Zeke, though gliding over the slippery ground with all the speed at his command, had kept a watch on the further corner of the house. He straightened himself now against the angle of the projecting, weather-beaten chimney, and drew a long breath.
“He didn’t see us,” he whispered reassuringly to Linsky, who had also drawn up as flatly as possible against the side of the house.
“Glory be to God!” the recruit ejaculated.
After a brief breathing spell, Zeke ventured out a few feet, and looked the house over. There was a single window on his side, opening upon the ground floor. Beckoning to Linsky to follow, lie stole over to the window, and standing his gun against the clapboards, cautiously tested the sash. It moved, and Zeke with infinite pains lifted it to the top, and stuck his knife in to hold it up. Then, with a bound, he raised himself on his arms, and crawled in over the sill.
It was at this moment, as Linsky for the first time stood alone, that a clamorous outburst of artillery-fire made the earth quiver under his feet. The crash of noises reverberated with so many echoes from hill to hill that he had no notion whence they had proceeded, or from what distance. The whole broad vailey before him, with its sodden meadows and wet, mist-wrapped forests showed no sign of life or motion. But from the crest of the ridge which they had quitted before daybreak there rose now, and whitened the gray of the overhanging clouds, a faint film of smoke—while suddenly the air above him was filled with a strange confusion of unfamiliar sounds, like nothing so much as the hoarse screams of a flock of giant wild-fowl; and then this affrighting babel ceased as swiftly as it had arisen, and he heard the thud and swish of splintered tree-tops and trunks falling in the woodland at the back of the house. The Irishman reasoned it out that they were firing from the hill he had left, over at the hill upon which he now stood, and was not comforted by the discovery.
While he stared at the ascending smoke and listened to the din of the cannonade, he felt himself sharply poked on the shoulder, and started nervously, turning swiftly, gun in hand. It was Zeke, who stood at the window, and had playfully attracted his attention with one of the long sides of bacon which the army knew as “sow-bellies.” He had secured two of these, which he now handed out to Linsky; then came a ham and a bag of meal; and lastly, a twelve-quart pan of sorghum molasses. When the Irishman had lifted down the last of these spoils, Zeke vaulted lightly out.
“Guess we’ll have a whack at the ham,” he said cheerfully. “It’s good raw.”
The two gnawed greedily at the smoked slices cut from the thick of the ham, as became men who had been on short rations. Zeke listened to the firing, and was visibly interested in noting all that was to be seen and guessed of its effects and purpose, meanwhile, but the ham was an effectual bar to conversation.
Suddenly the men paused, their mouths full, their senses alert. The sound of voices rose distinctly, and close by, from the other side of the house. Zeke took up his gun, cocked it, and crept noiselessly forward to the corner. After a moment’s attentive listening here, and one swift, cautious peep, he tiptoed back again.
“Take half the things,” he whispered, pointing to the provisions, “and we’ll get back again to the fence. There’s too many of ’em for us to try and hold the house. They’d burn us alive in there!”
The pan of sorghum fell to Linsky’s care, and Zeke, with both guns and all the rest in some mysterious manner bestowed about him, made his way, crouching and with long strides, toward the hedge. He got through the hole undiscovered, dragging his burden after him. Then he took the pan over the hedge, while Linsky should in turn crawl through. But the burlier Irishman caught in the thorns, slipped, and clutched Zeke’s arm, with the result that the whole contents of the pan were emptied upon Linsky’s head.
Then Zeke did an unwise thing. He cast a single glance at the spectacle his comrade presented—with the thick, dark molasses covering his cap like an oilskin, soaking into his hair, and streaming down his bewildered face in streaks like an Indian’s war-paint—and then burst forth in a resounding peal of laughter.
On the instant two men in gray, with battered slouch hats and guns, appeared at the corner of the house, looking eagerly up and down the hedge for some sign of a hostile presence. Zeke had dropped to his knees in time to prevent discovery. It seemed to be with a part of the same swift movement that he lifted his gun, sighted it as it ran through the thorns, and fired. While the smoke still curled among the branches and spiked twigs, he had snatched up Linsky’s gun and fire a second shot. The two men in gray lay sprawling and clutching at the wet grass, one on top of the other.
“Quick, Irish! We must make a break!” Zeke hissed at Linsky. “Grab what you can and run!”
Linsky, his eyes and mouth full of molasses, and understanding nothing at all of what had happened, found himself a moment later careering blindly and in hot haste down the open slope, the ham and the bag of meal under one arm, his gun in the other hand. A dozen minie-bullets sang through the damp air about him as he tore along after Zeke, and he heard vague volleys of cheering arise from the meadow to his right; but neither stopped his course.
It was barely three minutes—though to Linsky, at least, it seemed an interminable while—before the two came to a halt by a clump of trees on the edge of the ravine. In the shelter of these broad hemlock trunks they stood still, panting for breath. Then Zeke looked at Linsky again, and roared with laughter till he choked and went into a fit of coughing.
The Irishman had thrown down his provisions and gun, and seated himself on the roots of his tree. He ruefully combed the sticky fluid from his hair and stubble beard with his fingers now, and strove to clean his face on his sleeve. Between the native temptation to join in the other’s merriment and the strain of the last few minutes’ deadly peril, he could only blink at Zeke, and gasp for breath.
“Tight squeak—eh, Irish?” said Zeke at last, between dying-away chuckles.
“And tell me, now,” Linsky began, still panting heavily, his besmeared face red with the heat of the chase, “fwat the divil were we doin’ up there, anny-way? No Linsky or Lynch—’tis the same name—was ever called coward yet—but goin’ out and defoyin’ whole armies single-handed is no fit worrk for solicitors’ clarks. Spacheless and sinseless though I was with the dhrink, sure, if they told me I was to putt down the Rebellion be meself, I’d a’ had the wit to decloine.”
“That was a vidette post we were on,” explained Zeke.
“There’s a shorter name for it—God save us both from goin’ there. But fwat was the intintion? ’Tis that that bothers me entoirely.”
“Look there!” was Zeke’s response. He waved his hand comprehensively over the field they had just quitted, and the Irishman rose to his feet and stepped aside from his tree to see.
The little red farm-house was half hidden in a vail of smoke. Dim shadows of men could be seen flitting about its sides, and from these shadows shot forth tongues of momentary flame. The upper end of the meadow was covered thick with smoke, and through this were visible dark masses of men and the same spark-like flashing of fiery streaks. Along the line of the hedge, closer to the house, still another wall of smoke arose, and Linsky could discern a fringe of blue-coated men lying flat under the cover of the thorn-bushes, whom he guessed to be sharp-shooters.
“That’s what we went up there for—to start that thing a-goin’,” said Zeke, not without pride. “See the guide—that little flag there by the bushes? That’s our regiment. They was comin’ up as we skedaddled out. Didn’t yeh hear ’em cheer? They was cheerin’ for us, Irish—that is, some for us and a good deal for the sow-bellies and ham.”
No answer came, and Zeke stood for a moment longer, taking in with his practiced gaze the details of the fight that was raging before him. Half-spent bullets were singing all about him, but he seemed to give them no more thought than in his old Adirondack home he had wasted on mosquitoes. The din and deafening rattle of this musketry war had kindled a sparkle in his gray eyes.
“There they go, Irish! Gad! we’ve got ’em on the run! We kin scoot across now and jine our men.”
Still no answer. Zeke turned, and, to his amazement, saw no Linsky at his side. Puzzled, he looked vaguely about among the trees for an instant. Then his wandering glance fell, and the gleam of battle died out of his eyes as he saw the Irishman lying prone at his very feet, his face flat in the wet moss and rotting leaves, an arm and leg bent under the prostrate body. So wrapt had Zeke’s senses been in the noisy struggle outside, he had not heard his comrade’s fall.
The veteran knelt, and gently turned Linsky over on his back. A wandering ball had struck him in the throat. The lips were already colorless, and from their corners a thin line of bright blood had oozed to mingle grotesquely with the molasses on the unshaven jaw. To Zeke’s skilled glance it was apparent that the man was mortally wounded—perhaps already dead, for no trace of pulse or heartbeat could be found. He softly closed the Irishman’s eyes, and put the sorghum-stained cap over his face.
Zeke rose and looked forth again upon the scene of battle. His regiment had crossed the fence and gained possession of the farm-house, from which they were firing into the woods beyond. Further to the left, through the mist of smoke which hung upon the meadow, he could see that large masses of troops in blue were being pushed forward. He thought he would go and join his company. He would tell the fellows how well Linsky had behaved. Perhaps, after the fight was all over, he would lick Hugh O’Mahony for having spoken so churlishly to him.
He turned at this and looked down again upon the insensible Linsky.
“Well, Irish, you had sand in your gizzard, anyway,” he said, aloud. “I’ll whale the head off ’m O’Mahony, jest on your account.”
Then, musing upon some new ideas which these words seem to have suggested, he knelt once more, and, unbuttoning Linsky’s jacket, felt through his pockets.
He drew forth a leather wallet and a long linen-lined envelope containing many papers. The wallet had in it a comfortable looking roll of green, backs, but Zeke’s attention was bestowed rather upon the papers.
“So these would give O’Mahony an estate, eh?” he pondered, half aloud, turning them over. “It ’ud be a tolerable good bet that he never lays eyes on ’em. We’ll fix that right now, for fear of accidents.”
He began to kick about in the leaves, as he rose a second time, thinking hard upon the problem of what to do with the papers. He had no matches. He might cut down a cartridge, and get a fire by percussion—but that would take time. So, for that matter, would digging a hole to bury the papers.
All at once his abstracted face lost its lines of labor, and brightened radiantly. He thrust wallet and envelope into his own pocket, and smilingly stepped forward once more to see what the field of battle was like. The farm-house had become the headquarters of a general and his staff, and the noise of fighting had passed away to the furthest confines of the woods.
“This darned old campaign won’t last up’ard of another week,” he said, in satisfied reverie. “I reckon I’ve done my share in it, and somethin’ to lap over on the next. Nobody ’ll be a cent the wuss off if I turn up missin’ now.”
Gathering up the provisions and his gun, Zeke turned abruptly, and made his way down the steep side-hill into the forest, each long stride bearing him further from Company F’s headquarters.
It became known among the passengers on the Moldavian, an hour or so before bedtime on Sunday evening, April 23, 1865, that the lights to be seen in the larboard distance were really on the Irish coast. The intelligence ran swiftly through all quarters of the vessel. Its truth could not be doubted; the man on the bridge said that it truly was Ireland; and if he had not said so, the ship’s barber had.
Excitement over the news reached its highest point in the steerage, two-thirds of the inmates of which hung now lovingly upon the port rail of the forward deck, to gaze with eager eyes at the far-off points of radiance glowing through the soft northern spring night.
Farther down the rail, from the obscurity of the jostling throng, a stout male voice sent up the opening bars of the dear familiar song, “The Cove of Cork.” The ballad trembled upon the air as it progressed, then broke into something like sobs, and ceased.
“Ah, Barney,” a sympathetic voice cried out, “’tis no longer the Cove; ’tis Queenstown they’re after calling it now. Small wandher the song won’t listen to itself be sung!”
“But they haven’t taken the Cove away—God bless it!” the other rejoined, bitterly. “’Tis there, beyant the lights, waitin’ for its honest name to come back to it when—when things are set right once more.”
“Is it the Cove you think you see yonder?” queried another, captiously. “Thim’s the Fastnet and Cape Clear lights. We’re fifty miles and more from Cork.”
“Thin if ’twas daylight,” croaked an old man between coughs, “we’d be in sight of The O’Mahony’s castles, or what bloody Cromwell left of them.”
“It’s mad ye are, Martin,” remonstrated a female voice. “The’re laygues beyant on Dunmanus Bay. Wasn’t I born mesilf at Durrus?”
“The O’Mahony of Murrisk is on board,” whispered some one else, “returnin’ to his estates. I had it this day from the cook’s helper. The quantity of mate that same O’Mahony’s been ’atin’! An’ dhrink, is it? Faith, there’s no English nobleman could touch him!”
On the saloon deck, aft, the interest excited by these distant lights was less volubly eager, but it had sufficed to break up the card-games in the smoking-room, and even to tempt some malingering passengers from the cabins below. Such talk as passed among the group lounging along the rail, here in the politer quarter, bore, for the most part, upon the record of the Moldavian on this and past voyages, as contrasted with the achievements of other steamships. No one confessed to reverential sensations in looking at the lights, and no one lamented the change of name which sixteen years before, had befallen the Cove of Cork; but there was the liveliest speculation upon the probabilities of the Bahama, which had sailed from New York the same day, having beaten them into the south harbor of Cape Clear, where, in those exciting war times, before the cable was laid, every ocean steamer halted long enough to hurl overboard its rubber-encased budget of American news, to be scuffled for in the swell by the rival oarsmen of the cape, and borne by the successful boat to the island, where relays of telegraph clerks then waited day and night to serve Europe with tidings of the republic’s fight for life.
This concentration of thought upon steamer runs and records, to the exclusion of interest in mere Europe, has descended like a mantle upon the first-cabin passengers of our own later generation. But the voyagers in the Moldavian had a peculiar warrant for their concern. They had left America on Saturday, April 15, bearing with them the terrible news of Lincoln’s assassination in Ford’s Theatre, the previous evening, and it meant life-long distinction—in one’s own eyes at least—to be the first to deliver these tidings to an astounded Old World. Eight days’ musing on this chance of greatness had brought them to a point where they were prepared to learn with equanimity that the rival Bahama had struck a rock outside, somewhere. One of their number, a little Jew diamond merchant, now made himself quite popular by relating his personal recollections of the calamity which befel her sister ship, the Anglia, eighteen months ago, when she ran upon Blackrock in Galway harbor.
One of these first-cabin passengers, standing for a time irresolutely upon the outskirts of this gossiping group, turned abruptly when the under-sized Hebrew addressed a part of his narrative to him, and walked off alone into the shadows of the stern. He went to the very end, and leaned over the taff-rail, looking down upon the boiling, phosphorescent foam of the vessel’s wake. He did not care a button about being able to tell Europe of the murder of Lincoln and Seward—for when they left the secretary was supposed, also, to have been mortally wounded. His anxieties were of a wholly different sort.
He, The O’Mahony of Muirisc, was plainly but warmly clad, with a new, shaggy black overcoat buttoned to the chin, and a black slouch hat drawn over his eyes. His face was clean shaven, and remarkably free from lines of care and age about the mouth and nostrils, though the eyes were set in wrinkles. The upper part of the face was darker and more weather-beaten, too, than the lower, from which a shrewd observer might have guessed that until very recently he had always worn a beard.
There were half a dozen shrewd observers on board the Moldavian among its cabin passengers—men of obvious Irish nationality, whose manner with one another had a certain effect of furtiveness, and who were described on the ship’s list by distinctively English names, like Potter, Cooper and Smith; and they had watched the O’Mahony of Muirisc very closely during the whole voyage, but none of them had had doubts about the beard, much less about the man’s identity. In truth, they looked from day to day for him to give some sign, be it never so slight, that his errand to Ireland was a political one. They were all Fenians—among the advance guard of that host of Irishmen who returned from exile at the close of the American War—and they took it for granted that the solitary and silent O’Mahony was a member of the Brotherhood. The more taciturn he grew, the more he held aloof, the firmer became their conviction that his rank in the society was exalted and his mission important. The very fact that he would not be drawn into conversation and avoided their company was proof conclusive. They left him alone, but watched him with lynx-like scrutiny.
The O’Mahony had been conscious of this ceaseless observation, and he mused upon it now as he watched the white whirl of churned waters below. The time was close at hand when he should know whether it had meant anything or not; there was comfort in that, at all events. He was less a coward than any other man he knew, but, all the same, this unending espionage had worn upon his nerve. Doubtless, that was in part because sea-voyaging was a novelty to him. He had not been ill for a moment. In fact, he could not remember to have ever eaten and drunk more in any eight days of his life. If it had not been for the confounded watchfulness of the Irishmen, he would have enjoyed the whole experience immensely. But it was evident that they were all in collusion—“in cahoots,” he phrased it in his mind—and had a common interest in noting all his movements. What could it mean? Strange as it may seem, The O’Mahony had never so much as heard of the Fenian Brotherhood.
He rose from his lounging meditation presently, and sauntered forward again along the port deck. The lights from the coast were growing more distinct in the distance, and, as he paused to look, he fancied he could discern a dark line of shore below them.
“I suppose your ancistral estates are lyin’ further west, sir,” spoke a voice at his side. The O’Mahony cast a swift half-glance around, and recognized one of the suspected spies.
“Yes, a good deal west,” he growled, curtly.
The other took no offense.
“Sure,” he went on, pleasantly, “the O’Mahonys and the O’Driscolls, not to mintion the McCarthys, chased each other around that counthry yonder at such a divil of a pace it’s hard tellin’ now which belonged to who.”
“Yes, we did hustle round considerable,” assented The O’Mahony, with frigidity.
“You’re manny years away from Ireland, sir?” pursued the man.
“Why?”
“I notice you say ‘yes’ and ‘no.’ It takes a long absence to tache an Irishman that.”
“I’ve been away nearly all my life,” said The O’Mahony, sharply—“ever since I was a little boy and turning on his heel, he walked to the companionway and disappeared down the stairs.
“Faith, I’m bettin’ it’s the gineral himself!” said the other, looking after him.
To have one’s waking vision greeted, on a soft, warm April morning, by the sight of the Head of Kinsale in the sunlight—with the dark rocks capped in tenderest verdure and washed below by milkwhite breakers; with the smooth water mirroring the blue of the sky upon its bosom, yet revealing as well the marbled greens of its own crystalline depths; with the balmy scents of fresh blossoms meeting and mingling in the languorous air of the Gulf Stream’s bringing—can there be a fairer finish to any voyage over the waters of the whole terrestrial ball!
The O’Mahony had been up on deck before any of his fellow-passengers, scanning the novel details of the scene before him. The vessel barely kept itself in motion through the calm waters. The soft land breeze just availed to turn the black column of smoke rising from the funnel into a sort of carboniferous leaning tower. The pilot had been taken on the previous evening. They waited now for the tug, which could be seen passing Roche’s Point with a prodigious spluttering and splashing of side-paddles. Before its arrival, the Moldavian lay at rest within full view of the wonderful harbor—her deck thronged with passengers dressed now in fine shore apparel and bearing bags and rugs, who bade each other good-bye with an enthusiasm which nobody believed in, and edged along as near as possible where the gang-plank would be.
The O’Mahony walked alone down the plank, rebuffing the porters who sought to relieve him of his heavy bags. He stood alone at the prow of the tug, as it waddled and puffed on its rolling way back again, watching the superb amphitheatre of terraced stone houses, walls, groves and gardens toward which he had voyaged these nine long days, with an anxious, almost gloomy face. The Fenians, still closely observing him, grew nervous with fear that this depression forboded a discovery of contra-brand arms in his baggage.
But no scandal arose. The custom officers searched fruitlessly through the long platforms covered with luggage, with a half perfunctory and wholly whimsical air, as if they knew perfectly well that the revolvers they pretended to be looking for were really in the pockets of the passengers. Then other good-byes, distinctly less enthusiastic, were exchanged, and the last bonds of comradeship which life on the Moldavian had enforced snapped lightly as the gates were opened.
Everybody else seemed to know where to go. The O’Mahony stood for so long a time just outside the gates, with his two big valises at his feet and helpless hesitation written all over his face, that even some of the swarm of beggars surrounding him could not wait any longer, and went away giving him up. To the importunities of the others, who buzzed about him like blue-bottles on a sunny window-pane, he paid no heed; but he finally beckoned to the driver of the solitary remaining outside car, who had been flicking his broker, whip invitingly at him, and who now turned his vehicle abruptly round and drove it, with wild shouts of factitious warning, straight through the group of mendicants, overbearing their loud cries of remonstrance with his superior voice, and cracking his whip like mad. He drew up in front of the bags with the air of a lord mayor’s coachman, and took off his shapeless hat in salutation.
“I want to go to the law office of White & Carmody,” The O’Mahony said, brusquely.
“Right, your honor,” the carman answered, dismounting and lifting the luggage to the well of the car, and then officiously helping his patron to mount to his sidelong seat. He sprang up on the other side, screamed “Now thin, Maggie!” to his poor old horse, flipped his whip derisively at the beggars, and started off at a little dog-trot, clucking loudly as he went.
He drove through all the long ascending streets of Queenstown at this shambling pace, traversing each time the whole length of the town, until finally they gained the terraced pleasure-road at the top. Here the driver drew rein, and waved his whip to indicate the splendid scope of the view below—the gray roof of the houses embowered in trees, the river’s crowded shipping, the castellated shore opposite, the broad, island-dotted harbor beyond.
“L’uk there, now!” he said, proudly. “Have yez annything like that in Ameriky?”
The O’Mahony cast only an indifferent glance upon the prospect,
“Yes—but where’s White & Carmody’s office?” he asked. “That’s what I want.”
“Right, your honor,” was the reply; and with renewed clucking and cracking of the dismantled whip, the journey was resumed. That is to say, they wound their way back again down the hill, through all the streets, until at last the car stopped in front of the Queen’s Hotel.
“Is it thrue what they tell me, sir, that the Prisidint is murdhered?” the jarvey asked, as they came to a halt.
“Yes—but where the devil is that law-office?”
“Sure, your honor, there’s no such names here at all,” the carman replied, pleasantly. “Here’s the hotel where gintleman stop, an’ I’ve shown ye the view from the top, an’ it’s plased I am ye had such a clear day for it—and wud ye like to see Smith-Barry’s place, after lunch?”
The stranger turned round on his seat to the better comment upon this amazing impudence, beginning a question harsh of purpose and profane in form.
Then the spectacle of the ragged driver’s placidly amiable face and roguish eye; of the funny old horse, like nothing so much in all the world as an ancient hair-trunk with legs at the corners, yet which was driven with the noise and ostentation of a six-horse team; of the harness tied up with ropes; the tumble-down car; the broken whip; the beggars—all this, by a happy chance, suddenly struck The O’Mahony in a humorous light. Even as his angered words were on the air he smiled in spite of himself. It was a gaunt, reluctant smile, the merest curling of the lips at their corners; but it sufficed in a twinkling to surround him with beaming faces. He laughed aloud at this, and on the instant driver and beggars were convulsed with merriment.
The O’Mahony jumped off the car.
“I’ll run into the hotel and find out where I want to go,” he said. “Wait here.”
Two minutes passed.
“These lawyers live in Cork,” he explained on his return. “It seems this is only Queenstown. I want you to go to Cork with me.”
“Right, your honor,” said the driver, snapping his whip in preparation.
“But I don’t want to drive; it’s too much like a funeral. We ain’t a-buryin’ anybody.”
“Is it Maggie your honor manes? Sure, there’s no finer quality of a mare in County Cork, if she only gets dacent encouragement.”
“Yes; but we ain’t got time to encourage her. Go and put her out, and hustle back here as quick as you can. I’ll pay you a good day’s wages. Hurry, now; we’ll go by train.”
The O’Mahony distributed small silver among the beggars the while he waited in front of the hotel.
“That laugh was worth a hundred dollars to me,” he said, more to himself than to the beggars. “I hain’t laughed before since Linsky spilt the molasses over his head.”
The visit to White & Carmody’s law-office had weighed heavily upon the mind of The O’Mahony during the whole voyage across the Atlantic, and it still was the burden of his thoughts as he sat beside Jerry Higgins—this he learned to be the car-driver’s name—in the train which rushed up the side of the Lea toward Cork. The first-class compartment to which Jerry had led the way was crowded with people who had arrived by the Moldavian, and who scowled at their late fellow-passenger for having imposed upon them the unsavory presence of the carman. The O’Mahony was too deeply occupied with his own business to observe this. Jerry smiled blandly into the hostile faces, and hummed a “come-all-ye” to himself.
When, an hour or so after their arrival, The O’Mahony emerged from the lawyers’ office the waiting Jerry scarcely knew him for the same man. The black felt hat, which had been pulled down over his brows, rested with easy confidence now well back on his head; his gray eyes twinkled with a pleasant light; the long face had lost its drawn lines and saturnine expression, and reflected content instead.
“Come along somewhere where we can get a drink,” he said to Jerry; but stopped before they had taken a dozen steps, attracted by the sign and street-show of a second-hand clothing shop. “Or no,” he said, “come in here first, and I’ll kind o’ spruce you up a bit so’t you can pass muster in society.”
When they came upon the street again, it was Jerry who was even more strikingly metamorphosed. The captious eye of one whose soul is in clothes might have discerned that the garments he now wore had not been originally designed for Jerry. The sleeves of the coat were a trifle long; the legs of the trousers just a suspicion short. But the smile with which he surveyed the passing reflections of his improved image in the shop-windows was all his own. He strode along jauntily, carrying the heavy bags as if they had been mere featherweight parcels.
The two made their way to a small tavern near the quays, which Jerry knew of, and where The O’Mahony ordered a room, with a fire in it, and a comfortable meal to be laid therein at once.
“Sure, it’s not becomin’ that I should ate along wid your honor,” Jerry remonstrated, when they had been left alone in the dingy little chamber, overlooking the street and the docks beyond.
At this protest The O’Mahony lifted his brows in unaffected surprise.
“What’s the matter with you?” he asked, half-derisively; and no more was said on the subject.
No more was said on any subject, for that matter, until fish had succeeded soup, and the waiter was making ready for a third course. Then the founder of the feast said to this menial:
“See here, you, don’t play this on me! Jest tote in whatever more you’ve got, an’ put er down, an’ git out. We don’t want you bobbin’ in here every second minute, all the afternoon.”
The waiter, with an aggrieved air, brought in presently a tray loaded with dishes, which he plumped down all over The O’Mahony’s half of the table.
“That’s somethin’ like it,” said that gentleman, approvingly; “you’ll get the hang of your business in time, young man,” as the servant left the room. Then he heaped up Jerry’s plate and his own, ruminated over a mouthful or two, with his eyes searching the other’s face—and began to speak.
“Do you know what made me take a shine to you?” he asked, and then made answer: “’Twas on account of your dodrotted infernal cheek. It made me laugh—an’ I’d got so it seemed as if I wasn’t never goin’ to laugh any more. That’s why I cottoned to you—an’ got a notion you was jest the kind o’ fellow I wanted. D’ye know who I am?”
Jerry’s quizzical eyes studied his companion’s face in turn, first doubtingly, then with an air of reassurance.
“I do not, your honor,” he said at last, visibly restraining the impulse to say a great deal more.
“I’m the O’Mahony of Murrisk, an’ I’m returnin’ to my estates.”
Jerry did prolonged but successful battle once more with his sense of humor and loquacious instincts.
“All right, your honor,” he said, with humility.
“Maybe I don’t look like an Irishman or talk like one,” the other went on, “but that’s because I was taken to America when I was a little shaver, knee-high to a grasshopper, an’ my folks didn’t keep up no connection with Irishmen. That’s how I lost my grip on the hull Ireland business, don’t you see?”
“Sure, your honor, it’s as clear as Spike Island in the sunshine.”
“Well, that’s how it was. And now my relations over here have died off—that is, all that stood in front of me—and so the estates come to me, and I’m The O’Mahony.”
“An’ it’s proud ivery mother’s son of your tin-ints ‘ll be at that same, your honor.”
“At first, of course, I didn’t know but the lawyers ’ud make a kick when I turned up and claimed the thing. Generally you have to go to law, an’ take your oath, an’ fight everybody. But, pshaw! why they jest swallered me slick’n clean, as if I’d had my ears pinned back an’ be’n greased all over. Never asked ‘ah,’ ‘yes,’ or ‘no.’ Didn’t raise a single question. I guess there ain’t no White in the business now. I didn’t see him or hear anything about him. But Carmody’s a reg’lar old brick. They wasn’t nothin’ too good for me after he learnt who I was. But what fetched him most was that I’d seen Abe Lincoln, close to, dozens o’ times. He was crazy to know all about him, an’ the assassination, an’ what I thought ’ud be the next move; so’t we hardly talked about The O’Mahony business at all. An’ it seems ther’s been a lot o’ shenanigan about it, too. The fellow that came out to America to—to find me—Linsky his name was—why, darn my buttons, if he hadn’t run away from Cork, an’ stole my papers along with a lot of others, countin’ on peddlin’ ’em over there an’ collarin’ the money.”
“Ah, the thief of the earth!” said Jerry.
“Well, he got killed there, in about the last battle there was in the war; an’ ’twas by the finding of the papers on him that—that I came by my rights.”
“Glory be to God!” commented Jerry, as he buried his jowl afresh in the tankard of stout.
A term of silence ensued, during which what remained of the food was disposed of. Then The O’Mahony spoke again:
“Are you a man of family?”
“Well, your honor, I’ve never rightly, come by the truth of it, but there are thim that says I’m descinded from the O’Higginses of Westmeath. I’d not venture to take me Bible oath on it, but—”
“No, I don’t mean that. Have you got a wife an’ children?”
“Is it me, your honor? Arrah, what girl that wasn’t blind an’ crippled an’ deminted wid fits wud take up wid the likes of me?”
“Well, what is your job down at Queenstown like? Can you leave it right off, not to go back any more?”
“It’s no job at all. Sure, I jist take out Mikey Doolan’s car, wid that thund’rin’ old Maggie, givin’ warnin’ to fall to pieces on the road in front of me, for friendship—to exercise ’em like. It’s not till every other horse and ass in Queenstown’s ingaged that anny mortial sow ’ll ride on my car. An’ whin I gets a fare, why, I do be after that long waitin’ that—”
“That you drive ’em up on top of the hill whether they want to go or not, eh?” asked The O’Mahony, with a grin.
Jerry took the liberty of winking at his patron in response.
“Egor! that’s the way of it, your honor,” he said, pleasantly.
“So you don’t have to go back there at all?” pursued the other.
“Divila rayson have I for ever settin’ fut in the Cove ag’in, if your honor has work for me elsewhere.”
“I guess I can fix that,” said The O’Mahony, speaking more slowly, and studying his man as he spoke. “You see, I ain’t got a man in this hull Ireland that I can call a friend. I don’t know nothin’ about your ways, no more’n a babe unborn. It took me jest about two minutes, after I got out through the Custom House, to figger out that I was goin’ to need some one to sort o’ steer me—and need him powerful bad, too. Why, I can’t even reckon in your blamed money, over here. You call a shillin’ what we’d call two shillin’s, an’ there ain’t no such thing as a dollar. Now, I’m goin’ out to my estates, where I don’t know a livin’ soul, an’ prob’ly they’d jest rob me out o’ my eye-teeth, if I hadn’t got some one to look after me—some one that knew his way around. D’ye see?”
The car-driver’s eyes sparkled, but he shook his curly red head with doubt, upon reflection.
“You’ve been fair wid me, sir,” he said, after a pause, “an’ I’ll not be behind you in honesty. You don’t know me at all. What the divil, man!—why, I might be the most rebellious rogue in all County Cork.” He scratched his head with added dubiety, as he went on; “An’, for the matter of that, faith, if you did know me, it’s some one else you’d take. There’s no one in the Cove that ’ud give me a character.”
“You’re right,” observed The O’Mahony. “I don’t know you from a side o’ soleleather. But that’s my style. I like a fellow, or I don’t like him, and I do it on my own hook, follerin’ my own notions, and just to suit myself. I’ve been siz’in’ you up, all around, an’ I like the cut o’ your gib. You might be washed up a trifle more, p’r’aps, and have your hair cropped; but them’s details. The main point is, that I believe you’ll act fair and square with me, an see to it that I git a straight deal!”
“Sir, I’ll go to the end of the earth for you,” said Jerry. He rose, and by an instinctive movement, the two men shook hands across the table.
“That’s right,” said The O’Mahony, referring more to the clasping of hands than to the vow of fealty. “That’s the way I want ’er to stand. Don’t call me ‘yer honor,’ or any o’ that sort o’ palaver. I’ve been a poor man all my life. I ain’t used to bossin’ niggers around, or playin’ off that I’m better’n other folks. Now that I’m returnin’ to my estates, prob’ly I’ll have to stomach more or less of that sort o’ nonsense. That’s one of the things I’ll want you to steer me in.”
“An’ might I be askin’, where are these estates, sir?”
“So far’s I can make out, they’re near where we come in sight of Ireland first; it can’t be very far from here. They’re on the seashore—I know that much. We go to Dunmanway, wherever that is, by the railroad to-morrow, and there the lawyers have telegraphed to have the agent meet us. From there on, we’ve got to stage it. The place itself is Murrisk, beyond Skull—nice, comfortable, soothin’ sort o’ names you Irish have for your towns, eh?”
“And what time’ll we be startin’ to-morrow?”
“The train leaves at noon—that is, for Dunmanway.”
“Thank God for that,” said Jerry, with a sigh of relief.
The O’Mahony turned upon him with such an obviously questioning glance that he made haste to explain:
“I’ll be bound your honor hasn’t been to mass since—since ye were like that grasshopper ye spoke about.”
“Mass—no—how d’ye mean? What is it?”
“Luk at that, now!” exclaimed Jerry, triumphantly. “See what ’d ’a’ come to ye if ye’d gone to your estates without knowing the first word of your Christian obligations! We’ll rise early to-morrow, and I’ll get ye through all the masses there are in Cork, betune thin an’ midday.”
“Gad! I’d clean forgotten that,” said The O’Mahony. “An’ now let’s git out an’ see the town.”