One day passed, and then another, and the evening of the third day drew near—yet brought no returning Bernard. It is true that on the second day a telegram—the first Jerry had ever received in his life—came bearing the date of Cashel, and containing only the unsigned injunction:
“Don’t be afraid.”
It is all very well to say this, but Jerry and Linsky read over the brief message many scores of times that day, and still felt themselves very much afraid.
Muirisc was stirred by unwonted excitement. In all its history, the village had never resented anything else quite so much as the establishment of a police barrack in its principal street, a dozen years before. The inhabitants had long since grown accustomed to the sight of the sergeant and his four men lounging about the place, and had even admitted them to a kind of conditional friendship, but, none the less, their presence had continued to present itself as an affront to Muirisc. From one year’s end to another, no suspicion of crime had darkened the peaceful fame of the hamlet. They had heard vague stories of grim and violent deeds in other parts of the south and west, as the failure of the potatoes and the greed of the landlords conspired together to drive the peasantry into revolt, but in Muirisc, though she had had her evictions and knew what it was to be hungry, it had occurred to no one to so much as break a window.
Yet now, all at once, here were fresh constables brought in from Bantry, with an inspector at their head, and the amazed villagers saw these newcomers, with rifles slung over their short capes, and little round caps cocked to one side on their close-cropped heads, ransacking every nook and cranny of the ancient town in quest of some mysterious thing, the while others spread their search over the ragged rocks and moorland roundabout. And then the astounding report flew from mouth to mouth that Father Jago had read in a Dublin paper that O’Daly was believed to have been murdered.
Sure enough, now that they had thought of it, O’Daly had not been seen for two or three days, but until this strange story came from without, no one had given this a thought. He was often away, for days together, on mining and other business, but it was said now that his wife, whom Muirisc still thought of as Mrs. Fergus, had given the alarm, on the ground that if her husband had been going away over night, he would have told her. There was less liking for this lady than ever, when this report started on its rounds.
Three or four of the wretched, unwashed and half-fed creatures, who had fled from O’Daly’s evictions to the shelter of the furze-clad ditches outside, had been brought in and sharply questioned at the barracks, on this third day, but of what they had said the villagers knew nothing. And, now, toward evening, the excited groups of gossiping neighbors at the corners saw Jerry Higgins himself, with flushed face and apprehensive eye, being led past with his shambling cousin toward constabulary headquarters by a squad of armed policemen. Close upon the heels of this amazing spectacle came the rumor—whence started, who could tell?—that Jerry had during the day received a telegram clearly implicating him in the crime, At this, Muirisc groaned aloud.
“’Tis wid you alone I want to spake,” said Kate, bluntly, to the mother superior.
The April twilight was deepening the shadows in the corners of the convent’s reception hall, and mellowing into a uniformity of ugliness the faces of the four Misses O’Daly who sat on the long bench before the fireless hearth. These young women were strangers to Muirisc, and had but yesterday arrived from their country homes in Kerry or the Macroom district to enter the convent of which their remote relation was patron. They were plain, small-farmers’ daughters, with flat faces, high cheek-bones and red hands. They had risen in clumsy humility when Kate entered the room, staring in admiration at her beauty, and even more at her hat; they had silently seated themselves again at a sign from the mother superior, still staring in round-eyed wonder at this novel kind of young woman; and they clung now stolidly to their bench, in the face of Kate’s remark. Perhaps they did not comprehend it, But they understood and obeyed the almost contemptuous gesture by which the aged nun bade them leave the room.
“What is it thin, Dubhdeasa?” asked Mother Agnes, with affectionate gravity, seating herself as she spoke. The burden of eighty years rested lightly upon the lean figure and thin, wax-like face of the nun. Only a close glance would have revealed the fine net-work of wrinkles covering this pallid skin, and her shrewd observant eyes flashed still with the keenness of youth. “Tell me, what is it?”
“I’ve a broken heart in me, that’s all!” said the girl.
She had walked to one of the two narrow little windows, and stood looking out, yet seeing nothing for the mist of tears that might not be kept down. Only the affectation of defiance preserved her voice from breaking.
“Here there will be rest and p’ace of mind,” intoned the other. “’T is only a day more, Katie, and thin ye’ll be wan of us, wid all the worriments and throubles of the world lagues behind ye.”
The girl shook her head with vehemence and paced the stone floor restlessly.
“’T is I who’ll be opening the dure to ’em and bringing ’em all in here, instead. No fear, Mother Agnes, they’ll folly me wherever I go.”
The other smiled gently, and shook her vailed head in turn.
“’T is little a child like you drames of the rale throubles of me,” she murmured. “Whin ye’re older, ye’ll bless the good day that gave ye this holy refuge, and saved ye from thim all. Oh, Katie, darlin’, when I see you standing be me side in your habit—’t is mesilf had it made be the Miss Maguires in Skibbereen, the same that sews the vestmints for the bishop himself—I can lay me down, and say me nunc dimittis wid a thankful heart!”
Kate sighed deeply and turned away. It was the trusting sweetness of affection with which old Mother Agnes had enveloped her ever since the promise to take vows had been wrung from her reluctant tongue that rose most effectually always to restrain her from reconsidering that promise. It was clear enough that the venerable O’Mahony nuns found in the speedy prospect of her joining them the one great controlling joy of their lives. Thinking upon this now, it was natural enough for her to say:
“Can thim O’Daly girls rade and write, I wonder?”
“Oh, they’ve had schooling, all of them. ’T is not what you had here, be anny manes, but ’t will do.”
“Just think, Mother Agnes,” Kate burst forth, “what it ‘ll be like to be shut with such craytures as thim afther—afther you l’ave us!”
“They’re very humble,” said the nun, hesitatingly. “’T is more of that same spirit I’d fain be seeing in yourself, Katie! And in that they’ve small enough resimblance to Cormac O’Daly, who’s raked ’em up from the highways and byways to make their profession here. And oh—tell me now—old Ellen that brings the milk mintioned to Sister Blanaid that O’Daly was gone somewhere, and that there was talk about it.”
“Talk, is it!” exclaimed Kate, whose introspective mood had driven this subject from her mind, but who now spoke with eagerness. “That’s the word for it, ‘talk.’ ’T is me mother, for pure want of something to say, that putt the notion into Sergeant O’Flaherty’s thick skull, and, w’u’d ye belave it, they’ve brought more poliss to the town, and they’re worriting the loives out of the people wid questions and suspicions. I’m told they’ve even gone out to the bog and arrested some of thim poor wretches of O’Driscolls that Cormac putt out of their cottages last winter. The idea of it!”
“Where there’s so much smoke there’s some bit of fire,” said the older woman. “Where is O’Daly?” The girl shrugged her shoulders.
“’T is not my affair!” she said, curtly. “I know where he’d be, if I’d my will.”
“Katie,” chanted the nun, in tender reproof, “what spirit d’ye call that for a woman who’s within four-an’-twinty hours of making her profession! Pray for yourself, child, that these worldly feelings may be taken from ye!”
“Mother Agnes,” said the girl, “if I’m to pretind to love Cormac O’Daly, thin, wance for all, ’t is no use!”
“We’re bidden to love all thim that despite—” The nun broke off her quotation abruptly. A low wailing sound from the bowels of the earth beneath them rose through the flags of the floor, and filled the chamber with a wierd and ghostly dying away echo. Mother Agnes sprang to her feet.
“’T is the Hostage again!” she cried. “Sister Ellen vowed to me she heard him through the night. Did you hear him just now?”
“I heard it,” said Kate, simply.
The mother superior, upon reflection, seated herself again.
“’T is a strange business,” she said, at last. Her shrewd eyes, wandering in a meditative gaze about the chamber, avoided Katie’s face. “’T is twelve years since last we heard him,” she mused aloud, “and that was the night of the storm. ’T is a sign of misfortune to hear him, they say—and the blowing down of the walls that toime was taken be us to fulfill that same. But sure, within the week, The O’Mahoney had gone on his thravels, and pious Cormac O’Daly had taken his place, and the convint prospered more than ever. At laste that was no misfortune.”
“Hark to me, Mother Agnes,” said Kate, with emphasis. “You never used to favor the O’Mahonys as well I remimber, but you’re a fair-minded woman and a holy woman, and I challenge ye now to tell me honest: Wasn’t anny wan hair on The O’Mahony’s head worth the whole carcase of Cormac O’Daly? ’T was an evil day for Muirisc whin he sailed away. If the convint has prospered, me word, ’t is what nothing else in Muirisc has done. And laving aside your office as a nun, is it sp’akin well for a place to say that three old women in it are better off, and all the rist have suffered?”
“Katie!” admonished the other. “You’ll repint thim words a week hence! To hearken to ye, wan would think yer heart was not in the profession ye’re to make.”
The girl gave a scornful, little laugh.
“Did I ever pretind it was?” she demanded.
“’T is you are the contrary crayture!” sighed the mother superior. “Here now for all these cinturies, through all the storms and wars and confiscations, this holy house has stud firm be the old faith. There ’s not another family in Ireland has kept the mass in its own chapel, wid its own nuns kneeling before it, and never a break or interruption at all. I’ll l’ave it to yer own sinse: Can ye compare the prosperity of a little village, or a hundred of ’em, wid such a glorious and unayqualed riccord as that? Why, girl, ’t is you should be proud beyond measure and thankful that ye’re born and bred and selected to carry on such a grand tradition. To be head of the convint of the O’Mahonys ’t is more historically splindid than to be queen of England.”
“But if I come to be the head at all,” retorted Kate, “sure it will be a convint of O’Dalys.”
The venerable woman heaved another sigh and looked at the floor in silence.
Kate pursued her advantage eagerly.
“Sure, I’ve me full share of pride in proper things,” she said, “and no O’Mahony of them all held his family higher in his mind than I do. And me blood lapes to every word you say about that same. But would you—Agnes O’Mahony as ye were born—would you be asking me to have pride in the O’Dalys? And that ’s what ’t is intinded to make of the convint now. For my part, I’d be for saying: ‘L’ave the convint doy now wid the last of the ladies of our own family rather than keep it alive at the expinse of giving it to the O’Dalys.’”
Mother Agnes shook her head.
“I’ve me carnal feelings no less than you,” she said, “and me family pride to subdue. But even if the victory of humility were denied me, what c’u’d we do? For the moment, I’ll put this holy house to wan side. What can you do? How can you stand up forninst Cormac O’Daly’s determination? Remimber, widout him ye’re but a homeless gerrel, Katie.”
“And whose fault is that, Mother Agnes?” asked Kate, with swift glance and tone. “Will ye be telling me ’t was The O’Mahony’s? Did he l’ave me widout a four-penny bit, depindent on others, or was it that others stole me money and desaved me, and to-day are keeping me out of me own? Tell me that, Mother Agnes.”
The nun’s ivory-tinted face flushed for an instant, then took on a deeper pallor. Her gaze, lifted momentarily toward Kate, strayed beyond her to vacancy. She rose to her full height and made a forward step, then stood, fumbling confusedly at her beads, and with trembling, half-opened lips.
“’T is not in me power,” she stammered, slowly and with difficulty. “There—there was something—I’ve not thought of it for so long—I’m forgetting strangely—”
She broke off abruptly, threw up her withered hands in a gesture of despair, and then, never looking at the girl, turned and with bowed head left the room.
Kate still stood staring in mingled amazement and apprehension at the arched casement through which Mother Agnes had vanished, when the oak door was pushed open again, and Sister Blanaid, a smaller and younger woman, yet bent and half-palsied under the weight of years, showed herself in the aperture. She bore in her arms, shoving the door aside with it as she feebly advanced, a square wooden box, dust-begrimed and covered in part with reddish cow-skin.
“Take it away!” she mumbled. “’T is the mother-supayrior’s desire you should take it from here. ’T is an evil day that’s on us! Go fling this haythen box into the bay and thin pray for yourself and for her, who’s taken that grief for ye she’s at death’s door!”
The door closed again, and Kate found herself mechanically bearing this box in her arms and making her way out through the darkened hallways to the outer air. Only when she stood on the steps of the porch, and set down her burden to adjust her hat, did she recognize it. Then, with a murmuring cry of delight, she stooped and snatched it up again. It was the cathach which The O’Mahony had given her to keep.
On the instant, as she looked out across the open green upon the harbor, the bay, the distant peninsula of Kilcrohane peacefully gathering to itself the shadows of the falling twilight—how it all came back to her! On the day of his departure—that memorable black-letter day in her life—he had turned over this rude little chest to her; he had told her it was his luck, his talisman, and now should be hers. She had carried it, not to her mother’s home, but to the tiny school-room in the old convent, for safekeeping. She recalled now that she had told the nuns, or Mother Agnes, at least, what it was. But then—then there came a blank in her memory. She could not force her mind to remember when she ceased to think about it—when it made its way into the lumber-room where it had apparently lain so long.
But, at all events, she had it now again. She bent her head to touch with her lips one of the rough strips of skin nailed irregularly upon it; then, with a shining face, bearing the box, like some sanctified shrine, against her breast, she moved across the village-common toward the wharf and the water.
The injunction of quavering old Blanaid to cast it into the bay drifted uppermost in her thoughts, and she smiled to herself. She had been bidden, also, to pray; and reflection upon this chased the smile away. Truly, there was need for prayer. Her perplexed mind called up, one by one, in disheartening array, the miseries of her position, and drew new unhappiness from the confusion of right and wrong which they presented. How could she pray to be delivered from what Mother Agnes held up as the duties of piety? And, on the other hand, what sincerity could there be in any other kind of spiritual petition?
She wandered along the shore-sands under the cliffs, the box tightly clasped in her arms, her eyes musingly bent upon the brown reaches of drenched seaweed which lay at play with the receding tide.
Her mind conjured up the image of a smiling and ruddy young face, sun-burned and thatched with crisp, curly brown hair—the face of that curious young O’Mahony from Houghton County. His blue eye looked at her half quizzically, half beseeching, but Kate resolutely drove the image away. He was only the merest trifle less mortal than the others.
So musing, she strolled onward. Suddenly she stopped, and lifted her head triumphantly; the smile had flashed forth again upon her face, and the dark eyes were all aglow. A thought had come to her—so convincing, so unanswerable, so joyously uplifting, that she paused to marvel at having been blind to it so long. Clear as noon sunlight on Mount Gabriel was it what she should pray for.
What could it ever have been, this one crowning object of prayer, but the return of The O’Mahony?
As her mental vision adapted itself to the radiance of this revelation, the abstracted glance which she had allowed to wander over the bay was arrested by a concrete object. Two hundred yards from the water’s edge a strange vessel had heaved to, and was casting anchor. Kate could hear the chain rattling out from the capstan, even as she looked.
The sight sent all prayerful thoughts scurrying out of her head. The presence of vessels of the size of the new-comer was in itself most unusual at Muirisc. But Kate’s practiced eye noticed a strange novelty. The craft, though thick of beam and ungainly in line, carried the staight running bowsprit of a cutter, and in addition to its cutter sheets had a jigger lug-sail. The girl watched these eccentric sails as they were dropped and reefed, with a curious sense of having seen them somewhere before—as if in a vision or some old picture-book of childhood. Confused memories stirred within her as she gazed, and held her mind in daydream captivity. A figure she seemed vaguely to know, stood now at the gunwale.
The spell was rudely broken by a wild shout from the cliff close above her. On the instant, amid a clatter of falling stones and a veritable landslide of sand, rocks and turf, a human figure came rolling, clambering and tumbling down the declivity, and ran toward her, its arms stretched and waving with frantic gestures, and emitting inarticulate cries and groans as it came.
The astonished girl instinctively raised the box in her hands, to use it as a missile. But, lo, it was old Murphy who, half stumbling to his knees at her feet, fiercely clutched her skirts, and pointed in a frenzy of excitement seaward!
“Wid yer own eyes look at it—it, Miss Katie!” he screamed. “Ye can see it yerself! It’s not dr’aming I am!”
“It’s drunk ye are instead, thin, Murphy,” said the girl, sharply, though in great wonderment.
“Wid joy! Wid joy I’m drunk!” the old man shouted, dancing on the sands and slippery sea-litter like one possessed, and whirling his arms about his head.
“Murphy, man! What ails ye? In the name of the Lord—what—”
The browned, wild-eyed, ragged old madman had started at a headlong pace across the wet waste of weeds, and plunged now through the breakers, wading with long strides—knee-deep, then immersed to the waist. He turned for an instant to shout back: “I’ll swim to him if I drown for it! ’Tis the master come back!”
The girl fell to her knees on the sand, then reverently bowed her head till it rested upon the box before her.
Sorra a wink o’ sleep could I get the night,” groaned the wife of O’Daly—Mrs. Fergus—“what with me man muthered, an’ me daughter drowned, an’ me nerves that disthracted ’t was past the power of hot dhrink to abate em.”
It was early morning in the reception hall of the convent. The old nuns sat on their bench in a row, blinking in the bright light which poured through the casement as they gazed at their visitor, and tortured their unworldly wits over the news she brought. The young chaplain, Father Jago, had come in from the mass, still wearing soutane and beretta. He leaned his burly weight against the mantel, smiling inwardly at thoughts of breakfast, but keeping his heavy face drawn in solemn lines to fit these grievous tidings.
The mother superior sighed despairingly, and spoke in low, quavering tones. “Here, too, no one sleeps a wink,” she said. “Ah, thin, ’t is too much sorrow for us! By rayson of our years we’ve no stringth to bear it.”
“Ah—sure—’t is different wid you,” remarked Mrs. Fergus. “You’ve no proper notion of the m’aning of sleep. Faith, all your life you’ve been wakened bechune naps by your prayer-bell. ’T is no throuble to you. You’re accustomed to ’t. But wid me—if I’ve me rest broken, I’m killed entirely. ’T is me nerves!”
“Ay, them nerves of yours—did I ever hear of ’em before?” put in Mother Agnes, with a momentary gleam of carnal delight in combat on her waxen face. Then sadness resumed its sway. “Aye, aye, Katie! Katie!” she moaned, slowly shaking her vailed head. “Child of our prayers, daughter of the White Foam, pride of the O’Mahonys, darlin’ of our hearts—what ailed ye to l’ave us?”
The mother superior’s words quavered upward into a wail as they ended. The sound awakened the ancestral “keening” instinct in the other aged nuns, and stirred the thin blood in their veins. They broke forth in weird lamentations.
“Her hair was the glory of Desmond, that weighty and that fine!” chanted Sister Ellen. “Ah, wirra, wirra!”
“She had it from me,” said Mrs. Fergus, her hand straying instinctively to her crimps. Her voice had caught the mourning infection: “Ah-hoo! Katie Avourneen,” she wailed in vocal sympathy. “Come back to us, darlint!”
“She’d the neck of the Swan of the Lake of Three Castles!” mumbled Sister Blanaid. “’T was that same was said of Grace O’Sullivan—the bride of The O’Mahony of Ballydivlin—an’ he was kilt on the strand benayth the walls—an’ she lookin’ on wid her grand black eyes—”
“Is it floatin’ in the waves ye are, ma creevin cno—wid the fishes surroundin’ ye?” sobbed Mrs. Fergus.
Sister Blanaid’s thick tongue took up the keening again. “’T was I druv her out! ‘Go ’long wid ye,’ says I, ‘an’ t’row that haythen box o’ yours into the bay’—an’ she went and t’rew her purty self in instead; woe an’ prosthration to this house!—an’ may the Lord—”
Father Jago at this took his elbow from the mantel and straightened himself. “Whisht, now, aisy!” he said, in a tone of parental authority. “There’s modheration in all things. Sure ye haven’t a scintilla of evidence that there’s annyone dead at all. Where’s the sinse of laminting a loss ye’re not sure of—and that, too, on an impty stomach?”
“Nevir bite or sup more will I take till I’ve tidings of her!’ said the mother superior.
“The more rayson why I’ll not be waiting longer for ye now,” commented the priest; and with this he left the room. As he closed the door behind him, a grateful odor of frying bacon momentarily spread upon the air. Mrs. Fergus sniffed it, and half rose from her seat; but the nuns clung resolutely to their theme, and she sank back again.
“’T is my belafe,” Sister Ellen began, “that voice we heard, ’t is from no Hostage at all—’t is the banshee of the O’Mahonys.”
The mother superior shook her head.
“Is it likely, thin, Ellen O’Mahony,” she queried, “that our banshee would be distressed for an O’Daly? Sure the grand noise was made whin Cormac himself disappeared.”
“His marryin’ me—’t is clear enough that putt him in the family,” said Mrs. Fergus. “’T would be flat injustice to me to ’ve my man go an’ never a keen raised for him. I’ll stand on me rights for that much Agnes O’Mahony.”
“A fine confusion ye’d have of it, thin,” retorted the mother superior. “The O’Dalys have their own banshee—she sat up her keen in Kilcrohane these hundreds of years—and for ours to be meddlin’ because she’s merely related by marriage—sure, ’t would not be endured.”
The dubious problem of a family banshee’s duties has never been elucidated beyond this point, for on the instant there came a violent ringing of the big bell outside, the hoarse clangor of which startled the women into excited silence. A minute later, the white-capped lame old woman-servant threw open the door.
A young man, with a ruddy, smiling face and a carriage of boyish confidence, entered the room. He cast an inquiring glance over the group. Then recognizing Mrs. Fergus, he gave a little exclamation of pleasure, and advanced toward her with outstretched hand.
“Why, how do you do, Mrs. O’Daly?” he exclaimed, cordially shaking her hand. “Pray keep your seat. I’m just playing in luck to find you here. Won’t you—eh—-be kind enough to—eh—introduce me?”
“’T is a young gintleman from Ameriky, Mr. O’Mahony by name,” Mrs. Fergus stammered, flushed with satisfaction in his remembrance, but doubtful as to the attitude of the nuns.
The ladies of the Hostage’s Tears had drawn themselves into as much dignified erectness as their age and infirmities permitted. They eyed this amazing new-comer in mute surprise. Mother Agnes, after the first shock at the invasion, nodded frostily in acknowledgment of his respectful bow.
“Get around an’ spake to her in her north ear,” whispered Mrs. Fergus; “she can’t hear ye in the other.”
Bernard had been long enough in West Carbery to comprehend her meaning. In that strange old district there is no right or left, no front or back—only points of the compass. A gesture from Mrs. Fergus helped him now to guess where the north might lie in matters auricular.
“I didn’t stand on ceremony,” he said, laying his hat on the table and drawing off his gloves. “I’ve driven over post-haste from Skibbereen this morning—the car’s outside—and I rushed in here the first thing. I—I hope sincerely that I’m in time.”
“‘In toime?’” the superior repeated, in a tone of annoyed mystification. “That depinds entoirely, sir, on your own intintions. I’ve no information, sir, as to either who you are or what you’re afther doing.”
“No, of course not,” said Bernard, in affable apology. “I ought to have thought of that. I’ll explain things, ma’am, if you’ll permit me. As I said, I’ve just raced over this morning from Skibbereen.”
Mother Agnes made a stately inclination of her vailed head.
“You had a grand morning for your drive,” she said.
“I didn’t notice,” the young man replied, with a frank smile. “I was too busy thinking of something else. The truth is, I spent last evening with the bishop.”
Again the mother superior bowed slightly.
“An estimable man,” she remarked, coldly.
“Oh, yes; nothing could have been friendlier,” pursued Bernard, “than the way he treated me. And the day before that I was at Cashel, and had a long talk with the archbishop. He’s a splendid old gentleman, too. Not the least sign of airs or nonsense about him.”
Mother Agnes rose.
“I’m deloighted to learn that our higher clergy prodhuce so favorable an impression upon you,” she said, gravely; “but, if you’ll excuse us, sir, this is a house of mourning, and our hearts are heavy wid grief, and we’re not in precisely the mood—”
Bernard spoke in an altered tone:
“Oh! I beg a thousand pardons! Mourning, did you say? May I ask—”
Mrs. Fergus answered his unspoken question.
“Don’t you know it, thin? ’T is me husband, Cormac O’Daly. Sure he’s murdhered an’ his body’s nowhere to be found, an’ the poliss are scourin’ all the counthry roundabout, an’ there’s a long account of ’t in the Freeman sint from Bantry, an’ more poliss have been dhrafted into Muirisc, an’ they’ve arrested Jerry Higgins and that long-shanked, shiverin’ omadhaun of a cousin of his. ’T is known they had a tellgram warnin’ thim not to be afraid—”
“Oh, by George! Well, this is rich!”
The young man’s spontaneous exclamations brought the breathless narrative of Mrs. Fergus to an abrupt stop. The women gazed at him in stupefaction. His rosy and juvenile face had, at her first words, worn a wondering and puzzled expression. Gradually, as she went on, a light of comprehension had dawned in his eyes. Then he had broken in upon her catalogue of woes with a broad grin on his face.
“Igad, this is rich!” he repeated. He put his hands in his pockets, withdrew them, and then took a few steps up and down the room, chuckling deeply to himself.
The power of speech came first to Mother Agnes. “If ’t is to insult our griefs you’ve come, young sir,” she began; “if that’s your m’aning—”
“Bless your heart, madam!” Bernard protested. “I’d be the last man in the world to dream of such a thing. I’ve too much respect. I’ve an aunt who is a religious, myself. No, what I mean is it’s all a joke—that is, a mistake. O’Daly isn’t dead at all.”
“What’s that you’re sayin’?” put in Mrs. Fergus, sharply. “Me man is aloive, ye say?”
“Why, of course”—the youngster went off into a fresh fit of chuckling—“of course, he is—alive and kicking. Yes, especially kicking!”
“The Lord’s mercy on us!” said the mother superior. “And where would Cormac be, thin!”
“Well, that’s another matter. I don’t know that I can tell you just now; but, take my word for it, he’s as alive as I am, and he’s perfectly safe, too.”
The astonished pause which followed was broken by the mumbling monologue of poor half-palsied Sister Blanaid:
“I putt the box in her hands, an’ I says, says I: ‘Away wid ye, now, an’ t’row it into the say!’ An’ thin she wint.”
The other women exchanged startled glances. In their excitement they had forgotten about Kate.
Before they could speak, Bernard, with a mystified glance at the spluttering old lady, had taken up the subject of their frightened thoughts.
“But what I came for,” he said, looking from one to the other, “what I was specially in a stew about, was to get here before—before Miss Kate had taken her vows. The ceremony was set down for to-day, as I understand. Perhaps I’m wrong; but that’s why I asked if I was in time.”
“You are in time,” answered Mother Agnes, solemnly.
Her sepulchral tone jarred upon the young man’s ear. Looking into the speaker’s pallid, vail-framed face, he was troubled vaguely by a strange, almost sinister significance in her glance.
“You’re in fine time,” the mother superior repeated, and bowed her head.
“Man alive!” Mrs. Fergus exclaimed, rising and leaning toward him. “You’ve no sinse of what you’re saying. Me daughter’s gone, too!”
“‘Gone!’ How gone? What do you mean?” Bernard gazed in blank astonishment into the vacuous face of Mrs. Fergus. Mechanically he strode toward her and took her hand firmly in his.
“Where has she gone to?” he demanded, as his scattered wits came under control again. “Do you mean that she’s run away? Can’t you speak?”
Mrs. Fergus, thus stoutly adjured, began to whimper:
“They sint her from here—’t was always harsh they were wid her—ye heard Sister Blanaid yerself say they sint her—an’ out she wint to walk under the cliffs—some byes of Peggy Clancy saw her go—an’ she never came back through the long night—an’ me wid no wink o’ sleep—an’ me nerves that bad!”
Overcome by her emotions, Mrs. Fergus, her hand still in Bernard’s grasp, bent forward till her crimps rested on the young man’s shoulder. She moved her forehead gingerly about till it seemed certain that the ornaments were sustaining no injury. Then she gave her maternal feelings full sway and sobbed with fervor against the coat of the young man from Houghton County.
“Don’t cry, Mrs. O’Daly,” was all Bernard could think of to say.
The demonstration might perhaps have impressed him had he not perforce looked over the weeping lady’s head straight into the face of the mother superior. There he saw written such contemptuous incredulity that he himself became conscious of skepticism.
“Don’t take on so!” he urged, this time less gently, and strove to disengage himself.
But Mrs. Fergus clung to his hand and resolutely buried her face against his collar. Sister Ellen had risen to her feet beside Mother Agnes, and he heard the two nuns sniff indignantly. Then he realized that the situation was ridiculous.
“What is it you suspect?” he asked of the mother superior, eager to make a diversion of some kind.
“You can’t be imagining that harm’s come to Miss Kate—that she ’s drowned?”
“That same was our belafe,” said Mother Agnes, glaring icily upon him and his sobbing burden.
The inference clearly was that the spectacle before her affronted eyes had been enough to overturn all previous convictions, of whatever character.
Bernard hesitated no longer. He almost wrenched his hand free and then firmly pushed Mrs. Fergus away.
“It’s all nonsense,” he said, assuming a confidence he did not wholly feel. “She’s no more drowned than I am.”
“Faith, I had me fears for you, wid such a dale of tears let loose upon ye,” remarked Mother Agnes, dryly.
The young man looked straight into the reverend countenance of the superior and confided to it an audacious wink.
“I’ll be back in no time,” he said, taking up his hat. “Now don’t you fret another bit. She’s all right. I know it. And I’ll go and find her.” And with that he was gone.
An ominous silence pervaded the reception hall. The two nuns, still standing, stared with wrathful severity at Mrs. Fergus. She bore their gaze with but an indifferent show of composure, patting her disordered crimps with an awkward hand, and then moving aimlessly across the room.
“I’ll be going now, I’m thinking,” she said, at last, yet lingered in spite of her words.
The nuns looked slowly at one another, and uttered not a word.
“Well, thin, ’t is small comfort I have, annyway, or consolation either, from the lot of ye,” Mrs. Fergus felt impelled to remark, drawing her shawl up on her head and walking toward the door. “An’ me wid me throubles, an’ me nerves.”
“Is it consolation you’re afther?” retorted Mother Agnes, bitterly. “I haven’t the proper kind of shoulder on me for your variety of consolation.”
“Thrue ye have it, Agnes O’Mahony,” Mrs. Fergus came back, with her hand on the latch. “An’ by the same token, thim shoulders were small consolation to you yourself, till you got your nun’s vail to hide ’em!”
When she had flounced her way out, the mother superior remained standing, her gaze bent upon the floor.
“Sister Ellen,” she said at last, “me powers are failing me. ’T is time I laid down me burden. For the first time in me life I was unayqual to her impiddence.”
When Bernard O’Mahony found himself outside the convent gateway, he paused to consider matters.
The warm spring sunlight so broadly enveloped the square in which he stood, the shining white cottages and gray old walls behind him and the harbor and pale-blue placid bay beyond, in its grateful radiance, that it was not in nature to think gloomy thoughts. And nothing in the young man’s own nature tended that way, either.
Yet as he stopped short, looked about him, and even took off his hat to the better ponder the situation, he saw that it was even more complicated than he had thought. His plan of campaign had rested upon two bold strategic actions. He had deemed them extremely smart, at the time of their invention. Both had been put into execution, and, lo, the state of affairs was worse than ever!
The problem had been to thwart and overturn O’Daly and to prevent Kate from entering the convent. These two objects were so intimately connected and dependent one upon the other, that it had been impossible to separate them in procedure. He had caused O’Daly to be immured in secrecy in the underground cell, the while he went off to secure episcopal interference in the convent’s plans. His journey had been crowned with entire success. It had involved a trip to Cashel, it is true, but he had obtained an order forbidding the ladies of the Hostage’s Tears to add to their numbers. Returning in triumph with this invincible weapon, he discovered now that O’Daly’s disappearance had been placarded all over Ireland as a murder, that his two allies were in custody as suspected assassins, and that—most puzzling and disturbing feature of it all—Kate herself had vanished.
He did not attach a moment’s credence to the drowning theory. Daughters of the Coast of White Foam did not get drowned. Nor was it likely that other harm had befallen a girl so capable, so selfreliant, so thoroughly at home in all the districts roundabout. Obviously she was in hiding somewhere in the neighborhood. The question was where to look for her. Or, would it be better to take up the other branch of the problem first?
His perplexed gaze, roaming vaguely over the broad space, was all at once arrested by a gleam of flashing light in motion. Concentrating his attention, he saw that it came from the polished barrel of a rifle borne on the arm of a constable at the corner of the square. He put on his hat and walked briskly over to this corner. The constable had gone, and Bernard followed him up the narrow, winding little street to the barracks.
As he walked, he noted knots of villagers clustered about the cottage doors, evidently discussing some topic of popular concern. In the roadway before the barracks were drawn up two outside cars. A policeman in uniform occupied the driver’s seat on each, and a half-dozen others lounged about in the sunshine by the gate-posts, their rifles slung over their backs and their round, visorless caps cocked aggressively over their ears. These gentry bent upon him a general scowl as he walked past them and into the barracks.
A dapper, dark-faced, exquisitely dressed young gentleman, wearing slate-tinted gloves and with a flower in his button-hole, stood in the hall-way—two burly constables assisting him meanwhile to get into a light, silk-lined top-coat.
“Come, you fool! Hold the sleeve lower down, can’t you!” this young gentleman cried, testily, as Bernard entered. The two constables divided the epithet between them humbly, and perfected their task.
“I want to see the officer in charge here,” said Bernard, prepared by this for discourtesy.
The young gentleman glanced him over, and on the instant altered his demeanor.
“I am Major Snaffle, the resident magistrate,” he said, with great politeness. “I’ve only a minute to spare—I’m driving over to Bantry with some prisoners—but if you’ll come this way—” and without further words, he led the other into a room off the hall, the door of which the two constables rushed to obsequiously open.
“I dare say those are the prisoners I have come to talk about,” remarked Bernard, when the door had closed behind them. He noted that this was the first comfortably furnished room he had seen in Ireland, as he took the seat indicated by the major’s gesture.
Major Snaffle lifted his brows slightly at this, and fastened his bright brown eyes in a keen, searching glance upon Bernard’s face.
“Hm-m!” he said. “You are an American, I perceive.”
“Yes—my name’s O’Mahony. I come from Michigan.”
At sound of this Milesian cognomen, the glance of the stipendiary grew keener still, if possible, and the corners of his carefully trimmed little mustache were drawn sharply down. There was less politeness in the manner and tone of his next inquiry.
“Well—what is your business? What do you want to say about them?”
“First of all,” said Bernard, “let’s be sure we’re talking about the same people. You’ve got two men under arrest here—Jerry Higgins of this place, and a cousin of his from—from Boston, I think it is.”
The major nodded, and kept his sharp gaze on the other’s countenance unabated.
“What of that?” he asked, now almost brusquety.
“Well, I only drove in this morning—I’m in the mining business, myself—but I understand they’ve been arrested for the m—— that is, on account of the disappearance of old Mr. O’Daly.”
The resident magistrate did not assent by so much as a word. “Well? What’s that to you?” he queried, coldly.
“It’s this much to me,” Bernard retorted, not with entire good-temper, “that O’Daly isn’t dead at all.”
Major Snaffle’s eyebrows went up still further, with a little jerk. He hesitated for a moment, then said: “I hope you know the importance of what you are saying. We don’y like to be fooled with.”
“The fooling has been done by these who started the story that he was murdered,” remarked Bernard.
“One must always be prepared for that—at some stage of a case—among these Irish,” said the resident magistrate. “I’ve only been in Ireland two years, but I know their lying tricks as well as if I’d been born among them. Service in India helps one to understand all the inferior races.”
“I haven’t been here even two months,” said the young man from Houghton County, “but so far as I can figure it out, the Irishmen who do the bulk of the lying wear uniforms and monkey-caps like paper-collar boxes perched over one ear. The police, I mean.”
“We won’t discuss that,” put in the major, peremptorily. “Do you know where O’Daly is?”
“Yes, sir, I do,” answered Bernard.
“Where?”
“You wouldn’t know if I told you, but I’ll take you to the place—that is, if you’ll let me talk to your prisoners first.”
Major Snaffle turned the proposition over in his mind. “Take me to the place,” he commented at last; “that means that you’ve got him hidden somewhere, I assume.”
Bernard looked into the shrewd, twinkling eyes with a new respect. “That’s about the size of,” he assented.
“Hra-m! Yes. That makes a new offense of it, with you as an accessory, I take it—or ought I to say principal?”
Bernard was not at all dismayed by this shift in the situation.
“Call it what you like,” he answered. “See here, major,” he went on, in a burst of confidence, “this whole thing’s got nothing to do with politics or the potato crop or anything else that need concern you. It’s purely a private family matter. In a day or two, it’ll be in such shape that I can tell you all about it. For that matter, I could now, only it’s such a deuce of a long story.”
The major thought again.
“All right,” he said. “You can see the prisoners in my presence, and then I’ll give you a chance to produce O’Daly. I ought to warn you, though, that it may be all used against you, later on.”
“I’m not afraid of that,” replied Bernard.
A minute later, he was following the resident magistrate up a winding flight of narrow stone stairs, none too clean. A constable, with a bunch of keys jingling in his hand, preceded them, and, at the top, threw open a heavy, iron-cased door. The solitary window of the room they entered had been so blocked with thick bars of metal that very little light came through. Bernard, with some difficulty, made out two figures lying in one corner on a heap of straw and old cast-off clothing.
“Get up! Here’s some one to see you!” called out the major, in the same tone he had used to the constables while they were helping on the overcoat.
Bernard, as he heard it, felt himself newly informed as to the spirit in which India was governed. Perhaps it was necessary there; but it made him grind his teeth to think of its use in Ireland.
The two figures scrambled to their feet, and Bernard shook hands with both.
“Egor, sir, you’re a sight for sore eyes!” exclaimed Jerry, effusively, wringing the visitor’s fingers in his fat clasp. “Are ye come to take us out?”
“Yes, that’ll be easy enough,” said Bernard. “You got my telegram all right?”
Major Snaffle took his tablets from a pocket, and made a minute on them unobserved.
“I did—I did,” said Jerry, buoyantly. Then with a changed expression he added, whispering: “An’ that same played the divil intirely. ’T was for that they arrested us.”
“Don’t whisper!” interposed the resident magistrate, curtly.
“Egor! I’ll say nothing at all,” said Jerry, who seemed now for the first time to consider the presence of the official.
“Yes—don’t be afraid,” Bernard urged, reassuringly. “It’s all right now. Tell me, is O’Daly in the place we know of?”
“He is, thin! Egor, unless he’d wings on him, and dug his way up through the sayling, like a blessed bat.”
“Did he make much fuss?”
“He did not—lastewise we didn’t stop to hear, He came down wid us aisy as you plaze, an’ I unlocked the dure. ’T is a foine room,’ says I. ‘’T is that,’ says he. ‘Here’s whishky,’ says I. ‘I’d be lookin’ for that wherever you were,’ says he, ‘even to the bowels of the earth.’ ‘An’ why not?’ says I. ‘What is it the priest read to us, that it makes a man’s face to shine wid oil?’ ‘A grand scholar ye are, Jerry,’ says he—”
“Cut it short, Jerry!” interposed Bernard. “The main thing is you left him there all right?”
“Well, thin, we did, sir, an’ no mistake.”
“My plan is, major,”—Bernard turned to the resident magistrate—“to take my friend here, Jerry Higgins, with us, to the place I’ve been speaking of. We’ll leave the other man here, as the editors say in my country, as a ‘guarantee of good faith.’ The only point is that we three must go alone. It wouldn’t do to take any constables with us. In fact, there’s a secret about it, and I wouldn’t feel justified in giving it away even to you, if it didn’t seem necessary. We simply confide it to you.”
“You can’t confide anything to me,” said the resident magistrate. “Understand clearly that I shall hold myself free to use everything I see and learn, if the interests of justice seem to demand it.”
“Yes, but that isn’t going to happen,” responded Bernard. “The interests of justice are all the other way, as you’ll see, later on. What I mean is, if the case isn’t taken into court at all—as it won’t be—we can trust you not to speak about this place.”
“Oh—in my private capacity—that is a different matter.”
“And you won’t be afraid to go alone with us?—it isn’t far from here, but, mind, it is downright lonesome.”
Major Snaffle covered the two men—the burly, stout Irishman and the lithe, erect, close-knit young American—with a comprehensive glance. The points of his mustache trembled momentarily upward in the beginning of a smile. “No—not the least bit afraid,” the dapper little gentleman replied.
The constables at the outer door stood with their big red hands to their caps, and saw with amazement the major, Bernard and Jerry pass them and the cars, and go down the street abreast. The villagers, gathered about the shop and cottage doors, watched the progress of the trio with even greater surprise. It seemed now, though, that nothing was too marvelous to happen in Muirisc. Some of them knew that the man with the flower in his coat was the stipendary magistrate from Bantry, and, by some obscure connection, this came to be interpreted throughout the village as meaning that the bodies of both O’Daly and Miss Kate had been found. The stories which were born of this understanding flatly contradicted one another at every point as they flew about, but they made a good enough basis for the old women of the hamlet to start keening upon afresh.
The three men, pausing now and again to make sure they were not followed, went at a sharp pace around through the churchyard to the door of Jerry’s abode, and entered it. The key and the lantern were found hanging upon their accustomed pegs. Jerry lighted the candle, pushed back the bed, and led the descent of the narrow, musty stairs through the darkness. The major came last of all.
“I’ve only been down here once myself,” Bernard explained to him, over his shoulder, as they made their stumbling way downward. “It seems the place was discovered by accident, in the old Fenian days. I suppose the convent used it in old times—they say there was a skeleton of a monk found in it.”
“Whisht, now!” whispered Jerry, as, having passed through the long, low corridor leading from the staircase, he came to a halt at the doorway. “Maybe we’ll surproise him.”
He unlocked the door and flung it open. No sound of life came from within.
“Come along out ‘o that, Cormac!” called Jerry, into the mildewed blackness.
There was no answer.
Bernard almost pushed Jerry forward into the chamber, and, taking the lantern from him, held it aloft as he moved about. He peered under the table; he opened the great muniment chest; he pulled back the curtains to scrutinize the bed. There was no sign of O’Daly anywhere.
“Saints be wid us!” gasped Jerry, crossing himself, “the divil’s flown away wid his own!”
Bernard, from staring in astonishment into his confederate’s fat face, let his glance wander to the major. That official had stepped over the threshold of the chamber, and stood at one side of the open door. He held a revolver in his gloved, right hand.
“Gentlemen,” he said, in a perfectly calm voice, “my father served in Ireland in Fenian times, and an American-Irishman caught him in a trap, gagged him with gun-rags, and generally made a fool of him. Such things do not happen twice in any intelligent family. You will therefore walk through this door, arm in arm, handing me the lantern as you pass, and you will then go up the stairs six paces ahead of me. If either of you attempts to do anything else, I will shoot him down like a dog.”