CHAPTER II.—THE APPARITION OF THE MONK.
The room in which I had studied and now slept was that to the right hand as you entered the door of the Manor-house. It was lined stoutly with oak, and it was dark because, though it had two fair windows, they were much obscured by the myrtles my lord had planted, which had thriven exceedingly in this mild air.
This room, as I have said, my lord used for a dining-hall. Else when he was within doors he sat in the oriel of the pleasant room overhead; and it was there that he and Master Spenser would sit and smoke or be silent; and there, which is not to be forgotten, Sir Walter listened to The Faëry Queen.
For some reason or another this dining-hall, despite its purpose, seemed a place of little cheer. The Manor-house had belonged to the warden of the college, and owed its construction to him; and it was built after the English manner, which need not be surprising, since the progenitors of those church and abbey builders, the Munster Geraldines, were of English blood and race. Not only was the dining-hall in itself low and somewhat forbidding of aspect, but it smelt of earth and new graves, for all the generous wine and meats that had been consumed within it. The cause of the same my lord had never been able to determine, and it stayed, although the chimney roared with logs of ships’ timber, and the brightness, the good cheer, the wit and gayety that met there were enough to scare away any thought of death or the earth that shall receive us.
I slept, I have said, and while I slept the moon had arisen. The low light of it filled the chamber when I awoke with a start, smelling the graves, and feeling very cold. On the myrtle tree without an owl hooted. The rushlight had gone out, but this I hardly knew, only that an earthy wind, smelling of damp and mildews, blew about my face, and I was stiff from lying asleep upon my book.
But this I noticed vaguely, for as soon as my eyes were well open a strange appearance in the room drew my gaze upon it. I was by this time a stout lad of some sixteen years, and accustomed to fear nothing, yet I will confess that the hair of my head stood up. The figure of a monk was in the further corner from me. I knew it to be a monk, because of the effigies, images, and [pg!24] portraits in St. Mary’s Church and the library of the college. Further, I knew the apparition to be of a white friar. The cowl was over the face; the head was bent; a fold of white cloth hid the hands. The stature of the monk was exceedingly tall, and of a great leanness, as I could see where the belt of brown leather clasped the white gown about the middle.
All this I saw clearly by the light of the moon, or was it by some unearthly light of which the figure stood the centre? I know not, only that I saw everything clear: and still the odor of graves was in my nostrils.
While I stood stammering and staring a lean finger was pointed at me, so lean that I know not if flesh covered it, or if it were the fleshless finger of a skeleton. A voice, hollow and strange, came forth of the cowl.
“Son of the Geraldines,” it said, “why art thou here among their murderers and despoilers?”
The voice constrained me to answer.
“Alas,” I said, “I know not what you mean. I am a nameless boy, a dead leaf drifted in the forests. Why do you call me a son of the Geraldines, unless it be that I come of the humblest of the clan?”
“You are no kern’s son, Walter Fitzmaurice, but of a noble house. How is it that you eat the bread and run at the stirrups of the Sassenach who is the destroyer of your race?”
I stretched my hands imploringly to the cowled figure.
“He rescued me from death,” I cried; “he warmed me with his love. He has taught me all a noble youth should know.”
“You love him?”
“I love him.”
“Listen, boy. They think they have destroyed the Desmonds, root and branch, as a man might tread out under his heel a nest of vipers. Yet hope is not dead. The line of the Geraldines is not destroyed. Return to your own people and leave this evil knight.”
“Alas, I cannot,” I said, “for I love him.”
“The blood of your kin is red on his hands.”
“And yet I love him.”
“He and his freebooters have wasted the country that was the portion of your fathers. Whom he spared to slay famine and pestilence have slain.”
“I should have died of the hunger,” said I, “had he not delivered me.”
“And you will follow him?”
“I will follow him.”
“Wherever he goes?”
“To death.”
“To death and evil. Very well, Walter Fitzmaurice, of the race of Desmond, then your kindred’s blood be on your hands, as they are on those for which you have held basin and ewer that they might wash. Water will not wash them clean, nor yours that share in the stain. He shall die by violence as he has slain many another—and as for you, what penance, what fast and prayer shall suffice to wipe out your sin? You have chosen, Walter Fitzmaurice Fitzgerald. Take care that you have not chosen forever.”
The voice rose in a shriek of menace, and I caught sight of burning eyes under the cowl. Suddenly through the hooting of the owl in the myrtles there rang, shrilly as a trumpet, the crowing of a cock. The wind from the grave rose in my nostrils and filled me with a great terror. I turned giddy and swayed hither and thither, and the room went up and down under my feet.
The next thing I knew was that the sun was in the room, and I was lying with my cheek on the open page of the Virgil. Nothing was changed in the room since last night, except only that the rushlight had dwindled to a pool of cold fat; but how long it had been out I could not gauge.
Slowly the happenings of the night came back to me; but now in the warm daylight who thought on ghosts and goblins, or was afraid of them if they came? Where the owl had hooted over night a blackbird was singing, bold and bright. The lawn of the Manor-house was under dew. As I looked a peacock spread his tail in the sun, and his more sober mate stood to admire him.
Sitting there I rubbed my eyes. Why, I had awakened just as I had fallen asleep, worn out with the sorrow of loneliness, and the trial to fix my discontented thoughts upon my book. I stood up and caught sight of myself in a mirror. Then I realized that it is ill to sleep full-dressed. I was pale, and my hair strayed in disorder. My doublet looked as if I had had the habit to sleep in it, and my cloak was awry. I had been no sight to please my lord, who loved daintiness, and observed it himself in the strangest circumstances.
I would down to the Port-side and bathe in the morning waters. But ere I did that, remembering the dream or vision of the night, I went towards that place where I had seen the monk and carefully examined the same. But nothing there was to give me clue. The room was stoutly panelled with oak, every panel as like to his brother as two peas. Yet in that corner of the room there was one thing that made me linger, for the smell of earth, it seemed to me, was there stronger than elsewhere.
I sniffed and smelt like a terrier after a mouse; but sniff and smell as I might found nothing. I was no stranger to sliding panels and the like, at least by hearsay, but press and push as I might nothing came of it, so that at last I was fain to desist.
As I made my way to the water-side in the glorious morning my thoughts were full of the night’s encounter. If it had been no dream but a true happening I did not doubt now, with the sun risen, that the monk was no ghost but a living man, albeit a spare one, for I recalled his lean finger, and the burning eyes set in the hollow cheeks. His words had been verily human, not ghostly at all: and had I been minded to leave my great lord whom I loved, had he not been ready to bear me away with him? Either the thing was a fantasy of a dream, every part of it exceedingly sensible, and one part following another as I have not known it in dreams, or else it were true, and he a living man who had stood before me last night.
One thought made my heart leap up with a sharp throb of pleasure. The monk had said I was noble—I, who had come from none knew where, a nameless youth and treated courteously only because I was dear to my lord, and myself very sharp in a quarrel and adroit in the practice of arms.
After I had bathed and lain to dry in the sun I returned back hungry as a hawk. In the blessed sun all was different from last night. My lord would return, and would bear me away to court, and presently we should have letters of marque, and should go sailing on the Spanish Main in search of good fighting, salted with doubloons and pieces of eight; and presently should make for the Treasure Islands, and find there, as I imagined, jewels as large as plums, and gold and silver in great portions. For I had read Maundeville and other travellers, and had magnified in my credulity even the marvels they had told. I knew, too, that my lord had brought home to the Queen’s Majesty a necklace of pearls whereof each stone was larger than a cherry. And we had heard of Guiana that the very sands of the seashore sparkled with gold and silver, and that in the workings the old inhabitants thereof had made, that they might build their heathen temples, the walls were of gold, while the idols were crusted with jewels so that no man might look on them without winking.
So much in the sunlight. And yet again I had a cause for joy and pride because the monk had declared me noble. How to prove it I knew not, but resolved that when my lord was come hither again I would tell him all, and he would somehow unriddle me the secret and I should be no longer nameless.
My breakfast I had beneath the shade of Sir Walter’s myrtles, where he had made his favorite seat. It was brought thither by that good Sukey who had nearly drowned my lord the first time she beheld him smoking that weed called tobacco, which he had brought from his settlement in Virginia. For she conceived him to be on fire, and half-drowned him that she might put him out. I had my white manchet and roast beef and flagon of ale, and had a fine hunger for it after my morning swim.
But when it had all vanished I strolled away to the stable-yard, where Gregory Dabchick rubbed down one of my lord’s horses, and hissed between his teeth as is the manner of ostlers in the doing. He was a shock-headed fellow, of slow wits, but honest, and loved my lord.
“It be lonely, Master Wat,” he said, “since the master be gone.”
“Gregory Dabchick,” said I, “you were of Sir Walter’s following the day the Seneschal of Imokilly set upon him at the Ford of the Kine.”
“Ay,” he said, grinning, “and Jan was spilt in the water. He got up dripping like a fish, and when the Captain haled him to dry land, and he would mount his beast he overleapt him and a good horse galloped into the forest and so became the goods of the Irishry. I wish,” he added, “that Margery May, at home in pleasant Devon, might have looked on Jan then.”
“I have nothing to do with your jealousies,” I said, as haughty as though I were my lord’s son. “But tell me, Gregory, do you remember me that day?”
“A brown babby, as fat as ever I see,” Gregory answered, still rubbing down his horse. “And as near being spitted by Dan’l Drewe as ever I wish to see. I never liked that work myself, killing o’ babes and sucklings, and fair women, or leaving the babe to die on its mother’s breast. ’Twere lucky for you, Master Wat, them that starved in the forest did not eat you, ere ever you came the way o’ Dan’l’s mercy. Eh, what a fat one you were!”
“But a comely, Gregory?” I asked anxiously. “A noble child? Was I that? And clad in silk and fine woollen, as became my condition?”
“Why, no, Master Walter, but a fat, brown babe; eh, so fat! And nought but rabbit-skins to cover you. You had been good eating for them in the forest.”
“You are rude and dull, Gregory,” said I, leaving him in dudgeon. As I looked back I saw that he had come to the stable door and stood watching me with a gaping mouth. Plainly there was nothing to be learned from Gregory Dabchick.
[pg!37]