Kilgorman Part 6

"Well?" said he inquiringly.

"All right, sir," said I.

"That's a man," said he. "Your mother was dead before I reached her yesterday."

"She was English," said the garrulous priest, who stood by, lifting his voice above the general clamour. "She never took root among us. Sure, your honour will remember her when she was my lady's-maid at Kilgorman.

Ochone, that was a sad business!"

His honour did not attend to his reverence, but continued to look hard at me in that strange way of his.

"A sad business," continued the priest, turning round for some more attentive listener. "It was at Kilgorman that Barry and Tim were born-- mercy on them!--the night that Terence Gorman, his honour's brother, was murdered on the mountain. I mind the night well. Dear, oh! Every light in Kilgorman went out that night. The news of the murder killed the lady and her little babe. I mind the time well, for I was called to christen the babe. Do you mind Larry McQuilkin of Kerry Keel, O'Brady?

It was his wife as was nursing-woman to the child--as decent a woman as ever lived. She--"

Here his honour looked up sharply, and his reverence, pleased to have a better audience, chattered on:--

"Sure, your honour will remember Biddy McQuilkin, for she served at Knockowen when the little mistress there was born--"

"Where's Biddy now?" asked some one. "She was never the same woman after her man died."

"Ah, poor Biddy! When your honour parted with her she went to Paris to a situation; but I'm thinking she'd have done better to bide at home.

There's many an honest man in these parts would have been glad to meet a decent widow like Biddy. I told her so before she went, but--"

Here the fiddler struck up a jig, which cut short the gossip of the priest and made a diversion for his hearers. Some of the young fellows and girls present fell to footing it, and called on Tim and me to join in. But I was too much out of heart even to look on; and as for Tim, he glared as if he would have turned every one of them out of the cottage.

In the midst of the noise and the shouts of the dancers and the cheers of the onlookers, I crawled into the corner behind his honour's chair, and dropped asleep, to dream--strange to tell--not of my mother, or of his honour's turnips, or of the _Cigale_, but of Biddy McQuilkin of Kerry Keel, whom till now I had never seen or heard of.

When I awoke the daylight was struggling into the cabin, paling the candles that burned low beside my mother's bed. Tim stood where I had left him, sentinel-wise, glaring with sleepless eyes at his father's guests. Father, with his head on his arm, at the foot of the bed, slept a tipsy, sorrowful sleep. A few of the rest, worn-out with the night's revels, slumbered on the floor. Others made love, or quarrelled, or talked drowsily in couples.

His honour had escaped from the choking atmosphere of the cabin, and was pacing moodily on the gra.s.s outside, casting impatient glances eastward, where lay Kilgorman, and the _Cigale_, and the rising sun.

Presently, when with a salute I came out to join him, he said, "'Tis time we started. Waken your father, boy."

It was no easy task, and when he was wakened it was hard to make him understand what was afoot. It was only when his honour came in and spoke to him that he seemed to come to his senses.

The coffin was closed. The crowd stepped out with a shiver into the cold morning air. The priest took out his book and began to read aloud; and slowly, with Tim and me beside her, and my father in a daze walking in front, we bore her from the cabin down to the boats. There, in our own boat, we laid the coffin, and hoisting sail, shoved off and made for the opposite sh.o.r.e. Father and we two and his honour and the priest sailed together; and after us, in a long straggling procession of boats, came the rest. The light wind was not enough to fill our sail, and we were forced to put out the oars and row. I think the exercise did us good, and warmed our hearts as well as our bodies.

As we came under Kilgorman, I could see the mast of the _Cigale_ peeping over the rocks, and wondered if she would be discovered by all the company. His honour, to my surprise, steered straight for the creek.

The _Cigale_ flew the English flag, and very smart and trim she looked in the morning light, with her white sails bleaching on the deck and the bra.s.s nozzles of her guns gleaming at the port-holes. We loitered a little to admire her, and, seaman-like, to discuss her points. Then, when our followers began to crowd after us into the creek, we pulled to the landing and disburdened our boat of her precious freight.

The burying-ground of Kilgorman was a little enclosure on the edge of the cliff surrounding the ruin of the old church, of which only a few weed-covered piles of stone remained. The graves in it were scarcely to be distinguished in the long rank gra.s.s. The only one of note was that in which lay Terence Gorman with his wife and child--all dead twelve years since, within a week of one another.

With much labour we bore the coffin up the steep path, and in a shallow grave at the very cliff's edge deposited all that remained of our English mother.

As his reverence had said, she never took root in Donegal. She had been a loyal servant to her master, a loyal wife to her husband, and a loyal mother to us her sons. Yet she always pined for her old Yorkshire village home; a cloud of trouble, ever since we remembered her, had hovered on her brow. She had wept much in secret, and had lived, as it were, in a sort of dread of unseen evil.

Folks said the shock of the tragedy at Kilgorman, at the time when she too lay ill in the house with her twin babies, had unnerved her and touched her brain. But in that they were wrong; for she had taught Tim and me to read and write better than any schoolmaster could have done, and had read books and told stories to us such as few boys of our age between Fanad and Derry had the chance to hear.

Yet, though her brain was sound, it was not to be denied that she had been a woman of sorrow. And the strange words she had spoken when she was near her end added a mystery to her memory which, boy as I was, I took to heart, and resolved, if I could, to master.

That afternoon, when the mourners had gone their several ways, and the short daylight was already beginning to draw in, Tim and I lay at the cliff's edge, near our mother's grave, watching the _Cigale_ as, with all her canvas flying and my father's dexterous hand at the helm, she slipped out of the lough and spread her wings for the open sea. Even in the feeble breeze, which would scarcely have stirred one of our trawlers, she seemed to gather speed; and if we felt any anxiety as to her being chased by one of his Majesty's cutters, we had only to watch the way in which she slid through the water to a.s.sure us that she would need a deal of catching.

I told Tim all I knew about her, and of my errand to Derry.

"What are the guns for?" said he. "What's there to be fighting about?

Man, dear, I'd like a gun myself."

"There's plenty up at the house there," said I, pointing to Kilgorman--"two hundred."

"Two hundred! and we're only needing two. Come away, Barry; let's see where they're kept."

"You're not going up to Kilgorman House, sure?" said I in amazement.

"'Deed I am. I'm going to get myself a gun, and you too."

"But his honour?"

"Come on!" cried Tim, who seemed greatly excited; "his honour can't mind. I'll hold ye, Barry, we'll use a gun as well as any of the boys."

I would fain have escaped going up to so dreadful a place as Kilgorman on such an errand at such an hour. But I durst not let Tim think I was afraid, so when I saw his mind was made up I went with him, thankful at least that I had his company.

CHAPTER FOUR.

THE KITCHEN AT KILGORMAN.

The daylight failed suddenly as we turned from our perch on the edge of the cliff, and began to grope our way across the old graveyard towards the path which led up to Kilgorman House.

But that Tim was so set on seeing the hidden arms, and seemed so scornful of my ill-concealed terror of the place, I should have turned tail twenty times before I reached our destination. Yet in ordinary I was no coward. I would cross the lough single-handed in any weather; I would crack skulls with any boy in the countryside; I would ride any of his honour's horses barebacked. But I shook in my shoes at the thought of a ghost, and the cold sweat came out on my brow before ever we reached the avenue-gates.

"What's to hurt you?" said Tim, who knew what was on my mind as well as if I had spoken. "They say it's the lady walks through the house. Man, dear, you're not afraid of a woman, are ye?"

"If she is alive, no," said I.

"She'll hurt ye less as she is," said Tim scornfully. "Anyway, if you're afeard, Barry, you needn't come; run home."

This settled me. I laughed recklessly, and said,--

"What's good enough for you is good enough for me. I'm not afraid of a hundred ghosts."

And indeed I should have felt easier in the company of a hundred than of one.

We halted a moment at my mother's grave as we went by.

"She lived up at the house once," said Tim.

"I know," said I.