The Muted Harp

by JAMES REYNOLDS

I HAVE seen Temple Arklow many times, in all weathers and by day and night. I would say that the adjective which best describes the mood of it as it stands today is “dispirited.”I fully remember the first time I saw the house. It was a dismal, windy day, and there was no sign of life about. The rutted and neglected turf lawns were bleak and lonely. One flick of movement caught my eye. At the side where the kitchen wing projected from the main bulk of the house there flapped a slack clothesline from which hung a dirty brown dishrag. Dejectedly it battered the wind. Nothing could possibly have brought home to me more sharply than this abandoned rag the desolate days that now must be endured by the formerly graceful Temple Arklow .

The onee-white siuceo which is thinly spread over the rough stone shell of the house is scabrous wiih lichen and mildew. Long ribbons of rust streak down the walls from patches of corrugated iron on ihe roof. Panes of glass in the many wide windows are cracked or smashed out altogether from stones hurled by small boys in the neighborhood. Doors sag in eobwebbed doorways, and any shutters still left on hinges bang-bang-bang against crumbling stonework. Thousands of noisy rooks nest in the branches of the one gnarled oak which still stands sentinel at the foot of the steps leading to the pillared portico. Verily a haunted house.

Visitors from Ballylancy at the foot of the hill shake their heads when passing this moldering relic of a lovely house. “Oehone, ‘tis sad and a great pity,” they say. “When Miss Allie and Miss Rosetta were alive The Temple and its gay ways made the grandest tollin’ in the country.”

On a misty summer morning in 1880 Miss Alice and Miss Rosetta Blaney were deep in preparation for the approaching wedding of their younger sister, kalhleen, who was to marry Sir Denis Alcolt on the following Wednesday, only five days distant. So many arrangements yet to be made, so many last-minute details to attend to, the young women did not know which way to turn. Of course, as Rosetta remarked — a shade acidly — to Alice, Kathleen could not be expected to do anything towards her own wedding. Never having been strong in a in ease, she was even now, at eleven o’clock in ihe morning, lying down in the darkened drawing room, a bottle of can de cologne at her elbow. She had had a fit of the vapors shortly after breakfast. Il would be such a pity if one of these all too frequent attacks assailed her during the ceremony on Wednesday.

Alice, pencil clicking against her front teeth, regarded intently the long list of chores to be done, which Rosetta had just handed to her. Let’s see. Duggan the caterer in Kilkenny had warned her that eighteen dozen caramel meringues would not be enough for two hundred guests — better make it twenty dozen. For flowers there would be tuberoses and white Killarnoys and great bowls of water lilies from the quiet lough on the boundary of Arklow Demesne. She would tell Danny Ennis, the gardener’s boy, to gather a basketful on the morning of the wedding. Bolts of white tulle were needed to go under the rose point wedding veil that adorned the heads of Blaney brides. Most important item on her list, Alice mused, was the note “Be sure to get the man from the iron foundry at Tullow to repair the heavy iron crossbar under stairs!” The stairs, so delicately swung in a curve, swayed dangerously. It was thought unsafe for ordinary use now, let alone the weight of a whole army of guests running up and down on the day of the wedding.

Temple Arklow at the time I am speaking of was full of guests from one year’s end to the other. Great hunts were enjoyed out with the Kilkenny Hounds. Fishing parties, autumn shoots over the rough bogs which lay well stocked with wild life along the borders of Lough of Anner, and dinners, dancing, and a good deal of drinking were vastly enjoyed by the guests of “The Justice in the Temple,” as Judge Blaney was called by his legion friends. Village Postmistress Margit Leehanna, who had been parlormaid at Temple Arklow , loved to retell to an interested listener all she could remember of the “grand, wide days.” Sighing, her bright eyes gazing towards the hill, she would say, “The Blaneys lived very grandly in the old days. I can well remember, as well as if it was yisterda’, when I first climbed that hill to do service at the great house. I was only fifteen, but a strathin’ big girl for me age. I was first parlormaid and minded the front door to relieve Timsey Cullen, the laziest footman that iver trod.” Then, smiling and shrugging her shoulders, she added: “He’s been me husband fer fifty years, but no matter to me story. I had the drawin’ rooms to dust an’ I was as proud as a queen and twice as careful avc all the crystals and the hand-painted china. The three young ladies — Miss Alice, Miss Rosetta, and Miss Kathleen— were always in a great rapture over somethin’. The house was always open to the wide. They’d a ball ivery Saterda’ night, and Mass niver saw thim on a Sunda’.”

2

THE day of Kathleen Blaney’s wedding dawned brightly. A blue and gold day, a wedding day to remember. It was surely that.

At three o’clock in the afternoon, guests were still arriving. The small cow pasture with short, well-cropped turf, which lay along the River Barrow at. the foot of the hill, had been turned into a carriage park to accommodate the droves of horses drawing all manner of vehicles which were constantly arriving under the portico. The roped-off space was clogged with coaches, broughams, landaus, and wagonettes — even a few sporty little gigs and dogcarts. In the park Danny Ennis ruled with dispatch but an iron hand. He ran importantly around in circles shunting carriages into rows. Horses when unhitched were led to a shady stretch along the river. Fed and watered, the horses dozed or ruminated, switching lazily the alder branches which a thoughtful Danny had tied to their cobtails. A pack of lads and ragged little bogtrotters, sly and agile as weasels, kept an eye on the horses and cadged a sixpence or shilling from the owners. Next day the shops in Ballylancy would be awash with spending money.

The wedding ceremony was set for half-three o’clock. Late arrivals cooled parched throats with champagne cup, anti at last the bridal party assembled in the big guestroom at the head of the stairs.

Kathleen, the bride, was the traditional vision in white satin and her great-grandmother Mountgarrett’s frosty lace veil. Sir Denis was a handsome, florid bridegroom, soldierly in the green uniform of the Irish Lancers. Three little flower girls in pink muslin with ruches and rosy bonnets led the way. The two bridesmaids were Alice and Rosetta Blaney, proud but intensely flattery in Paris frocks with woefully corseted bodices and huge bustles springing like billowing waves from their slender waists. They carried white Killarney roses. Flowers were everywhere, Alice had arranged the decorations throughout the house — white lilies and shafts of heavenly scented tuberoses from the Mountgarret thothouse. Danny Eunis had filched every water lily from the lough with the eager help of scores of dripping-wet bogtrotters.

Kathleen Blaney loved the almost overpowering, Oriental scent of the waxy tuberose. The flower had a strange fascination for her. It almost seemed that there was an affinity between this pallid girl who had chosen a life confined to a divan and the faintly decadent hybrid rose which blossomed its best behind glass in a humid atmosphere. Just before the bridal party started down the stairs, Kathleen picked one of the pointed buds from a tall shaft of tuberoses in a vase at her elbow. She rubbed the bud between her palms, crushed it sharply with a fingernail, then sniffed the scent voluptuously.

The guests at Temple Arklow on this marriage day numbered over two hundred persons — County families for miles around, a few from Dublin and Cork, and a dowager cousin of Justice Blaney lately arrived from London. This rich and imperious Lady Charleville had given Kathleen the finest present of all, a pearl and diamond choker which encircled her throat as she stood, lightly veiled, at the head of the gracefully curving stairs. Assembled in a semicircle, the eager press of guests at the foot of the stairs gazed upward. Cousin Charleville, seated regally in a wing chair at a good vantage point, thought what a lovely staircase sweep it was. True, it looked somewhat fragile but, she recalled, it had cheerfully born the weight of generations of rampaging Blaneys and their legion guests; so, she surmised, it was stronger than it looked.

There was a sound of harp music. For a moment all eyes turned toward Miss Carsiairs, a well-known harpist brought at grent expense from Dublin, who sat half concealed in a bower of palms and sinilnx in the bow window.

Immediately Miss Carsiairs felt the eyes of the closely grouped wedding guests upon her, she struck a pose. She leaned the golden instrument against her knee and shoulder, and her expert fingers ran a liquid trill across the strings. The music sounded faint, far-off, almost like music under water, the memory of music once heard, for the harp was muted.

The familiar notes of Mendelssohn’s Wedding March soured through the high rooms, awakening divers memories m the minds of the silent listeners. So soft was the music that a bird was heard in song outside an open window. Down the stairs came the wedding procession. First, sedately, walked the little flower girls scattering rose petals before t hem, then the two bridesmaids, and bringing up the rear of the procession the bride and her father. The flower girls had nearly reached the bottom of the stairs, with the bride and her maids halfway up the staircase, when the treads and spindled balustrade began to creak loudly and sway. With a rending crash the structure of wood and plaster scrolls collapsed sideways, scattering beams and iron joists among the guests, who, intently gazing upward, were not fully conscious ol what was happening. After the tension and wild confusion had partly passed, it was found that the three little flower girls were stunned with fright but unharmed.

Sir Denis lay dead. A heavy crossbeam torn from the ceiling had crushed his skull. Rosetta, the fairest and gayest of the sisters Blaney, was the last to be found. She lay dead under the entire mass of wreckage. The condition of the bride was alarming. She lay inert but not bleeding or bruised. For days after the tragedy, she remained on her bed unconscious. Later she rallied and called for Sir Denis and her father, who had escaped with contusions. Then she look a turn for the worse. After a few days a high fever set in, accompanied by moaning and the ravings of delirium. Over the back of a chair near Kathleen’s bed hung the tattered remains of her wedding dress. The rose point veil was in shreds.

Alice, who had emerged unscathed from the tragedy, sat stonily by her sisler’s bedside day and night, intent on watching over her, bill appearing to see nothing, speaking to no one. Many persons pitied Alice most of all, for she blamed herself bitterly. Her thoughtlessness in not calling the foundryman from Tullow’ to mend the weakened support under the staircase curve had certainly caused this accident. As she sat beside her sister all night watching the deathlike mask of her face or listening to delirious ravings, Alice would bow her head and moan to herself, “Only I am to blame. All my life l have been heedless. How can I atone —oh, how can I atone?”

The aftermath of the wedding day tragedy at Temple Arklow sealed the doom of both the family of Blaney and their house as surely as if the Dread Woman of Moher, that horrific symbol of all Gaelic furies, had sal upon the pediment of The Temple and ravened all earlhly happiness from this earth. “True the house still stands, but so sorry a shell of past beauty it were better gone entirely.

3

THE late autumn day when 1 last called on Margit Leehanna, she was bundled in six or seven shawls and head-scarves of Galway wooL Outside her thatched eotcen the day seemed mild, drowsing in a fitful sun. I had to admit that except in the immediate radius of a small, smoky turl fire in a cavernous fireplace her eotcen was damp and drafty. On my entrance into the half-lit interior, one large room and a loft, Margit stirred the peat turfs and set a huge black kettle to boil so that we might converse over bowls of strong red tea which she “damped down" in the traditional maimer in a brown earthen pot set on the hob.

I asked Margit to tell me what she remembered about the tragedy. She looked off and away to the Drurce Mountains for a space of minutes; then, bringing her mind back as from far roaming, she said, “1 was in the back part ave the house when the stairs fell down. Mary Mother be thanked for the way I’m spared the scorch ave memory ave the terror ave it. If I’d seen me dear Miss Rosetta crushed in that vise ave limbers I’d niver be the woman I am this day. Ye’ll agree, sir, at eightylive I’m still strong made and have all me wits, if not me teeth.” Margit smiled a wide smile and her sharp blue eyes snapped in good nature. She poured two more cups ol tea that by this time, what with standing, had taken on the rich, strong color of Guinness stout, and continued her story.

“After they buried Sir Denis at Castle Cloon in Kerry, Miss Kathleen ailed worse u worse as the days fled. Once she* got up from her bed, had herself dressed, and was driven to Kerry to lay a wreath on Sir Denis’s grave. When she came back to The Temple more than half lavin’ in the crook ave Miss Allie’s arm, she looked like death itself. I’d the fright ave me life. She lay down that day and niver rose out ave her bed again. In two mouths time she was buried in “Tullow’ churchyard.

“After that Miss Allie took to bein’ silent and odd in her ways. The Justice lived mostly in Dublin. 1 heard him tell Corry the butler he’d niver bide in the house again. Miss Allie had a flight ave stairs built at an angle ave the hall to replace the grand one that fell. An odd class of stairway it was, surely, more the like ave a ladder. Just wide enough fer one person to walk up er down. Poor Miss Allie, poor creature, she niver roused herself to come out from under the dark blanket ave blame that covered her. She brooded fit to destroy herself. Then one day, and herself rummigin’ in a desk, she came across the list she’d made out before the weddin’. There, wrote down plain as yer hope ave Heaven, was the words ‘See foundry man in Tullow to fix stairs.’ A pity and shame she’d niver done it, but as I tried me best to tell her, it was too late to moan and out all joy from her life. Gone’s gone, l told her, but divil a bit ave attention she paid me.

Margit heaved a long sigh, stirred more sugar into her lye-strong tea. “A year to the day after Miss Kathleen died, Miss Allie came to me. She was dressed in deep mourning and no orniments at all. She carried a little reticule in her hand in which was all her earthly belongings, or so she told me. She put her hand on mine and said, ‘Good-by, Margit. I’m going out of the world; it would have been far better for this house if 1 had never come into it.’” The old woman paused. I could see she was deeply stirred by her memories. “That evening my dear Miss Allie entered the Convent ave the Immaculates at Portarlington. It’s a shut-away Order, the once yer in, yer niver out. That is, while yer alive. But after Sister Maria ave Atonement, the name she took on enterin’ the Order, died in 1914 she took to walkin’ abroad ave nights. I saw her minys the time meself.”

During this narration I had been busily taking notes and now 1 was to hear of the ghostly appearances of the dark-habited nun seen by so many persons on her midnight prowls in the shuttered house. “Me aunt Mary Fogarty and I. looked after Justice Blaney when he came back years later, a sick old man, to the house he hated, lookin’ not long fer t his world, which he wasn’t. He lived fer two years at The Temple, thin could not bear the hauntings ave Miss Allie and Miss Kathleen, He went to his sister in Cork and there he died. One night a year or so after Miss Allie had died at Portarlington I had taken a hot whisky punch to the master, poor creature, he seemed so lone and drear. As I came out of his room I saw the figure ave a woman movin across the gallery at the back ave the upstairs luilt. All in white she was. Me curiosity overcame me fright, as I looked closer, I saw that the white dress on the bony woman was all in tatters. Poor Miss Kathleen in her ruined weddin gown. Whirra, whirra, the sad look ave ‘er. She just stood gazin mournful, down into the hall below, mournful as the look ave a priest at Mass on a cold mornin’ and not a sinner in sight.

“A wave ave sweet odor, sickly-like, came rollin’ down the hall. Tuberoses be the Holy, the like Miss Kathleen had always around ‘er. Then a strange class ave thing happened. I heard the sound ave music. Far off and away it seemed, the like ave a Connaught harp it was playin’ the same tune as on the day ave the weddin’. As Miss Kathleen started to walk slowly down the stairs, her hands trailin’ the wall, bangin’ back like, the figure ave a tall woman seemed to appear, mostly in shadow, at the top ave the stairs. Holy Mother, it was Miss Allie in the dark habit ave a nun. Ave course I was rooted to the spot. As 1 watched, the creature in the weddin’ gown hesitated halfway on the stairs, then turned and ran hurriedly back up the stairs. The last 1 saw ave the two sister ghosts that night, the nun was leadin’ the poor sobbin’ bride into the darkness ave the back hall.”

When Margit told me of seeing Sister Maria of Atonement, I understood perfectly her feeling that having known these Blaney women so intimately she never thought of them as ghosts when she saw them moving about in their own house, Margit said, “As I told ye, that day ferninst. Miss Allie — or Sister Maria — died at Portarlington before the Justice did at his sister’s in Cork. 1 had seen her once on the night I told you of, but it was the afeard ave failin’ ghost ave his daughter Kathleen that upset the master and caused him to run off to Cork. Miss Allie did not rightly haunt the place in the way I’ll tell ye of until The Temple had been abandoned. Mrs. Bannerman in Cork, the Justice’s sister, niver came next nor nigh the house. She tried to let it but to bad case, because no tenant iver stayed the length ave a year. Two or three tried but soon whipped out ave it.

“Once, after the last tenants had left — that was in 1920, or about — I walked up to The Temple one evenin’ in August. I had a mind to look fer some heavy linen sheets I’d lent to the Farley tenants. These were locked away in a big press in the upper hall. As I walked along the narrow hall I held the key to the press, left with me be Mrs. Farley, in me right hand. I suddenly felt somethin’ cold, kind ave a draft drift past me, and immedjit after a cold hand strike me own, knockin’ the key to the floor. I stooped to pick it up and called out, ‘Here, here, what ‘ud ye be after doin’ now?’ There, stand in’ a few feet from me, lookin’ me straight in the eye, was a nun. Ave course it was Miss Allie, Sister Maria, or whatever. She’d on the dark habit ave the Order ave the Immaculates. She looked big in ‘er strength and imperious like. She put ‘er finger to ‘er lips. Then I heard again, same as on the night when I saw Miss Kathleen s ghost on the stairs, the music ave a harp, soft and more like wind soughin’ than music. The nun turned, walkin down the hall. I let ‘er go, I’d still me linen to git, ghosts er no ghosts. Lookin over me shoulder, I saw the nun enter the room that used to be Miss Kathleen’s, but she didn’t open the door, she just sort ave melted through it.”

I asked Margit if she often went to the house at night. “You are not afraid of these ghosts at Temple Arklow?” The grand old woman snorted. “Glory be to God, no. The Blaneys niver harmed me in life, why should they harm me in death?”