It was less than a year since I had seen Knockowen. But all seemed changed. Weeds and grass were on the paths, the flower-beds were unkempt, the fences were broken in places, damp stains were spread over the house front. Everywhere were signs of neglect and decay. Had I not known his honour to be a wealthy man, I should have supposed him an impecunious person with no income to maintain his property. As it was, there was some other cause to seek, and that cause I set down to the absence of Miss Kit.
Twice between the pier and the house I was challenged by sentries, and when I reached the door I noticed that the lower windows were shuttered and barred like those of a prison.
I announced myself to the servant who answered my summons as I had done to the sentinels, without giving my name, and was presently shown into his honour’s room at the back of the house, which, as all the shutters were closed, was lit by candles, though it was still daylight.
I was shocked to see how Mr Gorman was changed. The sly, surly expression had given place to a hunted, suspicious look. His face was haggard and pale and his beard unkempt. He started at any little sound, and his mouth, once firm, now looked weak and irresolute. Worse still, there was a flavour of spirits about the room and the man which told its own tale, and accounted for his bloodshot eyes and shaking fingers as he looked up.
“Gallagher!” he exclaimed, rising to his feet in evident panic; “what brings you here in this disguise? What have I ever done to you?”
“It is no disguise, your honour,” said I, in as reassuring a tone as I could assume. “I am Lieutenant Gallagher now.”
“And what do you want here? Why do you come in this sudden way? Go away, sir, and come when you are wanted! Where is my guard?”
And the poor man, whom the landlord at Rathmullan had well described as broken, actually put out his trembling hand to reach a pistol that lay on the table.
“You mistake me,” said I, paying no heed to the gesture. “I came merely on business, and if you like you can call your guard in. I’ve nothing to say that they need not hear.”
“You’re a good fellow, Gallagher,” said his honour, reassured. “I’m a little shaken in the nerves, and your coming was so sudden. I know you could mean no harm to your old benefactor.”
It made my heart bleed to hear him talk thus miserably, and I resolved to shorten the interview as much as I could.
“Stay and dine with me,” said he, as eager to keep me now as he was to be rid of me a minute ago; “it’s lonely, night after night, with no one to speak to and nowhere to go. You’ve heard, no doubt, I am a prisoner here.”
“How so, sir?”
“There’s a sentence of death out against me—not in the king’s name, but in the name of Tim Gallagher, your brother, captain of the rebels here.”
“In Tim’s name!” exclaimed I. “It’s false! I swear he never signed it; he is not even in the country.”
“Don’t be too sure of that. Anyway he’s their chosen leader, and they do all in his name. I daren’t go outside my own doors after dark for fear of a bullet.”
“The scoundrels!” cried I, starting up; “and they dare drag Tim’s name into their vile machinations. I tell you, Mr Gorman, Tim would no more wink at murder than—than Miss Kit would. And, by the way, sir, what of Miss Kit?”
He looked round with his haggard face.
“What is that to you, Gallagher?”
“I love her,” said I bluntly, “and so I have a right to know.”
“You! the son of Mike the boatman, and brother of Tim the rebel! You dare—”
I cut him short.
“See here, Maurice Gorman; understand me. With or without you I will find her, if I have to seek her to the world’s end. I’ve done so before now; remember how we parted last.”
“Oh,” said he, “I know all that, and of your meeting her in Holland and placing her in Biddy McQuilkin’s care. She wrote me all about that; and it’s little I owe you for it. Biddy belongs, body and soul, to the rebel faction.”
“But she wouldn’t let a hair of Miss Kit’s head be hurt for all that.”
“How do you know that, so long as I could be made to suffer by it?”
“Where are they now, then?” I asked eagerly.
“Till lately she was in Dublin, in the family of Lord Edward, who, traitor as he is, is at least a gentleman, and a distant kinsman into the bargain. She was happy there; and what sort of place was this to bring a girl to? But look here,” said he, getting up and fumbling in a drawer among some papers, “what do you say to this?” and he put a letter, written in a delicate female hand, before me. It read as follows:—
“To Maurice Gorman, Esquire.
“Sir,—With great sorrow I inform you that Miss Gorman, while walking yesterday evening in the Park with her attendant McQuilkin, was surrounded by a gang of masked men, and they were both carried away, whither we know not. We are in terrible distress, and sparing no effort to find the dear girl, whom Lord Edward and I had come to love as a sister. Be assured you shall receive such news as there may be. Lord Edward’s wrath knows no bounds, and he even risks his own liberty (for he is a marked man) in seeking for them.—I have the honour to be, sir, your obedient servant, Pamela Fitzgerald.”
“That is from Lady Edward,” said his honour. “Now read this.”
The paper he handed me now was a dirty and illiterate scrawl, without date or signature.
“Maris Gorman,—Take note your doghter is in safe hands, and will not be returnd till you take the oth of the Unyted Irishmen and pay 5 hundred pounds sterling to the fund. Allso note that unless you come in quickly, you will be shott like a dog, and the devil help you for a trayter to Ireland.”
“Now,” said he, with a gloomy smile, “you know as much of my daughter’s whereabouts as I do.”
“This is terrible news,” said I. “How is it you are not in Dublin at this moment, moving heaven and earth to find her?”
He laughed bitterly.
“It’s easy talking,” said he. “In the first place, I should be shot before I reached my own gate; I have been practically a prisoner here for weeks. In the next place, what could I do? Even if I took the oath, where is the money to come from?”
“Five hundred pounds is a small sum to a rich man like you.”
“Whoever calls me rich, lies,” said he testily, and with an uneasy gesture which explained to my mind the dilapidated state of the place. Maurice Gorman was not only a poltroon but a miser, and five hundred pounds were worth more to him than his own daughter.
“Is nothing being done?” said I. “Have you shown the letter to the authorities, or to Lord Edward?”
“What use?” said he. “I am on too ill terms with either to expect their help.”
“And so you intend to leave that poor girl to her fate?” I cried. “But if you will not move, I will!”
“What can I do?” said he wearily. “You know how I am fixed. Perhaps when I am shot they will let her go. Maybe that will be the simplest way out of it, after all.”
I could not help pitying him, much as I despised him, so miserably did he speak.
Then he began to talk about the state of the country, and of the bad odour he had fallen into with his brother magistrates.
“They suspect me of being in with the rebels, Gallagher, as if I had cause to love them. On my soul, if I’m to be suspected, it sometimes seems I might as well be so with reason as without. Suppose, for the sake of argument, Gallagher, I took their precious oath—suppose it, I say, how should I stand then? By all appearances, Ireland is going to be delivered; and it will be a bad day when she comes into her own for those who withstood her. Should I be worse off by joining them? I’m told they are ready to welcome any man of position and landed interest on their side. It might be an opportunity of doing some service to my fellow countrymen. Besides, when a daughter’s liberty is at stake, one does not stand at sacrifice. They hate me now because I have been instrumental in thwarting them. By winning me over they would be rid of an obstacle; and all the favour I have shown them in the past in the matter of the arms, and allowing some of them to slip through the fingers of the law, would stand to my credit. Why, Gallagher,” added he, growing quite excited at the vision, “in the new Irish Government I should be a man of mark; and my fortune, instead of being confiscated, would be my own, and at the service of my friends. Why, you and Tim—”
“Are you so sure that fortune is your own now?” said I, losing my self-restraint at last.
He turned a little whiter as he glared round at me.
“You mean that improbable story of the changeling at Kilgorman,” said he, with a forced laugh. “As pure moonshine as ever was, and beyond all proof even if it wasn’t.”
“You forget Biddy McQuilkin has been found.”
“Did she say anything?” he demanded.
“She did, on her oath.”
“And, pray, what was her version of this wonderful story?”
“She told me all I needed to know—that is, which of us two was Terence Gorman’s son.”
“And which is, pray?”
“That is my secret. Time will show.”
“What!” exclaimed he, “some new conspiracy to rob me? And one of the conspirators a man who presumes to my daughter’s hand! Come, Gallagher, let you and me understand each other. I defy you, or Biddy, or any one, to make good your story. But if you are frank with me, you won’t find me unreasonable. Let me see the documents.”
“In good time, sir,” said I. “Now, as to the smugglers.”
And we proceeded to talk about the object of our cruise. I found he had little news to give me, or else he chose to give little, and after a while I rose to go. He pressed me to stay the night, urging his solitude; but I had no desire to prolong the interview.
“We shall meet again,” said I; “and you may rely on hearing from me if I have any news of your daughter.”
We were out on the doorstep by this time. It was a beautiful, fresh evening, with a half-moon hanging above the opposite hills and sending a broad track of shimmering light across the lough.
“It’s a tempting night,” said he. “I’ve not taken the air for days. I’ve a good mind to see you to your boat.”
For all that, he looked round uneasily, with the air of a man who suspected a lurking foe in every rustling leaf.
“Two of you men follow,” said he to the sentries at the door. “Keep me in view. Ah, how fresh the air is after that close room! Yes, Gallagher, you were speaking of my daughter. Since she left me—keep in the shade, man, it’s safer—this place has been a hell to me. What’s the use of—what’s that?” he exclaimed, catching my arm; “it sounded like a man’s breathing. What’s the use of keeping it up, I say? I’ve a mind to—”
He got no further. We had emerged from the shady walk into the moonlit path leading down to the pier. The two sentinels were just discernible ahead, and the footsteps of the two behind followed us close. There was no other sound in the stillness but his honour’s quavering voice, and nothing stirring but the leaves of the trees and the waves of the lough as they broke gently on the beach.
Suddenly there rang out from the water’s edge the sharp crack of a gun, followed by a wild howl. Mr Gorman staggered forward a pace and fell on his face. There was a rapid swish of oars, two hurried shots from the sentries, and the phantom of a little boat as it darted out across the moon track and lost itself in the blackness of the shadows.
In a moment I was kneeling beside the body of the poor dying man. The shot had struck him in the breast, and the life-blood was oozing away fast. He was conscious as we tried to lift him.
“Let me lie here,” said he. “I’m safe here now.”
But by this time the soldiers had him in their arms, and were bearing him gently towards the house.
It was little a doctor could do if we had one, but a soldier was sent to Fahan to bring one, and to take word of the murder. Meanwhile we laid him on his bed, and I did what I could to stanch the bleeding and ease his suffering.
For half-an-hour he lay in a sort of stupor. Then he said,—
“Gallagher, I want to speak—Send the others away—no, keep one for a witness.”
We did as he desired, and waited for what was to come.
Several minutes passed; then he tried to lift his head, and said,—
“It is true that one of you is Terence Gorman’s boy, I knew it, but only Biddy knows which it is. I had no hand in Terence’s murder, nor had Mike Gallagher, though I tried to put it on him. Write that down quickly, and I’ll sign it.”
I wrote his words hurriedly down, and read them over; but when it came to putting the pen in his hand, he fell back, and I thought all was over. But after a few minutes he rallied again.
“Hold me up—guide my hand—it all swims before me.”
The paper with his woeful scrawl affixed lies before me at this moment as I write.
“Gallagher,” said he, more faintly yet, “be good to Kit, and forgive me.”
“God will do that, your honour,” whispered I.
“Pray for me.—Ah!” cried he, starting suddenly in bed, and throwing up his arm as if to ward off a blow, “I’ll take the oath, boys. You shall have the money. God save—”
And he fell back, dead.
Next day an inquiry was held which ended in nothing. No trace of the murderer was to be found, and no evidence but that of us who saw the tragedy with our own eyes. Plenty of folk, who had given him a wide berth living, crowded to the place to look at the dead Gorman; but in all their faces there was not one sign of pity or compunction—nay, worse, that very night, on Fanad and Knockalla bonfires were lit to celebrate his murder.
The next day we buried him. For miles round no one could be found willing to make his coffin, and in the end we had to lay him in a common soldier’s shell. Nor would any one lend horse or carriage to carry him to his grave, and we had to take him by boat to his resting-place, rowing it through the gathering storm with our own arms. The flag half-mast on the Gnat was the only sign of mourning; and when we bore the coffin up to the lonely graveyard on the cliff-top at Kilgorman, and laid it beside that of his lady, in the grave next to that of the murdered Terence, not a voice but mine joined in the “Amen” to the priest’s prayer.
When all was said and done, I lingered on, heedless of the wind and rain, in the deserted graveyard, full of the strange memories which the place and scene recalled.
Eight years ago I had stood here with Tim at the open grave of her whom we both called mother. And on that same day her ghostly footstep had sounded in our ears in the grim kitchen of Kilgorman, summoning us to a duty which was yet unfulfilled. What had not happened since then? The boatman’s boys were grown, one into the heir of half the lough-side, the other into a servant of his Majesty. Tim, entangled hand and foot in the toils of a miserable conspiracy, was indifferent to the fortune now lying at his feet; I, engaged in the task of hunting down the rebels of whom he was a leader, was eating my heart out for love of her who called by the sacred name of father the murdered man who lay here, to whom we owed all our troubles. Was the day never to dawn? Was there never to be peace between Tim and me? And was Kit, like some will-o’-the-wisp, always to be snatched from my reach whenever I seemed to have found her for my own?
I lingered beside his honour’s grave till the daylight failed and the waters of the lough merged into the stormy night, and the black gables of Kilgorman behind me lost themselves against the blacker sky. The weather suited my mood, and my spirits rose as the hard sleet struck my cheek and the buffet of the wind sweeping the cliff-top sent me staggering for support against the graveyard wall. It made me feel at home again to meet nature thus, and I know not how long I drank in courage for my sick heart that night.
At length I turned to go, before even it occurred to me that I had nowhere to go. The Gnat lay in the roadstead off Rathmullan, beyond reach that night. The cottage on Fanad was separated from me by a waste of boiling water. In Knockowen the bloodstains were not yet dry. Kilgorman—yes, there was no place else. I would shelter there till daylight summoned me to my post of duty on the Gnat. Looking back now, I can see that destiny led my footsteps thither.
As I turned towards the house, I thought I perceived in that direction a tiny spark of light, which vanished almost as soon as it appeared. Still more remarkable, a faint glimmer of light appeared in a small gable-window high up, where assuredly I had never before seen a light. It may have been on this account or from old association that, instead of approaching the place by the upper path, I descended the cliff and made my way round to the cave by which so many of my former visits had been paid. Fortunately the gale was an easterly one, so that the water in the cave was fairly still, and I was able in the dark to grope my way to the ledge on which the secret passage opened.
All was quiet when at last I reached the recess of the great hearth and peered out into the dark kitchen. By all appearance no one had looked into the place since I was there last a year ago and left my note for Tim, and found the mysterious message which warned me of the plot to carry off Miss Kit. I wondered if the former paper was still where I left it, and was about to step out of my hiding-place in search of a light, when the crunching of footsteps on the path without and the flitting of a lantern past a window sent me back suddenly into retirement.
A moment’s consideration told me that it was easy to guess who the intruders might be. The night that Maurice Gorman had been laid in his grave would be a grand night for the rebels of Fanad. And who could say whether the object of their meeting might not be to consider the fate of Miss Kit herself, who, now that her father was dead, was no longer a hostage or the price of a ransom in their hands? There might at least be news of her, and even of Tim.
So I stood close, and waited as still as a mouse.
I had not long to wait before the footsteps sounded in the long passage which led to the kitchen, and a dim streak of light appeared at the doorway. Two of the company, rather by their voices than their faces, I recognised—one as Martin, the other as Jake Finn, the treasurer of the rebels, whom I had last seen in this very place on the night that Paddy Corkill was appointed to waylay and shoot his honour on the Black Hill Road. The other two, who carried cutlasses at their belts, were strangers to me, but seemed to be men of importance in the rebel business. Evidently a fifth man was expected.
“Sure, he’ll come,” said one.
“It’s myself met him this blessed day no farther than Malin, and he promised he’d be here.”
“Did he know this about Gorman?”
“How should he? Sure, I didn’t know it myself. Besides, he’s just from the Foyle, and our news doesn’t travel east.”
“How will he take it?”
“Whisht!” cried Martin. “There he is.”
Three low taps sounded at the window, and Martin, taking the candle, hurried down the passage to admit the new arrival.
The other three men advanced to the door.
A quick, jaunty step sounded down the passage. The door opened, the men drew themselves up and saluted, Martin held the candle above his head, and there entered—Tim! At the sight of him the great fount of brotherhood that was in me welled up and nearly overflowed.
Tim was in the dress of a merchant sailor, and very handsome he looked, although the cut of his beard gave him a half-foreign look. His frame was knit harder than when I saw him last. His open face, tanned by the weather, was as fearless and serene as ever, and the toss of his head and the spring of his step were those rather of the boy I had known on Fanad years ago than of the dangerous rebel on whose head a price was set.
“Well, boys,” said he, as Martin replaced the light on the table, “what’s the best of your news?”
“Faith, that you’re welcome, Tim Gallagher,” replied Finn; “and it’s right glad we are to get our captain.”
“’Deed if it pleasures you to call me captain, you may,” said Tim; “but I’ve no time to spend in these parts. I have business that won’t keep. How goes the cause since I was here last?”
“Badly enough,” replied one of the men. “The boys are slack, and we’ve been desperately thwarted by traitors and dirty informers and the English gang.”
“And, saving your presence,” said Martin, “we’ve to thank your own brother Barry for some of that same trouble. It was him who thwarted us on the Black Hill Road, and nearly spoilt our trip to Holland—”
“Barry?” said Tim sharply. “What of him? He’s no ‘dirty informer.’ What’s all this about Black Hill Road and Holland?”
“’Deed, Tim,” said Finn, “it’s an old story, and has been righted by now. You mind his honour, Maurice Gorman of Knockowen?”
“Mind him? of course I do—a coward that blew hot and cold, and led the boys on to mischief only to betray them. Yes; I mind Maurice Gorman.”
This invective seemed greatly to encourage the men present, who had evidently feared Tim might for some reason have harboured a regard for their victim.
“It was him was to be settled with on the Black Hill Road a year ago; and settled he would have been but for Barry.”
Tim’s anger, I could see, was rising.
“Settled?” he said; “do you mean murdered?”
“Shot, any way. He got off that time; and a purty use he made of his chance, hanging boys by the dozen, and giving us no peace at all, at all. But since the young lady was lost to him—”
“What?” exclaimed Tim again; “how lost?”
“Didn’t we have her over the seas to Holland for a hostage? And ever since he durstn’t do a hand’s turn against us. But he wouldn’t come in for all that, or pay the money. It was Barry as nearly spoilt that game for us too; for he spirited the girl away in Holland, and if it hadn’t been for some of the boys who got hold of her again in Dublin, she’d have been clane lost to Ireland for all our trouble.”
“You dogs!” cried Tim, starting forward with his hand on his sword. “You mean to say you carried away an innocent girl to spite her father? You’re a shame to your country!”
They looked at him in amazement. Then the speaker went on,—
“Sure, all’s fair in war. The girl’s safe enough.” (Here Martin laughed in a sinister fashion.) “And now that all is settled up with Maurice Gorman at last—”
“Is Maurice Gorman dead, then?” asked Tim, controlling himself with a mighty effort, as was plain by his white lips and flashing eyes.
“He is so. We had him watched day and night, and on Sunday came our chance. He’s gone to his account; and it’s not six hours since he was put out of harm’s way under the turf. By Saint Patrick, but it’s a grand day for Ireland this.”
“And you mean to tell me,” said Tim, in a voice which made his hearers shift on their feet uncomfortably—“you mean to tell me that you dare to commit murder and outrage like this in the name of Ireland?”
“Why, what’s amiss? Wasn’t it yourself was saying with your own lips the Gorman was a dirty coward?” retorted one of the group testily.
“And that means the same to you as saying a man should be shot in the dark without a word of warning, and his innocent daughter carried off, who never did a hand’s turn in the place that wasn’t kindly and good?”
Guess who it was that loved Tim as he spoke those words?
“It’s no time to be squeamish,” persisted the man who had first spoken. “It’s a blow for the good of the country, and there’s them will give us credit for it, if you don’t.”
“You curs! I give you credit for being the meanest cowards unhung. And I don’t mind telling anybody as much. Pray, is it you and the like of you I’m captain to?”
“When we chose you, we thought you were for the people,” snarled Martin.
“Then take back your choice, you crew of blackguards,” cried Tim, now in a towering rage. “I’ve nothing to do with such as you. No more has Ireland, thank God!”
“That’s well enough,” said Finn savagely; “but what’s done is done, and in your name too, whether you like it or not. You should have let us know in time if your stomach wasn’t strong enough for the work.”
“My name! The girl carried away in my name, and her father murdered. How dare you, you dirty whelp, you!”
And he struck Finn across the cheek with his hand.
Instantly the scene became one of wild uproar. The blow was all the men had wanted to give vent to the bitter resentment which Tim’s contemptuous reproaches had called up. As long as the quarrel was one of words, they were sullen but cowed. Now it was come to blows, events befell rapidly. Ere I could push my way into the room, sword in hand—in truth, more rapidly than I can narrate it—Tim, my brave, impulsive brother, had sent one of the rascals to his last account, and had stepped to the wall, with his back there, holding the others at sword’s point.
Martin—that malign spirit, fated to thwart and injure me at all points—more cunning than his comrades, had stepped back behind the other two while Tim was engaged with them, poised a long knife above his head, and at the moment when Tim was lunging at the nearest of his assailants, I saw the brute, as in a nightmare, strike with all his might. The cowardly blow struck Tim full on the forehead, and brought him down with a crash on the floor. I had sprung at Martin’s raised arm, but, alas! had just missed him by a flash of time.
“Take that for many an old score!” I shouted, as I brought him down on the instant with a cut which laid him bleeding and prostrate at my feet.
Then stepping across Tim’s senseless body, I let out at the other two.
My sudden appearance—for I seemed to have dropped from the clouds—amazed and paralysed them. They were too terror-stricken to show much fight; and it was as well for them, for I was in a killing mood, and could have sent them to their last reckoning with a relish had they invited me. As it was, with white faces they backed to the door, and presently howled for mercy.
“It’s Barry himsilf!” exclaimed Finn. “Be aisy now Barry darlint, and don’t harm a defenceless man.” And he dropped his weapon on the floor.
The other man laid down his knife and tried to edge through the door; but I stopped him.
“Now you are here,” said I, “you shall stay here till I please. Help me to lift Tim; and the first of you that stirs for anything else is a dead man.”
We lifted Tim tenderly—I could see, now that the heat of passion was cooled, that the men really respected him and deplored the upshot of the unexpected encounter—and we laid him gently on the table. My heart almost stopped beating as I noted the ghastly pallor of his face and saw the blood running over his temple. He opened his eyes in a dazed way for a moment; but if he saw me he did not know me. I bandaged his wound as best I could, and soaking my kerchief in a pool of rain-water, which had oozed through and on to the window-ledge, moistened his parched lips.
“Now,” said I, sternly enough, stooping over Martin, on whom—with hardly a ray of pity for him in my heart, I fear—I could see the hand of death was laid, “one question for you: where is Maurice Gorman’s daughter?”
Martin half opened his eyes. I think he saw the gleam of my pistol, which, though still in my hand, I had no intention of using. A convulsive look of terror passed over his face as he muttered thickly,—
“Take that thing away, for mercy’s sake, and you shall know all. We took her and Biddy to the priest’s at Killurin; but Father Murphy would have nothing to say to us. We didn’t know what to do. So we—we—we—ah, Lord, forgive all.”
There was a painful pause. For a moment I thought his secret would die with him. Then he murmured, pointing to the ceiling with his thumb, “We brought her here!”
“What?” I cried in amazement; “Miss Kit is in this house now?”
Martin raised himself with difficulty on his elbow, fumbled feebly in his belt, and handed me a rusty key. Before I could seize it he fell back on the floor, and I had to take the key from his dead hand.
In the midst of my woe a wild throb of joy shot through me as I realised what this unlooked-for news meant.
As I looked from Martin to his dead comrade, and from him to my poor bruised Tim, from whom, as I feared, life was rapidly ebbing away, my mind was filled with the pathos and a sense of the useless suffering of it all. Addressing the two men who only a minute or two ago were his assailants and mine, but who now stood with downcast faces, I said,—
“Boys, I don’t doubt that ye are both acting from what ye consider to be a sense of duty to old Ireland, and maybe even to your Maker, in all this terrible bloodshed and unhappiness. To my thinking it’s a sadly mistaken sense of duty, and will only land you and the dear country in shame and misery. But that is not here or there. Let us part without hatred. You will find a passage here to the sea,” said I, showing them the opening by the fireplace through which I had entered the room; “and in a cave at the end of the passage you will find a boat. Carry your dead to it, and see them taken to their places.”
Both men said gravely, as in a chorus, “God save Ireland!” to which I could utter, though in a different sense from theirs, “Amen!”
Then they did as I bade them, and laboriously carried away their dead comrades.
I turned to Tim. He was stirring slowly and feebly. I took off my coat and rolled it into a pillow for his head. Presently he opened his eyes, and a smile like the smile of an angel passed over his face.
“Barry,” said he, “dear old Barry, and is it you, my brother?”
I bent over him and kissed his cheek.
“Methinks, Barry dear,” said he, “I have struck my last blow for beloved Ireland. God bless her! But it has been a paltry, poor bit of work—all that I have been able to do.”
“Cheer up, Tim, my boy, keep up your heart; we’ll soon have you right again,” said I, though my own heart misgave me as I spoke. “Do you know, Tim, that I have just heard that Kit is here, in this house, now—”
“Kit? Dear old Barry!” He took my hand in his and held it there, but all the strength was gone from his grip. I saw that he read my secret. “Now that her father is dead, Barry, this is her house,” he said, trying to smile.
“No, Tim. This house and these lands are yours.”
His face seemed to flush at this.
“Is that so? are you sure?” said he. “As sure as that I am here.”
“And it is I who am heir to the estates?”
“It is. You are a rich man, for your father besides had land in England with your mother.”
Tim’s eyes were wide open. He lay silent for a time. “Barry, boy,” he said, now almost fainting for lack of blood, “we have always been brothers, haven’t we? even when we differed and fought when we were boys, eh? Nothing, nothing can unbrother you and me, Barry. I hand on all my rights to you and Kit—God bless ye both!”
His eyes closed wearily, but on his face there came again the happy smile of boyhood.
“Tim dear, shall I bring Kit down?—if, indeed, she is here.”
“No, Barry, no; this is no place to bring a lady to, nor am I in a condition to see any lady.”
As I looked at the blood-stained floor and table, and the walls which bore marks of the fray, I could not but agree with him. It was easy to see also that poor Tim’s moments were numbered. His eyes were sunk deep in his head, his face was pallid, and his breathing became more and more difficult. His lips moved in broken utterance, but I saw he was not addressing me; there was a far-off, unworldly expression in his eyes. I could hear him murmur,—
“Ah, the tragedy! ah, the farce of it all!—I dreamed of a free, happy country, of a free, happy people prospering and blessed when the tyrant was overthrown—I thought I could help on this glorious time; and what happens? I am struck down by the hand of a friend in a miserable squabble; inglorious, farcical!—O Ireland, Ireland! the follies of your own children may be a greater curse to you in the days to come than have been the crimes of the stranger who has usurped your rights.”
While I held his hand, stooping over him, with a heart too full for speech, he opened his eyes again, and said,—
“Barry, brother, you have forgiven me for that stone I threw at ye on Fanad Head?—ay, and the poor old mother is gone, and father too—and the guns are in Kilgorman—and Wolfe Tone is coming—and the French are preparing to deliver us; yes, they are on the way—and a time of joy is coming to Ireland—Barry, Barry, do ye hear the rustle of silk by the hearthstone? Do ye think the ghost is here?—I hear something—put but the light, boy, and lie close—there, there—my God, it is mother!” and he swooned away.
I thought he was dead, and I began to pray, when I heard him murmur,—
“Barry, are ye there, dear?—I can’t see ye at all, at all. Why don’t ye light the lamp?—there is no air!—open the window!—light, light, give me light!” and he fell back dead.
It was the bitterest, saddest moment of my life. Yet I felt a curious envy of him. He was out of the whirl and confusion and chaos of our unhappy time! Peace be with him! I loved him as my own soul, with a love which was not weakened but made only more pathetic to me that his ideals for the happiness of our loved country were not my ideals.
But there was comfort for me—of a kind I perhaps little deserved—close at hand. When I had drawn my coat over Tim’s face, I rushed upstairs, calling aloud as I went,—
“Kit, Kit, I am coming! where are you, Kit?”
Then by-and-by I heard, far off, from a remote attic up in the roof of the rambling old building to which I had never before penetrated—I heard, faintly, a voice calling me by name, which fell on my heart like sweetest music. And when the rusty key had turned in the rusty old lock, and the crazy door was pushed open, I found a pair of arms flung tightly about my neck, and a pair of lips pressed close against mine, with cries of “Thank God, Barry! thank God, Barry! you are here at last.”
It was a meeting of smiles and tears, of most delicious joy, with a background of infinite sadness.
Kit and Biddy McQuilkin were quickly brought by me to more comfortable quarters in Knockowen, and where they were more likely to have better protection. Captain Felton, on my signal, came ashore from the Gnat, and I found in him a friend indeed. He urged me to take Kit and Biddy to the house of his aunt (the widow of one of the canons of Salisbury Cathedral), who lived a peaceful life in one of the quaint old houses in the Close of that lovely cathedral city—at any rate until quieter times for Ireland. Not only this, but he managed so that Kit and Biddy and I were landed at Stranraer, on the Scottish coast, bearing letters from him to his aunt, who received us hospitably, and in whose care I was content to leave my beloved one, with a lighter heart concerning her than I had experienced during all the years I had known her.
I am not going to detail here all the bloody work of the next few months in our loved country. The wars of brothers are best left untold. Of the terrible doings in the north and south and west, but especially in County Wexford, at Enniscorthy and Vinegar Hill, where blood was spilt like water, we had enough, and more than enough, in the public prints, and on the loud tongue of rumour, at the time. But I was in the sea-fight off Lough Swilly, when we made mincemeat of the French squadron in October of that black year 1798, and pluckier fighting against enormous odds than was done on that day by the French frigate Hoche I had never seen, nor ever again wish to see. It was courage worthy of a better cause.
It was for the part I had in that affair that, later on, to my joy, I received my promotion, and gained the coveted right to place the honoured word “captain” after my name. With the defeat of the French expeditions in the west and north, and the capture and subsequent tragic death of the heroic if erratic genius Wolfe Tone, and after many weary days of suffering on the part of Ireland’s noblest sons and daughters, there came gradually a modifying of the brutal spirit of hatred and bloodshed throughout the land. And with the better and more kindly understanding between the peoples there came by-and-by a measure of peace and prosperity and a calm after the long period of storm and disturbance.
In the spring of 1799 Kit and I were wedded in Salisbury. My friend Captain Felton was my “best man.” At first our home was in Belfast, but we made frequent expeditions to Knockowen and Kilgorman as the countryside became more settled; for the place, in spite of all that had passed, had a fascination for both of us. And as the painful associations died away, we have long since returned to Donegal. There for many a day we and our little ones—beloved Tim and Kit and Eileen—have made our home by the side of our lovely lough, as happy a home as any to be found throughout Ireland, in a renovated and regenerated Kilgorman.