An Isle in the Water Part 6

THE DEATH SPANCEL

High up among the dusty rafters of Aughagree Chapel dangles a thin shrivelled thing, towards which the people look shudderingly when the sermon is of the terrors of the Judgment and the everlasting fire. The woman from whose dead body that was taken chose the death of the soul in return for a life with the man whom she loved with an unholy pa.s.sion. Every man, woman, and child in that chapel amid gray miles of rock and sea-drift, has heard over and over of the unrepentant deathbed of Mauryeen Holion. They whisper on winter nights of how Father Hugh fought with the demons for her soul, how the sweat poured from his forehead, and he lay on his face in an agony of tears, beseeching that the sinner whom he had admitted into the fold of Christ should yet be saved. But of her love and her sin she had no repentance, and the servants in Rossatorc Castle said that as the priest lay exhausted from his vain supplications, and the rattle was in Dark Mauryeen's throat, there were cries of mocking laughter in the air above the castle, and a strange screaming and flapping of great wings, like to, but incomparably greater than, the screaming and flapping of the eagle over Slieve League. That devil's charm up there in the rafters of Aughagree is the death-spancel by which Dark Mauryeen bound Sir Robert Molyneux to her love. It is of such power that no man born of woman can resist it, save by the power of the Cross, and 'twas little Robert Molyneux of Rossatorc recked of the sweet Christ who perished that men should live--against whose Cross the demons of earth and the demons of air, the malevolent spirits that lurk in water and wind, and all witches and evil doctors, are powerless. But the thought of the death-spancel must have come straight from the King of Fiends himself, for who else would harden the human heart to desecrate a new grave, and to cut from the helpless dead the strip of skin unbroken from head to heel which is the death-spancel? Very terrible is the pa.s.sion of love when it takes full possession of a human heart, and no surer weapon to the hand of Satan when he would make a soul his own. And there is the visible sign of a lost soul, and it had nearly been of two, hanging harmlessly in the rafters of the holy place. A strange thing to see where the lamp of the sanctuary burns, and the sea-wind sighs sweetly through the door ever open for the continual worshippers.

Sir Robert Molyneux was a devil-may-care, sporting squire, with the sins of his cla.s.s to his account. He drank, and gambled, and rioted, and oppressed his people that they might supply his pleasures; nor was that all, for he had sent the daughter of honest people in shame and sorrow over the sea. People muttered when they heard he was to marry Lord Dunlough's daughter, that she would be taking another woman's place; but it was said yet again that it would be well for his tenants when he was married, for the lady was so kind and charitable, so gentle and pure, that her name was loved for many a mile. She had never heard the shameful story of that forlorn girl sailing away and away in the sea-mist, with her unborn child, to perish miserably, body and soul, in the streets of New York. She had the strange love of a pure woman for a wild liver; and she thought fondly when she caressed his fine, jolly, handsome face that soon his soul as well as his dear body would be in her keeping: and what safe keeping it would be.

Sir Robert had ever a free way with women of a cla.s.s below his own, and he did not find it easy to relinquish it. When he was with the Lady Eva he felt that under those innocent, loving eyes a man could have no desire for a lesser thing than her love; but when he rode away, the first pretty girl he met on the road he held in chat that ended with a kiss. He was always for kissing a pretty face, and found the habit hard to break, though there were times when he stamped and swore great oaths to himself that he would again kiss no woman's lips but his wife's--for the man had the germ of good in him.

It was a fortnight to his wedding day, and he had had a hard day's hunting. From early morning to dewy eve they had been at it, for the fox was an old one and had led the dogs many a dance before this. He turned homeward with a friend, splashed and weary, but happy and with the appet.i.te of a hunter. Well for him if he had never set foot in that house. As he came down the stairs fresh and shining from his bath, he caught sight of a girl's dark handsome face on the staircase.

She was one of the servants, and she stood aside to let him pa.s.s, but that was never Robert Molyneux's way with a woman. He flung his arm round her waist in a way so many poor girls had found irresistible.

For a minute or two he looked in her dark splendid eyes; but then as he bent lightly to kiss her, she tore herself from him with a cry and ran away into the darkness.

He slept heavily that night, the dead sleep of a man who has hunted all day and has drunk deep in the evening. In the morning he awoke sick and sorry, a strange mood for Robert Molyneux; but from midnight to dawn he had lain with the death-spancel about his knees. In the blackness of his mind he had a great longing for the sweet woman, his love for whom awakened all that was good in him. His horse had fallen lame, but after breakfast he asked his host to order out a carriage that he might go to her. Once with her he thought all would be well.

Yet as he stood on the doorstep he had a strange reluctance to go.

It was a drear, gray, miserable day, with sleet pattering against the carriage windows. Robert Molyneux sat with his head bent almost to his knees, and his hands clenched. What face was it rose against his mind, continually blotting out the fair and sweet face of his love? It was the dark, handsome face of the woman he had met on the stairs last night. Some sudden pa.s.sion for her rose as strong as h.e.l.l-fire in his breast. There were many long miles between him and Eva, and his desire for the dark woman raged stronger and ever stronger in him. It was as if ropes were around his heart dragging it backward. He fell on his knees in the carriage, and sobbed. If he had known how to pray he would have prayed, for he was torn in two between the desire of his heart for the dark woman, and the longing of his soul for the fair woman. Again and again he started up to call the coachman to turn back; again and again he flung himself in the bottom of the carriage, and hid his face and struggled with the curse that had come upon him.

And every mile brought him nearer to Eva and safety.

The coachman drove on in the teeth of the sleet and wondered what Sir Robert would give him at the drive's end. A half-sovereign would not be too much for so open-handed a gentleman, and one so near his wedding; and the coachman, already feeling his hand close upon it, turned a brave face to the sleet and tried not to think of the warm fire in the harness-room from which they had called him to drive Sir Robert.

Half the distance was gone when he heard a voice from the carriage window calling him. He turned round. 'Back! Back!' said the voice.

'Drive like h.e.l.l! I will give you a sovereign if you do it under an hour.' The coachman was amazed, but a sovereign is better than a half-sovereign. He turned his bewildered horses for home.

Robert Molyneux's struggle was over. Eva's face was gone now altogether. He only felt a mad joy in yielding, and a wild desire for the minutes to pa.s.s till he had traversed that gray road back. The coachman drove hard and his horses were flecked with foam, but from the windows Robert Molyneux kept continually urging him, offering him greater and greater rewards for his doing the journey with all speed.

Half way up the cypress avenue to his friend's house a woman with a shawl about her head glided from the shadow and signalled to the darkly flushed face at the carriage window. Robert Molyneux shouted to the man to stop. He sprang from the carriage and lifted the woman in.

Then he flung the coachman a handful of gold and silver. 'To Rossatorc,' he said, and the man turned round and once more whipped up his tired horses. The woman laughed as Robert Molyneux caught her in his arms. It was the fierce laughter of the lost. 'I came to meet you,' she said, 'because I knew you must come.'

From that day, when Robert Molyneux led the woman over the threshold of his house, he was seen no more in the usual places of his fellow-men. He refused to see any one who came. His wedding-day pa.s.sed by. Lord Dunlough had ridden furiously to have an explanation with the fellow and to horsewhip him when that was done, but he found the great door of Rossatorc closed in his face. Every one knew Robert Molyneux was living in shame with Mauryeen Holion. Lady Eva grew pale and paler, and drooped and withered in sorrow and shame, and presently her father took her away, and their house was left to servants. Burly neighbouring squires rode up and knocked with their riding-whips at Rossatorc door to remonstrate with Robert Molyneux, for his father's sake or for his own, but met no answer. All the servants were gone except a furtive-eyed French valet and a woman he called his wife, and these were troubled with no notions of respectability. After a time people gave up trying to interfere. The place got a bad name. The gardens were neglected and the house was half in ruins. No one ever saw Mauryeen Holion's face except it might be at a high window of the castle, when some belated huntsman taking a short-cut across the park would catch a glimpse of a wild face framed in black hair at an upper window, the flare of the winter sunset lighting it up, it might be, as with a radiance from h.e.l.l. Sir Robert drank, they said, and rack-rented his people far worse than in the old days. He had put his business in the hands of a disreputable attorney from a neighbouring town, and if the rent was not paid to the day the roof was torn off the cabin, and the people flung out into the ditch to rot.

So the years went, and folk ever looked for a judgment of G.o.d on the pair. And when many years were over, there came to Father Hugh, wringing her hands, the wife of the Frenchman, with word that the two were dying, and she dared not let them die in their sins.

But Mauryeen Holion, Dark Mauryeen, as they called her, would not to her last breath yield up the death-spancel which she had knotted round her waist, and which held Robert Molyneux's love to her. When the wicked breath was out of her body they cut it away, and it lay twisted on the ground like a dead snake. Then on Robert Molyneux, dying in a distant chamber, came a strange peace. All the years of sin seemed blotted out, and he was full of a simple repentance such as he had felt long ago when kneeling by the gown of the good woman whom he had loved. So Father Hugh absolved him before he died, and went hither and thither through the great empty rooms shaking his holy water, and reading from his Latin book.

And lest any in that place, where they have fiery southern blood in their veins, should so wickedly use philtres or charms, he hung the death-spancel in Aughagree Chapel for a terrible reminder.

XI

A SOLITARY

There was a difference of twenty years between the brothers, yet, to look at them, it might have been more. Patrick, the younger, was florid and hearty; the elder, James, was unpopular--a gray, withered old churl, who carried written on his face the record of his life's failure. His conversation, when he made any, was cynical. When he came into a room where young people were enjoying themselves, playing cards or dancing, his shadow came before him and lay heavily on the merry-makers. Fortunately, he did not often so intrude; he was happier in his room at the top of the fine house, where he had his books and his carpenter's tools. If one of those young people whom his cynicism withered could have seen him at his carpentry, how different he would have seemed! They would have seen him with his grimness relaxed, and his gray face lit up with interest, and would have been amazed to hear his low, cheery whistle, full and round as the pipe of a bullfinch; at night, when his telescope swept the stars, and he trembled with the delight of the visionary and the student, he was a new man. He was a clever man, born out of his proper sphere, and with only so much education as he had contrived to get at during a hard life. What came to him he a.s.similated eagerly, and every one of those books in his cupboard, rare old friends, had been read over a hundred times.

He ought to have had a chance in his youth, but his father was the last man in the world to encourage out-of-the-way ambitions in his sons. Father and mother were alike--hard, grasping, and ungracious.

The father, on the whole, was a pleasanter person than the mother, with her long, pale, horse-face and ready sneer; he was only uncompromisingly hard and ungenial to all the world.

There were other children besides these two, all long since dead or scattered. Two of the boys had run away and gone to America; their first letters home remained unanswered, and after one or two attempts they ceased to write. The one girl had slipped into a convent, after a horrified glimpse at the home-life of her parents when she had returned from her boarding-school. She had been sent away to a convent in a distant town while still a mere child. She had come and gone in recurring vacations, still too childish to be more than vaguely repelled by the unlovely rule of her home. But at sixteen she came home 'for good'; very much for evil, poor little Eily would have said, as she realised in its full sordidness the grinding manner of life which was to be hers. No wonder she wet her pillow night after night with her tears for the pure and gentle atmosphere of the convent, for the soft-voiced and mild-eyed nuns, and the life of the spirit which shone ideally fair by this appalling life of the world. So, after a time, she had her will and escaped to the convent.

James could never understand why he, too, had not broken bounds, and run off to America with Tom and Alick. Perhaps he was of a more patient nature than they. Perhaps the life held him down. It was, indeed, such a round of hard, unvarying toil that at night he was content to drop down in his place like a dead man, and sleep as the worn-out horses sleep, dreaming of a land of endless green pastures, beyond man's harrying. Alick and Tom were younger. They had not had time to get broken to hardship like him, and Patrick was yet a baby.

Friends or social pleasures were beyond their maddest dreams. Their parents' idea of a life for them was one in which hard work should keep them out of mischief. James could never remember in those days a morning when he had risen refreshed; he was always heavy with sleep when following the plough-horses, or feeding the cattle. Food of the coa.r.s.est, sleep of the scantiest, were the rule of the house. Joy, or love, or kindness, never breathed between those walls.

Meanwhile, the father was getting old, and a time came when he sat more and more by the fire in winter, sipping his gla.s.s of grog and reading the country papers, or listening to his wife's acrid tattle.

Mrs. Rooney hated with an extreme hatred all the good, easy-going neighbours who were so soft with their children, and encouraged dancing, and race-going and card-playing--the amus.e.m.e.nts of the Irish middle cla.s.ses. She had a bitter tongue, and once it was set agoing no one was safe from it--not the holiest nor purest was beyond its defilement.

It was about this time that the labourers began to think the young master rather more important than the old one; but for their connivance, James Rooney could never have been drawn into Fenianism.

The conspiracy was just the thing to fascinate the boy's impressionable heart. The poetry, the glamour of the romantic devotion to Mother Country fed his starved idealism; the midnight drillings and the danger were elements in its attraction. James Rooney drilled with the rest, swore with them their oaths of fealty to Dark Rosaleen, was out with them one winter night when the hills were covered with snow, and barely escaped by the skin of his teeth from the capture which sent some of his friends into penal servitude.

Mrs. Rooney's amazed contempt when she found that her eldest son was among 'the boys' was a study in character. The lad was not compromised openly; and though the police had their suspicions, they had nothing to go upon, and the matter ended in a domiciliary visit which put Mrs.

Rooney in a fine rage, for she had a curious subservient ambition to stand well with the gentry.

However, soon after that, as she was pottering about the fowl-yard one bitter day--she would never trust anybody to collect the eggs from the locked henhouse but herself--she took a chill, and not long afterwards died. If she had lived perhaps James would never have had the courage to a.s.sert himself and take the reins of management as he did. But with her going the iron strength of the old man seemed to break down.

He fulfilled her last behest, which was that her funeral was to take place on a Sunday, so that the farm hands should not get a day off; and then, with some wonder at the new masterful spirit in his son, he gave himself up to an easy life.

This independence in James Rooney was not altogether the result of his Fenianism. As a matter of fact, he had fallen in love, with the overwhelming pa.s.sion of a lad who had hitherto lived with every generous emotion repressed. The girl was a gay, sweet, yet impa.s.sioned creature who was the light of her own home. At that home James Rooney had first realised what a paradise home may be made; and coming from his own gloomy and horrid surroundings, the sunshine of hers had almost blinded him. In that white house among the wheatfields love reigned. And not only love, but charity, hospitality, patriotism, and religion. There was never a rough word heard there; even the household creatures, the canary in the south window, the comfortable cats, the friendly dogs, partook of the general sunniness.

They were rebels of the hottest type. The one son had been out with the Fenians and was now in America. His exile was a bitter yet proud grief to his father and mother; but their enthusiasm was whetted rather than damped by the downfall of the attempted rebellion. At night, when the curtains were drawn and the door barred against all fear of 'the peelers,' the papers that had the reports of the Dublin trials were pa.s.sed from hand to hand, or read aloud amid intense silence, accompanied by the flushing cheek, the clenching hand, often the sob, that told of the pa.s.sionate feeling of the hearers.

Sometimes Ellen would sing to them, but not the little gay songs she trilled so delightfully, now when their friends were in prison or the dock. Mournful, impa.s.sioned songs were hers, sung in a rich voice, trembling with emotion, or again a stave of battle and revenge, which set hearts beating and blood racing in the veins of the listeners. At such moments Ellen, with her velvety golden-brown eyes, and the bronze of her hair, was like the poet's 'Cl.u.s.ter of Nuts.'

I've heard the songs by Liffey's wave That maidens sung.

They sang their land, the Saxon's slave, In Saxon tongue.

Oh, bring me here that Gaelic dear Which cursed the Saxon foe.

When thou didst charm my raptured ear _Mo craoibhin cno!_

Among those admitted freely to that loving circle, James Rooney was one held in affectionate regard. The man who had been the means of bringing him there, Maurice O'Donnell, was his Jonathan, nay more than his Jonathan, for to him young Rooney had given all his hero-worship.

He was, indeed, of the heroic stuff, older, graver, wiser than his friend.

James Rooney spoke to no one of his love or his hopes. For he had hopes. Ellen, kind to every one, singled him out for special kindness.

He had seen in her deep eyes something shy and tender for him. For some time he was too humble to be sure he had read her gaze aright, but at last he believed in a flood of wild rapture that she had chosen him.

He did not speak, he was too happy in dallying with his joy, and he waited on from day to day. One evening he was watching her singing, with all his heart in his eyes. Among people less held by a great sincerity than these people were at the time, his secret would have been an open amus.e.m.e.nt. But the father and mother heard with eyes dim with tears; the young sisters about the fire flushed and paled with the emotion of the song; the hearts of the listeners hung on the singer's lips, and their eyes were far away.

Suddenly James Rooney looked round the circle with the feeling of a man who awakes from sleep. His friend was opposite to him, also gazing at the singer; the revelation in his face turned the younger man cold with the shock. When the song was done he said 'good-night' quietly, and went home. It was earlier than usual, and he left his friend behind him; for this one night he was glad not to have his company; he wanted a quiet interval in which to think what was to be done.

Now, when he realised that Maurice O'Donnell loved her, he cursed his own folly that he had dared to think of winning her. What girl with eyes in her head would take him, gray and square-jawed, before the gallant-looking fellow who was the ideal patriot. And Ellen--Ellen, of all women living, was best able to appreciate O'Donnell's qualities.

That night he sat all the night with his head bowed on his hands thinking his sick thoughts amid the ruin of his castles. When he stood up shivering in the gray dawn, he had closed that page of his life. He felt as if already the girl had chosen between them, and that he was found wanting.

That was not the end of it, however. If he had been left to himself he might have carried out his high, heroic resolve to go no more to the house which had become Paradise to him. But his friend followed him, with the curious tenderness that was between the two, and with an arm on his shoulder, drew his secret from him. When he had told it he put his face down on the mantelpiece by which they were standing, ashamed to look O'Donnell in the face because they loved the same woman. There was a minute's silence, and then O'Donnell spoke, and his voice, so far from being cold and angry, was more tender than before.

'So you would have taken yourself off to leave me a clear field, old fellow!'

'Oh, no,' said the other humbly, 'I never had a chance. If I had had eyes for any one but her, I would have known your secret, and should not have dared to love her.'