J. S. Le Fanus Ghostly Tales, Volume 5 | Page 8

time than did that poor, dumpy, potato-faced
heiress, who got over the nunnery garden wall, and jumped into the
handsome Captain's arms, for love.
He spent her income, frightened her out of her wits with oaths and
threats, and broke her heart.
Latterly she shut herself up pretty nearly altogether in her room. She

had an old, rather grim, Irish servant-woman in attendance upon her.
This domestic was tall, lean, and religious, and the Captain knew
instinctively she hated him; and he hated her in return, often threatened
to put her out of the house, and sometimes even to kick her out of the
window. And whenever a wet day confined him to the house, or the
stable, and he grew tired of smoking, he would begin to swear and
curse at her for a diddled old mischief-maker, that could never be easy,
and was always troubling the house with her cursed stories, and so
forth.
But years passed away, and old Molly Doyle remained still in her
original position. Perhaps he thought that there must be somebody there,
and that he was not, after all, very likely to change for the better.
CHAPTER II
The Blessed Candle He tolerated another intrusion, too, and thought
himself a paragon of patience and easy good nature for so doing. A
Roman Catholic clergyman, in a long black frock, with a low standing
collar, and a little white muslin fillet round his neck--tall, sallow, with
blue chin, and dark steady eyes--used to glide up and down the stairs,
and through the passages; and the Captain sometimes met him in one
place and sometimes in another. But by a caprice incident to such
tempers he treated this cleric exceptionally, and even with a surly sort
of courtesy, though he grumbled about his visits behind his back.
I do not know that he had a great deal of moral courage, and the
ecclesiastic looked severe and self-possessed; and somehow he thought
he had no good opinion of him, and if a natural occasion were offered,
might say extremely unpleasant things, and hard to be answered.
Well the time came at last, when poor Peg O'Neill--in an evil hour Mrs.
James Walshawe--must cry, and quake, and pray her last. The doctor
came from Penlynden, and was just as vague as usual, but more gloomy,
and for about a week came and went oftener. The cleric in the long
black frock was also daily there. And at last came that last sacrament in
the gates of death, when the sinner is traversing those dread steps that

never can be retraced; when the face is turned for ever from life, and
we see a receding shape, and hear a voice already irrevocably in the
land of spirits.
So the poor lady died; and some people said the Captain "felt it very
much." I don't think he did. But he was not very well just then, and
looked the part of mourner and penitent to admiration--being seedy and
sick. He drank a great deal of brandy and water that night, and called in
Farmer Dobbs, for want of better company, to drink with him; and told
him all his grievances, and how happy he and "the poor lady up-stairs"
might have been, had it not been for liars, and pick-thanks, and
tale-bearers, and the like, who came between them--meaning Molly
Doyle--whom, as he waxed eloquent over his liquor, he came at last to
curse and rail at by name, with more than his accustomed freedom. And
he described his own natural character and amiability in such moving
terms, that he wept maudlin tears of sensibility over his theme; and
when Dobbs was gone, drank some more grog, and took to railing and
cursing again by himself; and then mounted the stairs unsteadily, to see
"what the devil Doyle and the other ---- old witches were about in poor
Peg's room."
When he pushed open the door, he found some half-dozen crones,
chiefly Irish, from the neighbouring town of Hackleton, sitting over tea
and snuff, etc., with candles lighted round the corpse, which was
arrayed in a strangely cut robe of brown serge. She had secretly
belonged to some order--I think the Carmelite, but I am not
certain--and wore the habit in her coffin.
"What the d---- are you doing with my wife?" cried the Captain, rather
thickly. "How dare you dress her up in this ---- trumpery, you--you
cheating old witch; and what's that candle doing in her hand?"
I think he was a little startled, for the spectacle was grisly enough. The
dead lady was arrayed in this strange brown robe, and in her rigid
fingers, as in a socket, with the large wooden beads and cross wound
round it, burned a wax candle, shedding its white light over the