Stories by English Authors: Ireland

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"I'm thinkin' to slip down agin," he said, "and see if be any manner
of manes I could huroosha th' ould baste round the rocks yonder.
The wather mightn't be altogither too deep there yit; at all evints,
she's between the divil and the deep say where she is now; it's
just a chanst."

"Sorra a much," said Joe, disconsolately; "scarce worth breakin'
your bones after, any way."

"Bones, how are you? Sure, there's no call to be breakin' bones in
the matter," said Mick, beginning to descend. This was true enough,
if he had minded what he was about; but then he did not. So far from
it, he was saying to himself, "One 'ud ha' thought now she might
ha' took a sort of pride in it," when the bottom of the world seemed
to drop away from under his feet, and his irrelevant meditations
ended in a shattering thud down on the rocky pavement a long way
below. He never heard the shouts and shrieks which the incident
occasioned above his head. Once only he became dimly conscious of
a quivering network of prismatic flashes, which he could not see
through, and a booming throb in his ears, which made him murmur
dazedly: "Wirra, I thought I'd got beyond hearin' of them drums."
In another moment: "What's took me?" he said, with a start. But
the depths he sank among remain always dark and silent.

Next day messengers from Tullykillagin told Mrs. Doherty that the
Lord had "took" her son Mick, and that "he had gone out to say wid
the tide, before they could get anybody to him, and there was no
tellin' where he might be swep' up, if ever he came to shore at
all."

"And the quarest part of it was that Joe McEvoy's ould cow that
he went after had legged herself up, somehow, on the rocks out of
reach, and niver a harm on her when they found her in the mornin'.
But she'd been all of a could quiver ever since, and himself doubted
if she'd rightly git over it--might the divil mend her, and she
after bein' the death of a fine young man. Sure, every sowl up at
Tullykillagin was rale annoyed about it. Even ould Biddy Duggan,
that was as cross-tempered as a weasel, did be frettin' for the
lad; and Joe McEvoy was sittin' crooched like an ould wet hen, over
his fire block out, that he hadn't the heart to be lightin'."

Mrs. Doherty said she didn't know what talk they had of the Lord
and the say and the ould cow; but she'd known well enough the way
it was when Mick niver come home last night. He'd just took off
after the souldiers, as he'd a great notion one time.

She was, as may have been observed, rather a dull-witted woman,
and proportionately hard to convince against her will.

"A great notion intirely," she said; "on'y she'd scarce have
thought he'd go do such a thing on her in airnest. And I runnin'
away indoors yisterday out of the heighth of the divarsion, when
the band-music was a thrate to be hearin', just to see his bit of
supper wouldn't be late on him. And the grand little pitaty-cake
I had for him; I may be throwin' it to the hins now, unless Molly
might fancy a bit; for we 'll not be apt to set eyes on him this
three year. Och, wirra! and he that contint at home, and niver a
word out of him about the souldierin' this long while. If it had
been poor Thady itself, 't would ha' been diff'rint; but Mick--I'd
scarce ha' thought it of him; for he'd a dale of good-nature, Mrs.
Geoghegan, ma'am."

"He had so, tub-be sure, woman dear," said Mrs. Geoghegan, "or he
might be sittin' warm in here this minnit."

"The back of me hand to thim blamed ould throopers," said Mrs.
Doherty, "that sets the lads wild wid their thrampin' around."

"Poor Mick would be better wid them than where he is now--God have
mercy on his soul!" said a neighbour, solemnly.

But Mick's mother continued to bewail herself: "And I missin' the
best of all the tunes they played, so Molly was tellin' me, for
'fraid he 'd be kep' waitin' for his supper, and he comin' home
to me hungry; and now--There's a terrible len'th of time in three
year. I wouldn't ha' believed he'd ha' done it on me."

THE RIVAL DREAMERS

BY JOHN BANIM

Mr. Washington Irving has already given to the public a version
of an American legend, which, in a principal feature, bears some
likeness to the following transcript of a popular Irish one. It
may, however, be interesting to show this very coincidence between
the descendants of a Dutch transatlantic colony and the native
peasantry of Ireland, in the superstitious annals of both. Our
tale, moreover, will be found original in all its circumstances,
that alluded to only excepted.

Shamus Dempsey returned a silent, plodding, sorrowful man, though
a young one, to his poor home, after seeing laid in the grave
his aged, decrepit father. The last rays of the setting sun were
glorious, shooting through the folds of their pavilion of scarlet
clouds; the last song of the thrush, chanted from the bough nearest
to his nest, was gladdening; the abundant though but half-matured
crops around breathed of hope for the future. But Shamus's bosom was
covered with the darkness that inward sunshine alone can illumine.
The chord that should respond to song and melody had snapped in it;
for him the softly undulating fields of light-green wheat, or the
silken-surfaced patches of barley, made a promise in vain. He was
poor, penniless, friendless, and yet groaning under responsibilities;
worn out by past and present suffering, and without a consoling
prospect. His father's corpse had just been buried by a subscription
among his neighbours, collected in an old glove, a penny or a
half-penny from each, by the most active of the humble community to
whom his sad state was a subject of pity. In the wretched shed which
he called "home," a young wife lay on a truss of straw, listening
to the hungry cries of two little children, and awaiting her hour
to become the weeping mother of a third. And the recollection that
but for an act of domestic treachery experienced by his father and
himself, both would have been comfortable and respectable in the
world, aggravated the bitterness of the feeling in which Shamus
contemplated his lot. He could himself faintly call to mind a time
of early childhood, when he lived with his parents in a roomy house,
eating and sleeping and dressing well, and surrounded by servants
and workmen; he further remembered that a day of great affliction
came, upon which strange and rude persons forced their way into the
house; and, for some cause his infant observation did not reach,
father, servants, and workmen (his mother had just died) were
all turned out upon the road and doomed to seek the shelter of a
mean roof. But his father's discourse, since he gained the years
of manhood, supplied Shamus with an explanation of all these
circumstances, as follows.

Old Dempsey had been the youngest son of a large farmer, who divided
his lands between two elder children, and destined Shamus's father
to the Church, sending him abroad for education, and, during its
course, supplying him with liberal allowances. Upon the eve of
ordination the young student returned home to visit his friends;
was much noticed by neighbouring small gentry of each religion; at
the house of one of the opposite persuasion from his met a sister
of the proprietor, who had a fortune in her own right; abandoned
his clerical views for her smiles; eloped with her; married her
privately; incurred thereby the irremovable hostility of his own
family; but, after a short time, was received, along with his wife,
by his generous brother-in-law, under whose guidance both became
reputably settled in the house to which Shamus's early recollections
pointed and where, till he was about six years old, he passed
indeed a happy childhood.

But, a little previous to this time, his mother's good brother died
unmarried, and was succeeded by another of her brothers, who had
unsuccessfully spent half his life as a lawyer in Dublin, and who,
inheriting little of his predecessor's amiable character, soon showed
himself a foe to her and her husband, professedly on account of
her marriage with a Roman Catholic. He did not appear to their
visit, shortly after his arrival in their neighbourhood, and he
never condescended to return it. The affliction experienced by his
sensitive sister from his conduct entailed upon her a premature
accouchement, in which, giving birth to a lifeless babe, she
unexpectedly died. The event was matter of triumph rather than of
sorrow to her unnatural brother. For, in the first place, totally
unguarded against the sudden result, she had died intestate; in
the next place, he discovered that her private marriage had been
celebrated by a Roman Catholic priest, consequently could not,
according to law, hold good; and again, could not give to her nominal
husband any right to her property, upon which both had hitherto
lived, and which was now the sole means of existence to Shamus's
father.

The lawyer speedily set to work upon these points, and with little
difficulty succeeded in supplying for Shamus's recollections a day
of trouble, already noticed. In fact, his father and he, now without
a shilling, took refuge in a distant cabin, where, by the sweat of
his parent's brow, as a labourer in the fields, the ill-fated hero
of this story was scantily fed and clothed, until maturer years
enabled him to relieve the old man's hand of the spade and sickle,
and in turn labour for their common wants.

Shamus, becoming a little prosperous in the funeral we now see
Shamus returning, and to such a home does he bend his heavy steps.

If to know that the enemy of his father and mother did not thrive
on the spoils of his oppression could have yielded Shamus any
consolation in his lot, he had long ago become aware of circumstances
calculated to give this negative comfort. His maternal uncle
enjoyed, indeed, his newly acquired property only a few years after
it came into his possession. Partly on account of his cruelty to
his relations, partly from a meanness and vulgarity of character,
which soon displayed itself in his novel situation, and which, it
was believed, had previously kept him in the lowest walks of his
profession as a Dublin attorney, he found himself neglected and
shunned by the gentry of his neighbourhood. To grow richer than
those who thus insulted him, to blazon abroad reports of his wealth,
and to watch opportunities of using it to their injury, became the
means of revenge adopted by the parvenu. His legitimate income not
promising a rapid accomplishment of this plan, he ventured, using
precautions that seemingly set suspicion at defiance, to engage in
smuggling-adventures on a large scale, for which his proximity to
the coast afforded a local opportunity. Notwithstanding all his
pettifogging cleverness, the ex-attorney was detected, however, in
his illegal traffic, and fined to an amount which swept away half
his real property. Driven to desperation by the publicity of his
failure, as well as by the failure itself, he tried another grand
effort to retrieve his fortune; was again surprised by the revenue
officers; in a personal struggle with them, at the head of his
band, killed one of their body; immediately absconded from Ireland;
for the last twenty years had not been authentically heard of, but,
it was believed, lived under an assumed name in London, deriving
an obscure existence from some mean pursuit, of which the very
nature enabled him to gratify propensities to drunkenness and other
vices, learned during his first career in life.

All this Shamus knew, though only from report, inasmuch as his
uncle had exiled himself while he was yet a child, and without
previously having become known to the eyes of the nephew he had so
much injured. But if Shamus occasionally drew a bitter and almost
savage gratification from the downfall of his inhuman persecutor,
no recurrence to the past could alleviate the misery of his present
situation.

He passed under one of the capacious open arches of the old abbey,
and then entered his squalid shed reared against its wall, his heart
as shattered and as trodden down as the ruins around him. No words
of greeting ensued between him and his equally hopeless wife, as
she sat on the straw of her bed, rocking to sleep, with feeble and
mournful cries, her youngest infant. He silently lighted a fire
of withered twigs on his ready-furnished hearthstone; put to roast
among their embers a few potatoes which he had begged during the
day; divided them between her and her crying children; and, as
the moon rising high in the heavens warned him that night asserted
her full empire over the departed day, Shamus sank down upon the
couch from which his father's mortal remains had lately been borne,
supperless himself, and dinnerless, too, but not hungry; at least
not conscious or recollecting that he was.

His wife and little ones soon slept soundly, but Shamus lay for
hours inaccessible to nature's claims for sleep as well as for
food. From where he lay he could see, through the open front of
his shed, out into the ruins abroad. After much abstraction in his
own thoughts, the silence, the extent, and the peculiar desolation of
the scene, almost spiritualised by the magic effect of alternate
moonshine and darkness, of objects and of their parts, at last diverted
his mind, though not to relieve it. He remembered distinctly, for
the first time, where he was--an intruder among the dwellings of
the dead; he called to mind, too, that the present was their hour
for revealing themselves among the remote loneliness and obscurity
of their crumbling and intricate abode. As his eye fixed upon a
distant stream of cold light or of blank shadow, either the wavering
of some feathery herbage from the walls or the flitting of some
night-bird over the roofless aisle, made motion which went and came
during the instant of his alarmed start, or else some disembodied
sleeper around had challenged and evaded his vision so rapidly as
to baffle even the accompaniment of thought. Shamus would, however,
recur, during these entrancing aberrations, to his more real causes
for terror; and he knew not, and to this day cannot distinctly
tell, whether he waked or slept, when a new circumstance absorbed
his attention. The moon struck fully, under his propped roof, upon
the carved slab he had appropriated as a hearthstone; and turning
his eye to the spot, he saw the semblance of a man advanced in
years, though not very old, standing motionless, and very steadfastly
regarding him. The still face of the figure shone like marble in
the night-beam, without giving any idea of the solidity of that
material; the long and deep shadows thrown by the forehead over the
eyes left those unusally expressive features vague and uncertain.
Upon the head was a close-fitting black cap, the dress was a
loose-sleeved, plaited garment of white, descending to the ground,
and faced and otherwise checkered with black, and girded round
the loins; exactly the costume which Shamus had often studied in
a little framed and glazed print, hung up in the sacristy of the
humble chapel recently built in the neighbourhood of the ruin by a
few descendants of the great religious fraternity to whom, in its day
of pride, the abbey had belonged. As he returned very inquisitively,
though, as he avers, not now in alarm, the fixed gaze of his midnight
visitor, a voice reached him, and he heard these strange words:

"Shamus Dempsey, go to London Bridge, and you will be a rich man."

"How will that come about, your reverence?" cried Shamus, jumping
up from the straw.

But the figure was gone; and stumbling among the black embers on the
remarkable place where it had stood, he fell prostrate, experiencing
a change of sensation and of observance of objects around, which
might be explained by supposing a transition from a sleeping to a
waking state of mind.

The rest of the night he slept little, thinking of the advice he
had received, and of the mysterious personage who gave it. But he
resolved to say nothing about his vision, particularly to his wife,
lest, in her present state of health, the frightful story might
distress her; and, as to his own conduct respecting it, he determined
to be guided by the future; in fact, he would wait to see if his
counsellor came again. He did come again, appearing in the same
spot at the same hour of the night, and wearing the same dress,
though not the same expression of feature; for the shadowy brows
now slightly frowned, and a little severity mingled with the former
steadfastness of look.

"Shamus Dempsey, why have you not gone to London Bridge, and your
wife so near the time when she will want what you are to get by
going there? Remember, this is my second warning."

"Musha, your reverence, an' what am I to do on Lunnon Bridge?"

Again he rose to approach the figure; again it eluded him. Again a
change occurred in the quality of the interest with which he regarded
the admonition of his visitor. Again he passed a day of doubt as to
the propriety of undertaking what seemed to him little less than
a journey to the world's end, without a penny in his pocket, and
upon the eve of his wife's accouchement, merely in obedience to a
recommendation which, according to his creed, was not yet sufficiently
strongly given, even were it under any circumstances to be adopted.
For Shamus had often heard, and firmly believed, that a dream or a
vision instructing one how to procure riches ought to be experienced
three times before it became entitled to attention.

He lay down, however, half hoping that his vision might thus
recommend itself to his notice It did so.

"Shamus Dempsey," said the figure, looking more angry than ever,
"you have not yet gone to London Bridge, although I hear your wife
dying out to bid you go. And, remember, this s my third warning."

"Why, then, tundher an' ouns, your reverence, just stop and tell
me-"

Ere he could utter another word the holy visitant disappeared, in
a real passion at Shamus's qualified curse; and at the same moment
his confused senses recognised the voice of his wife, sending up
from her straw pallet the cries that betoken a mother's distant
travail. Exchaning a few words with her, he hurried away. professedly
call up, at her cabin window, an old crane who sometimes attended
the very poorest women in Nance Dempsey's situation.

"Hurry to her, Noreen, acuishla, and do the best it's the will
of God to let you do. And tell her from me, Noreen--" He stopped,
drawing in his lip, and clutching his cudgel hard.

"Shamus, what ails you, avick?" asked old Noreen; "what ails you,
to make the tears run down in the gray o' the morning?"

"Tell her from me," continued Shamus, "that it's from the bottom o'
the heart I 'll pray, morning and evening, and fresh and fasting,
maybe, to give her a good time of it; and to show her a face on
the poor child that's coming, likelier than the two that God sent
afore it. And that I 'll be thinking o' picturing it to my own
mind, though I'll never see it far away."

"Musha, Shamus, what are you speaking of?"

"No Matter, Noreen, only God be wid you, and wid her, and wid the
weenocks; and tell her what I bid you. More-be-token, tell her that
poor Shamus quits her in her throuble wid more love from the heart
out than he had for her the first day we came together; and I'll
come back to her at any rate, sooner or later, richer or poorer,
or as bare as I went; and maybe not so bare either. But God only
knows. The top o' the morning to you, Noreen, and don't let her
want the mouthful o' praties while I'm on my thravels. For this,"
added Shamus, as he bounded off, to the consternation of old
Noreen--"this is the very morning and the very minute that, if
I mind the dhrame at all at all, I ought to mind it; ay, without
ever turning back to get a look from her, that 'ud kill the heart
in my body entirely."

Without much previous knowledge of the road he was to take, Shamus
walked and begged his way along the coast to the town where he
might hope to embark for England. Here the captain of a merchantman
agreed to let him work his passage to Bristol, whence he again
walked and begged into London.

Without taking rest or food, Shamus proceeded to London Bridge,
often put out of his course by wrong directions, and as often
by forgetting and misconceiving true ones. It was with old London
Bridge that Shamus had to do (not the old one last pulled down, but
its more reverend predecessor), which, at that time, was lined
at either side by quaintly fashioned houses, mostly occupied
by shopkeepers, so that the space between presented perhaps the
greatest thoroughfare then known in the Queen of Cities. And at
about two o'clock in the afternoon, barefooted, ragged, fevered,
and agitated, Shamus mingled with the turbid human stream, that
roared and chafed over the as restless and as evanescent stream
which buffeted the arches of old London Bridge. In a situation so
novel to him, so much more extraordinary in the reality than his
anticipation could have fancied, the poor and friendless stranger
felt overwhelmed. A sense of forlornness, of insignificance, and
of terror seized upon his faculties. From the stare or the sneers
or the jostle of the iron-nerved crowd he shrank with glances of
wild timidity, and with a heart as wildly timid as were his looks.
For some time he stood or staggered about, unable to collect his
thoughts, or to bring to mind what was his business there. But when
Shamus became able to refer to the motive of his pauper journey
from his native solitudes into the thick of such a scene, it was
no wonder that the zeal of superstition totally subsided amid the
astounding truths he witnessed. In fact, the bewildered simpleton
now regarded his dream as the merest chimera. Hastily escaping
from the thoroughfare, he sought out some wretched place of repose
suited to his wretched condition, and there mooned himself asleep,
in self-accusations at the thought of poor Nance at home, and in
utter despair of all his future prospects.

At daybreak the next morning he awoke, a little less agitated, but
still with no hope. He was able, however, to resolve upon the best
course of conduct now left open to him; and he arranged immediately
to retrace his steps to Ireland, as soon as he should have begged
sufficient alms to speed him a mile on the road. With this intent
he hastily issued forth, preferring to challenge the notice of
chance passengers, even at the early hour of dawn, than to venture
again, in the middle of the day, among the dreaded crowds of the
vast city. Very few, indeed, were the passers-by whom Shamus met
during his straggling and stealthy walk through the streets, and
those of a description little able or willing to afford a half-penny
to his humbled, whining suit, and to his spasmed lip and watery
eye. In what direction he went Shamus did not know; but at last he
found himself entering upon the scene of his yesterday's terror.
Now, however, it presented nothing to renew its former impression.
The shops at the sides of the bridge were closed, and the occasional
stragglers of either sex who came along inspired Shamus, little as
he knew of a great city, with aversion rather than with dread. In
the quietness and security of his present position, Shamus was both
courageous and weak enough again to summon up his dream.

"Come," he said, "since I AM on Lunnon Bridge, I 'll walk over
every stone of it, and see what good that will do."

He valiantly gained the far end. Here one house, of all that stood
upon the bridge, began to be opened; it was a public-house, and, by
a sidelong glance as he passed, Shamus thought that, in the person
of a red-cheeked, red-nosed, sunken-eyed, elderly man, who took
down the window-shutters, he recognised the proprietor. This person
looked at Shamus, in return, with peculiar scrutiny. The wanderer
liked neither his regards nor the expression of his countenance,
and quickened his steps onward until he cleared the bridge.

"But I 'll walk it over at the other side now," he bethought, after
allowing the publican time to finish opening his house and retire
out of view.

But, repassing the house, the man still appeared, leaning against
his door-jamb, and as if waiting for Shamus's return, whom, upon
this second occasion, he eyed more attentively than before.

"Sorrow's in him," thought Shamus, "have I two heads on me, that
I'm such a sight to him? But who cares about his pair of ferret
eyes? I 'll thrudge down the middle stone of it, at any rate!"

Accordingly, he again walked toward the public-house, keeping the
middle of the bridge.

"Good-morrow, friend," said the publican, as Shamus a third time
passed his door.

"Sarvant kindly, sir," answered Shamus, respectfully pulling down
the brim of his hat, and increasing his pace.

"Am early hour you choose for a morning walk," continued his new
acquaintance.

"Brave and early, faix, sir," said Shamus, still hurrying off.

"Stop a bit," resumed the publican. Shamus stood still. "I see
you're a countryman of mine --an Irishman; I'd know one of you at
a look, though I'm a long time out of the country. And you're not
very well off on London Bridge this morning, either."

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