The Ashes of Old Wishes

by Herminie Templeton Kavanagh

  -

  The Crocks of Gold

  ONE June morning on a market day at Fethard, while the sun was as yet winking and blinking a sleepy eye over the top of shadowy Sleive-na-mon, Darby O'Gill, the knowledgeable man, stood upon the threshold of his cottage, impatient to be off to the town.

  "In the name of marcy, don't ax me to raymimber another thing, Bridget," he complained. "Ye have me bothered and kilt as it is wid yer 'raymimbers', so ye have."

  Bridget's voice came soothingly from within. "Ah, thin, so ye are kilt, darlint! But sure as eggs is eggs, I came near forgettin' to raymimber that we haven't a pinch of tay in the house. Whativer else ye forgit, raymimber to bring me half a pound of the foinest black tay. Oh, wirra, wirra, the medicine for little Eileen's cough! Where's the bottle? I had it in me hand a minute ago." At that, Bridget appeared on the threshold as rosy and fresh as the June morning itself.

  "And Darby dear, stand still and listen—sure ye have me flusthered wid yer twistin's an' turnin's. The sorra thing I can raymimber—come here till I fix yer neckerchief. Oh, musha, will ye look at him! I want ye to carry careful this dish to Mrs. Malony's. Ah ha, ye'll break it if ye put it in yer pocket with the bottle! Oh, by this an' that, get me two ya-ards of rid flannel to make little Mickey a new petticut; the poor child might as well be without anything, the way he is. An' get two dozen of white chaney buttons an' a packet of black linen thread."

  Darby was striving hard to be calm.

  Bridget put a coaxing hand on her husband's shoulder. "Shure, it's aisy to kape yer moind on it, avourneen, if ye'll sthrive not to be thinkin' of an-nything else. An' bring home a little brown sugar, a matther of three pounds say; an' pay attintion, Darby, while that thafe of the worruld, Dugan, is weighin' it out to ye. An' now be off with ye! No, wait a minute! Ye'd betther get a ya-ard an' a half of corduroy for patches; an' call in to me Aunt Nancy's on yer way back, an' get me the settin' of goose eggs she promised me—an' do you—"

  In sheer disgust, Darby flopped himself down on the threshold. "The duckins a foot I'll stir out of this today," he said desperately. "Go yerself, you, an' get yer settin' of eggs!"

  It was impossible for anyone to be angry long when Bridget laughed, for she had the merriest, cheeriest laugh with her in all the world. It began with a low thrush's gurgle, and then up it trilled and then down again and off into a note as sweet as a linnet's song in May.

  "Don't sit there whinging like little Mickey," she cried, as she pulled the rebellious man to his feet. "Be off now, and God go with ye—an'—Oh, Darby—"

  "Don't dare tell me another thing," Darby interrupted fiercely.

  "I was only going to say that ye mustn't be stayin' so late at Fethard that ye'll have to be takin' the shortcut home through Hagan's meadow afther dark. Ye know they did be sayin' at O'Hara's christening that Norah Sullivan's Dan tould Barney Delany that as he was coming from Jimmy Fogarty's wake and was gallopin' by Hagan's meadow, he could almost swear he saw back in the moonlight the shadow of a man pointing a gun at him. The Lord betune us and all harm! Everyone agreed that it must be Black Mulligan's ghost took to walking again."

  Faith, now this was disturbing news. All the world knew the story. One night, twenty-five years before that very day, Mack Mulligan, the gamekeeper, shot and killed, in Hagan's meadow, poor, harmless old William Fagan for poaching a rabbit. And though Mulligan died on the scaffold at Clonmel, that wasn't the last of him. From time to time, his restless spirit, gun in hand, walked the scene of his red crime to the terror of the countryside. All that terrible story quivered now through Darby's mind.

  "They say, too," Bridget warned the now-attentive listener, "that any night now, ye can see lights movin' round in the ruined abbey where the crocks o' goold lie hid."

  "What have the crocks o' goold to do with Black Mulligan? What put crocks o' goold into yer head?" Darby asked suspiciously.

  "Didn't Mrs. O'Hara tell me only last night that ye put the challenge on her Dominic to go hunt for thim?"

  "Huh! Dominic O'Hara! We hear ducks talkin'," laughed Darby. "That challenge came out of the bottom of the fourth glass o' punch."

  He tried to speak carelessly, but that news about Black Mulligan took so much of the pleasure out of the prospects for the day that the bothered man leaned a moment against the cottage door, filling his pipe and ruminating. Maybe he'd better put off the journey. Bridget stood with puckered lips, watching every change of his eyebrows. It's a queer way married women have of being able to tell what's in their husbands' minds, especially when it's a thing the wives themselves don't like.

  "I'll bring Bill Donohue, the tinker, home with me," he thought to himself.

  Instantly Bridget spoke up, and a threatening note hardened in her voice. "That wandhering vagabone, Bothered Bill Donohue, will be looking to fasten himself to ye again," she warned. "The last time ye brought him here, wasn't I soaping and scrubbing and cleaning for the week afther to get all trace of him out of the house. Now mind this, if ye ever bring that lad streeling again over that doorstep, yerself and himself can have it betwixt ye. I'll take the childher and go to me father's."

  Wasn't Bridget with her unreasonable cleanliness enough to heart-scald any man? There's such a thing as being too clean for comfort, and Bridget O'Gill, if any woman ever did, suffered from that complaint.

  Why, thought he, couldn't she let the poor fellow come home with him? True, Bill was not exactly a hawthorne bush in pink blossom! And what if his muddy brogues did leave a few tracks on the kitchen floor? Sure he couldn't help that! "However, there is nothing so unreasonable as an over-neat woman," he thought, as he flung himself angrily off the step.

  Bridget stood a minute, a smile on her lips and a twinkle in her brown eyes, as she watched him down the road, little dreaming of the wild happenings that lay between her husband and his fateful way back.

  The three counties elbowed one another in Fethard by the time Darby reached the old town gate. From that on, it was a slap on the shoulder here, and a bone-crushing handshake there, and a "God save ye, Darby, me bouchal" everywhere, so that the pleasant afternoon filled with jokes and news and gossip waned and grew dim before the busy lad could spare a thought for any of Bridget's commissions. Some of them had slipped clean from his mind. But through all the friendly greetings and pleasantries of the day, a constant worry smouldered, for whichever way he turned, the sharp gray eye of Bothered Bill Donohue, the tinker, kept burning a spot in the middle of his back.

  "Bad luck to him," muttered Darby ruefully, "if I bring the thieving blaggard home wid me, Bridget'll skiver the two of us. None of blood or breed iver rayfused man or mortial the width of his back for a place to sleep, or a bite an' a sup to ate. I'd like his company besides, at laste for a bit of the way. Whist! I know what I'll do. I'll slip intil Murphy's stable here an' bide awhile out of sight, an' whin the rover's gone, I'll whip over to Dugan's an' intil the back dure with me, buy me wares and off, home with me."

  No sooner said than done. For a half hour, Darby waited, grumbling, in the stable among the cows. No use! When at last he ventured over and poked a cautious head in at the back door of Dugan's shop, a well-known voice hailed him: "Come in, Darby asthore, I've been waitin' for ye this half hour. I'll be goin' home wid ye the night, I'm thinkin', to give ye a hand wid the bundles." And there, sitting calmly on an upturned tub, lolled Bothered Bill Donohue, the tinker. The vagabond's empty pipe was gripped upside down in his teeth—a pathetic hint to the callous Dugan—and he gathering with rambling hand constant mouthfuls of the fragrant contents of the scattered barrels, boxes, and cases.

  "We'd betther hurry, me bouchal," he urged. "We've a long road ahead of us. I don't like to kape Bridget waitin'. Whatever hour we'll get home," he confided loudly to all in the shop, "Bridget O'Gill'll be kapin' a foine, hot supper fer us."

  "Thank ye kindly, Bill," Darby mumbled shamelessly, "an' it's meself that's sore an' sorry that ye can't be comin' with me; but Joey Hooligan
was lookin' everywhere for ye. It's a great job of mendin' pots he has for the morrow. Hurry now, and you'll be up with him before he gets to the crossroads."

  "Huh! To blue tunder with Joey Hooligan an' his stack of ould leaky pots! It's with yerself I'm goin'." Again he took the shop-full of waiting customers into his boisterous confidence. "The rispectablest woman an' the comfortablest house in Tipperary is yer own, Darby O'Gill," he cried. Then, coming down from the box and slapping the dust from his trousers, he added, "Go on, now, dacint man, an' get what yer gettin'. I'll go bail ye forgot half what herself tould ye to bring."

  "I haven't forgot," Darby resented a bit spitefully. "Weigh me out one pound of yer foinest black tay, Tom Dugan, an' as much brown sugar as'll go with it; an' I—an' "—he rubbed a perplexed chin—"Wirra, it was something for the childher."

  "A pound of tobaccy, a quart of good whiskey, an' a couple of clay poipes," Bill suggested. "No, that wasn't it, but now ye mintion it, maybe I nade thim as well! Have ye a good gallon jug, Tom Dugan? It was something for little Mickey's petticut. Was it a yard of corduroy or—" Darby's troubled gaze floundered helplessly from one laden shelf to the other. "Maybe it was rid flannin," suggested Dugan.

  "Or gingerbreads," enticed Bill. "I've always noticed that little Mickey was very fond of gingerbreads, an' I don't wondher; I loike thim meself," he said, beaming his approval on the ring of listening neighbors.

  "I think it was the flannin, Dugan. How many ya-ards do I want?" Darby threw himself helplessly on the mercy of the shopkeeper.

  Dugan folded his arms judicially, shut one eye, and pursed his lips, "Does Mickey take afther yer wife's fambly, the Shaughnessy, or is he an O'Gill, I dunno?"

  "He's the dead sphilt of me father's brother Wullum," Darby answered, gulping on a note of pride.

  "Ah, thin no nade to ax! I'll warrant ye he's a foine-soized lad. I should say a matther of five ya-ards'd be lashins for a petticut an' a bit left over for patches." He turned to pull down a bolt of flaming red.

  "Patches! That's it," cried Darby. "I want something for patches!"

  "Why don't ye take two or three of thim foine smoked mackerel?" urged Bill, unctuously. He lifted one and held it aloft by its dripping tail. "I niver saw fatter," he smacked.

  Darby nodded uncertain consent at Dugan; and the three went on till, between the urgings of Bill and the suggestions of sympathetic Dugan, Darby and the tinker finally left the shop, their arms filled with bundles as high as their chins.

  The market was well over. The two strode down an empty road. The twinkling lights in the cottage windows got farther and farther apart. As they plodded along through the fast-growing twilight, Bill wore a settled expression of placid contentment, while the knowledgeable man glowered his troubles at the blurring hedges. The dusk had thickened into murky darkness when the pair stopped at Nancy Morrissey's for the goose eggs; and, of course, that good woman wouldn't hear of their leaving the house till they had finished a few cups of tea with a potato and a rasher or so of bacon.

  "Carry the bashkit in the middle of the handle, Darby acushla," she cried as the two stepped carefully out again into the middle of the road, "for if ye so much as joult one of thim raymarkable eggs, ye'll spile a lovely goose. An' now, goodnight and good luck to yez." It was neither the length nor the loneliness that weighed heaviest on the mind of Darby. Over and over, the knowledgeable man was asking himself, "What'll she say to me this night? What excuse can I give for bringing this blaggard home?"

  Suddenly he stopped in the road to laugh. "By the livin' farmer, I have it!" he chuckled. "I'll tell Bill that I'm goin' over to the abbey to dig for the goold, an' I'll ax him to come over an' help me. An' whin he refuses me—as, of course, he will—I'll sind him on to Bridget, and it's meself wouldn't be in his brogues thin for tin new shillings."

  The eggs rattled in the basket with the dint of Darby's suppressed chuckling till a sobering realization of his own risk flared into his mind.

  "Oh well, I won't venture but a few steps into the meadow," the lad finally argued to himself "It's only needful to climb across the low stile and stayle one or two tiptoes into the field. Bill won't be out of my hearing at all. I'll make him keep whistling or singing. It'd be foine if I crept along beside him inside the hedge and at the gap in the corner give one shout. Wouldn't it be sport if it was only light enough to watch the mad gallop he'll make then!"

  The eggs in the basket rattled once more. If Darby could have foreseen the mad gallop that lay before himself, his laugh might have changed its tune at that.

  Bill spoke up, as if vaguely divining what was in his companion's mind. "My, but ye're the bould man, Darby O'Gill! They were sayin' all over the market today what a courageous hayro ye wor to' be goin' wid Dominic O'Hara afther the crocks o' goold in the ould abbey. Far be it from me to put corrections on ye or the loikes of ye, but I can't help thinkin' that aich one of yez is a pair of two tunderin' fools."

  In spite of his bundles, the hero's chest swelled. "Well, I tell ye, Bill," he swaggered, "I'm at a loss about takin' that same Dominic O'Hara; he has no more conthrol over his long tongue than if it belonged to yerself, an' the worruld knows that if an-ny wan so much as mintions a pious wurrud while he's diggin' for thim crocks o' goold, in a twinkle he may be turned into a big yellow ox, or into a bit of a starved wran. Now, ye know yerself, Bill, that while Dominic is a nice, dacint man wid the best of intintions, he has wan big fault; ye niver know whin he's goin' to rip out wid a 'God save ye koindly' or a 'Saints presarve us.' So it's what I wor just thinkin' about yerself, Bill; ye niver said a pious worrud in yer life; an'—"

  "Bad luck to me if I'll do it," interrupted Bill promptly.

  "It'll be near midnight by the time we reach Hagan's meadow," went on Darby, paying no heed to the refusal, "so we'll lave Dominic O'Hara go diggin' for himself tomorrow night, an' me an' you'll go pardners tonight."

  The offer was like sousing Bill with a tub of cold water. He stopped still in the road and shivered. "Hould!" he choked. "There's nayther luck nor grace in even talkin' that kind o' talk!" He clutched Darby's arm, and his voice sank to a whisper. "Listen! As sure as gun is iron, Darby, some mystarious thing is creepin' an' crawlin' on t'other side of the hedge. Whist, they're listenin' now. Oh, millia murdher, don't ye hear thim kapin' sthill?"

  There's nothing so quickly contagious as terror. The tinker's genuine fright sent Darby's own heart with a jump into his mouth. Still and all, it would never do to show the white feather. So he stuttered, "Ye're right, Bill, me poor fellow, I knew that a half-hour ago. There's not one, but a dozen of thim beyant in the field. An' oh, by the hokey"—Darby's voice sank to a careless whisper—"there's a tall black man standin' just behind the hedge. Don't look 'round!"

  Bill gave a great lurch forward, as though suddenly kicked. "Wow!" he cried. "If ye don't come on, Darby O'Gill, I'll throw ivery last bundle at yer red head an' run for me loife!"

  "Wait a bit; it's the chance of yer life," Darby remonstrated, as he hurried after the tinker. "Come with me to the abbey, avick," he called, "an' I'll give you foive thurds of the goold, an' we'll allow Bridget, the crachure, four thirds, lavin' only six thurds for meself! I'm making a rich man out of ye."

  "Don't be talkin'," shouted Bill with a fresh burst of speed. "I won't sthray a fut off this highroad tonight for all the riches of Crashus."

  "Hold a minute! My, but yer a har-rd one at a bargain." Darby caught up with him to lay a detaining hand on his friend's shoulder. "I'll tell ye what I'll do: you take the six thurds, an' that'll lave poor Bridget only the three thurds."

  "Will ye niver lave off," hissed Bill, fiercely shaking off the detaining hand. "If ye say wan more wurrud about that onlucky ruin, I'll hut ye a kick that ye'll never forget."

  Darby slowed up in the road. "If ye didn't want to go, why didn't ye say so at once?" he expostulated. "Here's Hagan's meadow. There's many a person would give a leg for yer chance this night. Won't ye come? Well, then
I must go alone. Tell Bridget I'll be home within the hour. Good luck till ye."

  For an instant, the two faced each other through the inky blackness. In spite of his attempted heroic air, Darby's voice sounded a bit forced and gasping.

  "Man alive, are yez in airnest?" cried the tinker.

  "I'll cross over the meadow to the abbey," his companion continued, but he shivered as he spoke.

  "Keep steady on yer way, and look nayther to the right or to the left, Bill. There's them that will be follying you that's dead an' gone these hundred years. You won't see them, but maybe ye'll hear them. Pay no attention, and ye're safe enough. Go on now!"

  The last sentence spent itself on an empty world, for the tinker had instantly dissolved from hearing as well as from sight.

  The knowledgeable man shouted a quavering warning from the top of the stile: "An' I say, Bill, ye may as well whustle as loud as ye can. Thin ye won't be so frightened." He listened an instant, but no reassuring sound drifted back.