Visits and Sketches at Home and Abroad with Tales and Miscellanies Now First Collected Volume III Part 7

Cathleen listened, almost congealed with horror, but she did not swoon: her turn, she thought, must come next, though in the same instant she felt instinctively that her only chance of preservation was to counterfeit profound sleep. The murderers, having done their work on the poor Pedlar, approached her bed, and threw the gleam of their lanthorn full on her face; she lay quite still, breathing calmly and regularly.

They brought the light to her eye-lids, but they did not wink or move;--there was a pause, a terrible pause, and then a whispering;--and presently Cathleen thought she could distinguish a third voice, as of expostulation, but all in so very low a tone that though the voices were close to her she could not hear a word that was uttered. After some moments, which appeared an age of agonising suspense, the wretches withdrew, and Cathleen was left alone, and in darkness. Then, indeed, she felt as one ready to die: to use her own affecting language, "the heart within me," said she, "melted away like water, but I was resolute not to swoon, and I _did not_. I knew that if I would preserve my life, I must keep the sense in me, and _I did_."

Now and then she fancied she heard the murdered man move, and creep about in his bed, and this horrible conceit almost maddened her with terror: but she set herself to listen fixedly, and convinced her reason that all was still--that all was over.

She then turned her thoughts to the possibility of escape. The window first suggested itself: the faint moon-light was just struggling through its dirty and cobwebbed panes: it was very small, and Cathleen reflected, that besides the difficulty, and, perhaps, impossibility of getting through, it must be some height from the ground: neither could she tell on which side of the house it was situated, nor in what direction to turn, supposing she reached the ground: and, above all, she was aware that the slightest noise must cause her instant destruction. She thus resolved upon remaining quiet.

It was most fortunate that Cathleen came to this determination, for without the slightest previous sound the door again opened, and in the faint light, to which her eyes were now accustomed, she saw the head of the old woman bent forward in a listening att.i.tude: in a few minutes the door closed, and then followed a whispering outside. She could not at first distinguish a word until the woman's sharper tones broke out, though in suppressed vehemence, with "If ye touch her life, Barny, a mother's curse go with ye! enough's done."

"She'll live, then, to hang us all," said the miscreant son.

"Sooner than that, I'd draw this knife across her throat with my own hands; and I'd do it again and again, sooner than they should touch your life, Barny, jewel: but no fear, the creature's asleep or dead already, with the fright of it."

The son then said something which Cathleen could not hear; the old woman replied,

"Hisht! I tell ye, no,--no; the s.h.i.+p's now in the Cove of Cork that's to carry her over the salt seas far enough out of the way: and haven't we all she has in the world? and more, didn't she take the bit out of her own mouth to put into mine?"

The son again spoke inaudibly; and then the voices ceased, leaving Cathleen uncertain as to her fate.

Shortly after the door opened, and the father and son again entered, and carried out the body of the wretched pedlar. They seemed to have the art of treading without noise, for though Cathleen saw them move, she could not hear a sound of a footstep. The old woman was all this time standing by her bed, and every now and then casting the light full upon her eyes; but as she remained quite still, and apparently in a deep calm sleep, they left her undisturbed, and she neither saw nor heard any more of them that night.

It ended at length--that long, long night of horror. Cathleen lay quiet till she thought the morning sufficiently advanced. She then rose, and went down into the kitchen: the old woman was lifting a pot off the fire, and nearly let it fall as Cathleen suddenly addressed her, and with an appearance of surprise and concern, asked for her friend the pedlar, saying she had just looked into his bed, supposing he was still asleep, and to her great amazement had found it empty. The old woman replied, that he had set out at early daylight for Mallow, having only just remembered that his business called him that way before he went to Cork. Cathleen affected great wonder and perplexity, and reminded the woman that he had promised to pay for her breakfast.

"An' so he did, sure enough," she replied, "and paid for it too; and by the same token didn't I go down to Balgowna myself for the milk and the _male_ before the sun was over the tree tops; and here it is for ye, ma colleen:" so saying, she placed a bowl of stirabout and some milk before Cathleen, and then sat down on the stool opposite to her, watching her intently.

Poor Cathleen! she had but little inclination to eat, and felt as if every bit would choke her: yet she continued to force down her breakfast, and apparently with the utmost ease and appet.i.te, even to the last morsel set before her. While eating, she inquired about the husband and son, and the old woman replied, that they had started at the first burst of light to cut turf in a bog, about five miles distant.

When Cathleen had finished her breakfast, she returned the old woman many thanks for her kind treatment, and then desired to know the nearest way to Cork. The woman Hogan informed her that the distance was about seven miles, and though the usual road was by the high-way from which they had turned the preceding evening, there was a much shorter way across some fields which she pointed out. Cathleen listened attentively to her directions, and then bidding farewell with many demonstrations of grat.i.tude, she proceeded on her fearful journey. The cool morning air, the cheerful song of the early birds, the dewy freshness of the turf, were all unnoticed and unfelt: the sense of danger was paramount, while her faculties were all alive and awake to meet it, for a feverish and unnatural strength seemed to animate her limbs. She stepped on, shortly debating with herself whether to follow the directions given by the old woman. The high-road appeared the safest; on the other hand, she was aware that the slightest betrayal of mistrust would perhaps be followed by her destruction; and thus rendered brave even by the excess of her fears, she determined to take the cross path. Just as she had come to this resolution, she reached the gate which she had been directed to pa.s.s through; and without the slightest apparent hesitation, she turned in, and pursued the lonely way through the fields. Often did she fancy she heard footsteps stealthily following her, and never approached a hedge without expecting to see the murderers start up from behind it; yet she never once turned her head, nor quickened nor slackened her pace;

Like one that on a lonesome road Doth walk in fear and dread, Because he knows a frightful fiend Doth close behind him tread.

She had proceeded in this manner about three-quarters of a mile, and approached a thick and dark grove of underwood, when she beheld seated upon the opposite stile an old woman in a red cloak. The sight of a human being made her heart throb more quickly for a moment; but on approaching nearer, with all her faculties sharpened by the sense of danger, she perceived that it was no old woman, but the younger Hogan, the murderer of Halloran, who was thus disguised. His face was partly concealed by a blue handkerchief tied round his head and under his chin, but she knew him by the peculiar and hideous expression of his eyes: yet with amazing and almost incredible self-possession, she continued to advance without manifesting the least alarm, or sign of recognition; and walking up to the pretended old woman, said in a clear voice, "The blessing of the morning on ye, good mother! a fine day for travellers like you and me!"

"A fine day," he replied, coughing and mumbling in a feigned voice, "but ye see, hugh, ugh! ye see I've walked this morning from the Cove of Cork, jewel, and troth I'm almost spent, and I've a bad cowld, and a cough on me, as ye may hear," and he coughed vehemently. Cathleen made a motion to pa.s.s the stile, but the disguised old woman stretching out a great bony hand, seized her gown. Still Cathleen did not quail. "Musha, then, have ye nothing to give a poor ould woman?" said the monster, in a whining, snuffling tone.

"Nothing have I in this wide world," said Cathleen, quietly disengaging her gown, but without moving. "Sure it's only yesterday I was robbed of all I had but the little clothes on my back, and if I hadn't met with charity from others, I had starved by the way-side by this time."

"Och! and is there no place hereby where they would give a potatoe and a cup of cowld water to a poor old woman ready to drop on her road?"

Cathleen instantly pointed forward to the house she had just left, and recommended her to apply there. "Sure they're good, honest people, though poor enough, G.o.d help them," she continued, "and I wish ye, mother, no worse luck than myself had, and that's a good friend to treat you to a supper--aye, and a breakfast too; there it is, ye may just see the light smoke rising like a thread over the hill, just fornent ye; and so G.o.d speed ye!"

Cathleen turned to descend the stile as she spoke, expecting to be again seized with a strong and murderous grasp; but her enemy, secure in his disguise, and never doubting her perfect unconsciousness, suffered her to pa.s.s unmolested.

Another half-mile brought her to the top of a rising ground, within sight of the high-road; she could see crowds of people on horseback and on foot, with cars and carriages pa.s.sing along in one direction; for it was, though Cathleen did not then know it, the first day of the Cork a.s.sizes. As she gazed, she wished for the wings of a bird that she might in a moment flee over the s.p.a.ce which intervened between her and safety; for though she could clearly see the high-road from the hill on which she stood, a valley of broken ground at its foot, and two wide fields still separated her from it; but with the same unfailing spirit, and at the same steady pace, she proceeded onwards: and now she had reached the middle of the last field, and a thrill of new-born hope was beginning to flutter at her heart, when suddenly two men burst through the fence at the farther side of the field, and advanced towards her. One of these she thought at the first glance resembled her husband, but that it _was_ her husband himself was an idea which never entered her mind. Her imagination was possessed with the one supreme idea of danger and death by murderous hands; she doubted not that these were the two Hogans in some new disguise, and silently recommending herself to G.o.d, she steeled her heart to meet this fresh trial of her fort.i.tude; aware, that however it might end, it _must_ be the last. At this moment one of the men throwing up his arms, ran forward, shouting her name, in a voice--a dear and well-known voice, in which she _could_ not be deceived:--it was her husband!

The poor woman, who had hitherto supported her spirits and her self-possession, stood as if rooted to the ground, weak, motionless, and gasping for breath. A cold dew burst from every pore; her ears tingled, her heart fluttered as though it would burst from her bosom. When she attempted to call out, and raise her hand in token of recognition, the sounds died away, rattling in her throat; her arm dropped powerless at her side; and when her husband came up, and she made a last effort to spring towards him, she sank down at his feet in strong convulsions.

Reilly, much shocked at what he supposed the effect of sudden surprise, knelt down and chafed his wife's temples; his comrade ran to a neighbouring spring for water, which they sprinkled plentifully over her: when, however, she returned to life, her intellects appeared to have fled for ever, and she uttered such wild shrieks and exclamations, and talked so incoherently, that the men became exceedingly terrified, and poor Reilly himself almost as distracted as his wife. After vainly attempting to soothe and recover her, they at length forcibly carried her down to the inn at Balgowna, a hamlet about a mile farther on, where she remained for several hours in a state of delirium, one fit succeeding another with little intermission.

Towards evening she became more composed, and was able to give some account of the horrible events of the preceding night. It happened, opportunely, that a gentleman of fortune in the neighbourhood, and a magistrate, was riding by late that evening on his return from the a.s.sizes at Cork, and stopped at the inn to refresh his horse. Hearing that something unusual and frightful had occurred, he alighted, and examined the woman himself, in the presence of one or two persons.

Her tale appeared to him so strange and wild from the manner in which she told it, and her account of her own courage and sufferings so exceedingly incredible, that he was at first inclined to disbelieve the whole, and suspected the poor woman either of imposture or insanity.

He did not, however, think proper totally to neglect her testimony, but immediately sent off information of the murder to Cork. Constables with a warrant were despatched the same night to the house of the Hogans, which they found empty, and the inmates already fled: but after a long search, the body of the wretched Halloran, and part of his property, were found concealed in a stack of old chimneys among the ruins; and this proof of guilt was decisive. The country was instantly _up_; the most active search after the murderers was made by the police, a.s.sisted by all the neighbouring peasantry; and before twelve o'clock the following night, the three Hogans, father, mother, and son, had been apprehended in different places of concealment, and placed in safe custody. Meantime the Coroner's inquest having sat on the body, brought in a verdict of wilful murder.

As the judges were then at Cork, the trial came on immediately; and from its extraordinary circ.u.mstances, excited the most intense and general interest. Among the property of poor Halloran discovered in the house, were a pair of shoes and a cap which Cathleen at once identified as belonging to herself, and Reilly's silver watch was found on the younger Hogan. When questioned how they came into his possession, he sullenly refused to answer. His mother eagerly, and as if to s.h.i.+eld her son, confessed that she was the person who had robbed Cathleen in the former part of the day, that she had gone out on the Carrick road to beg, having been left by her husband and son for two days without the means of support; and finding Cathleen asleep, she had taken away the bundle, supposing it to contain food; and did not recognize her as the same person she had robbed, till Cathleen offered her part of her supper.

The surgeon, who had been called to examine the body of Halloran, deposed to the cause of his death;--that the old man had been first stunned by a heavy blow on the temple, and then strangled. Other witnesses deposed to the finding of the body: the previous character of the Hogans, and the circ.u.mstances attending their apprehension; but the princ.i.p.al witness was Cathleen. She appeared, leaning on her husband, her face was ashy pale, and her limbs too weak for support; yet she, however, was perfectly collected, and gave her testimony with that precision, simplicity, and modesty, peculiar to her character. When she had occasion to allude to her own feelings, it was with such natural and heart-felt eloquence that the whole court was affected; and when she described her rencontre at the stile, there was a general pressure and a breathless suspense: and then a loud murmur of astonishment and admiration fully partic.i.p.ated by even the bench of magistrates. The evidence was clear and conclusive; and the jury, without retiring, gave their verdict, guilty--Death.

When the miserable wretches were asked, in the usual forms, if they had any thing to say why the awful sentence should not be pa.s.sed upon them, the old man replied by a look of idiotic vacancy, and was mute--the younger Hogan answered sullenly, "Nothing:" the old woman, staring wildly on her son, tried to speak; her lips moved, but without a sound--and she fell forward on the bar in strong fits.

At this moment Cathleen rushed from the arms of her husband, and throwing herself on her knees, with clasped hands, and cheeks streaming with tears, begged for mercy for the old woman. "Mercy, my lord judge!" she exclaimed. "Gentlemen, your honours, have mercy on her. She had mercy on me! She only did _their_ bidding. As for the bundle, and all in it, I give it to her with all my soul, so it's no robbery. The grip of hunger's hard to bear; and if she hadn't taken it then, where would I have been now? Sure they would have killed me for the sake of the watch, and I would have been a corpse before your honours this moment. O mercy!

mercy for her! or never will I sleep asy on this side of the grave!"

The judge, though much affected, was obliged to have her forcibly carried from the court, and justice took its awful course. Sentence of death was p.r.o.nounced on all the prisoners; but the woman was reprieved, and afterwards transported. The two men were executed within forty-eight hours after their conviction, on the Gallows Green. They made no public confession of their guilt, and met their fate with sullen indifference.

The awful ceremony was for a moment interrupted by an incident which afterwards furnished ample matter for wonder and speculation among the superst.i.tious populace. It was well known that the younger Hogan had been long employed on the estate of a n.o.bleman in the neighbourhood; but having been concerned in the abduction of a young female, under circ.u.mstances of peculiar atrocity, which for want of legal evidence could not be brought home to him, he was dismissed; and, finding himself an object of general execration, he had since been skulking about the country, a.s.sociating with housebreakers and other lawless and abandoned characters. At the moment the hangman was adjusting the rope round his neck, a shrill voice screamed from the midst of the crowd, "Barny Hogan!

do ye mind Grace Power, and the last words ever she spoke to ye?" There was a general movement and confusion; no one could or would tell whence the voice proceeded. The wretched man was seen to change countenance for the first time, and raising himself on tiptoe, gazed wildly round upon the mult.i.tude: but he said nothing; and in a few minutes he was no more.

The reader may wish to know what has become of Cathleen, our _heroine_, in the true sense of the word. Her story, her sufferings, her extraordinary fort.i.tude, and pure simplicity of character, made her an object of general curiosity and interest: a subscription was raised for her, which soon amounted to a liberal sum; they were enabled to procure Reilly's discharge from the army, and with a part of the money, Cathleen, who, among her other perfections, was exceedingly pious after the fas.h.i.+on of her creed and country, founded yearly ma.s.ses for the soul of the poor pedlar; and vowed herself to make a pilgrimage of thanksgiving to St. Gobnate's well. Mr. L., the magistrate who had first examined her in the little inn at Balgowna, made her a munificent present; and anxious, perhaps, to offer yet farther amends for his former doubts of her veracity, he invited Reilly, on very advantageous terms, to settle on his estate, where he rented a neat cabin, and a _handsome_ plot of potatoe ground. There Reilly and his Cathleen were living ten years ago, with an increasing family, and in the enjoyment of much humble happiness; and there, for aught I know to the contrary, they may be living at this day.

THE INDIAN MOTHER.[27]

There is a comfort in the strength of love, Making that pang endurable, which else Would overset the brain--or break the heart.

_Wordsworth._

The monuments which human art has raised to human pride or power may decay with that power, or survive to mock that pride; but sooner or later they perish--their place knows them not. In the aspect of a ruin, however imposing in itself, and however magnificent or dear the a.s.sociations connected with it, there is always something sad and humiliating, reminding us how poor and how frail are the works of man, how unstable his hopes, and how limited his capacity compared to his aspirations! But when man has made to himself monuments of the works of G.o.d; when the memory of human affections, human intellect, human power, is blended with the immutable features of nature, they consecrate each other, and both endure together to the end. In a state of high civilization, man trusts to the record of brick and marble--the pyramid, the column, the temple, the tomb:

"Then the bust And altar rise--then sink again to dust."

In the earlier stages of society, the isolated rock--the mountain, cloud-encircled--the river, rolling to its ocean-home--the very stars themselves--were endued with sympathies, and const.i.tuted the first, as they will be the last, witnesses and records of our human destinies and feelings. The glories of the Parthenon shall fade into oblivion; but while the heights of Thermopylae stand, and while a wave murmurs in the gulph of Salamis, a voice shall cry aloud to the universe--"Freedom and glory to those who can dare to die!--woe and everlasting infamy to him who would enthral the unconquerable spirit!" The Coliseum with its sanguinary trophies is crumbling to decay; but the islet of Nisida, where Brutus parted with his Portia--the steep of Leucadia, still remain fixed as the foundations of the earth; and lasting as the round world itself shall be the memories that hover over them! As long as the waters of the h.e.l.lespont flow between Sestos and Abydos, the fame of the love that perished there shall never pa.s.s away. A traveller, pursuing his weary way through the midst of an African desert--a barren, desolate, and almost boundless solitude--found a gigantic sculptured head, shattered and half-buried in the sand; and near it the fragment of a pedestal, on which these words might be with pain deciphered: "_I am Ozymandias, King of kings; look upon my works, ye mighty ones, and despair!_" Who was Ozymandias?--where are now his works?--what bond of thought or feeling, links his past with our present? The Arab, with his beasts of burthen, tramples unheeding over these forlorn vestiges of human art and human grandeur. In the wildest part of the New Continent, hidden amid the depths of interminable forests, there stands a huge rock, hallowed by a tradition so recent that the man is not yet grey-headed who was born its contemporary; but that rock, and the tale which consecrates it, shall carry down to future ages a deep lesson--a moral interest lasting as itself--however the aspect of things and the conditions of people change around it. Henceforth no man shall gaze on it with careless eye; but each shall whisper to his own bosom--"What is stronger than love in a mother's heart?--what more fearful than power wielded by ignorance?--or what more lamentable than the abuse of a beneficent name to purposes of selfish cruelty?"

Those vast regions which occupy the central part of South America, stretching from Guinea to the foot of the Andes, overspread with gigantic and primeval forests, and watered by mighty rivers--those solitary wilds where man appears unessential in the scale of creation, and the traces of his power are few and far between--have lately occupied much of the attention of Europeans; partly from the extraordinary events and unexpected revolutions which have convulsed the nations round them; and partly from the researches of enterprising travellers who have penetrated into their remotest districts. But till within the last twenty years these wild regions have been unknown, except through the means of the Spanish and Portuguese priests, settled as missionaries along the banks of the Orinoco and the Paraguay. The men thus devoted to utter banishment from all intercourse with civilized life, are generally Franciscan or Capuchin friars, born in the Spanish Colonies. Their pious duties are sometimes voluntary, and sometimes imposed by the superiors of their order; in either case their destiny appears at first view deplorable, and their self-sacrifice sublime; yet, when we recollect that these poor monks generally exchanged the monotonous solitude of the cloister for the magnificent loneliness of the boundless woods and far-spreading savannahs, the sacrifice appears less terrible; even where accompanied by suffering, privation, and occasionally by danger. When these men combine with their religious zeal some degree of understanding and enlightened benevolence, they have been enabled to enlarge the sphere of knowledge and civilization, by exploring the productions and geography of these unknown regions; and by collecting into villages and humanizing the manners of the native tribes, who seem strangely to unite the fiercest and most abhorred traits of savage life, with some of the gentlest instincts of our common nature. But when it has happened that these priests have been men of narrow minds and tyrannical tempers, they have on some occasions fearfully abused the authority entrusted to them; and being removed many thousand miles from the European settlements and the restraint of the laws, the power they have exercised has been as far beyond control as the calamities they have caused have been beyond all remedy and all relief.

Unfortunately for those who were trusted to his charge, Father Gomez was a missionary of this character. He was a Franciscan friar of the order of Observance, and he dwelt in the village of San Fernando, near the source of the Orinoco, whence his authority extended as president over several missions in the neighbourhood of which San Fernando was the capital. The temper of this man was naturally cruel and despotic; he was wholly uneducated, and had no idea, no feeling, of the true spirit of christian benevolence: in this respect, the savages whom he had been sent to instruct and civilize were in reality less savage and less ignorant than himself.

Among the pa.s.sions and vices which Father Gomez had brought from his cell in the convent of Angostara, to spread contamination and oppression through his new domain, were pride and avarice; and both were interested in increasing the number of his converts, or rather, of his slaves. In spite of the wise and humane law of Charles the Third, prohibiting the conversion of the Indian natives by force, Gomez, like others of his brethren in the more distant missions, often accomplished his purpose by direct violence. He was accustomed to go, with a party of his people, and lie in wait near the hordes of unreclaimed Indians: when the men were absent he would forcibly seize on the women and children, bind them, and bring them off in triumph to his village. There, being baptized and taught to make the sign of the cross, they were _called_ Christians, but in reality were slaves. In general, the women thus detained pined away and died; but the children became accustomed to their new mode of life, forgot their woods, and paid to their Christian master a willing and blind obedience; thus in time they became the oppressors of their own people.

Father Gomez called these incursions, _la conquista espiritual_--the conquest of souls.

One day he set off on an expedition of this nature, attended by twelve armed Indians; and after rowing some leagues up the river Guaviare, which flows into the Orinoco, they perceived, through an opening in the trees, and at a little distance from the sh.o.r.e, an Indian hut. It is the custom of these people to live isolated in families; and so strong is their pa.s.sion for solitude, that when collected into villages they frequently build themselves a little cabin at a distance from their usual residence, and retire to it, at certain seasons, for days together. The cabin of which I speak was one of these solitary _villas_--if I may so apply the word. It was constructed with peculiar neatness, thatched with palm leaves, and overshadowed with cocoa trees and laurels; it stood alone in the wilderness, embowered in luxuriant vegetation, and looked like the chosen abode of simple and quiet happiness. Within this hut a young Indian woman (whom I shall call Guahiba, from the name of her tribe) was busied in making cakes of the ca.s.sava root, and preparing the family meal, against the return of her husband, who was fis.h.i.+ng at some distance up the river; her eldest child, about five or six years old, a.s.sisted her; and from time to time, while thus employed, the mother turned her eyes, beaming with fond affection, upon the playful gambols of two little infants, who, being just able to crawl alone, were rolling together on the ground, laughing and crowing with all their might.

Their food being nearly prepared, the Indian woman looked towards the river, impatient for the return of her husband. But her bright dark eyes, swimming with eagerness and affectionate solicitude, became fixed and glazed with terror when, instead of him she so fondly expected, she beheld the attendants of Father Gomez, creeping stealthily along the side of the thicket towards her cabin. Instantly aware of her danger (for the nature and object of these incursions were the dread of all the country round) she uttered a piercing shriek, s.n.a.t.c.hed up her infants in her arms, and, calling on the other to follow, rushed from the hut towards the forest. As she had considerably the start of her pursuers, she would probably have escaped, and have hidden herself effectually in its tangled depths, if her precious burthen had not impeded her flight; but thus enc.u.mbered she was easily overtaken. Her eldest child, fleet of foot and wily as the young jaguar, escaped to carry to the wretched father the news of his bereavement, and neither father nor child were ever more beheld in their former haunts.