THE SUPERNATURAL OMNIBUS (94 page)

scene of slaughter, his pruning-knife red with the evidence of his crime --'the grey hairs yet stuck to the heft!'

For their humane administration of the laws, the lieges of this portion of the realm have long been celebrated. Here it was that merciful verdict was recorded in the case of the old lady accused of larceny, 'We find her Not Guilty, and hope she will never do so any more!' Here it was that the more experienced culprit, when called upon to plead with the customary, though somewhat superfluous, inquiry, as to 'how he would be tried?' substituted for the usual reply 'By God and my country,' that of 'By your worship and a Dymchurch Jury.' Here it was -- but enough! -- not even a Dymchurch jury could resist such evidence, even though the gallows (i.e. the expense of erecting one) stared them, as well as the criminal, in the face. The very pig-tail alone!-- ever at his ear!-- a clearer cease of suadente Diabolo never was made out.

Had there been a doubt, its very conduct in the Court-house would have settled the question. The Rev. Joel Ingoldsby, umquhile chaplain to the Romney Bench, has left upon record that when exhibited in evidence, together with the blood-stained knife, its twistings, its caperings, its gleeful evolutions quite 'flabbergasted' the jury, and threw all beholders into a consternation. It was remarked, too, by many in the Court, that the Forensic Wig of the Recorder himself was, on that trying occasion, palpably agitated, and that its three depending, learned-looking tails lost curl at once, and slunk beneath the obscurity of the powdered collar, just as the boldest dog recoils from a rabid animal of its own species, how ever small and insignificant.

Why prolong the painful scene?-- Joe Washford was tried -- Joe Washford was convicted -- Joe Washford was hanged!

The fearful black gibbet, on which his body clanked in its chains to the midnight winds, frowns no more upon Orlestone Hill; it has sunk beneath the encroaching hand of civilization; but there it might be seen late in the last century, an awful warning to all bald-pated gentlemen how they wear, or accept, the old wig of a Special Attorney,

Timeo Danaos et dona ferentes!

Such gifts, as we have seen, may lead to a 'Morbid Delusion, the climax of which is Murder!'

The fate of the Wig itself is somewhat doubtful; nobody seems to have recollected, with any degree of precision, what became of it. Mr. Ingoldsby 'had heard' that, when thrown into the fire by the Court-keeper, after whizzing, and fizzling, and performing all sorts of supernatural antics and contortions, it at length whirled up the chimney with bang that was taken for the explosion of one of the Feversham powder-mills, twenty miles off; while others insinuate that in the 'Great Storm' which took place on the night when Mr. Jeremiah Jarvis went to his 'long home,'-- wherever that may happen to be,-- and the whole of'The Marsh' appeared as one broad sheet of flame, something that looked very like a Fiery Wig -- perhaps a miniature Comet -- it had unquestionably a tail -- was seen careering in the blaze,-- and seeming to 'ride on the whirlwind and direct the storm.'

from the
CORNHILL MAGAZINE
magazine, 1929

***

It is now the fall of the night. The last of the neighbours are hitting the road for home. The time they went out through that door together, for the sake of the company on the way, as they said, did they give e’er a thought at all to myself, left alone here in this desolate house? To be sure, they asked me more than once why I refuse to leave the place, and the day is in it, by the same token. But I have no call to answer them, though what I am about to set down here in black and white will settle the question, at least for myself.

A few hours ago, and the corpse of Tim McGowan was taken from under this roof and buried deep in the clay. They laid the spade and the shovel like a rude cross on the fresh sod of his grave, and they went down on their knees and said a few hasty prayers for the good of his soul. One or two, and their faces hidden in their hats, took good care not to rise from the wet ground till they got sight of others already on their two feet. Letting on that their thoughts were on higher things, they kept in mind the old belief that the first one to leave the churchyard warm in life would not be the last to come back cold in death.

The little groups moving out began to talk of the man who was gone. Their talk ran in whispers, for fear they might trouble his long sleep. They all knew, though none had the rights of it, that he was after earning his rest dearly. An old man, whose face was hard, even for his years, took a white clay pipe from the pocket of his body coat.

‘God rest your soul, Tim McGowan,’ he cried. It was the custom to pray for the dead before taking a ‘draw’ from a wake pipe. ‘God rest you in the grave,’ he added, ‘for it’s little peace or ease you had and you in the world that we know! ’

The bulk of those who heard his words caught, a little gladly, a mocking undertone which stole through the kindly feeling that

had at first shaken his voice. A young man, with eager eyes and a desire to know and talk of things that should be left hidden, took courge and spoke out bluntly:

‘For him to be haunting the graveyard like a ghost, and he a living man! That was a strange vagary, for sure.’

‘It was the death of the good woman a year ago,’ the old man went on, speaking more openly, in his turn. ‘It was her loss turned his poor head.’

‘There’s no denying there was a queer strain in him already,’ the young man said to that. ‘Sure they say all of that family were a bit touched!’

They did not scruple to speak like this before myself, and I of the one blood with the man who was dead, if any of them could know or suspect that. They were after doing their duty towards his mortal remains: if there was a kink in his nature or a mystery about his life why, they might fairly ask, should it not fill the gossip of an idle hour? But it was myself only, the stranger amongst them, who knew the true reason of Tim McGowan’s nightly vigils in Gort na Marbh, why he, a living man, as was said, chose to become the Watcher o’ the Dead in the lonesome graveyard. It was ere yesterday morning he told me his secret. Tim was lying there in the settle-bed from which his stark body was carried feet foremost this day. I was trying to get ready a little food by the fire on the hearth, for Tim had not been able to rise, let alone to do a hand’s turn for himself. Our wants were simple, and it was not for the first time that I had turned my poor endeavours to homely use.

‘There are times,’ I made bold to remark, ‘there are times I feel this house to be haunted;’ for every night during the short spell since I came to see my kinsman, I was sure I heard the fall of footsteps on the floor after the pair of us had gone to our beds. The rattling of the door, if it was not a troubled dream, had also startled me in my sleep. I had begun to ask myself was it one of these houses where the door must be left on the latch and the hearth swept clean for Those who come back. Always at a certain hour Tim was in a hurry to rake the fire and get shut of me out of the kitchen. A pang now shot through my breast. With the poor man hardly able to raise hand or foot, it was not kind to draw down such a thing. But he looked glad that I had given him the chance to speak out.

‘As you make mention of it,’ he said eagerly, ‘I want to let you know the house is haunted, surely! But it is not by any spirit of good or evil from beyond the grave. That is a strange thing, you will be saying.’

‘It is a strange thing,’ I agreed. I had no doubt what he was going to disclose. He had already given me the story of a house built, and not without warning, on a ‘fairy pass’, through which the Sluagh Sidhe in their hosting and revels swept gaily every night. This was the house for sure: The Gentle Folk had never passed the gates of death and know nothing of the grave.

‘But,’ he went on, ‘there is one other thing as strange again. It is that same you will now be hearing, if you pay heed to me.’ ‘You mean that this is the house’ - I began, intending to say that it was the house of the story, but I checked myself - ‘ that it is a case of a fallen angel, hanging between heaven and hell, who never had to pay the penalty of death ? ’

‘If you let me,’ he made answer, ‘I will tell you the truth. The place is haunted by a mortal man!’

‘One still in the world, one who goes about in his clothes, one to be seen by daylight?’ I asked, without drawing breath.

‘In troth,’ he declared, ‘it is haunted by the man who tells it, and no other, if I am still in the flesh itself!’

I lifted him slightly in the bed, not knowing what to say or think. Was this his way of speaking about some common habit, or was his reason leaving him?

‘Whisper!’ he said, and his face was flushed. ‘You came here to gather old stories out of the past, over and above seeing your last living relative in the world, leaving out Michael, my son, who should be here by this. I might do worse than give you the true version of my own trouble.’

This made a double reason why I should hear him out. There is no man but carries in his breast the makings of a story, which, though never told, comes more home to him, than any the mind of another man can find and fashion in words.

‘What harm if my story should turn out a poor thing in the telling?’ he sighed. ‘It will ease my mind, if it does only that.

And who knows: but we will talk of that when the times comes.’ He turned aside from the food I was coaxing him to take, and started:

‘It is now a year since herself was laid to rest. Laid to rest!’ He laughed, a little bitterly. ‘That is what they call it. A week after that again, call it what you like, the graveyard was closed by orders. There are people still to the fore who have their rights under the law; but it is hardly likely that many, if any of them, will try to make good their claim to be buried in Gort na Marbh.’ Gurthnamorrav, the Field of the Dead, that is what those around and about call the lonely patch to this day. Though this generation of them are ‘dull of’ the ancient tongue, such names, of native savour, help to keep them one in soul with the proud children of Banbha who are in eternity. Vivid imagery, symbols drawn, in a manner of speaking, from the brown earth, words of strength and beauty that stud like gems of light and grace the common speech hold not merely an abiding charm in themselves. Such heritages of the mind of the Gael evoke through active fancy the fuller life of the race of kings no less surely than those relics of skill and handicraft found by chance in tilth or red bog, the shrine of bell or battle book, the bronze spear head, the torque of gold.

‘But, surely,’ I objected, ‘those who are able would like to have their bones laid beside their own when their day of nature is past! Surely they would choose such a ground as the place of their resurrection, as the holy men of old used to say!’

‘Time and time again,’ he made answer, ‘people have left it to their deaths not to be buried in Gort na Marbh. Man and wife have been parted, mother and child. What call have I to tell you the reason? You know it rightly. You know it is the lot of the last body brought to its long home to be from that time forth the Watcher o’ the Dead?’

‘I have heard tell of that queer - of that belief,’ I replied. ‘That the poor soul cannot go to its rest, if it took years itself, till another comes to fill its place; that it must wander about in the dead of the night amongst the graves where the mortal body is crumbling to dust; and, as one might say in a plain way, keep an eye over the place!’

‘And who would care to be buried in ground that was shut up for ever?’ he asked. ‘Even at the best of times people try their best endeavours to be the first through the gate with the corpse of their own friend and when two funerals happen to fall on the one day.’

And then he went on to tell me, and his voice failing at that, of all he was after going through thinking of his woman, his share of the world, making the weary, dreary, rounds of the graveyard during the best part of the changing year. And, bitter agony! he felt that she could not share in the Communion of Saints, that all his good works for her sake would not hasten her release. But the thing that made it the hardest for him to bear was this: It was through his veneration for the old customs, through his great respect even for the dead, that this awful tribulation had come to the pair of them.

‘Let you not be laughing at what I’m going to tell you now,’ he warned me: ‘for I won’t deny there have been times when I made merry over the like myself. It was a seldom thing two funerals to be on the one day; nor would it have come to happen at the time it did if the other people had the proper spirit, like myself, or the right regard for the things good Christians hold highly. Listen! They knew the order to close the graveyard, the other people knew it was on the road, for the man who was dead and going to be buried on the same day as herself was himself on the Board of Guardians. That was why they waked him for one night only, and they people of means, and rushed with him in unseemly haste to Gort na Marbh. But we got wind of it, and would have been the first, for all that, only we followed the old road, the long road, and in a decent and becoming way walked in through the open gate while they took a short cut and got in over the stile. We did more than that, and so did they. While the savages, for they were little else, while they were trampling above the relics of the dead, we went round about the ground in the track of the sun till we came in the proper course to the side of the open grave.’

This set me thinking of the ancient ritual by which the corpse is brought round to pay its respects, as a body might say, to those who have gone before. I began to ask myself was it a fragment of Druid worship that had come down even to our own day. But this is what I said to my kinsman:

‘You did what was right, and no one would be better pleased than the woman who was gone!’

‘That is the way I felt myself at the first going off,’ he agreed: ‘but soon I began to question myself: When I did the right thing, that the neighbours gave me full credit for, was I thinking more of what was expected from the living or what was due to the dead? Was I thinking of myself, and the great name I’d be getting from the self-same neighbours, or of the woman going into the clay, who only wanted their prayers? Many’s the long night this thought kept me on the rack till I was nigh gone astray in the head. In my mind I saw her, and her brown habit down to her feet, and she looking to me for help, and it my sin of human respect, as I felt, that kept her so long from walking on the sunny hills of Glory! Funeral after funeral went the way, for people have to die; but not a one passed the rusty gate of Gort na Marbh as a poor woman of the roads might give the go-by to a stricken house.