Chapter Three.
Waking.
Had it not been for what I dreaded to find at home, my journey back from Derry would have been light enough; for now I was rid of my turnips I had nothing to fear from inquisitive wayfarers. Nor had I cause to be anxious as to the way, for my mare knew she was homeward bound, and stepped out briskly with no encouragement from me.
Indeed I had so little to do that about noon, when we had got off the highroad on to the hill-track, I curled myself up in the straw and fell asleep. Nor did I wake till the cart suddenly came to a standstill, and I felt myself being lifted out of my nest.
At first I thought I was back already at Knockowen, and wondered at the speed the old jade had made while I slept. But as soon as I had rubbed my eyes I found we were still on the hillside, and that my awakers were a handful of soldiers.
They demanded my name and my master’s. When I told them Mr Gorman of Knockowen, they were a thought less rough with me; for his honour was known as a friend of the government. Nevertheless they said they must search my cart, and bade me help them to unload the straw.
I could not help laughing as I saw them so busy.
“What’s the limb laughing at?” said one angrily. “Maybe he’s not so innocent as he looks.”
“’Deed, sir,” said I, “I was laughing at the soldiers I met at Fahan, who thought I’d got guns under his honour’s turnips. I warrant Mr Gorman won’t laugh at that. Maybe it’s guns you’re looking for too. They’re easy hid in a load of straw.”
At this they looked rather abashed, although they thought fit to cuff me for an impudent young dog. And when the straw was all out, and nothing found underneath, it was not a little hard on me that they left me to put it in again myself, roundly rating one another for the sorry figure they cut.
I was too glad to be rid of them to raise much clamour about the straw, and loaded it back as best I could, wondering if all his Majesty’s servants were as wide-awake as the smuggler-catchers of Donegal.
This was my only adventure till about seven o’clock when I sighted the lights of Knockowen, and knew this tedious journey was at an end.
His honour, I was told, was not at home. He had crossed to Fanad to be present at the wake of my poor mother, who, I heard, had died long before my father and Mr Gorman could reach her yesterday. She was to be buried, they told me, on the next day at Kilgorman; and I could guess why there was all this haste. My father was needed to steer the Cigale out of the lough, and his honour would be keen enough to get the funeral over for that reason.
With a very heavy heart I left the weary horse in the stable and betook myself to his honour’s harbour. Only one boat lay there, a little one with a clumsy lug-sail, ill-enough fitted for a treacherous lough like the Swilly. I knew her of old, however, and was soon bounding over the waves, with the dim outline of Fanad standing out ahead in the moonlight.
My heart sank to my boots as I drew nearer and discerned an unusual glow of light from the cabin window, and heard, carried across the water on the breeze, the sounds of singing and the wail of a fiddle. I dreaded to think of the dear body that lay there heedless of all the noise, whose eyes I should never see and whose voice I should never hear more. I could not help calling to mind again the strange words she had last spoken—of her longing to see his honour, of her wandering talk about a dead lassie and the hearthstone, and of some danger that threatened my father. It was all a mystery to me. Yet it was a mystery which, boy as I was, I resolved some day to explain.
The landing-place was full of boats, by which I knew that all the lough-side and many from the opposite shore had come to the wake. His honour’s boat was there among them. So was one belonging to the Cigale.
I felt tempted, instead of entering the cabin, to wander up on to the headland and lie there, looking out to the open sea, and so forget my troubles. But the thought of Tim and my father hindered me, and I clambered up to the cabin.
The door stood open, because, as I thought, so many folk were about it that it would not shut. As I made my way among them I was barely heeded—indeed there were many who did not even know me. I pushed my way into the cabin, in which were stifling heat and smoke and the fumes of whisky. There, on the bed in the corner, where I had seen her last, but now lit up with a glare of candles, lay my poor mother, with her eyes closed and her hands folded across her breast. At the foot of the bed sat my father, haggard and wretched, holding a glass of whisky in his hand, which now and again he put to his lips to give him the Dutch courage he needed. At the bedside stood Tim with a scowl on his face as he glared, first, on the noisy mourners, and then looked down on the white face on the pillow. At the fireplace sat his honour, buried in thought, and not heeding the talk of the jovial priest who sat and stirred his cup beside him. There, too, among the crowd of dirge-singing, laughing, whisky-drinking neighbours, I could see the outlandish-looking skipper of the Cigale.
It was a weird, woeful spectacle, and made me long more than ever for the pure, fresh breezes of the lonely headland. But Tim looked round as I entered, and his face, till now so black and sullen, lit up as he saw me, and he beckoned me to him. When last we parted it had been in anger and shame; now, over the body of our dead mother, we met in peace and brotherly love, and felt stronger each of us by the presence of the other.
My father, half-stupid with sorrow and whisky, roused himself and called out my name.
“Arrah, Barry, my son, are you there? Faith, it’s a sore day for the motherless lad. Howl, boys!”
And the company set up a loud wail in my honour, and pressed round me, to pat me on the head or back and say some word of consolation.
Presently his honour motioned me to him.
“Well?” said he inquiringly.
“All right, sir,” said I.
“That’s a man,” said he. “Your mother was dead before I reached her yesterday.”
“She was English,” said the garrulous priest, who stood by, lifting his voice above the general clamour. “She never took root among us. Sure, your honour will remember her when she was my lady’s-maid at Kilgorman. Ochone, that was a sad business!”
His honour did not attend to his reverence, but continued to look hard at me in that strange way of his.
“A sad business,” continued the priest, turning round for some more attentive listener. “It was at Kilgorman that Barry and Tim were born—mercy on them!—the night that Terence Gorman, his honour’s brother, was murdered on the mountain. I mind the night well. Dear, oh! Every light in Kilgorman went out that night. The news of the murder killed the lady and her little babe. I mind the time well, for I was called to christen the babe. Do you mind Larry McQuilkin of Kerry Keel, O’Brady? It was his wife as was nursing-woman to the child—as decent a woman as ever lived. She—”
Here his honour looked up sharply, and his reverence, pleased to have a better audience, chattered on:—
“Sure, your honour will remember Biddy McQuilkin, for she served at Knockowen when the little mistress there was born—”
“Where’s Biddy now?” asked some one. “She was never the same woman after her man died.”
“Ah, poor Biddy! When your honour parted with her she went to Paris to a situation; but I’m thinking she’d have done better to bide at home. There’s many an honest man in these parts would have been glad to meet a decent widow like Biddy. I told her so before she went, but—”
Here the fiddler struck up a jig, which cut short the gossip of the priest and made a diversion for his hearers. Some of the young fellows and girls present fell to footing it, and called on Tim and me to join in. But I was too much out of heart even to look on; and as for Tim, he glared as if he would have turned every one of them out of the cottage.
In the midst of the noise and the shouts of the dancers and the cheers of the onlookers, I crawled into the corner behind his honour’s chair, and dropped asleep, to dream—strange to tell—not of my mother, or of his honour’s turnips, or of the Cigale, but of Biddy McQuilkin of Kerry Keel, whom till now I had never seen or heard of.
When I awoke the daylight was struggling into the cabin, paling the candles that burned low beside my mother’s bed. Tim stood where I had left him, sentinel-wise, glaring with sleepless eyes at his father’s guests. Father, with his head on his arm, at the foot of the bed, slept a tipsy, sorrowful sleep. A few of the rest, worn-out with the night’s revels, slumbered on the floor. Others made love, or quarrelled, or talked drowsily in couples.
His honour had escaped from the choking atmosphere of the cabin, and was pacing moodily on the grass outside, casting impatient glances eastward, where lay Kilgorman, and the Cigale, and the rising sun.
Presently, when with a salute I came out to join him, he said, “’Tis time we started. Waken your father, boy.”
It was no easy task, and when he was wakened it was hard to make him understand what was afoot. It was only when his honour came in and spoke to him that he seemed to come to his senses.
The coffin was closed. The crowd stepped out with a shiver into the cold morning air. The priest took out his book and began to read aloud; and slowly, with Tim and me beside her, and my father in a daze walking in front, we bore her from the cabin down to the boats. There, in our own boat, we laid the coffin, and hoisting sail, shoved off and made for the opposite shore. Father and we two and his honour and the priest sailed together; and after us, in a long straggling procession of boats, came the rest. The light wind was not enough to fill our sail, and we were forced to put out the oars and row. I think the exercise did us good, and warmed our hearts as well as our bodies.
As we came under Kilgorman, I could see the mast of the Cigale peeping over the rocks, and wondered if she would be discovered by all the company. His honour, to my surprise, steered straight for the creek.
The Cigale flew the English flag, and very smart and trim she looked in the morning light, with her white sails bleaching on the deck and the brass nozzles of her guns gleaming at the port-holes. We loitered a little to admire her, and, seaman-like, to discuss her points. Then, when our followers began to crowd after us into the creek, we pulled to the landing and disburdened our boat of her precious freight.
The burying-ground of Kilgorman was a little enclosure on the edge of the cliff surrounding the ruin of the old church, of which only a few weed-covered piles of stone remained. The graves in it were scarcely to be distinguished in the long rank grass. The only one of note was that in which lay Terence Gorman with his wife and child—all dead twelve years since, within a week of one another.
With much labour we bore the coffin up the steep path, and in a shallow grave at the very cliff’s edge deposited all that remained of our English mother.
As his reverence had said, she never took root in Donegal. She had been a loyal servant to her master, a loyal wife to her husband, and a loyal mother to us her sons. Yet she always pined for her old Yorkshire village home; a cloud of trouble, ever since we remembered her, had hovered on her brow. She had wept much in secret, and had lived, as it were, in a sort of dread of unseen evil.
Folks said the shock of the tragedy at Kilgorman, at the time when she too lay ill in the house with her twin babies, had unnerved her and touched her brain. But in that they were wrong; for she had taught Tim and me to read and write better than any schoolmaster could have done, and had read books and told stories to us such as few boys of our age between Fanad and Derry had the chance to hear.
Yet, though her brain was sound, it was not to be denied that she had been a woman of sorrow. And the strange words she had spoken when she was near her end added a mystery to her memory which, boy as I was, I took to heart, and resolved, if I could, to master.
That afternoon, when the mourners had gone their several ways, and the short daylight was already beginning to draw in, Tim and I lay at the cliff’s edge, near our mother’s grave, watching the Cigale as, with all her canvas flying and my father’s dexterous hand at the helm, she slipped out of the lough and spread her wings for the open sea. Even in the feeble breeze, which would scarcely have stirred one of our trawlers, she seemed to gather speed; and if we felt any anxiety as to her being chased by one of his Majesty’s cutters, we had only to watch the way in which she slid through the water to assure us that she would need a deal of catching.
I told Tim all I knew about her, and of my errand to Derry.
“What are the guns for?” said he. “What’s there to be fighting about? Man, dear, I’d like a gun myself.”
“There’s plenty up at the house there,” said I, pointing to Kilgorman—“two hundred.”
“Two hundred! and we’re only needing two. Come away, Barry; let’s see where they’re kept.”
“You’re not going up to Kilgorman House, sure?” said I in amazement.
“’Deed I am. I’m going to get myself a gun, and you too.”
“But his honour?”
“Come on!” cried Tim, who seemed greatly excited; “his honour can’t mind. I’ll hold ye, Barry, we’ll use a gun as well as any of the boys.”
I would fain have escaped going up to so dreadful a place as Kilgorman on such an errand at such an hour. But I durst not let Tim think I was afraid, so when I saw his mind was made up I went with him, thankful at least that I had his company.
Chapter Four.
The kitchen at Kilgorman.
The daylight failed suddenly as we turned from our perch on the edge of the cliff, and began to grope our way across the old graveyard towards the path which led up to Kilgorman House.
But that Tim was so set on seeing the hidden arms, and seemed so scornful of my ill-concealed terror of the place, I should have turned tail twenty times before I reached our destination. Yet in ordinary I was no coward. I would cross the lough single-handed in any weather; I would crack skulls with any boy in the countryside; I would ride any of his honour’s horses barebacked. But I shook in my shoes at the thought of a ghost, and the cold sweat came out on my brow before ever we reached the avenue-gates.
“What’s to hurt you?” said Tim, who knew what was on my mind as well as if I had spoken. “They say it’s the lady walks through the house. Man, dear, you’re not afraid of a woman, are ye?”
“If she is alive, no,” said I.
“She’ll hurt ye less as she is,” said Tim scornfully. “Anyway, if you’re afeard, Barry, you needn’t come; run home.”
This settled me. I laughed recklessly, and said,—
“What’s good enough for you is good enough for me. I’m not afraid of a hundred ghosts.”
And indeed I should have felt easier in the company of a hundred than of one.
We halted a moment at my mother’s grave as we went by.
“She lived up at the house once,” said Tim.
“I know,” said I.
“Come on,” said Tim; “it’s getting very dark.”
So we went on; and on the way I tried to recall what I knew of the story of Kilgorman, as I had heard it from my mother and the country folk.
Twelve years ago Terence Gorman, brother of his honour, lived there and owned all the lough-side from Dunaff to Dunree, and many a mile of mountain inland. He was not a rich man, but tried, so folk said, to deal fairly with his tenants. But as a magistrate he was very stern to all ill-doers, no matter who they were; and since many of his own tenants aided and abetted the smuggling and whisky-making on the coast, Terence Gorman had plenty of enemies close to his own door. His household, at the time I speak of, consisted only of his young wife and her newly-born babe, and of my father and mother, who served in the house, one as boatman and gamekeeper and the other as lady’s-maid. My mother had come over with the young bride from England, and had married my father within a month or two of her coming. And, as it happened, just when my lady gave birth to her infant, and was most in need of her countrywoman’s help, my mother presented my father with twins, and lay sadly in need of help herself; so that Biddy McQuilkin, who was fetched from Kerry Keel to wait on both, had a busy time of it.
What happened on the fatal night that left Kilgorman desolate no one was able rightly to tell; for, except Biddy and Maurice Gorman, who chanced that night to have come over to see his brother, the sole occupants of the house had been Mrs Gorman and her child and my mother and her two infants.
Terence Gorman at nightfall had taken the gig, with my father, to drive to Carndonagh, where next day he was to inquire into some poaching affray. That was at seven o’clock. About midnight my father, half crazy with fright, brought the gig back, and in it the dead body of his master. They had reached the gap in Ballinthere Hill, he said, going by the lower road, when a shot was suddenly fired from the roadside, grazing my father’s arm and lodging in the neck of Mr Gorman. It was so suddenly done, and the horse bolted so wildly forward at the report, that before my father could even look round the assassin had vanished.
Mr Gorman was already dead. My father did what he could to stanch the wound, but without avail; and, in a daze, he turned the horse’s head and drove back as fast as he could to Kilgorman. My lady, whose bedroom was over the hall-door, was the first to hear the sound of the wheels, and she seemed to have guessed at a flash of the mind what had happened. Weak as she was, she succeeded in dragging herself from the bed and looking out of the window; and the first sight that met her eyes, by the gleam of the lanterns, was the lifeless body of her husband being lifted from the gig.
The shock was too much for her. She was found soon after in a dead swoon on the floor, and before morning her spirit had joined that of her husband. And not only hers—the little hope of the house shared the fate of her parents. And when the day of burial came, Terence Gorman and his wife and daughter were all laid in one grave.
My mother, to whom the shock of the news had been more gently broken, and whose husband had at least escaped with his life, recovered; and with her twin boys, Tim and me, was able in due time to remove to the cabin on Fanad across the lough which Maurice Gorman (who by this sad tragedy had unexpectedly become the heir to his brother’s estate) gave him for a home.
That was all I knew, except this: ever since that night Kilgorman House had remained empty, and people said that its only tenant was the wandering spirit of the distracted mother crying in the night for her husband and baby.
These sombre recollections were an ill preparation for our nocturnal visit to the haunted house. As the rusty avenue-gate swung back with a hoarse creak I was less inclined than ever for the adventure.
But Tim was not to be hindered, and paced sturdily down the long avenue, summoning me to keep close and hold my tongue, for fear any one might be within earshot.
Kilgorman was a big, irregular mansion of several stories, with some pretensions to architecture, and space enough within its rambling walls to quarter a ship’s company. In front a field of long, rank grass stretched up to the very doorway, having long since overgrown the old carriage-drive. In the rear was a swampy bog, out of which the house seemed to rise like a castle out of a moat. On either side gaunt trees crowded, overhanging the chimneys with their creaking boughs. There was no sound but the drip of the water from the roof, and the sobbing of the breeze among the trees, and now and again the hoot of an owl across the swamp which set me shivering.
Tim boldly marched up to the front door and tried it. It was fast and padlocked. The windows on the ground-floor were closely shuttered and equally secure.
We groped our way round to the rear, keeping close to the wall to avoid the water. But here, too, all was fast; nor was there a sign of any one having been near the place for years. My hopes began to rise as Tim’s fell.
“Why not come by daylight?” said I.
“Why not get in, now we are here?” said Tim—“unless you’re afraid.”
“Who’s afraid?” said I, shaking the window-frame till it rattled again.
“Come to the yard,” said Tim. “There’ll be a ladder there, I warrant.”
So we felt our way back to the side on which abutted the stable-yard, and there, sure enough, lay a crazy ladder against the wall. It took our united strength to lift it. To my horror, Tim suggested putting it to the window that overlooked the hall-door—that fatal window from which the poor lady had taken her last look in life.
I would fain have moved it elsewhere, but he was obstinate. The top of the porch was flat, and we could stand there better than anywhere else. So—Tim first, I next—we clambered cautiously up, and stepped on to the ledge. The window was fast like the rest, but it was not shuttered, and Tim boldly attacked the pane nearest to the catch with his elbow. What a hideous noise it made as it shivered inwards and fell with a smash on the floor!
“Mind now,” said Tim, as he slipped in his hand and pushed back the catch. “Lift away.”
It was a hard job to lift it, for the wood had warped and grown stiff in its grooves. But presently it started, and gave us room to squeeze through into the room.
Even Tim was a little overawed when he found himself standing there in the room, scarcely changed, except for the mildew and cobwebs, from what it had been twelve years ago.
“Whisht!” said he in a whisper. “I wish we had a light.”
But light there was none, and the fitful gleams of the wandering moon served only to make the darkness darker.
Once, as it floated clear for an instant, I caught sight of the bed, and a chair, and some withered flowers on the floor, left there, no doubt, since the day of the funeral.
Next moment all was dark again.
Tim had used the gleam to find the door, and I heard him call me.
“Come away. Keep your hand on the wall and feel with your feet for the stairs. It’s down below the arms will be.”
I am sure, had he looked, he would have been able to see the whiteness of my face through the darkness; but he was better employed.
“Here it is,” he said. “Now keep your hand on the rail and go gently down.”
“How’ll we find our way back to the ladder?” said I.
“We’ve to get our guns first,” said he, shortly.
When we reached the bottom of the stairs, we seemed to be in a passage or hall that went right and left.
In the plight in which we were it mattered little which turn we took, so Tim turned to the right, feeling along by the wall, with me close at his heels. Cautiously as we trod, our footsteps seemed to echo along the corridor, till often enough, with my heart in my mouth, I stopped short, certain I heard some one following. Tim too, I thought, was beginning to repent of his venture, and once more said, “We need a light badly.”
Just then the moon peeped in for a moment through a loophole in one of the shutters, and showed us a bracket on the wall opposite on which stood a candle, and beside it, to our joy, a tinder-box.
“These have not stood here twelve years,” said Tim, as he lifted them from their place. “This is a new candle.”
And I remembered then the moving lights I had seen not a week ago.
The dim light of the candle gave us some little comfort. But for safety we kept it closely shaded, lest we should betray ourselves. At the end of the passage a door stood partly open, and beyond we found ourselves in a large kitchen paved with flagstones, and crowded round the walls and down the middle of the floor with muskets, piled in military fashion in threes and sixes.
Tim’s soul swelled within him at the sight; but I confess I was more concerned at the gloomy aspect of the great chamber, and the general sense of horror that seemed to hang over the whole place.
“Begorrah, it was worth coming for!” said Tim, as he crouched down examining the lock of one specially bright weapon.
Suddenly he started to his feet and extinguished the candle. “Whisht!” he exclaimed, “there’s a step.”
We stood like statues, not even daring to breathe. There, sure enough, not on the walk without, but down at the end of the corridor we had just traversed, was a footstep. Tim drew me down to a corner near the hearth, where, hidden behind a stack of arms, we could remain partly hid. The step approached, but whoever came was walking, as we had done, in the dark. To my thinking it was a light step, and one familiar with the path it trod. For a moment it ceased, and I guessed it was at the bracket from which we had taken the candle. Tim’s hand closed on my arm as the sound began again; and presently we heard, for we could not see, the door move back.
I never wish again for a moment like that. If I could have shouted I would have done so. All we could do was to crouch, rooted to the spot, and wait with throbbing hearts for what was to happen. As the footsteps halted a moment at the open door my quick ears seemed to detect the rustle of a dress, and next moment what sounded like a sob, or it might have been only a moan of the wind outside, broke the silence.
Then the steps advanced direct for us. Even the moon had deserted us, and by no straining of our eyes could we detect who the stranger was, even when she (for by the rustling sound we were positive it was a woman) reached the hearth and stood motionless within a foot of us.
Reach out we could not; stir we durst not; all we could do was to wait and listen.
It is strange what, when all other senses fail, the ear will do for one. I at least could tell that this strange intruder was a woman, and that the dress she wore was of silk. Further, I could tell that when she reached the hearth she knelt before the empty fireplace, not for warmth, but as if seeking something. I could hear what seemed a faint irresolute tapping with the knuckles; then just as, once more, the wind fell into a moan without, there came a sudden and fearful noise, which roused us out of our stupor and filled the place with our shrieks.
For a moment we could not say what had happened. Then I understood that, in the tension of looking for the ghost I could not see, my foot had stretched against the butt of one of the guns and upset a stack of some six of them on to the stone floor, thereby putting an end to all things, the ghost included; for when we recovered from this last fright, and Tim in desperation struck a light, the place was as silent and empty as it was when we entered it.
If it was all an illusion, it was a strange one—strange indeed for a single witness to hear, stranger still for two. Yet illusion it must have been, begotten of my terrors, and the creak of the stairs, and the sighing of the wind, or the excursions of a vagabond rat. I do not pretend to explain it. Nor, for months after, could I be persuaded that the visitor was aught other than the poor distracted lady of Kilgorman. And it was months after that before I could get out of my mind that she had stood beside us and sought for something in the hearth.
As for us that night, I can promise you we were not many minutes longer in Kilgorman when the spell was once broken. Even Tim forgot the guns. With all the speed we could we ran to the stairs and so to my lady’s chamber, against which stood the friendly ladder, down which we slid, and not waiting even to restore it to its place, sped like hunted hares down the avenue and along the steep path, till we came to the harbour in the creek where lay our boat.
Nor was it till we were safely afloat, with sail hoisted and our bows pointing to Fanad, that we drew breath, and dared look back in the dim dawn at the grim walls and chimneys of Kilgorman as they loomed out upon us from among the trees and rocks.
Chapter Five.
Farewell to Fanad.
After that, life went uneventfully for a time with Tim and me. Now that the cabin was empty father visited us seldom. His voyages took him longer than before, and we had a shrewd guess that they were not all in search of fish; for little enough of that he brought home. Young as we boys were we knew better than to ask him questions. Only when he showed us his pocket full of French coin, or carried up by night a keg of spirits that had never been brewed in a lawful distillery, or piloted some foreign-looking craft after dark into one of the quiet creeks along the coast, or spent an evening in confidential talk with his honour and other less reputable characters, we guessed he was embarked on a business of no little risk, which might land him some fine day, with a file of marines to take care of him, in Derry Jail.
For all that, I would fain have taken to the sea with him; for every day I longed more for the open life of a sailor, and chafed at the shackles of my landsman’s fate. What made it worse was that one day, sorely against Tim’s will, my father ordered him to get ready for the sea, leaving me, who would have given my eyes for the chance, not only disappointed, but brotherless and alone in the world.
But I must tell you how this great change in our fortunes came to pass.
It was about a year after my mother’s death when, one dark night, as father and we two sat round the peat fire in the cabin, father telling us queer stories about the Frenchmen, and icebergs in the Atlantic, and races with the king’s cruisers, that the door opened suddenly, and a woman I had never seen before looked in.
“Biddy McQuilkin, as I’m a sinner!” said my father, taking the pipe from his lips, and looking, I thought, not altogether pleased. But he got up, as a gentleman should.
“Arrah, Mike, you may well wonder! I hardly know myself at all, at all. And there’s the boys. My! but it’s myself’s glad to see the pretty darlints.” And she gave us each a hug and a kiss.
Somehow or other I did not at first take kindly to Biddy McQuilkin. She was a stout woman of about mother’s age, with little twinkling eyes that seemed to look not quite straight, and gave her face, otherwise comely enough, rather a sly expression. And I guessed when she made so much of us that it was perhaps less on our account than on my father’s.
As for father, I think he felt pretty much as I did, and had not the cunning to conceal it.
“I thought you were in Paris, Biddy?” said he.
“So I was, and so, maybe, I’ll be again,” said the widow, taking her shawl from her head, and seating herself on a stool at the fire. “’Twas a chance I got to come and see the folk at home while the master and mistress are in Galway seeing what they can save out of the ruin of their estate there. Ochone, it’s bad times, Mike; indeed it is. Lonely enough for you and me and the motherless boys. I’ve a mind to stay where I am, and settle down in the ould country.”
My father looked genuinely alarmed.
“Lonely!” said he with a laugh; “like enough it is for you, poor body, but not for me. I promise you I’ve plenty to think of without being lonely.”
“Like enough,” said she with a sigh. “It’s when you come home now and again to the empty house you’ll be feeling lonely, and wishing you’d some kindly soul to mind you, Mike Gallagher.”
But my father was not going to allow that he was lonely even then; for he guessed what it would lead to if he did.
“I’m well enough as I am,” said he. “But since you’re so lonely, Biddy, why not get yourself a husband?”
She looked up with her little blinking eyes, and was going to speak. But my father, fairly scared, went on,—
“It’s not for me, who’ll never marry more, not if I live to a hundred, thank God, to advise the likes of you, Biddy. But there’s many a likely man would be glad of you, and I’d give him my blessings with you. You need company. I don’t; leastways none better than my pipe and my glass.”
She turned her face away rather sadly, and sat with her chin on the palm of her hand, blinking into the fire.
“What about the boys?” she said, not looking up.
“They’re rightly,” said my father shortly.
She gave a short, grating laugh, and was about to speak again, when there fell a footstep outside, and his honour looked in.
He had come to see father, who was to sail again to-morrow, and was fairly taken aback to see what company we had.
Biddy rose and courtesied.
“The top of the morning to your honour,” said she. “Faith, I’m proud to see you looking so well.”
“What brought you here, Biddy?” said his honour.
“’Deed, I had a longing to see my friends and the ould country, that’s why.”
His honour looked round the cabin. Tim lay asleep curled up in the corner, and I, wide-awake, sat up and listened to all they said.
“Go down and make fast his honour’s boat, Barry,” said my father.
I obeyed reluctantly, for I was curious to know what these three had to say to one another.
I found his honour’s boat already fast, and returned as quickly as I could to the cabin.
Biddy’s shrill voice, as I came near, rose above the other two.
“It served your turn, Maurice Gorman,” said she. “You know as well as me one of the two boys is—”
“Whisht!” exclaimed my father; “there he is.”
And as I entered the talk suddenly dropped, and I felt quite abashed to see them all look at me as they did.
“Well, well, Biddy,” said his honour presently, “you’re a decent woman, and I’ll help you. You shall have the forty pounds when you get back to Paris. My agent there will see to it, and you shall have a letter to him.”
“Your honour’s a gentleman,” said Biddy with a courtesy. “Maybe you’ll make it a little more, to save a poor widow another journey over to see you. Sure, forty pounds wouldn’t keep me in France for six months.”
“Well, well, we’ll see. Come to Knockowen to-morrow evening, Biddy.”
Biddy departed with a curious look in her eyes, and somewhat consoled for my father’s indifference to her charms.
“You sail to-morrow?” inquired his honour when she had gone.
“I do,” said my father. “I’m away to Sheep Haven to join her at cock-crow.”
His honour turned and caught sight of me standing by the fire. He beckoned me to him, as he had done once before, turned my face to the light, and stared at me.
Then he looked up at father.
“He’s no look of you, Mike.”
“So you may say,” replied my father, with a knowing glance at his honour. “Tim’s liker me, they say.”
His honour looked up with a significant nod.
“Well, Mike, I’ve said I’ll see after one of the lads, for their dead mother’s sake. Which will it be?”
“I’m thinking of taking Tim with me,” said my father.
“Very good. I’ll see to Barry then.”
“Och, father,” I cried, “take me to sea.”
“Howld your tongue, ye puppy,” said my father. “Can’t you hear his honour say he’ll see to you? There’s many a lad would be glad of the chance.”
“But Tim hates the sea, and I—”
“Be silent wid ye,” roared my father, so angrily that he woke Tim.
“Tim,” cried I, determined to make one more desperate effort, “you’re to go to sea, and I’m to be kept ashore at Knockowen.”
“Sea, is it?” roared Tim. “I’ll run away—no sea for me.”
“And I’ll run away too,” shouted I. “No Knockowen for me.”
But it was of no avail; protest as we would, we had to do as we were bid. That very hour, with nothing but a little book that was once my mother’s, and a few poor clothes, and Con the dog at my heels, I followed his honour down to the boat and left my old home behind me. And before dawn of day Tim was trudging surlily at my father’s heels across country, on his way to join the Cigale at Sheep Haven.
Chapter Six.
Miss Kit.
His honour, saving his presence! was one of the meanest men I ever met, and I have come across many a close-fisted one in my day. There was nothing large about Maurice Gorman. His little eyes could never open wide enough to see the whole of a matter, or his little mouth open wide enough to speak it. If he owed a guinea, he would only pay a pound of it, and trust to your forgetting the rest. If his boat wanted painting, he would give it one coat and save the other. If his horse wanted shoeing, he would give him three new shoes, and use an old one for the fourth. If he ever gave money, it was by way of a bargain; and if he ever took up a cause, good or bad, it was grudgingly, and in a way which robbed his support of all graciousness.
It took me some months to discover all this about my new master.
When first I found myself an inmate of Knockowen, I was so sore with disappointment and anger that I cared about nothing and nobody. His honour, whose professions of interest in me were, as I well knew, all hollow, concerned himself very little about my well-being under his roof. Why he had taken me at all I could not guess. But I was sure, whatever the reason, it was because it suited his interest, not mine. I was handed over to the stables, and there they made a sort of groom of me; and presently, because I was a handy lad, I was fetched indoors when company was present, and set to wait at table in a livery coat.
The Knockowen household was a small one, consisting only of his honour and Mistress Gorman and the young lady. Mistress Gorman was a sad woman, who had little enough pleasure in this world, and that not of her husband’s making. The man and his wife were almost strangers, meeting only at meal-times, and not always then, to exchange a few formal words, and then separate, one to her lonely chamber, the other to his grounds.
The brightness of the house was all centred in my little lady Kit, who was as remote from her mother’s sadness as she was from her father’s meanness. From the first she made my life at Knockowen tolerable, and very soon she made it necessary.
I shall not soon forget my first meeting with her. She had been away on a visit when I arrived, and a week later I was ordered to take the boat over to Rathmullan to fetch her home.
It was a long, toilsome journey, in face of a contrary wind, against which the boat travelled slowly, and frequently not without the help of an oar. How I groaned as I beat to and fro up the lough, and how I wished I was away with Tim and father on the Cigale.
At last, late in the afternoon, I reached Rathmullan, and made fast my boat to the pier. I was to call at the inn and find my young mistress there.
And there presently I found her, and a bright vision it was for me that dull afternoon. She was a little maid, although she was a month or two my elder. Her dark brown hair fell wildly on her shoulders, and her slight figure, as she stood there gazing at me with her big blue eyes, was full of grace and life. Her lips were pursed into a quaint little smile as she looked at me, and before I could explain who I was, she said,—
“So you are Barry Gallagher? How frightened you look! You needn’t be afraid of me, Barry; I don’t bite, though you look as if you thought so.”
“’Deed, Miss Kit,” said I, “and if you did, I’m thinking there’s worse things could happen.”
She laughed, and then bade me get together her boxes and carry them down to the boat.
Strange! Half-an-hour before I had been groaning over my lot. Now, as I staggered and sweated down to the wharf under her ladyship’s baggage, I felt quite lighthearted.
In due time I had all aboard, and called on her to come, which she did, protesting that the water would spoil her new Dublin gown, and that if I sailed home no quicker than I had come, she supposed it would be morning before she got her supper.
This put me on my mettle. I even went ashore for a moment to borrow a tarpaulin to lay over her knees, knowing I should have to make a voyage all the way back to-morrow to restore it. Then, when I had her tucked in, and set the ballast trim, I hoisted the sail, and sat beside her, with the tiller in one hand and the sheet in the other.
She soon robbed me of the former; for with the wind behind us it was plain sailing, and she could steer, she said, as well as I.
“Keep a look-out ahead, Barry,” she said, “and see if I don’t get you to Knockowen in half the time you took to come. I’ll give you a lesson in sailing this evening.”
Here she had me on a tender point.
“Begging your pardon, Miss Kit, I think not,” said I.
“Are you a seaman, then?” she asked.
“I’d give my soul to be one.”
“Your soul! It would be cheap at the price.”
“I don’t know what that means,” said I; “but if your ladyship will put the helm a wee taste more to port, we will catch the breeze better—so, so. Keep her at that!”
We slipped merrily through the water for a while; but it made me uneasy to see the clouds sweeping past us overhead, and feel the sting of a drop or two on my cheek.
I hitched the sheet a little closer, and came astern again to where she sat.
“You’ll need to let me take her,” said I; “there’s a squall behind us.”
“What of that?” said she. “Can I not steer through a squall?”
“No, Miss Kit,” said I; “it takes a man to send her through when the weather gets up. Pull the wrap well about you, and make up your mind for a wetting.”
She sniffed a little at my tone.
“I see you are captain of this ship,” said she.
“Ay, ay; and I’ve a valuable freight aboard,” said I.
Whereat she gave it up, and sat with her hair waving in the wind and her sailor’s wrap about her shoulders.
It was a nasty, sudden squall, with a shower of hail and half a cap of wind in it. Luckily it was straight behind us. Had we been crossing it, it would have caught us badly. As it was, although it gave us a great toss, and now and then sent a drenching wave over our backs and heads, we were in no real peril. Our only difficulty was that, unless it eased off before we came within reach of Knockowen, we should have to cross it to get home. But that was far enough away yet.
Miss Kit, who for all her pretty bragging had had little commerce in the mighty deep, sat still for a while, startled by the sudden violence of the wind and the onslaught of the waves behind us. But as soon as she discovered that all the harm they did was to wet her pretty head and drench her boxes, and when, moreover, she satisfied herself by a chance glance or two at my face that there was nothing to fear, she began to enjoy the novel experience, and even laughed to see how the boat tore through the water.
“Why can’t we go on like this, straight out to the open sea?” said she.
“We could do many a thing less easy,” said I. “It’s well Knockowen’s no nearer the open sea than it is.”
“Why?”
“If it was as far as Kilgorman,” said I, “we’d meet the tide coming in, and then it would be a hard sea to weather.”
“Kilgorman!” said she, catching at the name; “were you ever there, Barry?”
“Once,” said I guiltily, “when I should not have been. And I suffered for it.”
“How? what happened?”
“Indeed, Miss Kit; it’s not for the likes of you to hear; and his honour would be mad if he knew of it.”
“You think I’m a tell-tale,” said she. “I’m your mistress, and I order you to tell me.”
“Faith, then, I saw a ghost, mistress!”
She laughed, and pleasant the sound was amid the noise of the storm.
“You won’t make me believe you’re such a fool as that,” said she. “It’s only wicked people who see ghosts.”
“Sure, then, I’m thinking it’ll be long till you see one, Miss Kit. But mind now; we must put her a little away from the wind to make Knockowen. Sit fast, and don’t mind a wave or two.”
Now began the dangerous part of our voyage. The moment we put her head in for Knockowen, the waves began to break heavily over the stern, sometimes almost knocking the tiller from my hand, sometimes compelling us to run back into the wind to save being swamped.
She did not talk any more, but sat very quiet, watching each wave as it came, and looking up now and again at my face, as if to read our chances there. You may be sure I looked steady enough, so as not to give her a moment’s more uneasiness than she need. But, for all that, I was concerned to see how much water we shipped, and how much less easily the boat travelled in consequence.
Quit the helm I durst not. Yet how could I ask her to perform so menial a task as to bail the boat? But it soon went past the point of standing on ceremony.
“Begging your pardon, Miss Kit,” said I, “there’s a can below the seat you’re on. If you could use it a bit to get quit of some of the water, it would help us.”
She was down on her knees on the floor of the boat at once, bailing hard.
“Are we in danger of sinking?” said she, looking up.
“No, surely; but we’re better without water in the boat.”
Whereat she worked till her arm ached, and yet made little enough impression on the water, which, with every roll we took, swung ankle deep from side to side, and grew every minute.
We wanted a mile of Knockowen still, and I was beginning to think there would be nothing for it but to put out again before the wind, and run the risk of meeting the heavy sea in the open, when the wind suddenly shifted a point, and came up behind us once more. It was a lucky shift for us, for my little mistress was worn-out with her labour, and a few more broadsides might have swamped us.
As it was, we could now run straight for home, and a few minutes would see us alongside the little pier of Knockowen.
I helped her back to her seat beside me, and drew the tarpaulin around her.
Her face, which had been anxious enough for a while, cleared as suddenly as the wind had shifted.
“I declare, Barry, I was afraid just now.”
“So you might be; and no shame to you for it,” said I.
“Are you ever afraid?” said she.
“Ay, I was at Kilgorman that night.”
Again she laughed.
“I’d as soon be afraid of a real peril as of a silly fancy,” said she. “I mean to go and see Kilgorman one day.”
“Not with my good-will, mistress,” said I.
“Well, without it then, Mr Barry Gallagher,” she replied with a toss of the head which fairly abashed me, and made me remember that after all I was but a servant-man in my lady’s house. The sea, blessings on it! levels all things, and I had almost forgotten this little lady was my mistress. But I recalled it now, and still more when, ten minutes later, we ran alongside his honour’s jetty, and my fair crew was taken out of my hands by her parents, while I was left to carry up the dripping baggage, and seek my supper as best I could.
Chapter Seven.
A Book of Fate.
The coming of Mistress Kit, as I said before, made life at Knockowen tolerable for me. It mattered little if his honour neglected me, and my lady never looked at me; it mattered little if my fellow-servants ill-used me and put upon me; it mattered little that I had not a friend but Con and the horses to talk to, and not a holiday to call my own.
Miss Kit made all the difference. Not that she concerned herself specially about me, or went out of her way to be kind; but it did one good to see her about the place, with a smile for every one and a friendly word for man and beast. She even beat down the gloom that, in her absence, had weighed both on her father and mother. The former, indeed, was as indifferent as ever to his wife and the latter to her husband. But this daughter of theirs was one interest in common for both—perhaps the one object in the world about which both agreed.
It fell to my lot, as my young lady was an ardent horsewoman, to attend her on many a long ride, riding discreetly twenty yards in the rear, and never forgetting my duty so far as to speak when not spoken to.
One day, some weeks after she had come home, as we were riding on the cliffs near Dunaff, she turned in her saddle and beckoned me to approach.
“What road is that?” she said, pointing with her whip to a grass-grown track which led off the shore.
“That’s the Kilgorman road,” said I, guessing what was to follow.
“Kilgorman!” repeated she. “I should like to see the house.”
“By your leave,” said I, “his honour forbids any one to go there without his permission.”
She tossed her head.
“I am not any one,” she said. “I shall go where I please. Fall behind, sir; and if you are afraid to follow, stay where you are till I return.”
And without more words, she flicked her horse and cantered over the turf to the road.
Of course I followed. If I feared the place, it was all the less possible to allow her to go there alone.
It was one comfort to me that it was still broad daylight, so that the mystery, whatever it might be, would lose its chief terror.
She looked round once to see if I was following or not, and then, changing her canter to a trot, turned into the road.
Now his honour’s order to me about Kilgorman had been a very strict one, so much so that I suspected he had a shrewd idea who it was, eighteen months ago, had broken the window and knocked over the stand of arms in the kitchen.
“Mind, Barry,” said he, “I allow no one on the road that leads up to Kilgorman. No one is to go to the house on any excuse. If my orders are disobeyed, he who trespasses will be sorry for it.”
This had prevented my going near the place since. But now I followed the little mistress I felt myself in another case, and, any way, Gorman or no Gorman, I was not going to let her go alone.
The year and a half had made little change about the place. Only I noticed some wheel-ruts on the road that were not old, and saw, as we came nearer, that the window over the porch had been mended.
As we entered the avenue, Miss Kit reined up for me to approach.
“It’s a finer house than Knockowen,” said she. “I never saw it so near before. Why does my father hate it so?”
“’Deed I cannot say, but it’s certain he does hate it.”
“Help me down, Barry, and fasten the horses. Where do we go in?”
“Faith, that’s the puzzle. When I came before I got in by yon window.”
She laughed as she looked up.
“You’ll have to go the same way again,” said she, “and I’ll wait here till you open the door for me.”
I was in for the venture now! When I looked for the ladder, though, it was not to be seen. But the thick creeper beside the door served the purpose, and by dint of clambering I reached the porch-top in safety.
To my relief, I found that, though the window was mended, it was not bolted, and that I could lift it without breaking a new pane of glass.
I confess, in spite of the bright daylight, it gave me a turn to find myself once more in that fatal room, and recall the terrors of the night when I saw it last. As quickly as possible I left it, and descended the stairs to the hall.
Here a strange perplexity arose. For though I was certain where the door should be, there was never a sign of it inside—nothing but a row of iron-barred windows along the wall, like the corridor of a jail. When I came to look a little closer, I found that the doorway had been bricked up and plastered, so that by the ground-floor there was positively no entrance to the house.
With some misgivings, I wandered on to the great kitchen where Tim and I had had such a fright. But it was empty now, and the sun, as it glanced through the guarded window, fell brightly on the white hearthstone. Nor, though all was still as death, could my ears catch a single sound, except the stamping of the horses without and the idle tapping of my lady’s whip against the pilaster of the door.
I traversed the corridor to the other end. It opened into a large room of the same size as the kitchen, evidently a dining-room, for a long table stood in the middle, and a solitary, moth-eaten stag’s head, with antlers broken, hung over the chimney-piece.
Other doors opened off the corridor, and beyond them, along the back of the house and overlooking the boggy lake, ran another corridor, out of which no door opened to the outer world.
There was no sign of life anywhere, and the few pieces of furniture, rotten and withered with time, were more deathlike than if the house had been stark empty.
I returned upstairs, and on my way peeped into this room and that out of curiosity. But all was the same. Only in the last of all, at the end of the landing, did I see anything. There, on the window-ledge, covered with dust, which made it seem part of the woodwork it rested on, lay a little shabby book. How it caught my eye I hardly know, except that, believing in Providence as I do, I suppose it had lain there all those years, like the Sleeping Beauty in the fairy tale, waiting for me to discover it.
I remember, as I lifted it, the under cover stuck fast to the window-ledge and parted company with the rest of the book.
It was a common little volume of English ballads, with nothing much to commend it to the book lover. But the sight of it moved me strangely, for not only was it the same work, only another volume, as that I had brought away from the old home at Fanad, but on the front page, in my mother’s hand, was written in faded ink, “Mary Gallagher, her book. A gift from her dear mistress.” I thrust the precious relic hurriedly into my pocket, and casting a last look round the room, which I now guessed to be that in which I first saw the light, I hurried back to the chamber over the porch.
My little mistress was very vexed and put about when she found that there was no way into the house except the one. Had she been alone, I suspect she would have been up in a trice, and let dignity go; but my presence hindered her, and she chose, I think rather harshly, to blame me as the cause of her disappointment.
“If I were you,” said she, with a frown, “and you I, I warrant I could have found some way to let you in.”
“Faith, you wouldn’t be sorrier to keep me standing out here than I was,” said I humbly. “And indeed there’s little enough to pay you for the trouble when you’re once in. It’s a dull, dismal house.”
“And how was the ghost?” asked she.
“Whisht, Miss Kit! It wasn’t likely any evil spirit could walk abroad while you’re about.”
“All very fine,” said she. “I’ll see Kilgorman before I’m much older, cost what it may. And I’ll be my own groom, what’s more. Fall behind, Barry.”
And she set off, looking very mortified and angry.
I don’t know if I was more sorry or glad that things had turned out as they had. I dreaded for her to come across sorrow in any form. And this house of mourning, with its mysterious air of terror, with its prison-like bars and bolts, and its time-devoured relics of a life that had gone out all in one day like the wick of a candle, was no place, then, for the bright sunflower of Knockowen.
His honour, happily, was away in Derry, and no one was there to question us as to our expedition. So I put up the horses, and trusted to God there was an end of Kilgorman.
But that very night, as I curled up in my narrow bed above the stable, I recalled my prayer.
By the light of a candle I took the book I had found from my pocket to look at it again. My mother’s hand on the cover called back all the old memories of my childhood—how she sang to Tim and me these very ballads, and taught us to say them after her; how she always seemed as much a stranger in Fanad as this little English book seemed on the ledge at Kilgorman. There, too, between the leaves, were a few pressed flowers, and—what was this?
A little piece of thin paper fluttered down to my feet, written over in my mother’s hand, but, oh, so feebly and painfully. With beating heart I held it to the light, and made out these words,—
“If you love God, whoever you are, seek below the great hearth; and what you find there, see to it, as you hope for grace. God send this into the hands of one who loves truth and charity. Amen.”