Castle Innis

by H. de Vere Stacpoole

CASTLE INNIS

By H. DE VERE STACPOOLE

IRELAND is, perhaps, the most conservative country on earth. She clings to her past, and here one may still believe in haunted houses without discredit, and rent them without disappointment, sure of a banshee, if nothing else. Here, a few years ago, the Rev. Arthur Ridgwell Bilnott, Rector of Pebwell, Cambridgeshire, came for the hunting, as a guest of Mr. Michael Blake, whose estate lies in the top horn of Tipperary, not a hundred miles from Loch Derg.

Dilnott did not believe in ghosts. He was a full-blooded parson of the old type, riding fourteen stone, fond of good port, a good dinner, a good cigar, and a hand at whist; beloved by his parishioners. Brother-parsons called him pig-headed. He was—at all events, in his beliefs and disbeliefs. He did not believe in ghosts, but he believed in demons and evil spirits, holding, however, that these latter belonged to a past day, though capable, perhaps, still of earthly manifestations.

Riding to the meet this morning with Michael Blake, the Round House on the Arranakilty road brought his mind in clash with the mind of his host, a man steadfast in opinion as himself.

"That's where old Micky Doolan was killed in '61," said Blake. "He was a piper, blind as a bat, and he used to sit there the day long on a stool under that wall, with his long pipes under his arm, playing away whether folks were passing or not. You'd hear the droning of the pipes at the turn of the road, and there he'd be sitting, not asking for a copper or minding you, just playing away to himself. My father gave him many a shilling, and the poor folk, specially on market days, weren't behind-hand. They said he was rich, and carried all his money in gold in his pocket; and one evening, close on dusk, two fellows crept up on him from behind the wall and killed him for his money. That was on the fifth of December, and every fifth of December since then there he sits playing his pipes from dusk till dawn, so that not a soul from Arranakilty to Cloyne will use the road."

"You mean to say his ghost sits there?"

"And what else would be sitting there?"

"You don't believe that nonsense, surely?"

"Don't believe it?" said Blake. "And why shouldn't I believe it? Half the countryside has heard him."

"But there are no such things as ghosts; the manifestations have been proved over and over again to be fraudulent, as far as apparitional appearances, the result of mediumistic influence, are concerned, illusory as to the rest. Rats and neurotic women and practical jokers—subtract those factors, and the whole theory of haunted houses falls to the ground."

"I tell you there are ghosts," replied Blake. And then the argument began getting so acute that, as they rode into the main street of Arranakilty, Dilnott was saying—

"I don't wish to quarrel with you, my dear fellow—let us leave the subject. It is simply repugnant to common-sense."

That is the sort of man Dilnott was.

Blake laughed, but he said no more. The street was crowded with all sorts and conditions of people, drawn to the "meet of the houn's." Several pink coats the worse for weather showed up in front of the Dog and Badger Inn, and here now, from the direction of Clogher, came Hennessy, the master, the hounds, and the hunt servants, jigging along against the dull grey background of the road, greeted and greeting all and sundry.

Blake introduced Dilnott to the master, who declared his intention of first drawing Boyles Wood; and presently, on the stroke of ten, the hunt pressed back along the Clogher road, passed through a gate, and entered a stretch of waste land where, across a rise of the ground, a clump of firs and larches showed, cutting the skyline a quarter of a mile away.

It was a dark, grey, luminous morning—weather that in England would have indicated rain before noon. But there would be no rain, for the hills were set away in the distance—hills across which the wind was blowing, warm and scented from leagues of heather and bogland.

There was a fox in Boyles Wood, and he broke cover to the west, like a red streak amongst the bushes and broken land. Dilnott, who was mounted on Rat-trap, a fiddle-headed brute that carried him like a feather, brooked no interference with a straight line, and was wound up by Nature to go all day, found himself, at the end of the first five minutes, facing a stone wall; then it was behind him, Rat-trap taking it as a cat takes a larder window-sill, and before him a hillside falling to a river in spate, shallow and broad, by a mercy.

Across the river a rise took him to a hog's back, along which the hounds were streaming straight as if along a ruled line, over humps and dips in the teeth of the wind, and with a view of all Tipperary, from Loch Derg to King's County, on either side. Then another valley set with pines and winter-stripped trees, and echoing to the tune of hounds and horn, gave them check for a moment, only to pass them on across a bridge and another spating river, and by a village where cocks were crowing and chimneys smoking, but not a soul in sight, to a waste land where the hounds, dumb and flowing like hounds in a dream, led them still in the teeth of the wind, killing at last not a hundred yards from the earths that in another hundred seconds would have swallowed the tail of the good red fox.

"Thirty minutes from the wood," said Hennessy, looking at his watch.

Dilnott, tipping forward, ran his hand over the neck of Rat-trap, unblown and fresh almost as at the start. Thirty minutes of real life had brought fresh blood to his cheeks and youthened him by a full ten years, and the blowing wind had so banked down his prejudices that, had you said the word "ghosts" to him, he might have resented it without snapping your head off.

But ghosts were as far from his mind at this moment as from the minds of Hennessy or Michael Blake. Hennessy, after a look round, determined to draw Barrington Scrub, a mile away over the moorland. They drew it blank, passed on to a big spinney a couple of miles away in the direction of Silvermines, and here the hounds started a fox, running into him and killing him two miles away and right on the edge of a wood by the road to Silvermines.

It was now one o'clock, and along the road appeared Rafferty, Blake's groom, with two fresh horses. Dilnott creaked out of his saddle, devoured the sandwiches he had brought with him, consumed half a flask of sherry, and then mounted the Cat, half-sister to Rat-trap, a strawberry roan with a fleering eye and uncertain manner.

"Go gentle with her, sir," said Rafferty. "Once she gets warm, you can handle her like butter; but till she's taken her first fence, don't lay whip or spur to her, or she'll have you off and rowl on you."

II.

It was three o'clock, and Dilnott was handling her like butter across a country of fields and stone walls, when, clapping spurs to her, the stone wall before him wheeled to the right, then came a sickening slither, and he was seeing stars, with the Cat trying to "rowl" on him.

He had managed to disengage himself, however, and when he had finished stargazing and feeling around for broken bones, he got on his feet, recaptured his mount, led her through a gate on to the road, and got into the saddle.

The hunt had vanished. The faint toot of horn through the dull grey weather came from away towards Silvermines, but without awakening any echo in his heart. He had done enough hunting for one day. When one is over forty-five, a cropper towards the end of the day is a different thing from a cropper at the start. Dilnott found himself thinking of a hot bath, followed by a cigarette and a comfortable arm-chair, and just forty winks before dinner-time.

Mounting the Cat—by a miracle unhurt, and now subdued and in her right mind—he turned from the direction of Silvermines. A mile along the road he fell in with an old man driving a donkey-cart. This individual was deaf, but after a while, and by dint of shouting, came to understand his questioner.

"Castle Blake, did you say, sor? It's right foremint you—a matter of twelve miles and a bit as the crow flies, and eleven be the road. What's that you say, sir? I'm hard of hearin'. There ain't no cows. I was sayin' crows. Keep ahead sthrait as an arra, and you'll see the top of it poppin' up beyant the trees of Gallows Wood. You can't make no mistake."

Dilnott resumed his way. Five miles on, a lady feeding hens before a cabin gave him more information.

"D'you mane Mr. Michael Blake's, sor? Why, it's nigh into King's County from here: it's maybe siventeen miles you'll have to go. When you get to the cross-roads, take the way to Castle Down, keep sthrait ahead till you fetch the cross-roads—you can't make no mistake."

Dilnott resumed his way till he came to a place where the road forked. There were no sign-posts, and the two ways were equal in breadth. He uttered no pious ejaculation. Leaving the matter, with loose rein, to the instinct of the Cat, that animal selected the right-hand way, brought him to a cross-road with no sign-post, and, being left again to instinct, began to browse on stray tufts of grass and snatch sustenance from the hedgerows.

Meanwhile dusk was falling, and the wind was rising, and the trees whispering to the wind. Half an hour later, in full dark, lit occasionally by a glimpse of moon peeping through the broken clouds, Dilnott was riding along a road that Gustave Doré would have loved, looking no longer for Castle Blake, but for anything with a roof on it that would give him a light, the sight of a human face, and even a boiled potato. He was faint from hunger—faint yet ravenous. Roast legs of mutton flanked by decanters of port rose before him as he rode—boiled turkeys and celery sauce; hams—York hams—brown and crumbed over; larks on toast. So, in the desert, men conjure up date palms and shadowy wells; and now, just as though his hunger had conjured it up, Dilnott, waking from his food musings, became aware of the lights of a big house through the trees on the left of the road, and on the wind setting from there a smell recalling roast pheasants hung just to the right moment. More, it recalled bread-sauce and a salad of Pebwell tomatoes sliced in vinegar and oil.

The constructive imagination of the man was adding a dish of Arran Chief potatoes bursting in snow through their brown jackets, when a wide-open gateway and a drive leading to the house took his eye, lit by a glimpse of the moon. He turned the Cat into the drive and rode up it, sure of the one thing a stranger may be sure of in Ireland—a warm reception and a real and concrete hospitality, including in its form the best bed and the biggest potato.

The door of the great house was open, casting lamp-light on the drive and on a carriage that had just set down a gentleman in a cloak, who was mounting the steps. Two grooms in half-livery were cracking jokes with the driver of the carriage. One of these ran to take the new-comer's horse. Dilnott slipped from the saddle and gave him the reins.

"What house is this?" asked he.

"Castle Innis, sir; and you're only just in time, for they be just goin' in to dinner."

"Who's your master? I'm staying at Castle Blake, and have lost my way."

"Sir Patrick Kinsella's the master here, sir, and glad he'll be to see you."

"Thanks," said Dilnott. He went up the steps and entered a big hall. The hall was panelled with oak, black as ebony with age, hung with suits of armour, and lit by a galaxy of candles, extraordinarily beautiful in their number and effect amidst that setting of gloom and armour and oak.

Down the broad staircase were coming the guests—a troop of men, led by a stout gentleman of fifty or so in a red coat, with a face to match, joking and laughing as he came with the fellows behind him, and evidently gone in liquor. Not far gone, but gone, joyous, exuberant, and, clapping eyes on Dilnott when he was almost up with him, almost embracive.

"I have lost my way," said Dilnott, "and though I do not wish to intrude——"

But the great Kinsella, not even listening, with his arm half round him, swept him along, still bandying gibes with the fellows behind, into a huge room where a table was set out that would have seated many.

Hungry as Dilnott had been and was, he would have thought twice before entering that house, seeing the condition of its occupants. Fond enough of his half-bottle of port, he had a very great horror of intoxication in any form, even the mildest, and seated now at the left of his host, who occupied the head of the table, he could not but perceive the condition of the men about him. The noise was terrific, and now servants were flying in every direction, clapping down plates in front of the guests—plates that were empty.

Now, opposite Dilnott, and on the right of the host, sat an evil-looking, long-visaged man, with a patch covering half of his face. Behind the host and above the fireplace was hung a big mirror with a slight tilt forward. Dilnott, glancing by chance at this mirror, was astonished and horrified to see in it the reflection of a skull, looking, in the surrounding gloom and glow, like a picture by Holbein.

The candle-light lit it to perfection, and, moreover, demonstrated the monstrous fact that it was moving, tilting from side to side, rotating slightly, whilst the movements of the lower jawbone, caught in profile, could be plainly seen.

Suddenly, and corresponding to a burst of laughter from the man with the patch on his face, the thing tilted back and the lower jaw fell.

Then Dilnott knew that it was the true reflection of his vis-à-vis.

He sprang to his feet and made the sign of the Cross.

•⁠•⁠•⁠•⁠•

The Cat stumbled, nearly unseating him, and he awoke. He had never dismounted, he had entered no house. Musing on York hams and roast pheasant, sleep had sandbagged him, and fantasy had introduced him into that most extraordinary society. It was a nightmare, arising from the home of nightmares—the stomach.

Horse-hoofs and a voice behind made him turn. It was Blake, muddy to the eyes, but happy.

Dilnott told of his cropper, and how he had fallen out of the ran, and as they rode on he began to tell of his further adventures.

"I must have fallen asleep for a moment," said he, "and I had a most extraordinary dream."

"And what was the dream?" asked Blake.

"Well, it was this way," began the other. Then he stopped. They had reached a gateway clearly shown by the moonlight through the thinning clouds. It was the gateway he had entered in his dream, and there lay the avenue up which he had ridden.

He reined in.

"Where does that lead to?" asked he.

"Castle Innis," said Blake. "Look, you can see the ruins through the trees. It was burnt out in the 'thirties—set fire to one night old Pat Kinsella was having one of his jamborees. The whole crowd were burnt, and a good riddance. I've had the story often from my father. Kinsella and Billy Knox, who was his chief henchman in all sorts of wickedness, and Black French and Satan Moriarty, and a score of others. Only three of the lot were sober enough to escape."

"What sort of man was Kinsella?"

"A huge big chap riding fifteen stone. He was the master of the hounds, but he couldn't master the whisky bottle."

"And Knox?"

"Oh, Knox was a devil. My grandfather laid him out once for maltreating a horse. Half his face was afflicted with some disease or another, so he had to wear a patch to cover it; and he had a squint eye and an impediment in his speech. Well, what was this dream you were telling me of?"

"I've clean forgot it," said Dilnott.

A good raconteur tingling and burning to tell, his mouth was stopped by Micky Doolan, the blind piper of the Round House.

A year later, unburdening himself of the story to me, he began: "Now, I'll tell you one of the strangest coincidences you ever heard of." That is the sort of man Dilnott was.