The pikemen

by H. de Vere Stacpoole

THE PIKEMEN

By H. DE VERE STACPOOLE

WARBURTON had a horror of the sea, as it expresses itself in the Channel passages, and no great love for Ireland, yet he had allowed himself to become engaged to Norah Beamish, the only daughter of Sir Michael Beamish, of Kilgobbin Castle, County Gal way, an engagement that carried with it the strict understanding that half of their future married life was to be spent in the land of the shamrock.

"I'd die if I had to live all my life in England," said Norah; "but, for your sake, I don't mind living half my life there. And maybe, George, when you come to love the old place as much as I do, we'll only go to England just for visits."

George, who fancied he had a will of his own where Norah was concerned, agreed. It would be time to argue this matter after marriage, and meanwhile, to clinch the bargain and as an earnest of good faith, he had promised to come over and spend Christmas at Kilgobbin.

Warburton was an Englishman of the solid type, good-looking, well-to-do, a man of regular habits and hours. His knowledge of Ireland had been gained almost entirely in youth by the reading of "Charles O'Malley" and "Handy Andy," and as he took his seat in the Irish mail on the day before Christmas Eve, he felt that he was embarking upon an adventure—an adventure into a country and amidst a people where regular habits and hours were unknown, where landlords were sometimes shot like pheasants—old jokes from "Punch", in this connection, rose in his mind—and where whisky and humour were the two outstanding features in ordinary life.

The consciousness of having little humour in his own composition, and a very limited capacity for whisky drinking, did not add to his self-confidence. However, it was for the sake of Norah that he was making this experiment, and he determined to risk his digestion and personal comfort, furbish up whatever humour he could find in himself, and show surprise at nothing.

Kingstown, where he arrived in pouring rain, and Dublin, where the rain still continued, showed him little, in the way of surprises, but the railway for the west made up for these deficiencies. Warburton, who was a director of one of the English southern lines, and who might, therefore, be reckoned upon as an expert in tardiness and the unnecessary delays that affect railway traffic, became astonished at the things he experienced. He knew, by letters from indignant travellers, what Christmas week meant on the South Muddleshire in the way of congestion, general distraction, and parcels gone astray, but he had never imagined the -possibility of such a thing as a train, once started, run back into the station for a forgotten crate of turkeys, or a train delayed owing to an argument—presumably political—between the station-master and the engine-driver.

It was getting towards dusk when they reached Cloyne, the station for Kilgobbin, and the traveller from England, putting his head out of the carriage window and seeing no sign of a porter, collected his belongings, and was in the act of piling them on the platform, when a man in a caped overcoat came running towards him.

"Av you plaze, sor," said he, "are you Mr. Warburton the masther's expectin' be this train?"

"Yes," said Warburton, "that is my name. Are you——"

"I'm Rafferty, sor—Sir Michael's man—and the car's waiting there at the gate. I've tould them fool porters to be on the look-out for any thraps of yours in the van, and they'll come on in the luggage cart wid Billy Sheolan. This is the way, sor."

Laden with Warburton's small belongings, he led the way to the station gate, where an outside car, with a gossoon at the horse's head, stood in waiting. The luggage cart—a condemned pony trap of the "tub" variety—was also in evidence, and whilst Rafferty was superintending the stowing of the luggage, Warburton looked around him.

Opposite the station "The Harp Inn" flung its creaky sign to the wind from the moors, and to right and left of the inn the village of Cloyne streeled away into the dusk. Scarcely a soul was to be seen, and nothing could be more desolate than this seemingly deserted village, yet the soul of the traveller was not depressed.

The air was like wine. Warm for the time of year, and blowing in from the thunderous Atlantic, breaking ten miles away to the west, the wind bore with it the smell of Ireland, the scent of rain-wet leagues of turf, sea-smells from the kelp-strewn coast, and a vague trace of something from the bog lands, distinctive as frangipani, yet elusive as the perfume in a dream.

The luggage having been disposed of, Rafferty mounted on one side of the car, and Warburton on the other side, the gossoon let go the horse's head, and the animal rose on end like an heraldic lion.

"Hould tight, sor!" cried Rafferty.

The plunge that followed the cut of the whip nearly landed them in "The Harp Inn," and then they were off, Cloyne behind them and the hard high-road ringing to the horse's hoofs.

"He's a bad starter," said Rafferty, talking over his shoulder to the other, "but, once he's started, he doesn't know when to stop. He's like the mothor-car the master bought last summer. It was an ould car he bought cheap from Mr. Mulcahy, at the Four Ways. Mr. Mulcahy showed me how to drive her, and the first day she was brought home I set out in her to meet the masther, who was comin' by train from Dublin. I was an hour and a half tryin' to start her, turnin' the crank and turnin' the crank, till all at once she begins to buzz. In I gets, and off we goes. She goes fasther and fasther, and stop her I couldn't. All me job was cut out to steer her. We went through Cloyne at a hundred and tin miles an hour, the women shoutin' murder, and the pigs an' dogs scutterin' out of the road like chaff, an' the next thing I remimber was wakin' up in the cottage hospital. They tould me I'd met a steam-roller."

"And what became of the car?" asked Warburton.

"Faith, I duuno," said Rafferty. "There wasn't anything left of her but the number plate and the bits the docthors took out of me with pincers—bad scran to them. Do you see that big oak tree over bey ant there in the field, sor? That's the oak they hung Black Burke to be the heels in the ouhl days, an' lit a fire under him."

"Who was Black Burke?"

"An informer, sor."

"But why did they light a fire under him?"

"To smoke the divil out of him, so they say; and afther they'd smoked him till he was near black as his own heart, they took him down and hung him proper be the neck."

"Good Heavens!" said Warburton.

The moon was just breaking above the eastern hills and lighting the desolation of the country—a country that seemed planned as the stage for wild and savage deeds. The unconcern of Rafferty for the fate of Black Burke seemed in keeping with the fierceness of those rugged mountains and the moroseness of those far stretches of bog-land all a-croak with night-birds.

"When you come to love the old place as much as I do, we'll only go to England just for visits."

Warburton remembered those words of his fiancée as he looked across the country, with Rafferty's story still ringing in his ears.

"But that was murder," said he.

"Which, sor?"

"That what you have just told me about Black Burke."

"Faith, I suppose it was," replied the other—"at laste, I expect Black Burke would 'a' called it murder if he could have spoke."

"Do you have many of those sort of things happening now?"

"Killin's, do you mane, sor?"

"Yes, I suppose that's the polite term for it."

"Well, there's been one or two, owin' to the 'grarian thrubles. There was ould Mr. Moriarty, a crool, hard man he was, and it's I that am thinkin' he's fryin' now for all the bastings he gave his wife; The boys laid him out one night, not far from here, and the crowner's jury brought it in he'd fallen drunk from his horse—all the aisier because haff the jury was made up of the chaps that did for him, and the other half of their cousins and uncles."

"You mean to say the jury was packed?"

"Faith, that's the word. These chaps packed theirselves into the box like sardines in a tin, and brought in their verdict like one man. D'you see those chimneys, sor, beyant the trees? That's Kilgobbin—we're near there now."

The road here ran along an embankment, and Warburton was straining his eyes towards the roof top and chimneys showing in the moonlight beyond the trees, when the car suddenly began to rock as though one of the wheels were going.

"Hould tight, sor!" cried Rafferty. He had scarcely uttered the words when the crash came.

II.

When Warburton opened his eyes, he was lying on his back in long grass, and it seemed to him that he had been lying there for a hundred years. The blow that had stunned him seemed to have obliterated his speculative faculties, for he did not ask himself how he had come over the road wall and down the embankment to his present position, nor did he notice the curious fact that the full moon that had lit them on their way was now a half moon. He noticed and, cared for nothing, till all at once a shout wild and thin as the cry of a gull made him turn and scramble up on his hands and knees, with fear clutching at his heart—the reasonless and appalling fear only to be met with in dreamland.

Hard on the shout came the sound of men running, and, as if evoked from the darkness by the sound, came the figures of the runners—three ruffianly-looking men with long poles across their shoulders, breathing so hard that the sound came like the pumping of an ill-fitting saddle on a trotting horse, and passing so close that the watcher could almost have touched the nearest of them. Any man in his proper senses would have let these figures pass, thanking Providence they had not noticed him; but Warburton was not in his proper senses, and, springing to his feet, he followed them, running as hard as they, drawn after them and towards the point for which they were making just as a scrap of iron is drawn to a magnet.

He was conscious of the fact that to right and left of him other figures were running, and ahead of him now, through the trees that lay there, came the red, leaping light of a fire blazing in the wind, the screaming, chanting sound of bagpipes, the shouts of a crowd, and a leisurely booming like the notes of a gargantuan drum.

Then he knew in some way that all this fury was round Kilgobbin Castle—that the place was attacked, and the inmates in danger.

Blown along as if by a wind, he suddenly found himself in the thick of the turmoil, swept into a great courtyard, where a bonfire was blazing and casting its red-yellow light on pikes and faces and the battering-ram men who were at work on the great front door. Over the booming of the ram, the yelling of the crowd, and the crackling of the fire, came the shrill, wasp-like notes of the bagpipes from where, like the evil spirit of the business, the piper sat perched on a tub, blind and diddering, beating the staves with his heels and flinging his withered head from side to side.

Then of a sudden the crowd parted, and from the stable-yard came a rush of men. Lunatics just escaped from Bedlam they seemed, dragging along in their midst an unfortunate creature with a rope round his neck.

They were dragging him to an improvised gallows rigged near the bonfire, and Warburton was leaping forward to save him, when what seemed a blow on the head cut him off from the whole business like the shutting of a door.

III.

When he awoke, it was full daylight. He was lying in bed in a comfortably furnished bedroom, and by the fire, knitting a stocking, sat a cheery-looking woman in nurse's dress. He raised his hand to his head. It was bandaged, and the sound of his movement caused the woman to turn, and, laying her knitting down, she came towards him.

"Where am I?" asked Warburton.

"Where are you? " replied she. "Why, where would you be but in Kilgobbin Castle, and thank the saints you're not killed entirely. Now, don't be raising your arms and distressin' yourself. The doctor said you were to be kep' quiet if you woke, and that it was as good as killin' you to let you talk. Come, now, and let me tuck the sheets round you."

The patient lay quiet for a moment. Then he spoke again.

"Are those ruffians gone?" said he.

"Which ruffians was you meanin'?" asked she.

"Which! Good Heavens, the fellows that were attacking the house!"

Mrs. Byrne, the district nurse of Kilgobbin village, an exceedingly wise woman in her way, knew better than to argue with a patient who had head symptoms.

"Yes, they're gone," said she, "bad cess to them. And now be quiet, or I'll be havin' the doctor down me throat for lettin' you talk."

"Talking won't hurt me," replied Warburton. "What I want to know is this—what are the police doing to let such scandalous things happen? Good Heavens, are there any police in this district?"

"Faith, and there are," said she; "but they're mostly aslape when they're not poking their fingers into poor folk's business. Now lie quiet, and don't be strainin' yourself talking."

"Did they hang that man I was trying to save?"

"Faith, and they did," said she. "No, I mane the police saved him in time. Now, I'm not goin' to answer any more of your questions. Just close your eyes and forget all them things, and you'll be all right when you wake."

"They didn't hurt Miss Norah Beamish?"

"Not a hair of her head. She'll be in to see you to-morrow, when you're better able to talk to her, and your head's clear."

Warburton, who had pitched oh his head when the car upset, and who was still feeling the effects of concussion, turned on his side and fell asleep.

So well was he next day that the doctor allowed him up, and when Norah visited him she found him seated by the window, fully dressed and apparently in his right mind.

"And now," said she, after the first fond words, "isn't it lovely? Are you sorry you came? Look over at those mountains! That's Croagh Mahon, that great one over there. Isn't he beautiful? Where in the world would you get a view like that? And the peace of it after London! It's just a little bit of heaven. I know one oughtn't to praise one's own, country, but how can one help it? What is it, George? What have I said?"

"Peace!" said he. "Good Heavens, Norah, have you forgotten the other night? Suppose those ruffians had got hold of you! Nice sort of peace! And that unfortunate creature they were trying to hang? Peace, indeed! I'm going to have no peace with them. Yes, I know things are hushed up with packed juries, just like that poor old man, your coachman, told me about; but this is a different matter. I'm not going to let it drop."

The girl wilted as she listened to him. Mrs, Byrne had already given a sketch of the patient's delusions on his first waking, and those delusions still persisted. She was frightened, yet she did not show her feelings.

IV.

Two days later Sir Michael Beamish and his guest had a conference in the library.

"It is all nonsense," said Warburton—"all nonsense to say that those fellows can't be found now. Why, look you, that piper who was sitting on the barrel, playing whilst the others were attacking the house, surely he could be found. A man like that is easily traced by his calling."

"Faith, yes," said the distracted Sir Michael, "we might be able to catch that chap. But I'll tell you now, I wouldn't be taking this thing too much to heart. You see, it was Christmas Eve, and the boys may have been only doing it for a diversion. Between you and me, it'd be just as well to let it blow over. I don't bear any grudge against them."

"Yes, but I do," said Warburton. "I believe it was they that upset the car; and, leaving that alone, the whole of the rest of the business was the most devilish thing I ever heard of, let alone saw. There has got to be an inquiry."

"And so there will," said Sir Michael. To get this presumed madman out of his house, and break off his engagement to his daughter, was the unfortunate man's most pressing necessity.

Norah had already cooled off on the business, for there is nothing that kills love like madness, and a thick-skinned inspector of police managed the rest of the matter in so business-like a way that two days later Warburton, in a fury, left for Dublin, where I met him at the Shelbourne Hotel.

He told me the whole story, and of how he had come to Dublin—Heaven help him!—to obtain justice from the authorities. He did not know that chance had thrown him across the one man of all others to whom his story would most appeal, for the history of Galway has been my special study, and the history of Kilgobbin Castle was an open book to me.

"You are going to the authorities to get justice," said I. "Well, you have met an authority on the West of Ireland in the person of my humble self, and, if it's any satisfaction to you to know it, I regard you as the most interesting individual I have ever met, for you have seen Micky Feelan."

"Micky who?"

[Illustration: "They were dragging him to an improvised gallows … and Warburton was leaping forward to save him."]

"Feelan—that piper man you saw on the barrel. Can't you understand? Kilgobbin Castle was attacked by 'armed bands'—at least, that's the name Sloan's 'History of Galway' gives them—on Christmas Eve, in the rebellion year of '98. Feelan was the blind piper, whose name is known even still amongst the common people, and the expression 'You'll be dancin' to Feelan's tune' means that you will be hanged, simply because a man hanged without a drop, after the custom of the old days, seemed to dance in the air, and Feelan used to attend executions and play his pipes for the fun of the thing. He was the life and soul of all the insurrections and riots. That was he you saw. There is not the smallest doubt that when you were stunned by falling off that car, your mind became open to the past, and you saw the event that happened long ago, just as those two ladies, Miss Morison and Miss Lamont, saw the old Court life of Versailles, and Marie Antoinette sitting outside the Petit Trianon. You see, your mind was fresh to the country. It had been put en rapport with the past by those stories Rafferty, the car driver, had told you, and you were knocked out of consciousness at the very moment of the anniversary of the attack on Kilgobbin. It's all as plain as day; and if I were you, I'd go right back to Galway and make it up with the Beamishes. They'll understand, if you tell them what I say."

I said a good deal more, but I might just as well have talked to the man in the moon. Warburton was one of the people who refuse to believe in the supernatural; and when I left him, he was off to Dublin Castle in the hopes of obtaining an inquiry into the "seditious and lawless actions of certain individuals in the County of Galway, Province of Connaught, Ireland, on the 24th of December, 19—."

That was how his petition was framed, and he firmly believed that he would obtain redress—yet he did not believe in the supernatural!

Copyright, 1916, by H. de Vere Stacpoole, in the United States of America.