Delphi Complete Works of Sheridan Le Fanu, page 51
“Whisht — nothin’ at all, but myself that was going to tell you something,” replied Tim Dwyer, speaking still in a whisper, and looking cautiously from side to side, “only I was afeared some iv the boys might hear me, do you mind, an’ if they did, it might lead to MURDHER.”
He stooped as he uttered the last emphatic word in a grim whisper in the ear of his companion, and followed it by a portentous wink.
With a good deal of excitement, Mr. Goslin exclaimed, “I say, Tim Dwyer, my good fellow, what the devil are you at — speak out, man — can’t you?”
“You were mentionin’ their cookery,” observed Tim.
“Ay — what then?” replied the other.
“What then? Why, ain’t you a Protestant?” said Tim; “don’t you see it now?”
“Well, split my windpipe, if I do,” replied Mr. Goslin.
“Well, then, here it is,” rejoined Mr. Dwyer, in a hard mysterious whisper, “they have a way iv cooking, an’ a soort of vittles, do ye mind, whenever they get the ways and the mains iv comin’ at it, that id frighten you to hear iv, let alone to see it. Oh murdher! but we’re the divil’s savages, and flogs the blackimoors — divil a doubt iv it!”
“Come, come, my good man, speak out, can’t you?” urged Dick Goslin, pettishly.
“Spake out! Bedad I won’t, for how ‘id I know who’d be listenin’?” retorted Tim. “But the long an’ the short iv it’s just this, we’re rale tearin’, devourin’ savages — devourin’, do ye mind, bastes iv prey, Misther Goslin; savages by nature, and papists by religion, an’ as hungry as vultures, do ye mind.”
“Why, you don’t mean for to say as how you’d eat inhuman flesh?” ejaculated the Englishman, with a slight change of colour, and eyeing his companion with horrible curiosity.
“Not in Dublin, iv coorse,” replied Tim Dwyer.
“Nor anywhere else neither, I should say — eh?” continued the valet, with increasing consternation.
“Whis — sht!” ejaculated Tim, putting his finger to his nose mysteriously; “the Munsthermen has their oddities, an’ no wondher; it’s a mighty poor place entirely, an’ provisions is murdherin’ scairce; it’s hard to deny the craythurs when they’re cryin’ for a bit; an’ necessity’s the mother iv invention.”
“Why strike me flat, do you mean for to go for to say?” — exclaimed the Londoner, much excited.
“I main for to say this much,” interrupted Tim Dwyer, “that if I was so befrinded by heaven as to be an Englishman, do you mind me? an’ so illuminated as to be a Protestant, do you see? an’ if I found myself in a strange part iv Munster, do you consave, where I wouldn’t be missed if any thing was to happen me, why I’d take special good care to keep myself ankimminly quiet, an’ not to be lookin’ in before male times especially, into the cabins iv the poor starvin’ craythurs, that’s fond, to a failin’, iv fresh mate and black puddins — do you undherstand me?”
The cockney turned very pale, and breathed hard, as, with lips compressed, and sidelong glance of horrible significance, he exchanged a ghastly wink with his companion.
“Don’t tell, for the life iv you, it was I toult you. Mind, honour bright, isn’t it?” urged Tim Dwyer, in a low and earnest whisper.
“Word and honour, hand and glove,” replied the valet, with chivalric emphasis, and then sank into profound and moody silence, which he doggedly maintained until the three horsemen rode leisurely under the echoing archway of Glindarragh Castle.
CHAPTER IV.
THE PROPHETIC SONG — AND HOW THE KILLIOCH READ THE OMEN OF TORLOGH O’BRIEN.
THE castle of Glindarragh occupied the bank of a broad and devious mountain river, and presented a striking and somewhat sombre coup d’œil. The buildings of which it was composed formed a quadrangle of considerable dimensions, and though varying in height, were all alike structures of an ancient date, and of exceeding solidity and strength; its eastern side overhung the stream, from whose waters its walls arose in gray and sombre masses; and in that which looked toward the north, under a lofty arch, lay the chief entrance to the castle; in the olden time guarded by a portcullis and drawbridge, but now protected solely by an old and ponderous gate of oak, studded with huge iron nails, with heads as large as penny pieces — the fosse was dry, and choked with bushes, and at the entrance had been raised to the level of the road by which the building was approached, so that as a fortress, or post of military defence, the structure had manifestly been long disused; from the western side, sloped gently downward, as if in further evidence of the peaceful character and pursuits of its present owners, a closely hedged flower garden, varied with long grass terraces, and many trim living walls and arbours of close dark yew, exhibiting the exactest care in its culture, and in the richness and complication of its quaintly cut knots and beds, resembling the pattern of a fantastic carpet. To this rich and formal flower-garden, a smaller gate or sally port in the castle wall gave admission; the remaining side, which faced toward the south, contained those buildings which supplied, though upon an unwieldy scale, and in a sufficiently quaint and clumsy fashion, the purposes of a modern dwelling-house. At the moment when the three mounted travellers entered the great gate, which stood hospitably open to receive them, and gazed curiously round upon the antique buildings in whose shadows they stood, two very different figures were seated within the wall of the old castle.
The chamber which they occupied was a low room of moderate dimensions; the floor was covered with matting, and the ceiling was of clumsily joined, time-blackened oak; gilded leather hung the walls, and a lofty mantelpiece, supported by two spiral stone pillars, masked with its projection the broad arch of the hearth, in which a pile of turf and wood was burning. An old picture of a gentleman in the costume of Charles the First, much in need of cleaning, and which had suffered, whether accidentally or of malice prepense, a very ugly scar across the lower part of the visage, hung at the far end of the room in a dingy frame, and very imperfectly lighted.
The furniture of the chamber presented nothing remarkable, except that it was a little behind the fashion of the day, and of an unpretending and somewhat threadbare aspect, but still comfortable, and with a sort of snug air of old housekeeping about it, which more than made amends for its want of elegance. A narrow bed occupied a recess in the wall, and a single window, commanding a view of the winding river, and a vast and ancient orchard, and beyond them, of a broad plain, bounded by undulating hills, with the mighty Galties in the dim distance, admitted the light.
In a massive arm chair, singularly disproportioned to the dimensions of its occupant, was seated a little old woman, dressed in a sort of loose red wrapper, with short sleeves, showing her shrivelled yellow arms above the elbows, and with a coloured handkerchief brought over her head and knotted under her chin; a comical mixture of goodnature, gratification, and self-importance, was impressed upon her withered features, round which, escaping from beneath the folds of the kerchief which bound her head, there wantoned a few locks of grizzled red hair.
Seated near her feet, upon a low stool, with the guitar on which she had, but the moment before, been accompanying her sweet and silvery voice, lying tirelessly in her lap beneath her snow white arm, her other hand being Laid upon the old woman’s knee, while with a beautiful smile, half of fun and half of fondness, she looked up into her nurse’s face, was the fairest girl that ever yet combined the matchless graces of perfect form and feature, with the lovelier charms of expression ever varying, ever beautiful — the subtle, heart-stirring magic of true loveliness — the witchery, that sweetly, sadly, passionately beguiles the senses, and steals away the heart of the rapt gazer even while he looks.
“God bless you, mavourneen,” said the old woman, “God keep you, my darlin’, with your purty face and your purty songs; but of all the tunes you have, the one you sung the last, though its the best may-be, I like it the least.”
“And why, nurse,” asked the girl, with a smile. “Is it because the tune is a mournful one?”
“It is not that alone, alanna,” replied the old woman, with a shake of the head, “though it’s lonesome enough, God knows, it laves me.”
“What is it, then?” insisted the young lady, merrily. “Why does old nurse scorn my poor music? I know no sweeter tune than that; it needs must be you think I spoil it in the singing.”
“Spoil it! my darlin’ — spoil it! acushla,” ejaculated the old nurse. “No, no, it’s only too sweet an’ beautiful you sing it, my darlin’; if you knew but the mainin’ iv the tune — an’ its little I ever thought I’d hear one iv your name singing it, my purty child — aiah! but its a quare way things comes round, and it’s many’s the day since that song was heard inside these ould walls before; not since bloody Cromwell’s wars: I was but a slip of a colleen then myself — aiah wislia! but time runs on, flowin’ for ever, as constant as the river there, and no one noticin’ it all along; an’ it’s many’s the acorn is grown into an oak, and many’s the sthrong man is undher the grass, and many’s the purty girl is turned into a wrinkled ould killioch like myself, since thim days, avourneen!”
“Well, nurse, but the tune,” urged the young lady; “what harm is in the tune?”
“Harm, darlin’ — why, then, it’s little harm, or maybe less good there’s in it,” continued the old woman, oracularly; “but who in the wide world larned it to you, my own purty colleen?”
“That, nurse, is more than I myself can tell,” rejoined the girl, whose curiosity was a little piqued at the air of mingled mystery and anxiety with which the old crone dwelt upon the song; “I heard a girl sing it, as she went through the woods on the other side of the river, and so sweetly, that I listened until her wild notes were quite lost in the distance; and thus it was I learned the song, first one cadence, then another, and so on until the whole was learned; and for the words I sing with it, they, are Master Shakspeare’s. The girl from whom I caught the air was singing in Irish.”
“I’d give a gold piece I had my thumb on her windpipe,” replied the old beldame, fiercely, with a sudden and savage ferocity almost appalling. “I’d have tightened her whistle for her, the robber; for it’s an ould sayin’ I often heard, ‘a crowing hen was never lucky.’”
“Tell me, nurse — do, dear nurse, tell me, what is there in the song to move you thus?” asked the lady, at the same time drawing her stool closer to the old woman’s feet, and coaxingly looking up into her face.
“It’s a song, darlin’,” answered the nurse, “that was made in the ould times, by the O’Briens, before they lost this castle an’ all the lands, the last time in Cromwill’s wars, as I often tould you; it was mednear a hundred years ago, when the Willoughbys first got the court — the time the monks was turned out of Glindarragh abbey, as I often heard my grandmother tellin’ — God rest her — an’ it’s all full iv promises how the O’Briens is to come back, and to hold the castle and the lands again, in spite of the world; and it’s well I can think iv the time before your grandfather’s father — the saints receive him — it’s well I remember him, though I was no more nor a slip iv a girl, an he an ould man — was killed in the troubles on the bridge there below, ripped up and hacked to pieces with their skeins, like an ould horse they’d be tearing up in pieces for the dogs, and tumbled over the battlements, that you would not know him from a big sack of blood, if it wasn’t for the nice long gray hair he wore — God rest him — into the river, that was rollin’ and foamin’ bank high, and roarin’ like a mill sluice under every arch, that blessed day. It’s well I can remember how we used to hear them in the long nights before that, singin’ the same song in the wood opposite the castle; and, thrue enough, the O’Briens did get in, an’ had it to themselves, as I tould you, for eight long years, until Cromwill’s war come, and your grandfather — God rest him — got it back; an’ Cromwell druv them all out of the counthry, an’ left them not a sod, nor a stick, nor a stone belonging to them; an’ they were great men of courage in Spain — generals and the likes, as was reported here — an’ was always promisin’ how they’d come home some day, and win back the ould castle, and the twelve town-lands, and the three estates, and the wood of Glindarragh, an’ all the rest; an’ latterly there was talks of Torlogh Dhuv — a young boy of the O’Briens — as it was reported here, the greatest and the wickedest of them all, a terrible man of war and blood; and it’s said, moreover — the Lord guard and save us all — that he swore himself, on the altar, before the blessed and holy Pope, as I’m tould, in furrin parts, never to rest antil he had revenge on them that took the lands and the blood of his family.”
“That is Torlogh Dhuv, whose name used to frighten me when I was a child!” said the young girl. “Do you remember, nurse, how you used to say? ‘Dont go there, or Torlogh Dhuv will have you,’ and so on. But, in truth, I do believe from all I have learned, that he is a bad and violent man — nay, if report speak truth, a very monster of cruelty. My father heard but a week since that he is coming over to this country, and moreover, to have a command in the king’s army.”
“May God forbid, my darling child! God in his mercy, an all the saints, forbid!” cried the old woman, while her withered cheeks turned pale with horror, and in the energy of her terror she started up from her seat, and stood shaking and wan as the guilty resurrection of the old woman of Berkeley.
“‘Why, nurse! dear nurse — why are you thus appalled?” said the young lady, herself well nigh affrighted at the undisguised terror of the old woman.
“my child, I’m afeard the lands and castle are lost — lost to you and yours for ever, darling — an’ what worse, I know not, mavourneen. The old prophecy is comin’ out — he has the mark on his forehead, they all say that, and now he’s coming to this counthry. Oh, wirristhru! wirristhru!”
“Dear nurse,” said the young lady, half afraid that agitation had unsettled the old woman’s wits, “what does all this mean?”
“Mean, darling, mean!” echoed the agitated woman; “it’s too soon, I’m afeard, you’ll know the meaning of it all, acushla. Hasn’t he the mark; an’ isn’t he comin’ to the counthry — may be in it this blessed minute — the Lord be marciful to us all; and then it’s a little thing id bring him to Glindarragh-bridge. Oh, voh, voh! but it’s myself that has the sore heart this day!”
“Dear nurse, tell me what so much afflicts you in all this,” said the beautiful girl earnestly.
“Listen to me, mavourneen — listen, to me, asthora,” replied the nurse, while she shook her head, and raised her trembling hand; “it’s an ould prophecy that was made long ago, an’ they all knew when Cormack got the castle, in the throubles, that he’d lose it again, for he had not the marks in the prophecy. It was made in Irish, when first they lost the lands, in the ould queen’s time, a hundred years ago, an’ this is the way it runs.”
The crone paused as she conned over the fatal words; her white lips moving, and her shrivelled hand and arm uplifted, while she cowered over the lovely girl in the earnest effort to recall the syllables of the mystic rhyme, looking the very impersonation of one of those benevolent but hideous fairies, who, in nursery tales, delight to attend at royal christenings, and mutter over the highborn heroine of the story those spells of auspicious potency which guard and save her through all the enchanted dangers through which she is to pass.
At last the old woman, having satisfied herself of the accuracy of her recollection, repeated in a low and sullen tone some rude verses in Irish.
“And what is the meaning of the Irish, dear nurse?” inquired the lady; “for as yet I am no wiser than at first.”
I’ll tell you that, my child,” replied the old domestic. “I’ll tell you that; I’ll give you, word for word, the English of it all. This is the way it goes, then —
When the real O’Brien shall stand again On the bridge of Glindarragh, With a shamrogue in the bone of his forehead, And a jewel round his arm.
His horse shall keep holyday, stabled Under the long hall as of old, And his own shall never lose O’Brien any more.’
There it is, my child, there it is; acushla — an’ sure it’s thrublin’ me, darlin’, this minute while I’m sittin’ here.”
“It is a strange prophecy, nurse,” said the fair girl, musingly. “And a strange mark it describes — a shamrogue in the bone of his forehead! Is it not so it runs?”
“So it is, darling, and the mark is there, in the bone of his forehead, sure enough,” replied the old woman, mournfully. “A wound with a bullet that bruk the skull, left the print of the shamrogue in his forehead for ever — the three leaves, I’m toult, as plain as you’d pick it in the field; and now he’s comin’ to the counthry, and what’s to keep him from the castle bridge. Oh! my darlin’ acushla ma chree, it’s comin’ it is, asthora, an’ nothin’ can keep it back.”
At this moment a knocking was heard at the chamber door, and two handmaidens, breathless with haste and eagerness, burst into the room, both talking together so loud and so fast, that it was some time ere the young lady had ascertained that the purpose of their visit was to announce the arrival of her kinsman, Percy Neville, with the nature of whose visit the reader is already acquainted. The duties of hospitality would brook no delay; and Sir Hugh, as ill fortune would have it, was some miles from his home. So pretty Grace had no choice, awkward as was the task, but to run down to the chamber where her expectant kinsman awaited her, and herself to bid him welcome to Glindarragh. Wondering what kind of man he should prove to be, a good deal flushed, and a good deal fluttered, sustained, however, against the tremors of agitation by a certain amount of pride and natural dignity which never forsook her, with a light step, and a frank and gracious bearing, she entered the room to bid the stranger welcome.
Strange to say, it required but a single glance at the pale and somewhat effeminate features of the young stranger, and at the indolent negligence of his attitude, to quiet in an instant every fluttered feeling, and restore the embarrassed girl very nearly, if not entirely, to her usual self-possession. With perfect sang froid, though with no lack of courtesy, the young man arose, and with the formal gallantry of the day, carried the lady’s hand to his lips; and then, in his own light and careless way, he ran on from one trifle to another, and with, as she thought, a very perceptible indifference about the kind of impression he was making, and a total want of that kind of interest or even curiosity about the object of his destined choice, which is supposed to animate even the coldest lover. It were hard to say which of the two was most disappointed; for, though the young lady was eminently beautiful — there could be no question of that — yet her beauty was not of that saddened and gentler kind; there was not the homeliness, and humility, and piquante mauvaise honte — in short, there was not presented to him that entire contract to the style of female beauty, and mien, and dress, to which he had been in England accustomed; nor, if the truth must out, that decided inferiority to himself, in ease of deportment and self-possession, which a strange combination of caprice and vanity had led him to wish for, and wishing for, more than half to expect. In a word, never did two persons, brought together under such circumstances, stand before one another more completely disenchanted, than did Grace Willoughby and Percy Neville, as they thus encountered, in the dark and formal old parlour, hung round with grim and faded portraits, which seemed to look down with a kind of starch and severe approval upon this singularly platonic interview.
