Mrs. Murphy

Flanigan, on whose spirits the rain had no depressing effect, presumed that it had on mine, and volunteered the comforting reminder that Recess was not far off. “As a general thing, ma’am,” he added, “it is a long way off, in this country, to the man that lives next door; but, as I told you, the hotel at Recess is as comfortable as any one would wish to find, and kept equal to the best English establishments.” Here a turn of the road brought us to a cottage whose half-door emitted the usual blaze of light, which, in any other country, would lead me to suppose that the interior was in a state of conflagration. Two small, forlorn boys were fluttering about the road, like bats—it was quite ten o’clock—and stared at us in the half-obscurity with as much surprise as we felt in greeting them.

After repeated questions, as their knowledge of English was very limited, they asserted that Recess was a quarter of a mile beyond. We hurried on. The glowing fire that was gilding every nook of the humble cottage with golden comfort awakened me to a sense of fatigue. I looked forward with impatience to the supper and bed which would terminate my first day’s wanderings in Ireland. At last, in a declivity of the road where the overhanging trees made utter darkness, we stopped at a faint smoky glimmer that issued from the door of a hut. We both alighted; Flanigan called out in Irish, and I essayed to catch a glimpse of the interior over his shoulder, but the smoke made only an illuminated fog. After a while a head emerged from this fog, not much more distinct than the vapor surrounding it—a dark outline with shaggy hair, thin jaws, and broad shoulders-leaning on the half-door. This spectre told us in Irish and broken English that the Recess Hotel was a few steps further on, and that it had been uninhabited for six or eight years. I walked on, and descried a tumble-down gate; I looked into what appeared in the darkness to be one of the most abject and irrecoverable ruins I had ever beheld. Alas, Mr. Murray! how vain is one’s trust in guide-books!

“You have told me a falsehood, Flanigan,” I said, bitterly, having no more respectable authority at hand to condemn. “How dared I you assert that this hotel was in existence?”

“Indeed, ma’am, doesn’t every body think so? Isn’t the book itself mistaken? But I would sooner lose the best tooth in my head than have you suffer through me. Give me five minutes, and I will set all right!”

We returned to the hut and its shadowy occupant. I entered, and saw, as well as the smoky atmosphere would permit, a miserable I hovel, without window or chimney, in one corner of which on the mud floor lay a pig, and in the other, near the few sods of smouldering turf which found no other outlet than the door, a mat of straw, on which squatted the wife of our informant. To pass the night here was utterly impossible. The wet floor, the suffocating smoke, the filth and stench, were insupportable even for an instant, and I sallied into the air again.