CHAPTER VI—THE HEREDITARY BARD.
Two hours and more of the afternoon were spent before The O’Mahony and his new companion next day reached Dunmanway.
The morning had been devoted, for the most part, to church-going, and The O’Mahony’s mind was still confused with a bewildering jumble of candles, bells and embroidered gowns; of boys in frocks swinging little kettles of smoke by long chains; of books printed on one side in English and on the other in an unknown tongue; of strange necessities for standing, kneeling, sitting all together, at different times, for no apparent reason which he could discover, and at no word of command whatever. He meditated upon it all now, as the slow train bumped its wandering way into the west, as upon some novel kind of drill, which it was obviously going to take him a long time to master. He had his moments of despondency at the prospect, until he reflected that if the poorest, least intelligent, hod-carrying Irishman alive knew it all, he ought surely to be able to learn it. This hopeful view gaining predominance at last in his thoughts, he had leisure to look out of the window.
The country through which they passed was for a long distance fairly level, with broad stretches of fair grass-fields and strips of ploughed land, the soil of which seemed richness, itself. The O’Mahony noted this, but was still more interested in the fact that stone was the only building material anywhere in sight. The few large houses, the multitude of cabins, the high fences surrounding residences, the low fences limiting farm lands, even the very gateposts—all were of gray stone, and all as identical in color and aspect as if Ireland contained but a single quarry.
The stone had come to be a very prominent feature in the natural landscape as well, before their journey by rail ended—a cold, wild, hard-featured landscape, with scant brown grass barely masking the black of the bog lands, and dying of! at the fringes of gaunt layers of rock which thrust their heads everywhere upon the vision. The O’Mahony observed with curiosity that as the land grew poorer, the population, housed all in wretched hovels, seemed to increase, and the burning fire-yellow of the furze blossoms all about made lurid mockery of the absence of crops.
Dunmanway was then the terminus of the line, which has since been pushed onward to Bantry. The two travellers got out here and stood almost alone on the stone platform with their luggage. They were, indeed, the only first-class passengers in the train.
As they glanced about them, they were approached by a diminutive man, past middle age, dressed in a costume which The O’Mahony had seen once or twice on the stage, but never before in every-day life. He was a clean-shaven, swarthy-faced little man, lean as a withered bean-pod, and clad in a long-tailed coat with brass buttons, a long waist-coat, drab corduroy knee-breeches and gray worsted stockings. On his head he wore a high silk hat of antique pattern, dulled and rusty with extreme age. He took this off as he advanced, and looked from one to the other of the twain doubtingly.
“Is it The O’Mahony of Muirisc that I have the honor to see before me?” he asked, his little ferret eyes dividing their glances in hesitation between the two.
“I’m your huckleberry,” said The O’Mahony, and held out his hand.
The small man bent his shriveled form double in salutation, and took the proffered hand with ceremonious formality.
“Sir, you’re kindly welcome back to your ancesthral domain,” he said, with an emotional quaver in his thin, high voice. “All your people are waitin’ with anxiety and pleasure for the sight of your face.”
“I hope they’ve got us somethin’ to eat,” said The O’Mahony. “We had breakfast at daybreak this morning, so’s to work the churches, and I’m—”
“His honor,” hastily interposed Jerry, “is that pious he can’t sleep of a mornin’ for pinin’ to hear mass.”
The little man’s dark face softened at the information. He guessed Jerry’s status by it, as well, and nodded at him while he bowed once more before The O’Mahony.
“I took the liberty to order some slight refresh-mints at the hotel, sir, against your coming,” he said. “If you’ll do me the condescinsion to follow me, I will conduct you thither without delay.”
They followed their guide, as he, bearing himself very proudly and swinging his shoulders in rhythm with his gait, picked his way across the square, through the mud of the pig-market, and down a narrow street of ancient, evil-smelling rookeries, to the chief tavern of the town—a cramped and dismal little hostelry, with unwashed children playing with a dog in the doorway, and a shock-headed stable-boy standing over them to do with low bows the honors of the house.
The room into which they were shown, though no whit cleaner than the rest, had a comfortable fire upon the grate, and a plentiful meal, of cold meat and steaming potatoes boiled in their jackets, laid on the table. Jerry put down the bags here, and disappeared before The O’Mahony could speak. The O’Mahony promptly sent the waiter after him, and upon his return spoke with some sharpness:
“Jerry, don’t give me any more of this,” he said. “You can chore it around, and make yourself useful to me, as you’ve always done; but you git your meals with me, d’ ye hear? Right alongside of me, every time.”
Thus the table was laid for three, and the O’Mahony made his companions acquainted with each other.
“This is Jerry Higgins,” he explained to the wondering, swart-visaged little man. “He’s sort o’ chief cook and bottle-washer to the establishment, but he’s so bashful afore strangers, I have to talk sharp to him now an’ then. And let’s see—I don’t think the lawyer told me your name.”
“I am Cormac O’Daly,” said the other, bowing with proud humility. “An O’Mahony has had an O’Daly to chronicle his deeds of valor and daring, to sing his praises of person and prowess, since ages before Kian fought at Clontarf and married the daughter of the great Brian Boru. Oppression and poverty, sir, have diminished the position of the bard in most parts of Ireland, I’m informed. All the O’Dalys that informer times were bards to The O’Neill in Ulster, The O’Reilly of Brefny, The MacCarthy in Desmond and The O’Farrell of Annaly—faith, they’ve disappeared from the face of the earth. But in Muirisc—glory be to the Lord!—. there’s still an O’Daly to welcome the O’Mahony back and sing the celebration of his achievements.”
“Sort o’ song-and-dance man, then, eh?” said The O’Mahony. “Well, after dinner we’ll push the table back an’ give you a show. But let’s eat first.”
The little man for the moment turned upon the speaker a glance of surprise, which seemed to have in it the elements of pain. Then he spoke, as if reassured:
“Ah, sir, in America, where I’m told the Irish are once more a rich and powerful people, our ancient nobility would have their bards, with rale harps and voices for singing. But in this poor country it’s only a mettyphorical existence a bard can have. Whin I spoke the word ‘song,’ my intintion was allegorical. Sure, ’tis drivin’ you from the house I’d be after doing, were I to sing in the ginuine maning of the word. But I have here some small verses which I composed this day, while I was waitin’ in the pig-market, that you might not be indisposed to listen to, and to accept.”
O’Daly drew from his waistcoat pocket a sheet of soiled and crumpled paper forthwith, on which some lines had been scrawled in pencil. Smoothing this out upon the table, he donned a pair of big, hornrimmed spectacles, and proceeded to decipher and slowly read out the following, the while the others ate and, marveling much, listened:
I.
“What do the gulls scream as they wheel
Along Dunmanus’ broken shore?
What do the west winds, keening shrill,
Call to each othir for evermore?
From Muirisc’s reeds, from Goleen’s weeds,
From Gabriel’s summit, Skull’s low lawn,
The echoes answer, through their tears,
‘O’Mahony’s gone! O’Mahony’s gone!’
II.
“But now the sunburst brightens all,
The clouds are lifted, waters gleam,
Long pain forgotten, glad tears fall,
At waking from this evil dream.
The cawing rooks, the singing brooks,
The zephyr’s sighs, the bee’s soft hum,
All tell the tale of our delight—
O’Mahony’s come! O’Mahony’s come!
III.
“O’Mahony of the white-foamed coast,
Of Kinalmeaky’s nut-brown plains,
Lord of Rosbrin, proud Raithlean’s boast,
Who over the waves and the sea-mist reigns.
Let Clancy quake! O’Driscoll shake!
The O’Casey hide his head in fear!
While Saxons flee across the sea—
O’Mahony’s here! O’Mahony’s here!”
The bard finished his reading with a trembling voice, and looked at his auditors earnestly through moistened eyes. The excitement had brought a dim flush of color upon his leathery cheeks where the blue-black line of close shaving ended.
“It’s to be sung to the chune of ‘The West’s Awake!’” he said at last, with diffidence.
“You did that all with your own jack-knife, eh?” remarked the The O’Mahony, nodding in approbation. “Well, sir, it’s darned good!”
“Then you’re plased with it, sir?” asked the poet.
“‘Pleased!’ Why, man, if I’d known they felt that way about it, I’d have come years ago. ‘Pleased?’ Why it’s downright po’try.”
“Ah, that it is, sir,” put in Jerry, sympathetically. “And to think of it that he did it all in the pig-market whiles he waited for us! Egor! ’twould take me the best part of a week to conthrive as much!”
O’Daly glanced at him with severity.
“Maybe more yet,” he said, tersely, and resumed his long-interrupted meal.
“And you’re goin’ to be around all the while, eh, ready to turn these poems out on short notice?” the O’Mahony asked.
“Sir, an O’Daly’s poor talents are day and night at the command of the O’Mahony of Muirisc,” the bard replied. Then, scanning Jerry, he put a question:
“Is Mr. Higgins long with you, sir?”
“Oh, yes; a long while,” answered The O’Mahony, without a moment’s hesitation. “Yes—I wouldn’t know how to get along without him—he’s been one of the family so long, now.”
The near-sighted poet failed to observe the wink which was exchanged across the table.
“The name Higgins,” he remarked, “is properly MacEgan. It is a very honorable name. They were hereditary Brehons or judges, in both Desmond and Ormond, and, later, in Connaught, too. The name is also called O’Higgins and O’Hagan. If you would permit me to suggest, sir,” he went on, “it would be betther at Muirisc if Mr. Higgins were to resume his ancestral appellation, and consint to be known as MacEgan. The children there are that well grounded in Irish history, the name would secure for him additional respect in their eyes. And moreover, sir, saving Mr. Higgins’s feelings, I observed that you called him ‘Jerry.’ Now ‘Jerry’ is appropriate when among intimate friends or relations, or bechune master and man—and its more ceremonious form, Jeremiah, is greatly used in the less educated parts of this country. But, sir, Jeremiah is, strictly speaking, no name for an Irishman at all, but only the cognomen of a Hebrew bard who followed the Israelites into captivity, like Owen Ward did the O’Neils into exile. It’s a base and vulgar invintion of the Saxons—this new Irish Jeremiah—for why? because their thick tongues could not pronounce the beautiful old Irish name Diarmid or Dermot. Manny poor people for want of understanding, forgets this now. But in Muirisc the laste intelligent child knows betther. Therefore, I would suggest that when we arrive at your ancesthral abode, sir, Mr. Higgins’s name be given as Diarmid MacEgan.”
“An’ a foine bould name it is, too!” said Jerry. “Egor! if I’m called that, and called rigular to me males as well, I’ll put whole inches to my stature.”
“Well, O’Daly,” said The O’Mahony, “you just run that part of the show to suit yourself. If you hear of anything that wants changin’ any time, or whittlin’ down or bein’ spelt different, you can interfere right then an’ there without sayin’ anything to me. What I want is to have things done correct, even if we’re out o’ pocket by it. You’re the agent of the estate, ain’t you?”
“I am that, sir; and likewise the postmaster, the physician, the precepthor, the tax-collector, the clerk of the parish, the poor law guardian and the attorney; not to mintion the proud hereditary post to which I’ve already adverted, that of bard and historian to The O’Mahony. But, sir, I see that your family carriage is at the dure. We’ll be startin’ now, if it’s your pleazure. It’s a long journey we’ve before us.”
When the bill had been called for and paid by O’Daly, and they had reached the street, The O’Mahony surveyed with a lively interest the strange vehicle drawn up at the curb before him. In principle it was like the outside cars he had yesterday seen for the first time, but much lower, narrower and longer. The seats upon which occupants were expected to place themselves back to back, were close together, and cushioned only with worn old pieces of cow-skin. Between the shafts was a shaggy and unkempt little beast, which was engaged in showing its teeth viciously at the children and the dog. The whole equipage looked a century old at the least.
At the end of four hours the rough-coated pony was still scurrying along the stony road at a rattling pace. It had galloped up the hills and raced down into the valleys with no break of speed from the beginning. The O’Mahony, grown accustomed now to maintaining his seat, thought he had never seen such a horse before, and said so to O’Daly, who sat beside him, Jerry and the bag being disposed on the opposite side, and the driver, a silent, round-shouldered, undersized young man sitting in front with his feet on the shafts.
“Ah, sir, our bastes are like our people hereabouts,” replied the bard—“not much to look at, but with hearts of goold. They’ll run till they fall. But, sir—halt, now, Malachy!—yonder you can see Muirisc.”
The jaunting-car stopped. The April twilight was gathering in the clear sky above them, and shadows were rising from the brown bases of the mountains to their right. The whole journey had been through a bleak and desolate moor and bog land, broken here and there by a lonely glen, in the shelter of which a score of stone hovels were clustered, and to which all attempts at tillage were confined.
Now, as The O’Mahony looked, he saw stretched before him, some hundred feet below, a great, level plain, from which, in the distance, a solitary mountain ridge rose abruptly. This plain was wedgeshaped, and its outlines were sharply defined by the glow of evening light upon the waters surrounding it—waters which dashed in white-breakers against the rocky coast nearest by, but seemed to lie in placid quiescence on the remote farther shore.
It was toward this latter dark line of coast, half-obscured now as they gazed by rising sea-mists, that O’Daly pointed; and The O’Mahony, scanning the broad, dusky landscape, made out at last some flickering sparks of reddish light close to where the waters met the land.
“See, O’Mahoney, see!” the little man cried, his claw-like hand trembling as he pointed. “Those lights burned there for Kian when he never returned from Clontarf, eight hundred years ago; they are burning there now for you!”
CHAPTER VII—THE O’MAHONY’S HOME-WELCOME.
The road from the brow of the hill down to the plain wound in such devious courses through rock-lined defiles and bog-paths shrouded with stunted tangles of scrub-trees, that an hour elapsed before The O’Mahony again saw the fires which had been lighted to greet his return. This hour’s drive went in silence, for the way was too rough for talk. Darkness fell, and then the full moon rose and wrapped the wild landscape in strange, misty lights and weird shadows.
All at once the car emerged from the obscurity of overhanging trees and bowlders, and the travellers found themselves in the very heart of the hamlet of Muirisc. The road they had been traversing seemed to have come suddenly to an end in a great barn-yard, in the center of which a bonfire was blazing, and around which, in the reddish flickering half-lights, a lot of curiously shaped stone buildings, little and big, old and new, were jumbled in sprawling picturesqueness.
About the fire a considerable crowd of persons were gathered—thin, little men in long coats and knee-breeches; old, white-capped women with large, black hooded cloaks; younger women with crimson petticoats and bare feet and ankles, children of all sizes and ages clustering about their skirts—perhaps a hundred souls in all. Though The O’Mahony had very little poetic imagination or pictorial sensibility, he was conscious that the spectacle was a curious one.
As the car came to a stop, O’Daly leaped lightly to the ground, and ran over to the throng by the bonfire.
“Now thin!” he called out, with vehemence, “have ye swallowed ye’re tongues? Follow me now! Cheers for The O’Mahony! Now thin! One—two—”
The little man waved his arms, and at the signal, led by his piping voice, the assembled villagers sent up a concerted shout, which filled the shadowed rookeries round about with rival echoes of “hurrahs” and “hurroos,” and then broke, like an exploding rocket, into a shower of high pitched, unintelligible ejaculations.
Amidst this welcoming chorus of remarks, which he could not understand, The O’Mahony alighted, and walked toward the fire, closely followed by Jerry, and by Malachy, the driver, bearing the bags.
For a moment he almost feared to be overthrown by the spontaneous rush which the black-cloaked old women made upon him, clutching at his arms and shoulders and deafening his ears with a babel of outlandish sounds. But O’Daly came instantly to his rescue, pushing back the eager crones with vigorous roughness, and scolding them in two languages in sharp peremptory tones.
“Back there wid ye, Biddy Quinn! Now thin, ould deludherer, will ye hould yer pace! Come along out o’ that, Pether’s Mag! Lave his honor a free path, will ye!” Thus, with stern remonstrance, backed by cuffs and pushes, O’Daly cleared the way, and The O’Mahony found himself half-forced, half-guided away from the fire and toward a tall and sculptured archway, which stood, alone, quite independent of any adjoining wall, upon the nearest edge of what he took to be the barnyard.
Passing under this impressive mediæval gateway, he confronted a strange pile of buildings, gray and hoar in the moonlight where their surface was not covered thick with ivy. There were high pinnacles thrusting their jagged points into the sky line, which might be either chimneys or watch-towers; there were lofty gabled walls, from which the roofs had fallen; there were arched window-holes, through which vines twisted their umbrageous growth unmolested; and side by side with these signs of bygone ruin, there were puzzling tokens of present occupation.
A stout, elderly woman, in the white, frilled cap of her district, with a shawl about her shoulders and a bright-red skirt, stood upon the steps of what seemed the doorway of a church, bowing to the new-comer. Behind her, in the hall, glowed the light of a hospitable, homelike fire.
“It is his honor come back to his own, Mrs. Sullivan,” the stranger heard O’Daly’s voice call out.
“And it’s kindly welcome ye are, sir,” said the woman, bowing again. “Yer honor doen’t remimber me, perhaps. I was Nora O’Mara, thin, in the day whin ye were a wee bit of a lad, before your father and mother—God rest their sowls!—crossed the say.”
“I’m afraid I doen’t jest place you,” said The O’Mahony. “I’m the worst hand in the world at rememberin’ faces.”
The woman smiled.
“Molare! It’s not be me face that anny boy of thirty years back ’ud recognize me now,” she said, as she led the way for the party into the house. “There were thim that had a dale of soft-sawderin’ words to spake about it thin; but they’ve left off this manny years ago.”
“It’s your cooking and your fine housekeeping that we do be praising now with every breath, Mrs. Sullivan; and sure that’s far more complimintary to you than mere eulojums on skin-deep beauty, that’s here to-day and gone to-morrow, and that was none o’ your choosing at best,” said O’Daly, as they entered the room at the end of the passage.
“Thrue for you, Cormac O’Daly,” the housekeeper responded, with twinkling eyes; “and I’m thinkin’, if we’d all of us the choosin’ of new faces, what an altered appearance you’d presint, without delay.”
A bright, glowing bank of peat on the hearth filled the room with cozy comfort.
It was a small, square chamber, roofed with blackened oak beams, and having arched doors and windows. Its walls, partly of stone, partly of plaster roughly scratched, were whitewashed. The sanded floor was bare, save for a cowskin mat spread before the fire. A high, black-wood sideboard at one end of the room, a half-dozen stiffbacked, uncompromising looking chairs, and a table in the center, heaped with food, but without a cloth, completed the inventory of visible furniture.
Mrs. O’Sullivan bustled out of the room, leaving the men together. The O’Mahony sent a final inquisitive glance from ceiling to uncarpeted floor.
“So this is my ranch, eh?” he said, taking off his hat.
“Sir, you’re welcome to the ancesthral abode of the O’Mahony’s of Muirisc,” answered O’Daly, gravely. “The room we stand in often enough sheltered stout Conagher O’Mahony, before confiscation dhrove him forth, and the ruffian Boyle came in. ’Tis far oldher, sir, than Ballydesmond or even Dunmanus.”
“So old, the paper seems to have all come off’n the walls,” said The O’Mahony. “Well, we’ll git in a rocking-chair or so and a rag-carpet and new paper, an’ spruce her up generally. I s’pose there’s lots o’ more room in the house.”
“Well, sir, rightly spakin’, there is a dale more, but it’s mostly not used, by rayson of there being no roof overhead. There’s this part of the castle that’s inhabitable, and there’s a part of the convent forninst the porch where the nuns live, but there’s more of both, not to mintion the church, that’s ruined entirely. Whatever your taste in ruins may plase to be, there’ll be something here to delight you. We have thim that’s a thousand years old, and thim that’s fallen into disuse since only last winter. Anny kind you like: Early Irish, pray-Norman, posht-Norman, Elizabethan, Georgian, or very late Victorian—here the ruins are for you, the natest and most complate and convanient altogether to be found in Munster.”
The eyes of the antiquarian bard sparkled with enthusiasm as he recounted the architectural glories of Muirisc. There was no answering glow in the glance of The O’Mahony.
“I’ll have a look round first thing in the morning,” he said, after the men had seated themselves at the table.
A bright-faced, neatly clad girl divided with Mrs. O’Sullivan the task of bringing the supper from the kitchen beyond into the room; but it was Malachy, wearing now a curiously shapeless long black coat, instead of his driver’s jacket, who placed the dishes on the table, and for the rest stood in silence behind his new master’s chair.
The O’Mahony grew speedily restless under the consciousness of Malachy’s presence close at his back.
“We can git along without him, can’t we?” he asked O’Daly, with a curt backward nod.
“Ah, no, sir,” pleaded the other. “The boy ’ud be heart-broken if ye sint him away. ’Twas his grandfather waited on your great-uncle’s cousin, The O’Mahony of the Double Teeth; and his father always served your cousins four times removed, who aich in his turn held the title; and the old man sorrowed himsilf to death whin the last of ’em desaysed, and your honor couldn’t be found, and there was no more an O’Mahony to wait upon. The grief of that good man wud ’a’ brought tears to your eyes. There was no keeping him from the dhrink day or night, sir, till he made an ind to him-silf. And young Malachy, sir, he’s composed of the same determined matarial.”
“Well, of course, if he’s so much sot on it as all that,” said The O’Mahony, relenting. “But I wanted to feel free to talk over affairs with you—money matters and so on; and—”
“Ah, sir, no fear about Malachy. Not a word of what we do be saying does he comprehind.”
“Deef and dumb, eh?”
“Not at all; but he has only the Irish.” In answer to O’Mahony’s puzzled look, O’Daly added in explanation: “It’s the glory of Muirisc, sir, that we hould fast be our ancient thraditions and tongue. In all the place there’s not rising a dozen that could spake to you in English. And—I suppose your honor forgets the Irish entoirely? Or perhaps your parents neglected to tache it to you?”
“Yes,” said The O’Mahony; “they never taught me any Irish at all; leastways, not that I remember.”
“Luk at that now!” exclaimed O’Daly, sadly, as he took more fish upon his plate.
“It’s goin’ to be pritty rough sleddin’ for me to git around if nobody understands what I say, ain’t it?” asked The O’Mahony, doubtfully.
“Oh, not at all,” O’Daly made brisk reply. “It’s part of my hereditary duty to accompany you on all your travels and explorations and incursions, to keep a record of the same, and properly celebrate thim in song and history. The last two O’Mahonys betwixt ourselves, did nothing but dhrink at the pig-market at Dunmanway once a week, and dhrink at Mike Leary’s shebeen over at Ballydivlin the remainding days of the week, and dhrink here at home on Sundays. To say the laste, this provided only indifferent opportunities for a bard. But plase the Lord bether times have come, now.”
Malachy had cleared the dishes from the board, and now brought forward a big square decanter, a sugar-bowl, a lemon fresh cut in slices, three large glasses and one small one. O’Daly at this lifted a steaming copper kettle from the crane over the fire, and began in a formally ceremonious and deliberate manner the brewing of the punch. The O’Mahony watched the operation with vigilance. Then clay pipes and tobacco were produced, and Malachy left the room.
“What I wanted to ask about,” said The O’Mahony, after a pause, and between sips from his fragrant glass, “was this: That lawyer, Carmody, didn’t seem to know much about what the estate was worth, or how the money came in, or anything else. All he had to do, he said, was to snoop around and find out where I was. All the rest was in your hands. What I want to know is jest where I stand.”
“Well, sir, that’s not hard to demonsthrate. You’re The O’Mahony of Muirisc. You own in freehold the best part of this barony—some nine thousand acres. You have eight-and-thirty tinants by lasehold, at a total rintal of close upon four hundred pounds; turbary rights bring in rising twinty pounds; the royalty on the carrigeens bring ten pounds; your own farms, with the pigs, the barley, the grazing and the butter, produce annually two hundred pounds—a total of six hundred and thirty pounds, if I’m not mistaken.”
“How much is that in dollars?”
“About three thousand one hundred and fifty dollars, sir.”
“And that comes in each year?” said The O’Mahony, straightening himself in his chair.
“It does that,” said O’Daly; then, after a pause, he added dryly: “and goes out again.”
“How d’ye mean?”
“Sir, the O’Mahonys are a proud and high-minded race, and must live accordingly. And aich of your ancestors, to keep up his dignity, borrowed as much money on the blessed land as ever he could raise, till the inthrest now ates up the greater half of the income. If you net two hundred pounds a year—that is to say, one thousand dollars—you’re doing very well indeed. In the mornin’ I’ll be happy to show you all me books and Mrs. Fergus O’Mahony.”
“Who’s she?”
“The sister of the last of The O’Mahonys before you, sir, who married another of the name only distantly related, and has been a widow these five years, and would be owner of the estate if her brother had broken the entail as he always intinded, and never did by rayson that there was so much dhrinking and sleeping and playing ‘forty-five’ at Mike Leary’s to be done, he’d no time for lawyers. Mrs. Fergus has been having the use of the property since his death, sir, being the nearest visible heir.”
“And so my comin’ threw her out, eh? Did she take it pritty hard?”
“Sir, loyalty to The O’Mahony is so imbedded in the brest of every sowl in Muirisc, that if she made a sign to resist your pretinsions, her own frinds would have hooted her. She may have some riservations deep down in her heart, but she’s too thrue an O’Mahony to revale thim.”
More punch was mixed, and The O’Mahony was about to ask further questions concerning the widow he had dispossessed, when the door opened and a novel procession entered the room.
Three venerable women, all of about the same height, and all clad in a strange costume of black gowns and sweeping black vails, their foreheads and chins covered with stiff bands of white linen, and long chains of beads ending in a big silver-gilt cross swinging from their girdles, advanced in single file toward the table—then halted, and bowed slightly.
O’Daly and Jerry had risen to their feet upon the instant of this curious apparition, but the The O’Mahony kept his seat, and nodded with amiability.
“How d’ do?” he said, lightly. “It’s mighty neighborly of you to run in like this, without knockin’, or standin’ on ceremony. Won’t you sit down, ladies? I guess you can find chairs.”
“These are the Ladies of the Hostage’s Tears, your honor,” O’Daly hastened to explain, at the same time energetically winking and motioning to him to stand.
But The O’Mahony did not budge.
“I’m glad to see you,” he assured the nuns once more. “Take a seat, won’t you? O’Daly here’ll mix you up one o’ these drinks o’ his’n, I’m sure, if you’ll give the word.”
“We thank you, O’Mahony,” said the foremost of the aged women, in a deep, solemn voice, but paying no heed to the chairs which O’Daly and Jerry had dragged forward. “We come solely to do obeisance to you as the heir and successor of our pious founder, Diarmid of the Fine Steeds, and to presint to you your kinswoman—our present pupil, and the solitary hope of our once renowned order.”
The O’Mahony gathered nothing of her meaning from this lugubrious wail of words, and glanced over the speaker’s equally aged companions in vain for any sign of hopefulness, solitary or otherwise. Then he saw that the hindmost of the nuns had produced, as if from the huge folds of her black gown, a little girl of six or seven, clad in the same gloomy tint, whom she was pushing forward.
The child advanced timidly under pressure, gazing wonderingly at The O’Mahony, out of big, heavily fringed hazel eyes. Her pale face was made almost chalk-like by contrast with a thick tangle of black hair, and wore an expression of apprehensive shyness almost painful to behold.
The O’Mahony stretched out his hands and smiled, but the child hung back, and looked not in the least reassured. He asked her name with an effort at jovialty.
“Kate O’Mahony, sir,” she said, in a low voice, bending her little knees in a formal bob of courtesy.
“And are you goin’ to rig yourself out in those long gowns and vails, too, when you grow up, eh, siss?” he asked.
“The daughters of The O’Mahonys of Muirisc, with only here and there a thrifling exception, have been Ladies of the Hostage’s Tears since the order was founded here in the year of Our Lord 1191,” said the foremost nun, stiffly. “After long years, in which it seemed as if the order must perish, our prayers were answered, and this child of The O’Mahonys was sent to us, to continue the vows and obligations of the convent, and restore it, if it be the saints’ will, to its former glory.”
“Middlin’ big job they’ve cut out for you, eh, siss?” commented The O’Mahony, smilingly.
The pleasant twinkle in his eye seemed to attract the child. Her face lost something of its scared look, and she of her own volition moved a step nearer to his outstretched hands. Then he caught her up and seated her on his knee.
“So you’re goin’ to sail in, eh, an’ jest make the old convent hum again? Strikes me that’s a pritty chilly kind o’ look-out for a little gal like you. Wouldn’t you now, honest Injun, rather be whoopin’ round barefoot, with a nanny-goat, say, an’ some rag dolls, an’—an’—climbin’ trees an’ huntin’ after eggs in the hay-mow—than go into partnership with grandma, here, in the nun business?”
The O’Mahony had trotted the child gently up and down, the while he propounded his query. Perhaps it was its obscure phraseology which prompted her to hang her head, and obstinately refuse to lift it even when he playfully put his finger under her chin. She continued to gaze in silence at the floor; but if the nuns could have seen her face they would have noted that presently its expression lightened and its big eyes flashed, as The O’Mahony whispered something into her ear. The good women would have been shocked indeed could they also have heard that something.
“Now don’t you fret your gizzard, siss,” he had whispered—“you needn’t be a nun for one solitary darned minute, if you don’t want to be.”
CHAPTER VIII—TWO MEN IN A BOAT.
A fishing-boat lay at anchor in a cove of Dun-manus Bay, a hundred rods from shore, softly rising and sinking with the swell of the tide which stirred the blue waters with all gentleness on this peaceful June morning. Two men sat in lounging attitudes at opposite ends of the little craft, yawning lazily in the sunshine. They held lines in their hands, but their listless and wandering glances made it evident that nothing was further from their thoughts than the catching of fish.
The warm summer air was so clear that the hamlet of Muirisc, whose gray walls, embroidered with glossy vines, and tiny cottages white with lime-wash were crowded together on the very edge of the shore, seemed close beside them, and every grunt and squawk from sty or barn-yard came over the lapping waters to them as from a sounding-board. The village, engirdled by steep, sheltering cliffs, and glistening in the sunlight, made a picture which artists would have blessed their stars for. The two men in the boat looked at it wearily.
“Egor, it’s my belafe,” said the fisher at the bow, after what seemed an age of idle silence, “that the fishes have all follied the byes an’ gerrels, an’ betaken thimselves to Ameriky.” He pulled in his line, and gazed with disgust at the intact bait. “Luk at that, now!” he continued. “There’s a male fit for the holy Salmon of Knowledge himsilf, that taught Fin MacCool the spache of animals, and divil a bite has the manest shiner condiscinded to make at it.”
“Oh, darn the fish!” replied the other, with a long sigh. “I don’t care whether we catch’ any or not. It’s worth while to come out here even if we never get a nibble and baked ourselves into bricks, jest to get rid of that infernal O’Daly.”
It was The O’Mahony who spake, and he invested the concluding portion of his remark with an almost tearful earnestness. During the pause which ensued he chewed vigorously upon the tobacco in his mouth, and spat into the sea with a stern expression of countenance.
“I tell you what, Jerry,” he broke out with at last—“I can’t stand much more of that fellow. He’s jest breakin’ me up piecemeal. I begin to feel like Jeff Davis—that it ’ud have bin ten dollars in my pocket if I’d never bin born.”
“Ah, sure, your honor,” said Jerry, “ye’ll git used to it in time. He manes for the best.”
“That’s jest what makes me tired,” rejoined The O’Mahony; “that’s what they always said about a fellow when he makes a confounded nuisance of himself. I hate fellows that mean for the best. I’d much rather he meant as bad as he knew how. P’raps then he’d shut up and mind his own business, and leave me alone part of the time. It’s bad enough to have your estate mortgaged up to the eyebrows, but to have a bard piled on top o’ the mortgages—egad, it’s more’n flesh and blood can stand! I don’t wonder them other O’Mahonys took to drink.”
“There’s a dale to be said for the dhrink, your honor,” commented the other, tentatively.
“There can be as much said as you like,” said The O’Mahony, with firmness, “but doin’ is a hoss of another color. I’m goin’ to stick to the four drinks a day an’ two at night; an’ what’s good enough for me’s good enough for you. That bat of ours the first week we come settled the thing. I said to myself: ‘There’s goin’ to be one O’Mahony that dies sober, or I’ll know the reason why!’”
“Egor, Saint Pether won’t recognize ye, thin,” chuckled Jerry; and the other grinned grimly in spite of himself.
“Do you know I’ve bin fig’rin’ to myself on that convent business,” The O’Mahony mused aloud, after a time, “an’ I guess I’ve pritty well sized it up. The O’Mahonys started that thing, accordin’ to my notion, jest to coop up their sisters in, where board and lodgin’ ’ud come cheap, an’ one suit o’ clothes ’ud last a lifetime, in order to leave more money for themselves for whisky. I ain’t sayin’ the scheme ain’t got some points about it. You bar out all that nonsense about bonnets an’ silk dresses an’ beads an’ fixin’s right from the word go, and you’ve got ’em safe under lock an’ key, so ’t they can’t go gallivantin’ round an’ gittin’ into scrapes. But I’ll be dodrotted if I’m goin’ to set still an’ see ’em capture that little gal Katie agin her will. You hear me! An’ another thing, I’m goin’ to put my foot down about goin’ to church every mornin’. Once a week’s goin’ to be my ticket right from now. An’ you needn’t show up any oftener yourself if you don’t want to. It’s high time we had it out whether it’s me or O’Daly that’s runnin’ this show.”
“Sure, rightly spakin’, your honor’s own sowl wouldn’t want no more than a mass aich Sunday,” expounded Jerry, concentrating his thoughts upon the whole vast problem of dogmatic theology. “But this is the throuble of it, you see, sir: there’s the sowls of all thim other O’Mahonys that’s gone before, that the nuns do be prayin’ for to git out of purgatory, an’—”
“That’s all right,” broke in The O’Mahony, “but my motto is: let every fellow hustle for himself. They’re on the spot, wherever it is, an’ they’re the best judges of what they want; an’ if they ain’t got sand enough to sail in an’ git it, I don’t see why I should be routed up out of bed every mornin’ at seven o’clock to help ’em. To tell the truth, Jerry, I’m gittin’ all-fired sick of these O’Mahonys. This havin’ dead men slung at you from mornin’ to night, day in an’ day out, rain or shine, would have busted up Job himself.”
“I’m thinking, sir,” said Jerry, with a merry twinkle in his eyes, “there’s no havin’ annything in this worruld without payin’ for that same. ’Tis the pinalty of belongin’ to a great family. Egor, since O’Daly thranslated me into a MacEgan I’ve had no pace of me life, by rayson of the necessity to demane mesilf accordin’.”
“Why, darn it all, man,” pursued the other, “I can’t do a solitary thing, any time of day, without O’Daly luggin’ up what some old rooster did a thousand years ago. He follows me round like my shadow, blatherin’ about what Dermid of the Bucking Horses did, an’ what Conn of the Army Mules thought of doin’ and didn’t, and what Finn of the Wall-eyed Pikes would have done if he could, till I git sick at my stomach. He won’t let me lift my ‘finger to do anything, because The O’Mahony mustn’t sile his hands with work, and I have to stand round and watch a lot of bungling cusses pretend to do it, when they don’t know any more about the work than a yellow dog.”
“Faith, ye’ll not get much sympathy from the gintry of Ireland on that score,” said Jerry.
“An’ then that Malachy—he gives me a cramp! he ain’t got a grin in his whole carcass, an’ he can’t understand a word that I say, so that O’Daly has that for another excuse to hang around all the while. Take my steer, Jerry; if anybody leaves you an estate, you jest inquire if there’s a bard and a hereditary dumb waiter that go with it; an’ if there is, you jest sashay off somewhere else.”
“Ah, sir, but an estate’s a great thing.”
“Yes—to tell about. But now jest look at the thing as she stands. I’m the O’Mahony an’ all that, an’ I own more land than you can shake a stick at; but what does it all come to? Why, when the int’rest is paid, I am left so poor that if churches was sellin’ at two cents apiece, I couldn’t buy the hinge on a contribution box. An’ then it’s downright mortifyin’ to me to have to git a livin’ by takin’ things away from these poverty-stricken devils here. I’m ashamed to look ’em in the face, knowin’ as I do how O’Daly makes ’em whack up pigs, an’ geese, an’ chickens, an’ vegetables, an’ fish, not to mention all the money they can scrape together, just to keep me in idleness. It ain’t fair. Every time one of ’em comes in, to bring me a peck o’ peas, or a pail o’ butter, or a shillin’ that he’s managed to earn somewhere, I say to myself: ‘Ole hoss, if you was that fellow, and he was loafin’ round as The O’Mahony, you’d jest lay for him and kick the whole top of his head off, and serve him darned well right, too.’”
Jerry looked at his master now with a prolonged and serious scrutiny, greatly differing from his customary quizzical glance.
“Throo for your honor,” he said at last, in a hesitating way, as if his remark disclosed only half his thought.
“Yes, sirree, I’m sourin’ fast on the hull thing,” The O’Mahony exclaimed. “To do nothin’ all day long but to listen to O’Daly’s yarns, an’ make signs at Malachy, an’ think how long it is between drinks—that ain’t no sort o’ life for a white man. Egad! if there was any fightin’ goin’ on anywhere in the world, darn me if I would not pull up stakes an’ light out for it. Another six months o’ this, an’ my blood’ll all be turned to butter-milk.”
The distant apparition of a sailing-vessel hung upon the outer horizon, the noon sun causing the white squares of canvas to glow like jewels upon the satin sheen of the sea. Jerry stole a swift glance at his companion, and then bent a tong meditative gaze upon the passing vessel, humming softly to himself as he looked. At last he turned to his companion with an air of decision.
“O’Mahony,” he said, using the name thus for the first time, “I’m resolved in me mind to disclose something to ye. It’s a sacret I’m goin’ to tell you.”
He spoke with impressive solemnity, and the other looked up with interest awakened.
“Go ahead,” he said.
“Well, sir, your remarks this day, and what I’ve seen wid me own eyes of your demaynor, makes it plane that you’re a frind of Ireland. Now there’s just wan way in the worruld for a frind of Ireland to demonsthrate his affection—and that’s be enrollin’ himsilf among thim that’ll fight for her rights. Sir, I’ll thrust ye wid me sacret. I’m a Fenian.”
The O’Mahony’s attentive face showed no light of comprehension. The word which Jerry had uttered with such mystery conveyed no meaning to him at all at first; then he vaguely recalled it as a sort of slang description of Irishmen in general, akin to “Mick” and “bogtrotter.”
“Well, what of it?” he asked, wonderingly.
Jerry’s quick perception sounded at once the depth of his ignorance.
“The Fenians, sir,” he explained, “are a great and sacret society, wid tins of thousands of min enlisted here, an’ in Ameriky, an’ among the Irish in England, wid intint to rise up as wan man whin the time comes, an’ free Ireland. It’s a regular army, sir, that we’re raisin’, to conquer back our liberties, and dhrive the bloody Saxon foriver away from Erin’s green shores.”
The O’Mahony let his puzzled gaze wander along the beetling coast-line of naked rocks.
“So far’s I can see, they ain’t green,” he said; “they’re black and drab. An’ who’s this fellow you call Saxon? I notice O’Daly lugs him into about every other piece o’ po’try he nails me with, evenin’s.”
“Sir, it’s our term for the Englishman, who oppreases us, an’ dhrives us to despair, an’ prevints our holdin’ our hieads up amongst the nations of the earth. Sure, sir, wasn’t all this counthry roundabout for a three days’ journey belongin’ to your ancesthors, till the English stole it and sold it to Boyle, that thief of the earth—and his tomb, be the same token, I’ve seen many a time at Youghal, where I was born. But—awh, sir, what’s the use o’ talkin’? Sure, the blood o’ the O’Mahonys ought to stir in your veins at the mere suspicion of an opporchunity to sthrike a blow for your counthry.” The O’Mahony yawned and stretched his long arms lazily in the sunshine.
“Nary a stir,” he said, with an idle half-grin. “But what the deuce is it you’re drivin’ at anyway?”
“Sir, I’ve towld ye we’re raisin’ an army—a great, thund’rin’ secret army—and whin it’s raised an’ our min all dhrilled an’ our guns an’ pikes all handy—sure, thin we’ll rise and fight. An’ it’s much mistaken I am in you, O’Mahony, if you’d be contint to lave this fun go on undher your nose, an’ you to have no hand in it.”
“Of course I want to be in it,” said The O’Mahony, evincing more interest. “Only I couldn’t make head or tail of what you was talkin’ about. An’ I don’t know as I see yet jest what the scheme is. But you can count me in on anything that’s got gunpowder in it, an’ that’ll give me somethin’ to do besides list’nin’ to O’Daly’s yawp.”
“We’ll go to Cork to-morrow, thin, if it’s convanient to you,” said Jerry, eagerly. “I’ll spake to my ‘B,’ or captain, that is, an’ inthroduce ye, through him, to the chief organizer of Munster, and sure, they’ll mak’ ye an’ ‘A,’ the same as a colonel, an’ I’ll get promotion undher ye—an’, Egor! we’ll raise a rigiment to oursilves entirely—an’ Muirisc’s the very darlin’ of a place to land guns an’ pikes an’ powdher for all Ireland—an’ ’tis we’ll get the credit of it, an’ get more promotion still, till, faith, there’ll be nothin’ too fine for our askin’, an’ we’ll carry the whole blessed Irish republic around in our waistcoat pocket. What the divil, man! We’ll make ye presidint, an’ I’ll have a place in the poliss.”
“All right,” said The O’Mahony, “we’ll git all the fun there is out of it; but there’s one thing, mind, that I’m jest dead set about.” ..
“Ye’ve only to name it, sir, an’ they’ll be de-loighted to plase ye.”
“Well, it’s this: O’Daly’s got to be ruled out o’ the thing. I’m goin’ to have one deal without any hereditary bard in it, or I don’t play.”