“Land, no!”
Rebecca went upstairs to lay aside her coat and bonnet. But she came hurrying back with them still on.
“Who’s been in my room?” she gasped. Her face was pale as ashes. Mrs. Dent also paled as she regarded her.
“What do you mean?” she asked slowly.
“I found when I went upstairs that—little nightgown of—Agnes’s on—the bed, laid out. It was—LAID OUT. The sleeves were folded across the bosom, and there was that little red rose between them. Emeline, what is it? Emeline, what’s the matter? Oh!”
Mrs. Dent was struggling for breath in great, choking gasps. She clung to the back of a chair. Rebecca, trembling herself so she could scarcely keep on her feet, got her some water.
As soon as she recovered herself Mrs. Dent regarded her with eyes full of the strangest mixture of fear and horror and hostility.
“What do you mean talking so?” she said in a hard voice.
“It IS THERE.”
“Nonsense. You threw it down and it fell that way.”
“It was folded in my bureau drawer.”
“It couldn’t have been.”
“Who picked that red rose?”
“Look on the bush,” Mrs. Dent replied shortly.
Rebecca looked at her; her mouth gaped. She hurried out of the room. When she came back her eyes seemed to protrude. (She had in the meantime hastened upstairs, and come down with tottering steps, clinging to the banisters.)
“Now I want to know what all this means?” she demanded.
“What what means?”
“The rose is on the bush, and it’s gone from the bed in my room! Is this house haunted, or what?”
“I don’t know anything about a house being haunted. I don’t believe in such things. Be you crazy?” Mrs. Dent spoke with gathering force. The colour flashed back to her cheeks.
“No,” said Rebecca shortly. “I ain’t crazy yet, but I shall be if this keeps on much longer. I’m going to find out where that girl is before night.”
Mrs. Dent eyed her.
“What be you going to do?”
“I’m going to Lincoln.”
A faint triumphant smile overspread Mrs. Dent’s large face. “You can’t,” said she; “there ain’t any train.”
“No train?”
“No; there ain’t any afternoon train from the Falls to Lincoln.”
“Then I’m going over to the Slocums’ again to-night.”
However, Rebecca did not go; such a rain came up as deterred even her resolution, and she had only her best dresses with her. Then in the evening came the letter from the Michigan village which she had left nearly a week ago. It was from her cousin, a single woman, who had come to keep her house while she was away. It was a pleasant unexciting letter enough, all the first of it, and related mostly how she missed Rebecca; how she hoped she was having pleasant weather and kept her health; and how her friend, Mrs. Greenaway, had come to stay with her since she had felt lonesome the first night in the house; how she hoped Rebecca would have no objections to this, although nothing had been said about it, since she had not realized that she might be nervous alone. The cousin was painfully conscientious, hence the letter. Rebecca smiled in spite of her disturbed mind as she read it, then her eye caught the postscript. That was in a different hand, purporting to be written by the friend, Mrs. Hannah Greenaway, informing her that the cousin had fallen down the cellar stairs and broken her hip, and was in a dangerous condition, and begging Rebecca to return at once, as she herself was rheumatic and unable to nurse her properly, and no one else could be obtained.
Rebecca looked at Mrs. Dent, who had come to her room with the letter quite late; it was half-past nine, and she had gone upstairs for the night.
“Where did this come from?” she asked.
“Mr. Amblecrom brought it,” she replied.
“Who’s he?”
“The postmaster. He often brings the letters that come on the late mail. He knows I ain’t anybody to send. He brought yours about your coming. He said he and his wife came over on the ferry-boat with you.”
“I remember him,” Rebecca replied shortly. “There’s bad news in this letter.” Mrs. Dent’s face took on an expression of serious inquiry.
“Yes, my Cousin Harriet has fallen down the cellar stairs—they were always dangerous—and she’s broken her hip, and I’ve got to take the first train home to-morrow.”
“You don’t say so. I’m dreadfully sorry.”
“No, you ain’t sorry!” said Rebecca, with a look as if she leaped. “You’re glad. I don’t know why, but you’re glad. You’ve wanted to get rid of me for some reason ever since I came. I don’t know why. You’re a strange woman. Now you’ve got your way, and I hope you’re satisfied.”
“How you talk.”
Mrs. Dent spoke in a faintly injured voice, but there was a light in her eyes.
“I talk the way it is. Well, I’m going to-morrow morning, and I want you, just as soon as Agnes Dent comes home, to send her out to me. Don’t you wait for anything. You pack what clothes she’s got, and don’t wait even to mend them, and you buy her ticket. I’ll leave the money, and you send her along. She don’t have to change cars. You start her off, when she gets home, on the next train!”
“Very well,” replied the other woman. She had an expression of covert amusement.
“Mind you do it.”
“Very well, Rebecca.”
Rebecca started on her journey the next morning. When she arrived, two days later, she found her cousin in perfect health. She found, moreover, that the friend had not written the postscript in the cousin’s letter. Rebecca would have returned to Ford Village the next morning, but the fatigue and nervous strain had been too much for her. She was not able to move from her bed. She had a species of low fever induced by anxiety and fatigue. But she could write, and she did, to the Slocums, and she received no answer. She also wrote to Mrs. Dent; she even sent numerous telegrams, with no response. Finally she wrote to the postmaster, and an answer arrived by the first possible mail. The letter was short, curt, and to the purpose. Mr. Amblecrom, the postmaster, was a man of few words, and especially wary as to his expressions in a letter.
“Dear madam,” he wrote, “your favour rec’ed. No Slocums in Ford’s Village. All dead. Addie ten years ago, her mother two years later, her father five. House vacant. Mrs. John Dent said to have neglected stepdaughter. Girl was sick. Medicine not given. Talk of taking action. Not enough evidence. House said to be haunted. Strange sights and sounds. Your niece, Agnes Dent, died a year ago, about this time.
“Yours truly,
“THOMAS AMBLECROM.”
I. There is a town called Porter’s Falls in West Virginia, situated a few miles to the east of the Ohio River, but Wilkins Freeman is likely using fictitious locations throughout this story.
II. “A Maiden’s Prayer” is by Polish composer Tekla Bądarzewska-Baranowska; first published in 1856, it became a popular piece in American country music.
Herminie Templeton Kavanagh (1861–1933), born Herminie McGibney to an Irish major, is best remembered as an English writer of short stories about Darby O’Gill, collected in two volumes, Darby O’Gill and the Good People (1903), published under the name Herminie Templeton (the name of her first husband) and Ashes of Old Wishes and Other Darby O’Gill Tales (1926), published as Herminie Templeton Kavanagh (Kavanagh being her second husband). She also wrote two plays in 1903. The O’Gill stories proved very popular, and Walt Disney Productions produced a live-action feature film combining the following story and others into Darby O’Gill and the Little People. In the following story, first published in May 1903 in McClure’s Magazine, Darby is a “lad”—in the Disney version, he is an aging caretaker, originally intended to be played by Barry Fitzgerald but ultimately portrayed by Albert Sharpe (who was age 74 at the time of the film’s release).
The Banshee’s Halloween by Herminie Templeton Kavanagh
I
&nb
sp; Halloween night, to all unhappy ghosts, is about the same as St. Patrick’s Day is to you or to me—’tis a great holiday in every churchyard.I An’ no one knew this betther or felt it keener than did Darby O’Gill,II that same Halloween night, as he stood on his own doorstep with the paper of black tayIII for Eileen McCarthy safely stowed away in the crown of his top-hat.
No one in that barony was quicker than he at an act of neighbourly kindness, but now, as he huddled himself together in the shelter of his own eaves, and thought of the dangers before, an’ of the cheerful fire an’ comfortable bed he was leaving behint, black raybellion rushed shouting across his heart.
“Oh, my, oh, my, what a perishin’ night to turn a man out into!” he says. “It’d be half a comfort to know I was goin’ to be kilt before I got back, just as a warnin’ to Bridget,” says he.
The misthrayted lad turned a sour eye on the chumultuous weather, an’ groaned deep as he pulled closer about his chowldhers the cape of his greatcoat an’ plunged into the daysarted an’ flooded roadway.
Howsumever, ’twas not the pelting rain, nor the lashing wind, nor yet the pitchy darkness that bothered the heart out of him as he wint splashin’ an’ stumbling along the road. A thought of something more raylentless than the storm, more mystarious than the night’s blackness put pounds of lead into the lad’s unwilling brogues; for somewhere in the shrouding darkness that covered McCarthy’s house the bansheeIV was waiting this minute, purhaps, ready to jump out at him as soon as he came near her.
And, oh, if the banshee nabbed him there, what in the worruld would the poor lad do to save himself?
At the raylisation of this sitiwation, the goose-flesh crept up his back an’ settled on his neck an’ chowldhers. He began to cast about in his mind for a bit of cheer or a scrap of comfort, as a man in such sarcumstances will do. So, grumblin’ an’ sore-hearted, he turned over Bridget’s parting words. “If one goes on an errant of marcy,” Bridget had said, “a score of God’s white angels with swoords in their hands march before an’ beside an’ afther him, keeping his path free from danger.”
He felt anxious in his hat for the bit of charitable tay he was bringin’, and was glad to find it there safe an’ dhry enough, though the rest of him was drenched through an’ through.
“Isn’t this an act of charity I’m doin’, to be bringin’ a cooling drink to a dyin’ woman?” he axed himself aloud. “To be sure it is. Well, then, what rayson have I to be afeared?” says he, pokin’ his two hands into his pockets. “Arrah, it’s aisy enough to bolsther up one’s heart with wise sayin’ an’ hayroic praycepts when sitting comodious by one’s own fire; but talkin’ wise words to one’s self is mighty poor comfort when you’re on the lonely high-road of a Halloween night, with a churchyard waitin’ for ye on the top of the hill not two hundred yards away. If there was only one star to break through the thick sky an’ shine for him, if there was but one friendly cow to low or a distant cock to break the teeming silence, ‘twould put some heart into the man. But not a sound was there only the swish and wailing of the wind through the inwisible hedges.
“What’s the matther with the whole worruld? Where is it wanished to?” says Darby. “If a ghost were to jump at me from the churchyard wall, where would I look for help? To run is no use,” he says, “an’ to face it is—”
Just then the current of his misdoubtings ran whack up against a sayin’ of ould Peggy O’Callaghan. Mrs. O’Callaghan’s repitation for truth and voracity, whin it come to fairy tales or ghost stories, be it known, was ayquil if not shuparior to the best in Tipperary. Now, Peggy had towld Ned Mullin, an’ Ned Mullin had towld Bill Donahue, the tinker, an’ the tinker had adwised Darby that no one need ever be afeared of ghosts if he only had the courage to face them.
Peggy said, “The poor crachures ain’t roamin’ about shakin’ chains an’ moanin’ an’ groanin’, just for the sport of scarin’ people, nor yet out of maneness. ‘Tis always a throuble that’s on their minds—a message they want sint, a saycret they’re endayvouring to unload. So instead of flyin’ from the onhappy things, as most people generally do,” she said, “one should walk up bowld to the apparraytion, be it gentle or common, male or faymale, an’ say, ‘What throubles ye, sir?’ or ‘What’s amiss with ye, ma’am?’ An’ take my worrud for it,” says she, “ye’ll find yourself a boneyfactor to them when you laste expect it,” she says.
’Twas a quare idee, but not so onraysonable afther all whin one comes to think of it; an’ the knowledgeable man fell to dayliberatin’ whether he’d have the hardness to folly it out if the chanst came. Sometimes he thought he would, then agin he was sure he wouldn’t. For Darby O’Gill was one who bint quick undher trouble like a young three before a hurrycane, but he only bint—the throuble never broke him. So, at times his courage wint down to a spark like the light of a candle in a gust of wind, but before you could turn on your heel ’twas blazing up sthrong and fiercer than before.
Whilst thus contimplatin’ an’ meditaytin’, his foot sthruck the bridge in the hollow just below the berrin’-ground, an’ there as the boy paused a minute, churning up bravery enough to carry him up the hill an’ past the mystarious gravestones, there came a short quiver of lightning, an’ in its sudden flare he was sure he saw not tin yards away, an’ comin’ down the hill toward him, a dim shape that took the breath out of his body.
“Oh, be the powers!” he gasped, his courage emptying out like wather from a spilt pail.
It moved, a slow, grey, formless thing without a head, an’ so far as he was able to judge it might be about the size of an ulephant. The parsecuted lad swung himself sideways in the road, one arrum over his eyes an’ the other stretched out at full length, as if to ward off the terrible wisitor.
The first thing that began to take any shape in his bewildhered brain was Peggy O’Callaghan’s adwice. He thried to folly it out, but a chatterin’ of teeth was the only sound he made. An’ all this time a thraymendous splashin’, like the floppin’ of whales, was coming nearer an’ nearer.
The splashin’ stopped not three feet away, an’ the ha’nted man felt in the spine of his back an’ in the calves of his legs that a powerful, unhowly monsther towered over him.
Why he didn’t swoonge in his tracks is the wondher. He says he would have dhropped at last if it weren’t for the distant bark of his own good dog, Sayser, that put a throb of courage intil his bones. At that friendly sound he opened his two dhry lips an’ stutthered this sayin’:
“Whoever you are, an’ whatever shape ye come in, take heed that I’m not afeared,” he says. “I command ye to tell me your throubles an’ I’ll be your boneyfactor. Then go back dacint an’ rayspectable where you’re buried. Spake an’ I’ll listen,” says he.
He waited for a reply, an’ getting none, a hot splinther of shame at bein’ so badly frightened turned his sowl into wexation. “Spake up,” he says, “but come no furder, for if you do, be the hokey I’ll take one thry at ye, ghost or no ghost!” he says. Once more he waited, an’ as he was lowering the arrum from his eyes for a peek, the ghost spoke up, an’ its answer came in two pitiful, disthressed roars. A damp breath puffed acrost his face, an’ openin’ his eyes, what should the lad see but the two dhroopin’ ears of Solomon, Mrs. Kilcannon’s grey donkey. Foive different kinds of disgust biled up into Darby’s throat an’ almost sthrangled him. “Ye murdherin’, big-headed imposture!” he gasped.
Half a minute afther a brown hoot-owl, which was shelthered in a near-by black-thorn three, called out to his brother’s fambly which inhabited the belfry of the chapel above on the hill that some black-minded spalpeenV had hoult of Solomon Kilcannon be the two ears an’ was kickin’ the ribs out of him, an’ that the langwidge the man was usin’ to the poor baste was worse than scan’lous.
Although Darby couldn’t undherstand what the owl was sayin’, he was startled be the blood-curdlin’ hoot, an’ that same hoot saved Solomon from any further exthrayornery throuncin’, bekase as the angry man sthopped to
hearken there flashed on him the rayilisation that he was bating an’ crool maulthraytin’ a blessing in dishguise. For this same Solomon had the repitation of being the knowingest, sensiblist thing which walked on four legs in that parish. He was a fayvourite with young an’ old, especially with childher, an’ Mrs. Kilcannon said she could talk to him as if he were a human, an’ she was sure he understhood. In the face of thim facts the knowledgeable man changed his chune, an’ puttin’ his arrum friendly around the disthressed animal’s neck, he said:
“Aren’t ye ashamed of yerself, Solomon, to be payradin’ an’ mayandherin’ around the churchyard Halloween night, dishguisin’ yerself this away as an outlandish ghost, an’ you havin’ the foine repitation for daciency an’ good manners?” he says, excusin’ himself. “I’m ashamed of you, so I am, Solomon,” says he, hauling the baste about in the road, an’ turning him till his head faced once more the hillside. “Come back with me now to Cormac McCarthy’s, avourneen.VI We’ve aich been in worse company, I’m thinkin’; at laste you have, Solomon,” says he.
At that, kind an’ friendly enough, the forgivin’ baste turned with him, an’ the two keeping aich other slitherin’ company, went stumblin’ an’ scramblin’ up the hill toward the chapel. On the way Darby kept up a one-sided conwersation about all manner of things, just so that the ring of a human woice, even if ’twas only his own, would take a bit of the crool lonesomeness out of the dark hedges.
“Did you notice McDonald’s sthrame as you came along the night, Solomon? It must be a roarin’ torrent be this, with the pourin’ rains, an’ we’ll have to cross it,” says he. “We could go over McDonald’s stone bridge that stands ferninst McCarthy’s house, with only Nolan’s meadow betwixt the two, but,” says Darby, laying a hand, confaydential on the ass’s wet back, “ ’tis only a fortnit since long Faylix, the blind beggarman, fell from the same bridge and broke his neck, an’ what more natural,” he axed, “than that the ghost of Faylix would be celebraytin’ its first Halloween, as a ghost, at the spot where he was kilt?”
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