Jack Hinton: The Guardsman

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 butt-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 God!’ he exclaimed, after a prayer of some minutes, in which his features worked like one in a fit of epilepsy – ‘O God, is it then too late?’

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 snatched 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 God. 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 attitude 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 passed 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 succumbs 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 harassing 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 masses 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 pass, 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 – ‘God’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 buttoned within the bosom of his greatcoat.

The priest now joined us, and spoke for several minutes in Irish; and although ignorant of all he said, I could mark in the tone of his voice, his look, his manner, and his gesture that his words were those of rebuke and reprobation. The old man heard him in silence, but without any evidence of feeling. The others, on the contrary, seemed deeply affected; and the younger of the two, whose arm was broken, seemed greatly moved, and the tears rolled down his hardy cheeks.

These signs of emotion were evidently displeasing to the old man, whose nature was of a sterner and more cruel mould; and as he turned away from the father’s admonition he moved past me, muttering, as he went —

‘Isn’t it all fair? Blood for blood; and sure they dhruv him to it.’

After a few words from the priest, two of the party took their spades from the car, and began digging the grave; while Father Loftus, leading the other aside, talked to him for some time.

‘Begorra,’ said the old man, as he shovelled the earth to either side, ‘Father Tom isn’t like himself, at all, at all. He used to have pity and the kind word for the poor when they were turned out on the world to starve, without as much as a sheaf of straw to lie upon, or potatoes enough for the children to eat.’

‘Whisht, father! or the priest will hear ye,’ said the younger one, looking cautiously around.

‘Sorrow bit o’ me cares if he does! it’s thruth I’m telling. You are not long in these parts, sir, av I may make so bowld?’

‘No,’ said I, ‘I’m quite a stranger.’

‘Well, anyhow, ye may understand that this isn’t a fine soil for a potato-garden; and yet the devil a other poor Shaun had since they turned him out on the road last Michaelmas Day, himself and his wife and the little gossoon – the only one they had, too – with a fever and ague upon him. The poor child, however, didn’t feel it long, for he died in ten days after. Well, well! the way of God there’s no saying against it. But, sure, if the little boy didn’t die Shaun was off to America; for he tuk his passage, and got a sea-chest of a friend, and was all ready to go. But you see, when the child died, he could not bring himself to leave the grave; and there he used to go and spend half of his days fixing it, and settling the sods about it, and wouldn’t take a day’s work from any of the neighbours. And at last he went off one night, and we never knew what was become of him, till a pedlar brought word that he and Mary was living in the Cluan Beg, away from everybody, without a friend to say “God save you!” It’s deep enough now, Mickey; there’s nobody will turn him out of this. And so, sir, he might have lived for many a year; but when he heerd that the boys was up, and going to settle a reckoning with Mr. Tarleton – ’

‘Come, you,’ cried the priest, who joined us at the moment, and who I could perceive was evidently displeased at the old man’s communicativeness – ‘come, you, the sooner you all get back the better. We must look after Mary, too; for God knows where she is wandering. And now let us put the poor boy in the earth.’

With slow and sullen steps the old man entered the house, followed by the others. I did not accompany them, but stood beside the grave, my mind full of all I heard. In a few minutes they returned, carrying the coffin, one corner of which was borne by the priest himself. Their heads were bare, and their features were pale and care-worn. They placed the body in the grave, and gazed down after it for some seconds. The priest spoke a few words in a low, broken voice, the very sounds of which, though their meaning was unknown to me, sank deep into my heart. He whispered for an instant to one of the young men, who went into the cabin and speedily returned, carrying with him some of the clothes of the deceased and the old carbine that lay beneath the bed.

‘Throw them in the grave, Mickey – throw them in,’ said the priest. ‘Where’s his coat?’

‘It isn’t there, sir,’ said the man. ‘That’s everything that has a mark of blood upon it.’

‘Give me that gun,’ cried the priest; and at the same moment he took the carbine by the end of the barrel, and by one stroke of his strong foot snapped it at the breech. ‘My curse be on you!’ said he, as he kicked the fragments into the grave; ‘there was peace and happiness in the land before men knew ye, and owned ye! Ah, Hugh,’ said he, turning his eyes fiercely on the old man, ‘I never said ye hadn’t griefs and trials, and sore ones too, some of them; but God help you, if you think that an easy conscience and a happy home can be bought by murder.’ The old man started at the words, and as his dark brow lowered and his lip trembled, I drew near to the priest, fearful lest an attack might be made on him. ‘Ay, murder, boys! that’s the word, and no less. Don’t tell me about righting yourselves, and blood for blood, and all that. There’s a curse upon the land where these things happen, and the earth is not lucky that is moistened with the blood of God’s creatures.’

‘Cover him up! cover him up!’ said the old man, shovelling in the earth so as to drown the priest’s words, ‘and let us be going. We ought to be back by six o’clock, unless,’ added he with a sarcastic bitterness that made him look like a fiend – ‘unless your reverence is going to set the police on our track.’

‘God forgive you, Hugh, and turn your heart,’ said the priest, as he shook his outstretched hands at the old man. As the father spoke these words he took me by the arm, and led me within the house. I could feel his hand tremble as it leaned upon me, and the big tears rolled down his cheeks in silence.

We sat down in the little cabin, but neither of us spoke. After some time we heard the noise of the cartwheels and the sound of voices, which grew fainter and fainter as they passed up the glen, and at length all became still.

‘And the poor wife,’ said I, ‘what, think you, has become of her?’

‘Gone home to her people, most likely,’ answered the priest. ‘Her misfortunes will make her a home in every cabin. None so poor, none so wretched, as not to succour and shelter her. But let us hence.’

We walked forth from the hovel, and the priest closing the door after him fastened it with a padlock that he had found within, and then, placing the key upon the door-sill, he turned to depart; but suddenly stopping, he took my hand in both of his, and said, in a voice of touching earnestness —

‘This has been a sad scene. Would to God you had not witnessed it! Would to God, rather, that it might not have occurred! But promise me, on the faith of a man of honour and the word of a gentleman, that what you have seen this night you will reveal to no man, until I have passed away myself, and stand before that judgment to which we all are coming.’

‘I promise you faithfully,’ said I. ‘And now let us leave a spot that has thrown a gloom upon my heart which a long life will never obliterate.’

CHAPTER XXXV. THE JOURNEY

As we issued from the glen the country became more open; patches of cultivation presented themselves, and an air of comfort and condition superior to what we had hitherto seen was observable in the dwellings of the country-people. The road lead through a broad valley bounded on one side by a chain of lofty mountains, and on the other separated by the Shannon from the swelling hills of Munster. Deeply engaged in our thoughts, we travelled along for some miles without speaking. The scene we had witnessed was of that kind that seemed to forbid our recurrence to it, save in our own gloomy reflections. We had not gone far when the noise of horsemen on the road behind us induced us to turn our heads. They came along at a sharp trot, and we could soon perceive that although the two or three foremost were civilians, they who followed were dragoons. I thought I saw the priest change colour as the clank of the accoutrements struck upon his ear. I had, however, but little time for the observation, as the party soon overtook us.

‘You are early on the road, gentlemen,’ said a strong, powerfully-built man, who, mounted upon a grey horse of great bone and action, rode close up beside us.

‘Ah, Sir Thomas, is it you?’ said the priest, affecting at once his former easy and indifferent manner. ‘I’d rather see the hounds at your back than those beagles of King George there. Is there anything wrong in the country?’

‘Let me ask you another question,’ said the knight in answer. ‘How long have you been in it, and where did you pass the night, not to hear of what has occurred?’

‘‘Faith, a home question,’ said the priest, summoning up a hearty laugh to conceal his emotion; ‘but if the truth must out, we came round by the priory at Glenduff, as my friend here being an Englishman – may I beg to present him to you? Mr. Hinton, Sir Thomas Garland – he heard wonders of the monks’ way of living up there, and I wished to let him judge for himself.’

‘Ah, that accounts for it,’ said the tall man to himself. ‘We have had a sad affair of it, Father Tom. Poor Tarleton has been murdered.’

‘Murdered!’ said the priest, with an expression of horror in his countenance I could scarcely believe feigned.

‘Yes, murdered! The house was attacked a little after midnight. The party must have been a large one, for while they forced in the hall door, the haggard and the stables were seen in a blaze. Poor George had just retired to bed, a little later than usual; for his sons had returned a few hours before from Dublin, where they had been to attend their college examination. The villains, however, knew the house well, and made straight for his room. He got up in an instant, and seizing a sabre that hung beside his bed, defended himself, with the courage of desperation, against them all. The scuffle and the noise soon brought his sons to the spot, who, although mere boys, behaved in the most gallant manner. Overpowered at last by numbers, and covered with wounds, they dragged poor Tarleton downstairs, shouting out as they went, “Bring him down to Freney’s! Let the bloody villain see the black walls and the cold hearth he has made, before he dies!” It was their intention to murder him on the spot where, a few weeks before, a distress for rent had been executed against some of his tenants. He grasped the banisters with a despairing clutch, while fixing his eyes upon his servant, who had lived with him for some years past, he called out to him in his agony to save him; but the fellow came deliberately forward and held the flame of a candle beneath the dying man’s fingers, until he relaxed his hold and fell back among his murderers. Yes, yes, father, Henry Tarleton saw it with his own eyes, for while his brother was stretched senseless on the floor, he was struggling with the others at the head of the staircase; and, strange enough too, they never hurt the boys, but when they had wreaked their vengeance on the father, bound them back to back, and left them.’

‘Can you identify any of them?’ said the priest, with intense emotion in his voice and manner.

‘Scarcely, I fear; their faces were blackened, and they wore shirts over their coats. Henry thinks he could swear to two or three of the number; but our best chance of discovery lies in the fact that several of them were badly wounded, and one in particular, whom he saw cut down by his father’s sabre, was carried downstairs by his comrades, bathed in blood.’

‘He didn’t recognise him?’ said the priest eagerly.

‘No; but here comes the poor boy, so I’ll wish you good-morning.’

He put spurs to his horse as he spoke and dashed forward, followed by the dragoons; while at the same moment, on the opposite side of the road, a young man – pale, with his dress disordered, his arm in a sling – rode by. He never turned a look aside; his filmy eye was fixed, as it were, on some far-off object, and he seemed scarce to guide his horse as he galloped onward over the rugged road.

The priest relaxed his pace to permit the crowd of horsemen to pass on, while his countenance once more assumed its drooping and despondent look, and he relapsed into his former silence.

‘You see that high mountain to the left there?’ said he after a long pause. ‘Well, our road lies around the foot of it; and, please God, by to-morrow evening we ‘ll be some five-and-twenty miles on the other side, in the heart of my own wild country, with the big mountains behind you, and the great blue Atlantic rearing its frothing waves at your feet.’ He stopped for an instant, and then grasping my arm with his strong hand, continued in a low, distinct voice: ‘Never speak to me nor question me about what we saw last night, and try only to remember it as a dream. And now let me tell you how I intend to amuse you in the far west.’

Here the priest began a spirited and interesting description of the scenery and the people – their habits, their superstitions, and their pastimes. He sustained the interest of his account with legend and story, now grave, now gay – sometimes recalling a trait from the older history of the land; sometimes detailing an incident of the fair or the market, but always by his wonderful knowledge of the peasantry, their modes of thinking and reasoning, and by his imitation of their figurative and forcible expressions, able to carry me with him, whether he took the mountain’s side for his path, sat beside some cotter’s turf-fire, or skimmed along the surface of the summer sea in the frail bark of an Achill fisherman. I learned from him that in the wild region where he lived there were above fifteen thousand persons, scarce one of whom could speak or understand a word of English. Of these he was not only the priest, but the ruler and judge. Before him all their disputes were settled, all their differences reconciled. His word, in the strongest sense of the phrase, was law – not indeed to be enforced by bayonets and policemen, by constables and sheriffs’ officers, but which in its moral force demanded obedience, and would have made him who resisted it an outcast among his fellows.

‘We are poor,’ said the priest, ‘but we are happy. Crime is unknown among us, and the blood of man has not been shed in strife for fifty years within the barony. When will ye learn this in England? When will ye know that these people may be led, but never driven; that they may be persuaded, but never compelled? When will ye condescend to bend so far the prerogative of your birth, your riches, and your rank, as to reason with the poor and humble peasant that looks up to you for protection? Alas! my young friend, were you to ask me what is the great source of misery of this unhappy land, I should tell you the superior intelligence of its people. I see a smile, but hear me out. Unlike the peasantry of other countries, they are not content. Their characters are mistaken, their traits misconstrued – partly from indifference, partly from prejudice, and in a great measure because it is the fashion to recognise in the tiller of the soil a mere drudge, with scarce more intelligence than the cattle in his plough or the oxen in his team. But here you really have a people quick, sharp-sighted, and intelligent, able to scan your motives with ten times the accuracy you can guess at theirs; suspicious, because their credulity has been abused; revengeful, because their wild nature knows no other vindicator than their own right arm; lawless, for they look upon your institutions as the sources of their misery and the instruments of your tyranny towards them; reckless, for they have nothing to lose; indolent, for they have nothing to gain. Without an effort to win their confidence or secure their good-will, you overwhelm them with your institutions, cumbrous, complicated, and unsuitable; and while you neglect or despise all appeal to their feelings or affections, you place your faith in your soldiery or a special commission. Heaven help you! you may thin them off by the gallows and transportation, but the root of the evil is as far from you as ever. You do not know them, you will not know them. More prone to punish than prevent, you are satisfied with the working of the law, and not shocked with the accumulation of crime; and when, broken by poverty and paralysed by famine, a gloomy desolation spreads over the land, you meet in terms of congratulation to talk over tranquilised Ireland.’