how it was, but the same time I got considherin’ the way ’twould be, supposin’ I held me tongue for that minyit. For if I didn’t tell him the one thing, nobody’d ever tell him the other, and ’twould save throuble in a manner. Och, I dunno what come over me, but in the end all I sez to him was, ‘You’ll have to be walkin’ cautious, Dan,’—God forgive me, but for sure He won’t: that was every word I said.”
“But why should you have said more?” asked the District-Inspector. “The bridge is safe enough. Wasn’t the man sober?”
“Safe enough, begorra!” said Hugh. “If there warn’t six fut smashed slap out of the middle of it wid the big ash-tree buttin’ its head through it, that was blown off the top of the bank in the storm the night before last. Six fut clever and clane, and maybe six times six fut under it to drop down on the river and the rocks.”
“And you sent him over that in the dark?” said the District-Inspector. “What on earth possessed you?” This question, however, was merely a phrase, for he seemed to know the reason very well. “Was he killed?” he demanded, with the inquest in his mind. “Where’s the body lying?”
“It’s that I’m watchin’ for,” said Hugh, his eyes still following the rough white race below, “ever since I had light to see. He might be comin’ by any minyit now. But until the river riz wid the rain a couple of hours back, I doubt was there water enough to bring him; there was no very great dale runnin’ in it before then. So I wouldn’t think he could ha’ slipped past, and I not to notice.”
“Do you mean to say,” said the District-Inspector, “that you went off and left the unfortunate man there, without so much as ascertaining whether he was dead or alive?”