Part 41 (1/2)

'G.o.d help her!' said he; 'G.o.d comfort her! This is sore affliction.'

As he spoke he walked towards the little cabin, the door of which now stood open. All was still and silent within its walls. Unused to see the dwellings of the poor in Ireland, my eye ranged over the bare walls, the damp and earthen floor, the few and miserable pieces of furniture, when suddenly my attention was called to another and a sadder spectacle. In one corner of the hovel, stretched upon a bed whose poverty might have made it unworthy of a dog to lie in, lay the figure of a large and powerfully-built man, stone dead. His eyes were dosed, his chin bound up with a white cloth, and a sheet, torn and ragged, was stretched above his cold limbs, while on either side of him two candles were burning.

His features, though rigid and stiffened, were manly and even handsome--the bold character of the face heightened in effect by his beard and moustache, which appeared to have been let grow for some time previous, and whose black and waving curl looked darker from the pallor around it.

Some lines there were about the mouth that looked like harshness and severity, but the struggle of departing life might have caused them.

Gently withdrawing the sheet that covered him, the priest placed his hand upon the man's heart. It was evident to me, from the father's manner, that he still believed the man living; and as he rolled back the covering, he felt for his hand. Suddenly starting, he fell back for an instant; and as he moved his fingers backwards and forwards, I saw that they were covered with blood. I drew near, and now perceived that the dead man's chest was laid open by a wound of several inches in extent.

The ribs had been cut across, and some portion of the heart or lung seemed to protrude. At the slightest touch of the body, the blood gushed forth anew, and ran in streams upon him. His right hand, too, was cut across the entire palm, the thumb nearly severed at the joint. This appeared to have been rudely bound together; but it was evident, from the nature and the size of the other wound, that he could not have survived it many hours.

As I looked in horror at the frightful spectacle before me, my foot struck at something beneath the bed. I stooped down to examine, and found it was a carbine, such as dragoons usually carry. It was broken at the stock and bruised in many places, but still seemed not unserviceable. Part of the b.u.t.t-end was also stained with blood. The clothes of the dead man, clotted and matted with gore, were also there, adding by their terrible testimony to the dreadful fear that haunted me.

Yes, everything confirmed it--murder had been there.

A low, muttering sound near made me turn my head, and I saw the priest kneeling beside the bed, engaged in prayer. His head was bare, and he wore a kind of scarf of blue silk, and the small case that contained the last rites of his Church was placed at his feet. Apparently lost to all around, save the figure of the man that lay dead before him, he muttered with ceaseless rapidity prayer after prayer--stopping ever and anon to place his hand on the cold heart, or to listen with his ear upon the livid lips; and then resuming with greater eagerness, while the big drops rolled from his forehead, and the agonising torture he felt convulsed his entire frame.

'O G.o.d!' he exclaimed, after a prayer of some minutes, in which his features worked like one in a fit of epilepsy--'O G.o.d, is it then too late?'

[Ill.u.s.tration: 392]

He started to his feet as he spoke, and bending over the corpse, with hands clasped above his head, he poured forth a whole torrent of words in Irish, swaying his body backwards and forwards, as his voice, becoming broken by emotion, now sank into a whisper, or broke into a discordant shout. 'Shaun, Shaun!' cried he, as, stooping down to the ground; he s.n.a.t.c.hed up the little crucifix and held it before the dead man's face; at the same time he shook him violently by the shoulder, and cried, in accents I can never forget, some words aloud, among which alone I could recognise one word, 'Thea'--the Irish word for G.o.d. He shook the man till his head rocked heavily from side to side, and the blood oozed from the opening wound, and stained the ragged covering of the bed.

At this instant the priest stopped suddenly, and fell upon his knees, while with a low, faint sigh he who seemed dead lifted his eyes and looked around him; his hands grasped the sides of the bed, and, with a strength that seemed supernatural, he raised himself to a sitting posture. His lips were parted and moved, but without a sound, and his filmy eyes turned slowly in their sockets from one object to another, till at length they fell upon the little crucifix that had dropped from the priest's hand upon the bed. In an instant the corpse-like features seemed inspired with life; a gleam of brightness shot from his eyes; the head nodded forward a couple of times, and I thought I heard a discordant, broken sound issue from the open mouth; but a moment after the head dropped upon the chest, and the hands relaxed, and he fell back with a crash, never to move more.

Overcome with horror, I staggered to the door and sank upon a little bench in front of the cabin. The cool air of the night soon brought me to myself, and while in my confused state I wondered if the whole might not be some dreadful dream, my eyes once more fell upon the figure of the woman, who still knelt in the att.i.tude we had first seen her. Her hands were clasped before her, and from time to time her wild cry rose into the air and woke the echoes of that silent valley. A faint moonlight lay in broken patches around her, and mingled its beams with the red glare of the little candles within, as their light fell upon her marble features. From the cabin I could hear the sounds of the priest's voice, as he continued to pray without ceasing.

As the hours rolled on, nothing changed; and when, prompted by curiosity, I looked within the hovel, I saw the priest still kneeling beside the bed, his face pale and sunk and haggard, as though months of sickness and suffering had pa.s.sed over him. I dared not speak; I dared not disturb him; and I sat down near the door in silence.

It is one of the strange anomalies of our nature that the feelings which rend our hearts with agony have a tendency, by their continuance, to lull us into slumber. The watcher by the bedside of his dying friend, the felon in his cell but a few hours before death, sleep--and sleep soundly. The bitterness of grief would seem to blunt sensation, and the mind, like the body, can only sustain a certain amount of burden, after which it succ.u.mbs and yields. So I found it amid this scene of horror and anguish, with everything to excite that can operate upon the mind--the woman stricken motionless and senseless by grief; the dead man, as it were, recalled to life by the words that were to herald him into life everlasting; the old man, whom I had known but as a gay companion, displayed now before my eyes in all the workings of his feeling heart, called up by the afflictions of one world and the terrors of another--and this in a wild and dreary valley, far from man's dwelling. Yet amid all this, and more than all, the hara.s.sing conviction that some deed of blood, some dark hour of crime, had been here at work, perhaps to be concealed for ever, and go unavenged save of Heaven--with this around and about me, I slept. How long I know not; but when I woke, the mist of morning hung in the valley, or rolled in ma.s.ses of cloudlike vapour along the mountain-side. In an instant the whole scene of the previous night was before me, and the priest still knelt beside the bed and prayed. I looked for the woman, but she was gone.

The noise of wheels, at some distance, could now be heard on the mountain-road; and as I walked stealthily from the door, I could see three figures descending the pa.s.s, followed by a car and horse. As they came along, I marked that beneath the straw on the car something protruded itself on either side, and this, I soon saw, was a coffin.

As the men approached the angle of the road they halted, and seemed to converse in an eager and anxious manner, when suddenly one of them broke from the others, and springing to the top of a low wall that skirted the road, continued to look steadily at the house for some minutes together.

The thought flashed on me at the moment that perhaps my being a stranger to them might have caused their hesitation; so I waved my hat a couple of times above my head. Upon this they resumed their march, and in a few minutes more were standing beside me. One of them, who was an old man with hard, weather-beaten features, addressed me, first in Irish, but correcting himself, at once asked, in a low, steady voice--

'Was the priest in time? Did he get the rites?'

I nodded in reply; when he muttered, as if to himself--'G.o.d's will be done! Shaun didn't tell of Hogan----'

'Whisht, father! whisht!' said one of the younger men as he laid his hand upon the old man's arm, while he added something in Irish, gesticulating with energy as he spoke.

'Is Mary come back, sir?' said the third, as he touched his hat to me respectfully.

'The woman--his wife?' said I. 'I have not seen her to-day.'

'She was up with us, at Kiltimmon, at two o'clock this morning, but wouldn't wait for us. She wanted to get back at once, poor crayture! She bears it well, and has a stout heart. 'Faith, maybe before long she 'll make some others faint in their hearts that have stricken hers this night.'

'Was she calm, then?' said I.

'As you are this minute; and sure enough she helped me, with her own hands, to put the horse in the car, for you see I couldn't lift the shaft with my one arm.'

I now saw that his arm was bound up, and b.u.t.toned within the bosom of his greatcoat.