The Ashes of Old Wishes

by Herminie Templeton Kavanagh

  So saying, Michael rose, stepped carefully over the fallen arch stones that blocked the doorway of the ruined chapel, and, after picking out a soft, green mound for a pillow on the sunny side of the wall, laid himself down and fell asleep. But sure, it wasn't forty winks nor forty hundred winks the poor man took. The afternoon shadowed into evening, and the evening darkened into night, and Michael says he was sleeping like one of the cold stones when, suddenly, something like the skim of a bird's wing, or the brush of a garment passing across his face, startled every vein in his body, and he was wide awake at once and sitting up.

  The full moon was sailing swiftly out to sea through a bank of fleecy clouds, and it took a wondering second or two to place rightly in the lad's mind the tumbled, roofless walls, and the tall, broken arches of the ruin. And it's ghostly and solemn enough the place was, too, in the moonlight, with the sighing of the wind in the yew trees, and the whispering of the restless ivy on the walls, and far away the lonesome chirping of a cricket.

  As Bresnaham hesitated, round-eyed and breathless, suddenly from the gaping tower of the abbey, soft and muffled, stole the boom of a tolling bell. Its toll was like the hollow moan of the shoal bell when the fog lies heavy on the sea; it was the mere ghost of a sound. This was strange, for no mortal's bell ever was heard within six miles of the spot.

  "My grief and my woe, where am I at all, at all?" he began. "And what's this awful place?" The jump of his heart up into his throat took the breath from his lips, for the truth flashed into Michael's mind that this was the ruined abbey on the cliff where he had lain down for a minute's sleep; and, O Father in Heaven, wasn't tonight All Souls' night, when the terrible monks of Saint Bride walked in their awful penance?

  The tolling ceased.

  "The saints preserve us, 'tis the abbey!" whispered Michael. "Maybe I'll be able to slip down there before they come." He was half to his feet when there broke from the court outside the chapel a low, wailing cry that froze the blood in his heart. It was as if someone in deep torment were begging for a drop of pity.

  "Remember not his iniquities," pleaded the terrible voice, "nor let Thine anger encompass him."

  Instantly the mournful chant of many lips, like the swelling moan of the ocean, took up the response of the litany: "O Lord, we beseech Thee to hear us."

  Michael crouched breathless behind a broken pillar. To the day of his death, the bitter beseeching of that litany rang in his ears.

  "From Thy wrath and from everlasting death," wailed the first supplicant.

  Then the response, growing wild and dismal as the winter wind: "O Lord, deliver him."

  "I'm lost," groaned Michael. " 'Tis the monks of Saint Bride, and they're coming in." Twice he tried to look, but the courage wasn't in him, so he just huddled there, cowering. At the same time, the ghostly chant kept swelling nearer and nearer, and every wild prayer for the dead, with its pitiful response, went driving through the heart of poor Bresnahan.

  Presently he felt that the monks were near the chapel door behind him, and compelled by very terror, Michael glanced shrinkingly back over his shoulder.

  By this time, the great white moon was flinging a soft, steady light over the old ruin, and clearly, through the archway of the chapel, the crouching man saw approaching a sight terrible for mortal eyes.

  Marching two by two, moved a shadowy procession of brown-robed monks, and they chanting the litany for the dead as they came. The specters walked with arms folded, and each bowed head was hidden in its cowl. There must have been fifty of them. The fallen stones along their way made no hindrance to their feet any more than if those same stones had been moon-shadows.

  A few paces in front of the procession, slow, solemn, and silent, the abbot advanced alone, a tall, stately figure. Just behind him, four monks carried something between them on a litter. As the abbot entered the ruined chapel, soft and low again, the bell in the tower began tolling.

  Michael saw that they were going to pass by within a yard of him, so he strained every nerve and sinew to move aside, but the arms and legs of the poor lad were as heavy and had as little life in them as the stones lying scattered about the ground. When the monks drew near, the night air grew cold and damp and close as an open vault.

  "Out of Thy great pity, pardon his infirmities," chanted the abbot.

  "O Lord, we beseech Thee to hear us," answered the monks.

  When they were within five feet of him, Michael could see the abbot's hands crossed humbly upon the sunken breast; and, oh, achone mavrone! they were the long, thin, fleshless hands of a skeleton. Then he might have put out his hand and touched the dreadful shape.

  One face in all the ghastly train was visible as it slowly passed, and that one was the still, white face of a dead man who was being carried by on the bier. And a terrible thing he was to see, with his long, silken tunic dripping wet from the sea-brine, and the heavy seaweed clinging to him.

  "Merciful Father!" gasped Bresnahan. "Isn't it Black Roderick himself that I'm looking at, an' him dhrownded and dead these five hundred years?"

  It's well Michael Bresnahan marked that, as the monks passed him by, not one of them cast a shadow on the ground. And they turned neither to the right nor to the left, nor changed their pace, nor made any kind of sign till they reached the place where the old altar used to be standing. There they stopped, and the four bearers set the litter on the ground. The bell ceased tolling. Even the crickets shrank into a frightened silence. Michael's breath came in faint sobs.

  It was the abbot himself, then, that moved solemnly to the head of the bier, and, kneeling down as though before an altar, stretched wide his arms. He was praying there, but what he said Michael couldn't hear because the chanting had begun again. But at any rate, there they all were, the helpless dead praying for the helpless dead. Here was the chance at last for poor Bresnahan to escape. And so he made one mighty effort. With teeth chattering and knees quaking, the lad turned himself round and began creeping over toward the black, gaping archway. Barely was he able to climb the fallen stones.

  There isn't a doubt but what Michael, if he had had the strength, would have opened his lips and prayed aloud with the monks, for he remembered the legend well of how the tormented spirits needed only a living voice to join its prayer with their own, that way they would have rest in quiet graves, but the fear lay too heavy on the poor man, and he couldn't do that.

  But just as he reached the archway, the heartbroken wail rose higher and higher and more despairing, so that he could bear the sorrow of it no longer, and, turning where he stood, he bent his knees and fiercely cried aloud with the others, "O Lord, we beseech Thee to hear us."

  Those were the happy words. Instantly the chant ceased. The abbot rose from his knees and flung his arms to the sky. The man from the bier was kneeling beside the abbot. A sudden glow illuminated the chapel. Michael waited to see no more.

  As Bresnahan scrambled over the fallen stones of the threshold and darted down the hill with all the strength of his legs, the wail of the solemn chant for the dead had changed for the glorious burst of the Te Deum Laudamus. And no wonder: the curse was broken, the punishment of the centuries was ended, for the prayer of the living had been joined to the prayer of the dead. In that way, Bresnahan knew that the spirits were released from their penance. And ye may not believe it, but it's as true as the Book that, from that good day to this, the monks of Saint Bride walk the ruin no more.

  As for Katie Bresnahan, the kindhearted woman, when she heard of the great miracle that her husband, Michael, had performed that night, she quit faulting him about the little drop of liquor he used to be taking, and on account of all that had happened to him, Michael grew to be a hero throughout the countryside and was looked up to as a knowledgable man to the day he died.

  Naturally he walked happy in this new and deserved importance. There remained but one thorn in his side. Whenever he chanced to meet up with Father Driscoll on the highway, the suspicious-minded prie
st would only laugh and shake the riding whip at him. Everyone else paid him his due of dignified respect.

  -

  Killbohgan and Killboggan

  ONCE upon a time, and a black-fortuned, potato-blighted time it was, there lived near the town of Clonmel, in the beautiful County of Tipperary, a sober-minded farmer named Jerry O'Flynn.

  Of cattle or horses or sheep or goats or any four-footed beasts, Jerry had none, saving and barring a beautiful white pig which he had picked up at his own threshold on a blustery evening in April, when it was a little, stray, shivering, pink-nosed bonive.

  Well, that same pig grew and grew, fat and silky and good-natured, till it was the pride and the pleasure of the family to currycomb him, to wash him, to feed him, and to rub his fine broad back. And when the time came for him to go the way of all pigs, Jerry's thatched roof covered as sore-hearted a family as dwelt in all Ireland. However, the piteous law which compels the strong to prey upon the weak, was in this instance considered to be inexorable; so, the evening before the day of execution, Jerry repaired to a secluded spot behind the high, black, turf stack and there, with his own unwilling hands, arranged the grim paraphernalia for the morrow's tragedy. When this dismal work was finished, the honest fellow had not enough courage left to carry himself back to the cottage, there to face the accusing eyes of his children; so he slunk over to the stile in the lane and stood with his right arm thrown listlessly about the hedge post, lost in troubled contemplation of the unconscious and confiding victim who stretched himself luxuriously in the grass at his master's feet.

  So preoccupied was the lad with his bothersome thoughts, that he failed to notice the hasty approach of good-natured old Mrs. Clancey, and he answered her cheery "God save ye" with a half-frightened start.

  "I've come to tell ye, Jerry agra," the excited woman panted, "that there's a letther—a big blue letther—from Amerikay—waitin' for ye down in the town; and the postmasther (bad cess to him) wouldn't let me have it to bring to you. He even rayfused to open it for me, so I might bring ye the news who it was from. The curse of the crows light on him!" She spoke with such hearty bitterness as to suggest a keenly disappointed curiosity.

  "Thank ye, and thank ye ag'in for your throuble, Mrs. Clancey! You're sure the letther was from Amerikay?"

  "Oh, faith I am; the postmasther hilt it up, an' more than a dozen of us saw the postmark."

  "My, but that's quare," muttered Jerry. "I have no one in Amerikay who could be afther sending me a letther, barrin' me Uncle Dan, and Dan's dead an' gone, Heaven rest him, these two years. I'm bilin' to know who the letther's from, but I can't go afther it the morrow bekase," and he sighed deeply, "we've set that day for the killin' of Char-les, the pig there. And it's a red-handed murdherer I feel meself already, Mrs. Clancey ma'am."

  Well, at these words, strange as it may seem, Char-les gave a startled grunt, rose to his fat haunches, and threw a look of such resentful surprise from under his white eyelashes, first at Jerry, and then at Mrs. Clancey, that the old woman, with a muttered "God save us, will ye look at that now," shrank back a pace from the stile.

  "I wouldn't kill that pig, Jerry O'Flynn," says she, with a wag of her forefinger. "I wouldn't kill that pig if he was as full of goold suverings as the Bank of England, Ireland, and Scotland put together, so I wouldn't!"

  The smouldering trouble in Jerry's gray eyes deepened, and he sucked hard at his empty, black pipe.

  "And why wouldn't ye, Mrs. Clancey ma'am? What raysons have ye agin him?" asked Jerry, peering anxiously at her from under the rim of his old caubeen. Mrs. Clancey deliberately folded her arms in her shawl, and came a step nearer the stile.

  "Well, first and foremost," says she, "he is a shupernatural baste, and there's a knowledgeableness in the cock of his white eye when he turns it on me that makes me shiver, so it does. Just look at him sittin' there now! Look at the saygacious twisht of the tail of him. I'll warrant he ondherstands every worrud we're thinkin', let alone sayin'—conshuming to him."

  Jerry threw an apprehensive eye over his shoulder at the pig who now sat with his back toward them, solemnly twisting his tail first this way, then that. But for all his seeming indifference, there was such a subtle suggestion of listening in the twitch of the beast's ears and the hump of his broad shoulders, that Jerry placed a cautious hand to his mouth when he whispered, "Do ye think so, Mrs. Clancey? No, no, it's only just the natural cultivaytion of the baste. Though I'll not deny that Char-les has sometimes the look of a Christian on him. Then, again, his ways are so friendly and polite that it goes sore agin me heart to lift a hand till him, so, it does. Sure, pigs have feelings as well as you or I, and you wouldn't like to be kilt yourself, Mrs. Clancey, I'm thinkin'."

  The unhappy personal comparison offended Mrs. Clancey's ever-sensitive dignity, so with head askew and tight lips she replied, "If I wor a pig, which Heaven forbid, I hope I'd be philosopher enough to be satisfied with me station in loife. Pigs were born to be kilt; how else could they be turned into things needful? 'Tis the least they can expect."

  "Thrue fer ye!" apologetically sighed Jerry. "And to substantiate what ye're sayin', there's the rint long due, an' Christmas almost on top of us, and the childher needin' shoes, an' herself fairly perishin' for a bit of a bonnet; an' look at him! There sits tay, an' bonnet, an' shoes, an' rint, an' lashin's an' lavin's of tabaccy; and here am I wid an empty poipe, too tindherhearted to transmogrify the baste. What'll I do at all, at all?"

  "Faith, I dunno, Jerry me bouchal. It's beyant me," replied Mrs. Clancey, turning to go. "But"—and a sudden thought halted her—"tomorrow is market day at Clonmel, and if that same Char-les wor my pig, I'd have him halfway there before the sun stuck a leg over the mountain, an' I'd sell him widout the flutther of an eyelid. By that manes, ye'd shift the raysponsibility onto himself. And if Char-les is half as wise as he purtinds to be, lave him alone, but he'll take care of himself."

  With a self-satisfied toss of her head and a cheerful "Good night," the wise woman took herself hurriedly up the road.

  Jerry leaned heavily on the stile and gazed with unseeing eyes at the brown shawl fast disappearing in the shadows, until he was startled by two short, indignant grunts at his side. Looking quickly around, he met the reproachful eyes of the pig gazing steadfastly up at him.

  "Arrah, don't be blaming me, Char-les, me poor lad! Don't look at me that way! Me heart's fair broke, so it is. Haven't I raised you since you were the size of that hand? An' a sociabler, civiler-mannered baste I niver saw. Musha, I wisht you were a cow, so I do; then you wouldn't be a pig an' have to be kilt. Heigh, ho! Sorrows the day! Come along up with me, agra, an' we'll have a petatie."

  That night, long after the hearth was swept and the childer and herself were in bed, Jerry sat with his chin in his hands, gazing moodily into the smoldering turf. The heavy task of the morrow drove all wish for the bed from his mind, so the leaden-hearted lad decided to sit up until morning—the better to get an early start.

  As thus he waited, the stillness of the night grew heavier and heavier around him, broken only by the spluttering of the ash-covered turf at his feet, and he felt the darkness of the room creeping up from behind, and pressing down upon his shoulders like a great cloak.

  The expiring rush light on the old oak mantel above his head struggled feebly with the strangling shadows as it burned itself to the very rim of the tall brass candlestick. But the contest proved a hopeless one, and so at last, with one despairing spurt of yellow flame, the vanquished light sank gurgling and choking out of sight. Jerry marked how its soul, in one slender, wavering spire of gray smoke, crept softly upward and disappeared. With a little shivering shrug, the lad drew his stool closer into the hearth. "Someone stepped over me grave sartin that time," he complained. "My, but isn't this a murdherin' shuperstitious night?"

  And the turf fire at his feet—sure, never before had its dull red caverns held so many weird and grostesque phantoms; an old woman with a bundle of sti
cks on her back glowed for an instant there, then suddenly changed and sank into a body stretched out on a low bier. And then the body rose slowly upright and stood a tall, long-faced, hunchbacked man who soon spread and spread, and then crumbled into a pack of running hounds. Jerry's fascinated eyes watched the pack until, with a sharp crackle and a little hiss of flame, the hounds dropped into an open sea of gray ashes. As they disappeared, a sudden chill filled the whole room, and on that instant, loud and shrill, Phelim, the old black cock, crowed from his perch outside the door—a most unlucky sign before midnight, as everyone knows. Jerry flung a startled look at the clock. Its two warning fingers pointed the hour of midnight. He hastily drew himself together on the stool, counting the slow, heavy strokes and dreading he knew not what. The last chime of the old clock was yet tingling through the room, when Jerry heard (and his heart turned to jelly at the sound) a strange, weird voice calling from outside under the window.