Confessions Of Con Cregan, the Irish Gil Blas

From these and similar mental meanderings I was brought back by Joe, who, after emptying the ashes from his pipe, said, and with a peculiarly dry voice, “Ye ‘r in a service, young man?”

Now, although the words are few, and the speaker did not intend that his manner should have given them any particular significance, yet the tone, the cautious slowness of the enunciation, coupled with the stern, steady stare at my “bravery,” made them tingle on my ears, and send the blood rushing to my cheeks with shame. It was like a sharp prick of the spur; and so it turned out.

“In a service!” said I, with a look of offended dignity. “No, I flatter myself not that low yet. What could have made you suppose so? Oh, I see! “ – here I burst out into a very well-assumed laugh. “That is excellent, to be sure! ha, ha, ha! so it was these” – and I stretched forth my embroidered shins – “it was these deceived you! And a very natural mistake, too. No, my worthy friend, – not but, indeed, I might envy many in that same ignoble position.” I said this with a sudden change of voice, as though overcast by some sad recollection.

“‘Twas indeed your dress,” said Joe, with a modest deference in his manner, meant to be a full apology for his late blunder. “Maybe ‘tis the fashion here.”

“No, Cullinane,” said I, using a freedom which should open the way to our relative future standing; “no, not even that.” Here I heaved a heavy sigh, and became silent. My companion, abashed by his mistake, said nothing; and so we sat, without interchanging a word, for full five minutes.

“I have had a struggle with myself, Cullinane,” said I, at last, “and I have conquered. Ay, I have gained the day in a hard-fought battle against my sense of shame. I will be frank with you, therefore. In this dress I appeared to-night on the boards of the Quebec theatre.”

“A play actor!” exclaimed Joe, with a face very far from expressing any high sense of the histrionic art.

“Not exactly,” said I, “only a would-be one. I am a gentleman by birth, family, and fortune; but taking it into my head, in a foolish hour, that I should like the excitement of an actor’s life, I fled from home, quitted friends, relatives, affluence, and ease, to follow a strolling company. At another time I may relate to you all the disguises I assumed to escape detection. Immense sums were offered for my apprehension – why do I say were?– ay, Cullinane, are offered. I will not deceive you. It is in your power this instant, by surrendering me to my family, to earn five thousand dollars!”

“Do ye think I’d be – ”

“No, I do not. In proof of my confidence in you, hear my story. We travelled through the States at first by unfrequented routes till we reached the North, when, gaining courage, I ventured to take a high range of characters, and, I will own it, with success. At last we came to Canada, in which country, although the reward had not been announced, my father had acquainted all the principal people with my flight, entreating them to do their utmost to dissuade me from a career so far below my rank and future prospects. Among others, he wrote to an old friend and schoolfellow, the Governor-General, requesting his aid in this affair. I was always able, from other sources, to learn every step that was taken with this object; so that I not only knew this, but actually possessed a copy of my father’s letter to Lord Poynder, wherein this passage occurred: ‘Above all things, my dear Poynder, no publicity, no exposure! Remember the position Cornelius will one day hold, and let him not be ashamed when he may meet you in after-life. If the silly boy can be induced, by his own sense of dignity, to abandon this unworthy pursuit, so much the better; but coercion would, I fear, give faint hope of eradicating the evil.’ Now, as I perceived that no actual force was to be employed against me, I did not hesitate to appear in the part for which the bills announced me. Have you ever read Shakespeare?”

“No, sir,” said Joe, respectfully.

“Well, no matter. I was to appear as Hamlet, – this is the dress of that character, – little suspecting, indeed, how the applause I was accustomed to receive was to be changed. To be brief. In the very centre of the dress-circle was the Governor himself, he came with his whole staff, but with out any previous intimation. No sooner had I made my entrance on the scene, – scarcely had I begun that magnificent soliloquy, ‘Show me the thief that stole my fame,’ – when his Excellency commenced hissing! Now, when the Governor-General hisses, all the staff hiss; then the President of the Council and all his colleagues hiss; then come the bishop and the inferior clergy, with the judges and the Attorney-General, and so on; then all the loyal population of the house joined in, with the exception of a few in the galleries that hated the British connection, and who cried out, ‘Three cheers for Con Cregan and the independence of Canada!’ In this way went on the first act; groans and yells and cat-calls overtopping all I tried to say, and screams for the manager to come out issuing from every part of the house. At last out he did come. This for a while made matters worse; so many directions were given, questions asked, and demands made that it was clearly impossible to hear any one voice; and there stood the manager, swinging his arms about like an insane telegraph, now running to the stage-box at one side, then crossing over to the other, to maintain a little private conversation by signs, till the sense of the house spoke out by accidentally catching a glimpse of me in the side-scenes.

“‘Is it your pleasure, my lords, ladies, and gentlemen, that this actor should not appear again before you?’

“‘Yes – yes. No – no – no,’ were shouted from hundreds of voices.

“‘ What am I to understand?’ said he, bowing, with his arms crossed submissively before him. ‘I submit myself to your orders. If Mr. Cregan does not meet your approbation – ’

“‘Throw him into the dock! – break his neck! – set him adrift on a log down the Gulf-stream! – chip him up for bark! – burn him for charcoal!’ – and twenty other like humane proposals burst forth together; and so, not waiting to see how far the manager’s politeness would carry him, I fled from the theatre. Yes, Cullinane, I fled with shame and disgust from that fickle public, who applaud with ecstasy today that they may condemn with infamy to-morrow. Nor was I deceived by the vain egotism of supposing that I was the object of their ungenerous anger. Alas! my friend, the evil lay deeper, – it was my Irish name and family they sought to insult! The old grudge that they bear us at home, they carry over the seas with them. How plain it is: they never can forgive our superiority. It is this they seek revenge upon wherever they find us.”

I own that in giving this peculiar turn to my narrative I was led by perceiving that my listener had begun to show a most lamentable want of sympathy for myself and my sufferings; so I was driven to try what a little patriotism might do in arousing his feelings; and I was right. Some of Cullnane’s connections had been Terrys, – or Blackfeet, or White-feet, or some one or other of these pleasant fraternities who study ball-practice, with a landlord for the bull’s-eye. He at once caught up the spirit of my remarks, and even quoted some eloquent passages of Mr. O’Connell about the width of our shoulders and the calves of our legs, and other like personal advantages, incontestably showing as they do that we never were made to be subject to the Saxon. It was the law of the land, however, which had his heartiest abhorrence. This, like nine-tenths of his own class in Ireland, he regarded as a systematic means of oppression, invented by the rich to give them the tyrannical dominion over the poor. Nor is the belief to be wondered at, considering how cognizant the peasant often is of all the schemes and wiles by which a conviction is compassed; nay, the very adroitness of a legal defence in criminal cases, – the feints, the quips, the stratagems, – instead of suggesting admiration for those barriers by which the life and liberty of a subject are protected, only engendered a stronger conviction of the roguish character of that ordeal where craft and subtlety could do so much.

It was at the close of a very long diatribe over Irish law and lawyers that Cullinane, whose confidence increased each moment, said, with a sigh, “Ay! they wor n’t so ‘cute in ould times, when my poor grandfather was tried, as they are now, or may be he’d have had betther luck.”

“What happened to him?” said I.

“He was hanged, acushla!” said he, knocking the ashes out of his pipe as leisurely as might be, and then mumbling a scrap of a prayer below his breath.

“For what?” asked I, in some agitation; but he didn’t hear me, being sunk in his own reflections, so that I was forced to repeat my question.

“Ye never heerd of one Mr. Shinane, of the Grove?” said he, after a pause. “Of coorse ye did n’t, – ‘tis many years ago now; but he was well known oncet, and owned a great part of Ennistymore, and a hard man he was. But no matter for that, – he was a strong, full man, with rosy cheeks and stout built, and sorra a lease in the country had not his life in it! – a thing he liked well, for he used to say, ‘t ‘ll be the ruin of ye all, if any one shoots me!’ Well, my grandfather – rest his sowl in glory! – was his driver, and used to manage everything on the property for him; and considerin’ what a hard thing it is, he was well liked by the country round, – all but by one man, Maurice Cafferty by name. I never seed him, for it was all ‘fore I was born; but the name is in my mind as if I knew him well, – I used to hear it every night of my life when I was a child!

“There was a dispute about Cafferty’s houldin’, and my grandfather was for turnin’ him out, for he was a bad tenant; but Mr. Shinane was afeerd of him, and said, ‘Leave him quiet, Mat,’ says he; ‘he’s a troublesome chap, and we ‘ll get rid of him in our own good time; but don’t drive him to extremities: I told him to come up to the cottage, this morning: come with me there, and we ‘ll talk to him.’ Now, the cottage was a little place about two miles off, in the woods, where the master used to dine sometimes in summer, when they were chipping bark; but nobody lived there.

“It was remarked by many that morning, as they went along, that my grandfather and Mr. Shinane were in high words all the time, – at least, so the people working in the fields thought, and even the childer that was picking bark said that they were talking as if they were very angry with each other.

“This was about eleven o’clock, and at the same time Cafferty, who was selling a pig in Ennistymore, said to the butcher, ‘Be quick, and tell me what you ‘ll give, for I must go home and clean myself, as I ‘m to speak to the master today about my lease.’ Well, at a little before twelve Cafferty came through the wood, and asked the people had they seen Mr. Shinane pass by, for that he towld him to meet him at the cottage; and the workmen said yes, and more by token that he was quarrellin’ with Mat Cullinane. ‘I’m sorry for that,’ says Cafferty, ‘for I wanted him to be in a good humor, and long life to him! ‘The words was n’t well out, but what would they see but my grandfather running towards them, at the top of his speed, screeching out like mad, ‘The master’s murdered! the master’s kilt dead!’ Away they all went to the cottage, and there upon the floor was the dead body, with an axe buried deep in the skull, – so deep that only the thick part of the iron was outside. That was the dreadful sight! and, sure enough, after looking at the corpse, every eye was turned on my grandfather, who was leaning on the dresser, pale and trembling, and his hands and knees all covered with blood. ‘How did it happen, Mat?’ said three or four together; but Cafferty muttered, ‘It’s better ask nothing about it; it’s not likely he ‘ll tell us the truth!’

“The same night my grandfather was arrested on suspicion and brought to Ennis, where he was lodged in jail; and although there was no witness agin’ him, nor anything more than I towld ye, – the high words between them, the axe being my grandfather’s, the blood on his clothes and hands, and his dreadful confusion when the people came up, – all these went so hard against him, and particularly as the judge said it was good to make an example, that he was condemned; and so it was he was hanged on the next Saturday in front of the jail!”

“But what defence did he make; what account did he give of the circumstance?”

“All he could tell was, that he was standing beside the master at the table, talking quietly, when he heard a shout and a yell in the wood, and he said, ‘They ‘re stealing the bark out there; they ‘ll not leave us a hundredweight of it yet!’ and out he rushed into the copse. The shouting grew louder, and he thought it was some of the men cryin’ for help, and so he never stopped running till he came where they were at work felling trees. ‘What’s the matter?’ says he, to the men, as he came up panting and breathless; ‘where was the screeching?’

“‘We heerd nothing,’ says the men.

“‘Ye heerd nothing! didn’t ye hear yells and shouting this minute?’

“‘Sorra bit,’ says the men, looking strangely at each other, for my grandfather was agitated, and trembling, between anger and a kind of fear; just as he said afterwards, ‘as if there was something dreadful going to happen him!’ ‘Them was terrible cries, anyway!’ says my grandfather; and with that he turned back to the cottage, and it was then that he found the master lying dead on his face, and the axe in his skull. He tried to lift him up, or turn him over on his back, and that was the way he bloodied his hands and all the front of his clothes. That was all he had to say, and to swear before the sight of Heaven that he didn’t do it!

“No matter! they hanged him for it! Ay, and I have an ould newspaper in my trunk this minit, where there ‘s a great discourse about the wickedness of a crayture going out of the world wid a lie on his last breath!”

“And you think he was innocent?” said I.

“Sure, we know it! sure, the priest said to my father, – ‘Take courage,’ says he, ‘your father is n’t in a bad place if he ‘s in purgatory,’ says he,’ he ‘s not over the broken bridge, where the murderers does be, but in the meadows, where the stream is shallow, and stepping-stones in it! and every stone costs ten masses – sorra more! ‘God help us! but blood is a dreadful thing!” And with this reflection, uttered in a voice of fervent feeling, the hardy peasant laid down his pipe; and I could see, by his muttering lips and clasped hands, that he was offering up a prayer for the soul’s rest of his unhappy kinsman.

“And what became of Cafferty?” said I, as he finished his devotions.

“‘T was never rightly known; for, after he gave evidence on the trial, the people did n’t like him, and he left the place; some say he went to his mother’s relations down in Kerry!”

The deep-drawn breathings of the sleepers around us; the unbroken stillness of the night; the fast-expiring embers, which only flickered at intervals, – contributed their aid to make the story more deeply affecting; and I sat pondering over it, and canvassing within my mind all the probabilities of the condemned man’s guilt or innocence; nor, I must own it, were all my convictions on the side of the narrator’s belief; but even that very doubt heightened the interest considerably. As for Cullinane, his thoughts were evidently less with the incidents of the characters as they lived, than with that long pilgrimage of expiation, in which his imagination pictured his poor relative still a wanderer beyond the grave.

The fire now barely flickered, throwing from time to time little jets of light upon the sleeping figures around us, and then leaving all in dark indistinctness. My companion also, crouching down, hid his face within his hands, and either slept or was lost in deep thought, and I alone of all the party was left awake, my mind dwelling on the tale I had just heard, with a degree of interest to which the place and the hour strongly contributed.

I had been for some time thus, when the sound of feet moving heavily overhead attracted my attention; they were like the sluggish footsteps of age, but passing to and fro with what seemed haste and eagerness. I could hear a voice, too, which even in its indistinctness I recognized as that of the old woman; and once or twice fancied I could detect another, whose accents sounded like pain and suffering. The shuffling footsteps still continued, and I heard the old crazy sash of the window open, and after an interval shut again, while I distinctly could catch the old hag’s voice saying, “It ‘s all dark without; there ‘s no use ‘trying’!” a low whining sound followed; and then I heard the old woman slowly descending the stairs, and, by the motion of her hand along the wall, I conjectured that she had no light.

She stopped as she came to the door, and seemed to listen to the long-drawn breathing of the sleepers; and then she pushed open the door and entered. With a strange dread of what this might mean, I still resolved to let the event take its course; and, feigning deepest sleep, I lay back against the wall and watched her well.

Guiding herself along by the wall, she advanced slowly, halting every second or third step to listen, – a strange precaution, since her own asthmatic breathing was enough to mask all other sounds. At last she neared the grate; and then her thin and cord-like fingers passed from the wall, to rest upon my head. It was with a kind of thrill I felt them; for I perceived by the touch that she did not know on what her hand was placed. She knelt down now, close beside me, and, stooping over, stirred the embers with her fingers till she discovered some faint resemblance to fire, amid the dark ashes. To brighten this into flame, she blew upon it for several minutes, and, even taking the live embers in her hands, tried in every way to kindle them.

With a patience that seemed untirable, she continued at this for a long time; now selecting from the hearth some new material to work upon, and now abandoning it for another; till, when I had almost grown drowsy in watching this monotonous process, a thin bright light sprung up, and I saw that she had lighted a little piece of candle that she held in her hand. I think even now I have her before me, as, crouched down upon her knees, and sheltering the candle from the current air of the room, she took a stealthy, but searching, glance at the figures, who, in every attitude of weariness, were sleeping heavily around.

It was not without a great effort that she regained her feet, for she was very old and infirm; and now she retraced her steps cautiously as she came, – stooping at intervals to listen, and then resuming her way as before. I watched her till she passed out; and then, as I heard her first heavy footstep on the stair, I slipped off my shoes and followed her.

My mind throughout the whole of that night had been kept in a state of tension that invariably has the effect of magnifying the significance of every, even the very commonest, occurrences. It resembles that peculiar condition in certain maladies when the senses become preternaturally acute; in such moments the reason is never satisfied with drawing only from inferences for any fact before it; it seeks for more, and in the effort becomes lost in the mazes of mere fancy. I will own that as, with stealthy step and noiseless gesture, I followed that old hag, there was a kind of ecstasy in my terror which no mere sense of pleasure could convey. The light seemed to show ghastly shapes, as she passed, on the green and mouldy walls, and her head, with its masses of long and straggling gray hair, nodded in shadow like some unearthly spectre.

As she came nigh the top, I heard a weak and whining cry, something too deep for the voice of infancy, but seeming too faint for manhood. “Ay, ay,” croaked the hag, harshly, “I’m coming, I’m coming!” and as she said this, she pushed open a door and entered a room, which, by the passing gleam of light as she went, I perceived lay next to the roof, for the rafters and the tiles were both visible, as there was no ceiling.

I held my breath as I slowly stole along, and then, reaching the door as it lay half ajar, I crouched down and peeped in.

CHAPTER XVII. A “SCENE” AND “MY LUCUBRATIONS ON THE ST. LAWRENCE.”

When the light of the candle which the old woman carried had somewhat dissipated the darkness, I could see the whole interior of the room; and certainly, well habituated as I had been from my earliest years to such sights, poverty like this I never had seen before! Not a chair nor table was there; a few broken utensils for cooking, such as are usually thrown away as useless among rubbish, stood upon the cold hearth. A few potatoes on one broken dish, and a little meat on another, were the only things like food. It was not for some minutes that I perceived in the corner a miserable bed of straw confined within a plank, supported by two rough stones; nor was it till I had looked long and closely that I saw that the figure of a man lay extended on the bed, his stiffened and outstretched limbs resembling those of a corpse. Towards this the old woman now tottered with slow steps, and, setting the small piece of candle upright in a saucer, she approached the bed. “There it is, now; look at it, and make yer mind aisy,” said she, placing it on the floor beside the bed, in such a position that he could see it.

The sick man turned his face round, and as his eyes met the light, there came over his whole features a wondrous change. Livid and clammy with the death-sweat, the rigid muscles relaxed, and in the staring eyeballs and the parted lips there seemed a perfect paroxysm of emotion. “Is that it? – are ye sure that’s it?” cried he, in a voice to which the momentary excitement imparted strength.

“To be sure I am; I seen Father Ned bless it himself, and sprinkle it too!” said she.

“Oh, the heavenly – ” He stopped, and in a lower voice added, “Say it for me, Molly! – say it for me, Molly! I can’t say it myself.”

“Keep your eyes on the blessed candle!” said the hag, peevishly; “‘t is a quarter dollar it cost me.”

“Wouldn’t he come, Molly? – did he say he wouldn’t come?”

“Father Ned! arrah, ‘tis likely he’d come here at night, with the Tapageers on their rounds, and nothing to give him when he kem!”

“Not to hear my last words! – not to take my confession!” cried he, in a kind of shriek. “Oh, ‘tis the black list of sins I have to own to!”

“Whisht, whisht!” cried the hag. “‘T is many a year ago now; maybe it’s all forgot.”

“No, it’s not,” cried the dying man, with a wild energy he did not seem to have strength for. “When you wor away, Molly, he was here, standing beside the bed.”

The old hag laughed with a horrid sardonic laugh.

“Don’t – don’t, for the love of – ah – I can’t say – I can’t say it,” cried he; and the voice died away in the effort.

“What did he say to ye when he kem?” said she, in a scoffing tone.

“He never spoke a word, but he pressed back the cloth that was on his head, and I saw the deep cut in it, down to the very face!”

“Well, I am sure it had time to heal before this time,” said the woman, with a tone of mockery that at last became palpable to the dying man.

“Where’s Dan, Molly, – did he never come back since?”

“Sorra bit; he said he’d go out of the house, and never come back to it. You frightened the boy with the terrible things you say in your ravings.”

“Oh, murther – murther! My own flesh and blood desart me!”

“Then why won’t you be raisonable, – why won’t you hould your peace about what happened long agone?”

“Because I can’t,” said he, with a peevish eagerness. “Because I’m going where it’s all known a’ready.”

“Faix, and I would n’t be remindin’ them, anyway!” said the hag, whose sarcastic impiety added fresh tortures to the dying sinner.

“I wanted to tell Father Ned all; I wanted to have masses for him that’s gone, – the man that suffered instead of me! Oh, dear! – Oh, dear! – and nobody will come to me.”

“If ye cry that loud, I ‘ll leave you too,” said the hag. “They know already ‘tis the spotted fever ye have, and the Tapageers would burn the house under ye, if I was to go.”

“Don’t go, Molly, – don’t leave me,” he cried, with heart-rending anguish. “Bring the blessed candle nearer; I don’t see it well.”

“You’ll see less of it soon; ‘tis nigh out,” said she, snuffing the wick with her fingers.