Part 10

A wrecker who had gone to watch the shore, saw, as the sun went down, a full-rigged vessel standing off and on. Coppinger came to the beach, put off in a boat to the vessel, and jumped on board. She spread canvas, stood off shore, and with Coppinger in her was seen no more. That night was one of storm. Whether the vessel rode it out, or was lost, none knew.

* * * * *

In 1864 a large ship was seen in distress off the coast. The Rev. A. Thynne, rector of Kilkhampton, at once drove to Morwenstow. The vessel was riding at anchor a mile off shore, west of Hartland Race. He found Mr. Hawker in the greatest excitement, pacing his room and shouting for some things he wanted to put in his greatcoat-pockets, and intensely impatient because his carriage was not round. With him was the Rev. W. Valentine, rector of Whixley in Yorkshire, then resident at Chapel in the parish of Morwenstow.

"What are you going to do?" asked the rector of Kilkhampton: "I shall drive at once to Bude for the lifeboat."

"No good!" thundered the vicar, "no good comes out of the west. You must go east. I shall go to Clovelly, and then, if that fails, to Appledore. I shall not stop till I have got a lifeboat to take those poor fellows off the wreck."

"Then," said the rector of Kilkhampton, "I shall go to Bude, and see to the lifeboat there being brought out."

"Do as you like; but mark my words, no good comes of turning to the west. Why," said he, "in the primitive church they turned to the west to renounce the Devil."

His carriage came to the door, and he drove off with Mr. Valentine as fast as his horses could spin him along the hilly, wretched roads.

Before he reached Clovelly, a boat had put off with the mate from the ship, which was the Margaret Quail, laden with salt. The captain would not leave the vessel; for, till deserted by him, no salvage could be claimed. The mate was picked up on the way, and the three reached Clovelly.

Down the street proceeded the following procession--the street of Clovelly being a flight of stairs:--

_First_, the vicar of Morwenstow in a claret-colored coat, with long tails flying in the gale, blue knitted jersey, and pilot-boots, his long silver locks fluttering about his head. He was appealing to the fishermen and sailors of Clovelly to put out in their lifeboat to rescue the crew of the Margaret Quail. The men stood sulky, lounging about with folded arms, or hands in their pockets, and sou'-westers slouched over their brows. The women were screaming at the tops of their voices that they would not have their husbands and sons and sweethearts enticed away to risk their lives to save wrecked men. Above the clamor of their shrill tongues and the sough of the wind rose the roar of the vicar's voice: he was convulsed with indignation, and poured forth the most sacred appeals to their compassion for drowning sailors.

_Second_ in the procession moved the Rev. W. Valentine, with purse full of gold in his hand, offering any amount of money to the Clovelly men, if they would only go forth in the lifeboat to the wreck.

_Third_ came the mate of the Margaret Quail, restrained by no consideration of cloth, swearing and damning right and left, in a towering rage at the cowardice of the Clovelly men.

_Fourth_ came John, the servant of Mr. Hawker, with bottles of whisky under his arm, another inducement to the men to relent and be merciful to their imperiled brethren.

The first appeal was to their love of heaven and to their humanity; the second was to their pockets, their love of gold; the third to their terrors, their fear of Satan, to whom they were consigned; and the fourth to their stomachs, their love of grog.

But all appeals were in vain. Then Mr. Hawker returned to his carriage, and drove away farther east to Appledore, where he secured the lifeboat. It was mounted on a wagon; ten horses were harnessed to it; and as fast as possible it was conveyed to the scene of distress.

But in the mean while the captain of the Margaret Quail, despairing of help and thinking that his vessel would break up under him, came off in his boat with the rest of the crew, trusting rather to a rotten boat, patched with canvas which they had tarred over, than to the tender mercies of the covetous Clovellites, in whose veins ran the too recent blood of wreckers. The only living being left on board was a poor dog.

No sooner was the captain seen to leave the ship than the Clovelly men lost their repugnance to go to sea. They manned boats at once, gained the Margaret Quail, and claimed three thousand pounds for salvage.

There was an action in court, as the owners refused to pay such a sum; and it was lost by the Clovelly men, who however got an award of twelve hundred pounds. The case turned somewhat on the presence of the dog on the wreck; and it was argued that the vessel was not deserted, because a dog had been left on board to keep guard for its masters. The owner of the cargo failed; and the amount actually paid to the salvors was six hundred pounds to two steam-tugs (three hundred pounds each), and three hundred pounds to the Clovelly skiff and sixteen men.

Mr. Hawker went round the country indignantly denouncing the sailors of Clovelly, and with justice. It roused all the righteous wrath in his breast. And as may well be believed, no love was borne him by the inhabitants of that little fishing village. They would probably have made a wreck of him had he ventured among them.

Jane Barlow

(18-)

The general reader has yet to learn the most private and sacred events of Miss Jane Barlow's life, now known only to herself and friends. She is the daughter of Dr. Barlow of Trinity College, and lives in the seclusion of a collage at Raheny, a hamlet near Dublin. Her family has been in Ireland for generations, and she comes of German and Norman stock. As some one has said, the knowledge and skill displayed in depicting Irish peasant life, which her books show, are hers not through Celtic blood and affinities, but by a sympathetic genius and inspiration.

The publication of her writings in book form was preceded by the appearance of some poems and stories in the magazines, the Dublin University Review of 1885 containing 'Walled Out; or, Eschatology in a Bog.' 'Irish Idyls' (1892), and 'Bogland Studies' (of the same year), show the same pitiful, sombre pictures of Irish peasant life about the sodden-roofed mud hut and "pitaties" boiling, which only a genial, impulsive, generous, light-hearted, half-Greek and half-philosophic people could make endurable to the reader or attractive to the writer. The innate sweetness of the Irish character, which the author brings out with fine touches, makes it worth portrayal. "It is safe to say," writes a critic, "that the philanthropist or the political student interested in the eternal Irish problem will learn more from Miss Barlow's twin volumes than from a dozen Royal Commissions and a hundred Blue Books." Her sympathy constantly crops out, as, for instance, in the mirthful tale of 'Jerry Dunne's Basket,' where--

"Andy Joyce had an ill-advised predilection for seeing things which he called 'dacint and proper' about him, and he built some highly superior sheds on the lawn, to the bettering, no doubt, of his cattle's condition. The abrupt raising of his rent by fifty per cent, was a broad hint which most men would have taken; and it did keep Andy ruefully quiet for a season or two. Then, however, having again saved up a trifle, he could not resist the temptation to drain the swampy corner of the farthest river-field, which was as kind a bit of land as you could wish, only for the water lying on it, and in which he afterward raised himself a remarkably fine crop of white oats. The sight of them 'done his heart good,' he said, exultantly, nothing recking that it was the last touch of farmer's pride he would ever feel. Yet on the next quarter-day the Joyces received notice to quit, and their landlord determined to keep the vacated holding in his own hands; those new sheds were just the thing for his young stock. Andy, in fact, had done his best to improve himself off the face of the earth."

The long story which Miss Barlow has published, 'Kerrigan's Quality' (1894), is told with her distinguishing charm, but the book has not the close-knit force of the 'Idyls.' Miss Barlow herself prefers the 'Bogland Studies,' because, she says, they are "a sort of poetry." "I had set my heart too long upon being a poet ever to give up the idea quite contentedly; 'the old hope is hardest to be lost.' A real poet I can never be, as I have, I fear, nothing of the lyrical faculty; and a poet without that is worse than a bird without wings, so, like Mrs. Browning's Nazianzen, I am doomed to look 'at the lyre hung out of reach.'"

Besides the three books named, Miss Barlow has published 'Mockus of the Shallow Waters' (1893); 'The End of Elfintown' (1894); 'The Battle of the Frogs and Mice in English' (1894); 'Maureen's Fairing and other Stories' (1895); and 'Strangers at Lisconnel,' a second series of 'Irish Idyls' (1895). In the last book we again have the sorrows and joys of the small hamlet in the west of Ireland, where "the broad level spreads away and away to the horizon before and behind and on either side of you, very sombre-hued, yet less black-a-vised than more frequent bergs," where in the distance the mountains "loom up on its borders much less substantial, apparently, in fabric than so many spirals of blue turf smoke," and where the curlew's cry "can set a whole landscape to melancholy in one chromatic phrase."

THE WIDOW JOYCE'S CLOAK

From 'Strangers at Lisconnel'

Still, although the Tinkers' name has become a byword among us through a long series of petty offenses rather than any one flagrant crime, there is a notable misdeed on record against them, which has never been forgotten in the lapse of many years. It was perpetrated soon after the death of Mrs. Kilfoyle's mother, the Widow Joyce, an event which is but dimly recollected now at Lisconnel, as nearly half a century has gone by. She did not very long survive her husband, and he had left his roots behind in his little place at Clonmena, where, as we know, he had farmed not wisely but too well, and had been put out of it for his pains to expend his energy upon our oozy black sods and stark-white bowlders. But instead he moped about, fretting for his fair green fields, and few proudly cherished beasts,--especially the little old Kerry cow. And at his funeral the neighbors said, "Ah, bedad, poor man, God help him, he niver held up his head agin from that good day to this."

When Mrs. Joyce felt that it behooved her to settle her affairs, she found that the most important possession she had to dispose of was her large cloak. She had acquired it at the prosperous time of her marriage, and it was a very superior specimen of its kind, in dark-blue cloth being superfine, and its ample capes and capacious hood being double-lined and quilted and stitched in a way which I cannot pretend to describe, but which made it a most substantial and handsome garment. If Mrs. Joyce had been left entirely to her own choice in the matter, I think she would have bequeathed it to her younger daughter Theresa, notwithstanding that custom clearly designated Bessy Kilfoyle, the eldest of the family, as the heiress. For she said to herself that poor Bessy had her husband and childer to consowl her, any way, but little Theresa, the crathur, had ne'er such a thing at all, and wouldn't have, not she, God love her. "And the back of me hand to some I could name." It seemed to her that to leave the child the cloak would be almost like keeping a warm wing spread over her in the cold wide world; and there was no fear that Bessy would take it amiss.

But Theresa herself protested strongly against such a disposition, urging for one thing that sure she'd be lost in it entirely if ever she put it on; a not unfounded objection, as Theresa was several sizes smaller than Bessy, and even she fell far short of her mother in stature and portliness. Theresa also said confidently with a sinking heart, "But sure, anyhow, mother jewel, what matter about it? 'Twill be all gone to houles and flitters and thraneens, and so it will, plase goodness, afore there's any talk of anybody else wearin' it except your own ould self." And she expressed much the same conviction one day to her next-door neighbor, old Biddy Ryan, to whom she had run in for the loan of a sup of sour milk, which Mrs. Joyce fancied. To Biddy's sincere regret she could offer Theresa barely a skimpy noggin of milk, and only a meagre shred of encouragement; and by way of eking out the latter with its sorry substitute, consolation, she said as she tilted the jug perpendicularly to extract its last drop:--

"Well, sure, me dear, I do be sayin' me prayers for her every sun goes over our heads that she might be left wid you this great while yet; 'deed, I do so. But ah, acushla, if we could be keepin' people that-a-way, would there be e'er a funeral iver goin' black on the road at all at all? I'm thinkin' there's scarce a one livin', and he as ould and foolish and little-good-for as you plase, but some crathur'ill be grudgin' him to his grave, that's himself may be all the while wishin' he was in it. Or, morebetoken, how can we tell what quare ugly misfortin' thim that's took is took out of the road of, that we should be as good as biddin' thim stay till it comes to ruinate them? So it's prayin' away I am, honey," said old Biddy, whom Theresa could not help hating heart-sickly. "But like enough the Lord might know better than to be mindin' a word I say."

And it seemed that He did; anyway, the day soon came when the heavy blue cloak passed into Mrs. Kilfoyle's possession.

At that time it was clear, still autumn weather, with just a sprinkle of frost white on the wayside grass, like the wraith of belated moonlight, when the sun rose, and shimmering into rainbow stars by noon. But about a month later the winter swooped suddenly on Lisconnel: with wild winds and cold rain that made crystal-silver streaks down the purple of the great mountainheads peering in over our bogland.

So one perishing Saturday Mrs. Kilfoyle made up her mind that she would wear her warm legacy on the bleak walk to Mass next morning, and reaching it down from where it was stored away among the rafters wrapped in an old sack, she shook it respectfully out of its straight-creased folds. As she did so she noticed that the binding of the hood had ripped in one place, and that the lining was fraying out, a mishap which should be promptly remedied before it spread any further. She was not a very expert needlewoman, and she thought she had better run over the way to consult Mrs. O'Driscoll, then a young matron, esteemed the handiest and most helpful person in Lisconnel.

"It's the nathur of her to be settin' things straight wherever she goes," Mrs. Kilfoyle said to herself as she stood in her doorway waiting for the rain to clear off, and looking across the road to the sodden roof which sheltered her neighbor's head. It had long been lying low, vanquished by a trouble which even she could not set to rights, and some of the older people say that things have gone a little crookeder in Lisconnel ever since.

The shower was a vicious one, with the sting of sleet and hail in its drops, pelted about by gusts that ruffled up the puddles into ripples, all set on end, like the feathers of a frightened hen. The hens themselves stood disconsolately sheltering under the bank, mostly on one leg, as if they preferred to keep up the slightest possible connection with such a very damp and disagreeable earth. You could not see far in any direction for the fluttering sheets of mist, and a stranger who had been coming along the road from Duffelane stepped out of them abruptly quite close to Mrs. Kilfoyle's door, before she knew that there was anybody near. He was a tall, elderly man, gaunt and grizzled, very ragged, and so miserable-looking that Mrs. Kilfoyle could have felt nothing but compassion for him had he not carried over his shoulder a bunch of shiny cans, which was to her mind as satisfactory a passport as a ticket of leave. For although these were yet rather early days at Lisconnel, the Tinkers had already begun to establish their reputation. So when he stopped in front of her and said, "Good-day, ma'am," she only replied distantly, "It's a hardy mornin'," and hoped he would move on. But he said, "It's cruel could, ma'am," and continued to stand looking at her with wide and woful eyes, in which she conjectured--erroneously, as it happened--hunger for warmth or food. Under these circumstances, what could be done by a woman who was conscious of owning a redly glowing hearth with a big black pot, fairly well filled, clucking and bobbing upon it? To possess such wealth as this, and think seriously of withholding a share from anybody who urges the incontestable claim of wanting it, is a mood altogether foreign to Lisconnel, where the responsibilities of poverty are no doubt very imperfectly understood. Accordingly Mrs. Kilfoyle said to the tattered tramp, "Ah, thin, step inside and have a couple of hot pitaties." And when he accepted the invitation without much alacrity, as if he had something else on his mind, she picked for him out of the steam two of the biggest potatoes, whose earth-colored skins, cracking, showed a fair flouriness within; and she shook a little heap of salt, the only relish she had, onto the chipped white plate as she handed it to him, saying, "Sit you down be the fire, there, and git a taste of the heat."

Then she lifted her old shawl over her head, and ran out to see where at all Brian and Thady were gettin' their deaths on her under the pours of rain; and as she passed the Keoghs' adjacent door--which was afterward the Sheridans', whence their Larry departed so reluctantly--young Mrs. Keogh called her to come in and look at "the child," who, being a new and unique possession, was liable to develop alarmingly strange symptoms, and had now "woke up wid his head that hot, you might as well put your hand on the hob of the grate." Mrs. Kilfoyle stayed only long enough to suggest, as a possible remedy, a drop of two-milk whey. "But ah, sure, woman dear, where at all 'ud we come by that, wid the crathur of a goat scarce wettin' the bottom of the pan?" and to draw reassuring omens from the avidity with which the invalid grabbed at a sugared crust. In fact, she was less than five minutes out of her house; but when she returned to it, she found it empty. First, she noted with a moderate thrill of surprise that her visitor had gone away leaving his potatoes untouched; and next, with a rough shock of dismay, that her cloak no longer lay on the window seat where she had left it. From that moment she never felt any real doubts about what had befallen her, though for some time she kept on trying to conjure them up, and searched wildly round and round and round her little room, like a distracted bee strayed into the hollow furze-bush, before she sped over to Mrs. O'Driscoll with the news of her loss.

It spread rapidly through Lisconnel, and brought the neighbors together exclaiming and condoling, though not in great force, as there was a fair going on down beyant, which nearly all the men and some of the women had attended. This was accounted cruel unlucky, as it left the place without any one able-bodied and active enough to go in pursuit of the thief. A prompt start might have overtaken him, especially as he was said to be a "thrifle lame-futted"; though Mrs. M'Gurk, who had seen him come down the hill, opined that "'twasn't the sort of lameness 'ud hinder the miscreant of steppin' out, on'y a quare manner of flourish he had in a one of his knees, as if he was gatherin' himself up to make an offer at a grasshopper's lep, and then thinkin' better of it."

Little Thady Kilfoyle reported that he had met the strange man a bit down the road, "leggin' it along at a great rate, wid a black rowl of somethin' under his arm that he looked to be crumplin' up as small as he could,"--the word "crumpling" went acutely to Mrs. Kilfoyle's heart,--and some long-sighted people declared that they could still catch glimpses of a receding figure through the hovering fog on the way toward Sallinbeg.

"I'd think he'd be beyant seein' afore now," said Mrs. Kilfoyle, who stood in the rain, the disconsolate centre of the group about her door; all women and children except old Johnny Keogh, who was so bothered and deaf that he grasped new situations slowly and feebly, and had now an impression of somebody's house being on fire. "He must ha' took off wid himself the instiant me back was turned, for ne'er a crumb had he touched of the pitaties."

"Maybe he'd that much shame in him," said Mrs. O'Driscoll.

"They'd a right to ha' choked him, troth and they had," said Ody Rafferty's aunt.

"Is it chokin'?" said young Mrs. M'Gurk, bitterly. "Sure the bigger thief a body is, the more he'll thrive on whatever he gits; you might think villiny was as good as butter to people's pitaties, you might so. Sharne how are you? Liker he'd ate all he could swally in the last place he got the chance of layin' his hands on anythin'."

"Och, woman alive, but it's the fool you were to let him out of your sight," said Ody Rafferty's aunt. "If it had been me, I'd niver ha' took me eyes off him, for the look of him on'y goin' by made me flesh creep upon me bones."

"'Deed was I," said Mrs. Kilfoyle, sorrowfully, "a fine fool. And vexed she'd be, rael vexed, if she guessed the way it was gone on us, for the dear knows what dirty ould rapscallions 'ill get the wearin' of it now. Rael vexed she'd be."

This speculation was more saddening than the actual loss of the cloak, though that bereft her wardrobe of far and away its most valuable property, which should have descended as an heirloom to her little Katty, who, however, being at present but three months old, lay sleeping happily unaware of the cloud that had come over her prospects.

"I wish to goodness a couple of the lads 'ud step home wid themselves this minit of time," said Mrs. M'Gurk. "They'd come tip wid him yet, and take it off of him ready enough. And smash his ugly head for him, if he would be givin' them any impidence."

"Aye, and 'twould be a real charity--the mane baste;--or sling him in one of the bog-houles," said the elder Mrs. Keogh, a mild-looking little old woman. "I'd liefer than nine nine-pennies see thim comin' along. But I'm afeard it's early for thim yet."

Everybody's eyes turned, as she spoke, toward the ridge of the Knockawn, though with no particular expectation of seeing what they wished upon it. But behold, just at that moment three figures, blurred among the gray rain-mists, looming into view.

"Be the powers," said Mrs. M'Gurk, jubilantly, "it's Ody Rafferty himself. To your sowls! Now you've a great good chance, ma'am, to be gettin' it back. He's the boy 'ill leg it over all before him"--for in those days Ody was lithe and limber--"and it's hard-set the thievin' Turk 'ill be to get the better of him at a racin' match--Hi--Och." She had begun to hail him with a call eager and shrill, which broke off in a strangled croak, like a young cock's unsuccessful effort. "Och, murdher, murdher, murdher," she said to the bystanders, in a disgusted undertone. "I'll give you me misfort'nit word thim other two is the pólis."