You may believe me or believe me not, but at thim worruds Solomon sthopped dead still in his thracks an’ rayfused to go another step till Darby coaxed him on be sayin’:
“Oh, thin, we won’t cross it if you’re afeared, little man,” says he, “but we’ll take the path through the fields on this side of it, and we’ll cross the sthrame by McCarthy’s own wooden foot-bridge. ’Tis within tunty feet of the house. Oh, ye needn’t be afeared,” he says agin; “I’ve seen the cows cross it, so it’ll surely hould the both of us.”
A sudden raymembrance whipped into his mind of how tall the stile was, ladin’ into Nolan’s meadow, an’ the boy was puzzling deep in his mind to know how was Solomon to climb acrost that stile, whin all at once the gloomy western gate of the graveyard rose quick be their side.
The two shied to the opposite hedge, an’ no wondher they did.
Fufty ghosts, all in their shrouds, sat cheek be jowl along the churchyard wall, never caring a ha’porth for the wind or the rain.
There was little Ted Rogers, the humpback, who was dhrownded in Mullin’s well four years come Michaelmas; there was black Mulligan, the game-keeper, who shot Ryan, the poacher, sittin’ with a gun on his lap, an’ he glowerin’; beside the game-keeper sat the poacher, with a jagged black hole in his forehead; there was Thady Finnegan, the scholar, who was disappointed in love an’ died of a daycline; furder on sat Mrs. Houlihan, who dayparted this life from ating of pizen musherooms; next to her sat—oh, a hundhred others!
Not that Darby saw thim, do ye mind. He had too good sinse to look that way at all. He walked with his head turned out to the open fields, an’ his eyes squeeged shut. But something in his mind toult him they were there, an’ he felt in the marrow of his bones that if he gave them the encouragement of one glance two or three’d slip off the wall an’ come moanin’ over to tell him their throubles.
What Solomon saw an’ what Solomon heard, as the two wint shrinkin’ along’ll never be known to living man, but once he gave a jump, an’ twice Darby felt him thrimblin’, an’ whin they raiched at last the chapel wall the baste broke into a swift throt. Purty soon he galloped, an’ Darby wint gallopin’ with him, till two yallow blurs of light across in a field to the left marked the windys of the stone-cutter’s cottage.
’Twas a few steps only, thin, to the stile over into Nolan’s meadow, an’ there the two stopped, lookin’ helpless at aich other. Solomon had to be lifted, and there was the throuble. Three times Darby thried be main strength to hist his compagnen up the steps, but in vain, an’ Solomon was clane dishgusted.
Only for the tendher corn on our hayro’s left little toe, I think maybe that at length an’ at last the pair would have got safe over. The kind-hearted lad had the donkey’s two little hoofs planted on the top step, an’ whilst he himself was liftin’ the rest of the baste in his arrums, Solomon got onaisy that he was goin’ to be trun, an’ so began to twisht an’ squirm; of course, as he did, Darby slipped an’ wint thump on his back agin the stile, with Solomon sittin’ comfortable on top of the lad’s chist. But that wasn’t the worst of it, for as the baste scrambled up he planted one hard little hoof on Darby’s left foot, an’ the knowledgeable man let a yowl out of him that must have frightened all the ghosts within miles.
Seein’ he’d done wrong, Solomon boulted for the middle of the road an’ stood there wiry an’ attentive, listening to the names flung at him from where his late comerade sat on the lowest step of the stile nursin’ the hurted foot.
’Twas an excited owl in the belfry that this time spoke up an’ shouted to his brother down in the blackthorn:
“Come up, come up quick!” it says. “Darby O’Gill is just afther calling Solomon Kilcannon a malayfactor.”
Darby rose at last, an’ as he climbed over the stile he turned to shake his fist toward the middle of the road.
“Bad luck to ye for a thick-headed, on-grateful informer!” he says; “you go your way an’ I’ll go mine—we’re sundhers,”VII says he. So sayin’, the crippled man wint limpin’ an’ grumplin’ down the boreen,VIII through the meadow, whilst his desarted friend sint rayproachful brays afther him that would go to your heart.
The throbbin’ of our hayro’s toe banished all pity for the baste, an’ even all thoughts of the banshee, till a long, gurgling, swooping sound in front toult him that his fears about the rise in McDonald’s sthrame were undher rather than over the actwil conditions.
Fearin’ that the wooden foot-bridge might be swept away, as it had been the year purvious, he hurried on.
Most times this sthrame was only a quiet little brook that ran betwixt purty green banks, with hardly enough wather in it to turn the broken wheel in Chartres’ runed mill; but to-night it swept along an angry, snarlin’, growlin’ river that overlept its banks an’ dhragged wildly at the swaying willows.
Be a narrow throw of light from McCarthy’s side windy our thraveller could see the maddened wathers thrivin’ an’ tearing to pull with it the props of the little foot-bridge; an’ the boards shook an’ the centre swayed undher his feet as he passed over. “Bedad, I’ll not cross this way goin’ home, at any rate,” he says, looking back at it.
The worruds were no sooner out of his mouth than there was a crack, an’ the middle of the foot-bridge lifted in the air, twishted round for a second, an then hurled itself into the sthrame, laving the two inds still standing in their place on the banks.
“Tunder an’ turf!” he cried, “I mustn’t forget to tell the people within of this, for if ever there was a thrap set by evil spirits to drownd a poor, unwary mortial, there it stands. Oh, ain’t the ghosts terrible wicious on Halloween!”
He stood dhrippin’ a minute on the threshold, listening; thin, without knockin’, lifted the latch an’ stepped softly into the house.
II
Two candles burned above the blue and white chiney dishes on the table, a bright fire blazed on the hearth, an’ over in the corner where the low bed was set the stone-cutter was on his knees beside it.
Eileen lay on her side, her shining hair sthrealed out on the pillow. Her purty, flushed face was turned to Cormac, who knelt with his forehead hid on the bed-covers. The colleen’s two little hands were clasped about the great fist of her husband, an’ she was talking low, but so airnest that her whole life was in every worrud.
“God save all here!” said Darby, takin’ off his hat, but there was no answer. So deep were Cormac an’ Eileen in some conwersation they were having together that they didn’t hear his coming. The knowledgeable man didn’t know what to do. He raylised that a husband and wife about to part for ever were lookin’ into aich other’s hearts, for maybe the last time. So he just sthood shifting from one foot to the other, watching thim, unable to daypart, an’ not wishin’ to obtrude.
“Oh, it isn’t death at all that I fear,” Eileen was saying. “No, no, Cormac asthore, ’tis not that I’m misdoubtful of; but, ochone mavrone,IX ’tis you I fear!”
The kneelin’ man gave one swift upward glance, and dhrew his face nearer to the sick wife. She wint on, thin, spakin’ tindher an’ half smiling an’ sthrokin’ his hand:
“I know, darlint, I know well, so you needn’t tell me, that if I were to live with you a thousand years you’d never sthray in mind or thought to any other woman, but it’s when I’m gone—when the lonesome avenings folly aich other through days an’ months, an’ maybe years, an’ you sitting here at this fireside without one to speak to, an’ you so handsome an’ gran’, an’ with the penny or two we’ve put away—”
“Oh, asthore machree,X why can’t ye banish thim black thoughts!” says the stone-cutter. “Maybe,” he says, “the banshee will not come again. Ain’t all the counthry-side prayin’ for ye this night, an’ didn’t Father Cassidy himself bid you to hope? The saints in Heaven couldn’t be so crool!” says he.
But the colleen wint on as though she hadn’t heard him, or as if he hadn’t intherrupted her:
“An’ listen,” says she; “they’
ll come urging ye, the neighbours, an’ raysonin’ with you. Your own flesh an’ blood’ll come, an’, no doubt, me own with them, an’ they all sthriving to push me out of your heart, an’ to put another woman there in my place. I’ll know it all, but I won’t be able to call to you, Cormac machree, for I’ll be lying silent undher the grass, or undher the snow up behind the church.”
While she was sayin’ thim last worruds, although Darby’s heart was meltin’ for Eileen, his mind began running over the colleens of that townland to pick out the one who’d be most likely to marry Cormac in the ind. You know how far-seeing an’ quick-minded was the knowledgeable man. He settled sudden on the Hanlon girl, an’ daycided at once that she’d have Cormac before the year was out. The ondaycency of such a thing made him furious at her.
He says to himself, half crying, “Why, then, bad cessXI to you for a shameless, red-haired, forward baggage, Bridget Hanlon, to be runnin’ afther the man, an’ throwing yourself in his way, an’ Eileen not yet cowld in her grave!” he says.
While he was saying them things to himself, McCarthy had been whuspering fierce to his wife, but what it was the stone-cutter said the friend of the fairiesXII couldn’t hear. Eileen herself spoke clean enough in answer, for the faver gave her onnatural strength.
“Don’t think,” she says, “that it’s the first time this thought has come to me. Two months ago, whin I was sthrong an’ well an’ sittin’ happy as a meadow-lark at your side, the same black shadow dhrifted over me heart. The worst of it an’ the hardest to bear of all is that they’ll be in the right, for what good can I do for you when I’m undher the clay,” says she.
“It’s different with a woman. If you were taken an’ I left I’d wear your face in my heart through all me life, an’ ax for no sweeter company.”
“Eileen,” says Cormac, liftin’ his hand, an’ his woice was hoarse as the roar of the say, “I swear to you on me bendid knees——”
With her hand on his lips, she sthopped him. “There’ll come on ye by daygrees a great cravin’ for sympathy, a hunger an’ a longing for affection, an’ you’ll have only the shadow of my poor, wanished face to comfort you, an’ a recollection of a woice that is gone for ever. A new, warm face’ll keep pushin’ itself betwixt us——”
“Bad luck to that red-headed hussy!” mutthered Darby, looking around disthressed. “I’ll warn father Cassidy of her an’ of her intintions the day afther the funeral.”
There was silence for a minute; Cormac, the poor lad, was sobbing like a child. By-and-by Eileen wint on again, but her woice was failing an’ Darby could see that her cheeks were wet.
“The day’ll come when you’ll give over,” she says. “Ah, I see how it’ll all ind. Afther that you’ll visit the churchyard be stealth, so as not to make the other woman sore-hearted.”
“My, oh, my, isn’t she the far-seein’ woman?” thought Darby.
“Little childher’ll come,” she says, “an’ their soft, warm arrums will hould you away. By-and-by you’ll not go where I’m laid at all, an’ all thoughts of these few happy months we’ve spent together—Oh! Mother in Heaven, how happy they were——”
The girl started to her elbow, for, sharp an’ sudden, a wild, wailing cry just outside the windy startled the shuddering darkness. ’Twas a long cry of terror and of grief, not shrill, but piercing as a knife-thrust. Every hair on Darby’s head stood up an’ pricked him like a needle. ’Twas the banshee!
“Whist, listen!” says Eileen. “Oh, Cormac asthore, it’s come for me again!” With that, stiff with terror, she buried herself undher the pillows.
A second cry follyed the first, only this time it was longer, and rose an’ swelled into a kind of a song that broke at last into the heart-breakingest moan that ever fell on mortial ears. “Ochone!” it sobbed.
The knowledgeable man, his blood turned to ice, his legs thremblin’ like a hare’s, stood looking in spite of himself at the black windy-panes, expecting some frightful wision.
Afther that second cry the woice balanced itself up an’ down into the awful death keen. One word made the whole song, and that was the turruble worrud, “Forever!”
“Forever an’ forever, oh, forever!” swung the wild keen, until all the deep meaning of the worrud burned itself into Darby’s sowl, thin the heart-breakin’ sob, “Ochone!” inded always the varse.
Darby was just wondherin’ whether he himself wouldn’t go mad with fright, whin he gave a sudden jump at a hard, sthrained woice which spoke up at his very elbow.
“Darby O’Gill,” it said, and it was the stone-cutter who spoke, “do you hear the death keen? It came last night; it’ll come to-morrow night at this same hour, and thin—oh, my God!”
Darby tried to answer, but he could only stare at the white, set face an’ the sunken eyes of the man before him.
There was, too, a kind of fierce quiet in the way McCarthy spoke that made Darby shiver.
The stone-cutter wint on talkin’ the same as though he was goin’ to dhrive a bargain. “They say you’re a knowledgeable man, Darby O’Gill,” he says, “an’ that on a time you spint six months with the fairies. Now I make you this fair, square offer,” he says, laying a forefinger in the palm of the other hand. “I have fifty-three pounds that Father Cassidy’s keeping for me. Fifty-three pounds,” he says agin. “An’ I have this good bit of a farm that me father was born on, an’ his father was born on, too, and the grandfather of him. An’ I have the grass of seven cows. You know that. Well, I’ll give it all to you, all, every stiverXIII of it, if you’ll only go outside an’ dhrive away that cursed singer.” He trew his head to one side an’ looked anxious up at Darby.
The knowledgeable man racked his brains for something to speak, but all he could say was, “I’ve brought you a bit of tay from the wife, Cormac.”
McCarthy took the tay with unfeeling hands, an’ wint on talking in the same dull way. Only this time there came a hard lump in his throat now and then that he stopped to swally.
“The three cows I have go, of course, with the farm,” says he. “So does the pony an’ the five pigs. I have a good plough an’ a foine harrow; but you must lave my stone-cutting tools, so little Eileen an’ I can earn our way wherever we go, an’ it’s little the crachure ates the best of times.”
The man’s eyes were dhry an’ blazin’; no doubt his mind was cracked with grief. There was a lump in Darby’s throat, too, but for all that he spoke up scolding-like.
“Arrah, talk rayson, man,” he says, putting two hands on Cormac’s chowlders; “if I had the wit or the art to banish the banshee, wouldn’t I be happy to do it an’ not a fardin’ to pay?”
“Well, then,” says Cormac, scowling, an’ pushin’ Darby to one side, “I’ll face her myself—I’ll face her an’ choke that song in her throat if Sattin himself stood at her side.”
With those words, an’ before Darby could sthop him, the stone-cutter flung open the door an’ plunged out into the night. As he did so the song outside sthopped. Suddenly a quick splashing of feet, hoarse cries, and shouts gave tidings of a chase. The half-crazed gossoonXIV had stharted the banshee—of that there could be no manner of doubt. A raymembrance of the awful things that she might do to his friend paythrefied the heart of Darby.
Even afther these cries died away he stood listenling a full minute, the sowls of his two brogues glued to the floor. The only sounds he heard now were the deep ticking of a clock and a cricket that chirped slow an’ solemn on the hearth, an’ from somewhere outside came the sorrowful cry of a whipperwill. All at once a thought of the broken bridge an’ of the black, treacherous waters caught him like the blow of a whip, an’ for a second drove from his mind even the fear of the banshee.
In that one second, an’ before he rayalised it, the lad was out undher the dhripping trees, and running for his life toward the broken foot-bridge. The night was whirling an’ beating above him like the flapping of thraymendous wings, but as he ran Darby thought he heard above the rush of the water and th
rough, the swish of the wind Cormac’s woice calling him.
The friend of the fairies stopped at the edge of the foot-bridge to listen. Although the storm had almost passed, a spiteful flare of lightning lept up now an’ agin out of the western hills, an’ afther it came the dull rumble of distant thunder; the water splashed spiteful against the bank, and Darby saw that seven good feet of the bridge had been torn out of its centre, laving uncovered that much of the black, deep flood.
He stood sthraining his eyes an’ ears in wondheration, for now the woice of Cormac sounded from the other side of the sthrame, and seemed to be floating toward him through the field over the path Darby himself had just thravelled. At first he was mightily bewildhered at what might bring Cormac on the other side of the brook, till all at once the murdhering scheme of the banshee burst in his mind like a gunpowdher explosion.
Her plan was as plain as day—she meant to dhrown the stone-cutter. She had led the poor, daysthracted man straight from his own door down to and over the new stone bridge, an’ was now dayludherin’ him on the other side of the sthrame, back agin up the path that led to the broken foot-bridge.
In the glare of a sudden blinding flash from the middle of the sky Darby saw a sight he’ll never forget till the day he dies. Cormac, the stone-cutter, was running toward the death-trap, his bare head trun back, an’ his two arrums stretched out in front of him. A little above an’ just out of raich of them, plain an’ clear as Darby ever saw his wife Bridget, was the misty white figure of a woman. Her long, waving hair sthrealed back from her face, an’ her face was the face of the dead.
At the sight of her Darby thried to call out a warning, but the words fell back into his throat. Thin again came the stifling darkness. He thried to run away, but his knees failed him, so he turned around to face the danger.
As he did so he could hear the splash of the man’s feet in the soft mud. In less than a minute Cormac would be sthruggling in the wather. At the thought Darby, bracing himself body and sowl, let a warning howl out of him.
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