Kilgorman Part 9

"He's no look of you, Mike."

"So you may say," replied my father, with a knowing glance at his honour. "Tim's liker me, they say."

His honour looked up with a significant nod.

"Well, Mike, I've said I'll see after one of the lads, for their dead mother's sake. Which will it be?"

"I'm thinking of taking Tim with me," said my father.

"Very good. I'll see to Barry then."

"Och, father," I cried, "take me to sea."

"Howld your tongue, ye puppy," said my father. "Can't you hear his honour say he'll see to you? There's many a lad would be glad of the chance."

"But Tim hates the sea, and I--"

"Be silent wid ye," roared my father, so angrily that he woke Tim.

"Tim," cried I, determined to make one more desperate effort, "you're to go to sea, and I'm to be kept ash.o.r.e at Knockowen."

"Sea, is it?" roared Tim. "I'll run away--no sea for me."

"And I'll run away too," shouted I. "No Knockowen for me."

But it was of no avail; protest as we would, we had to do as we were bid. That very hour, with nothing but a little book that was once my mother's, and a few poor clothes, and Con the dog at my heels, I followed his honour down to the boat and left my old home behind me.

And before dawn of day Tim was trudging surlily at my father's heels across country, on his way to join the _Cigale_ at Sheep Haven.

CHAPTER SIX.

MISS KIT.

His honour, saving his presence! was one of the meanest men I ever met, and I have come across many a close-fisted one in my day. There was nothing large about Maurice Gorman. His little eyes could never open wide enough to see the whole of a matter, or his little mouth open wide enough to speak it. If he owed a guinea, he would only pay a pound of it, and trust to your forgetting the rest. If his boat wanted painting, he would give it one coat and save the other. If his horse wanted shoeing, he would give him three new shoes, and use an old one for the fourth. If he ever gave money, it was by way of a bargain; and if he ever took up a cause, good or bad, it was grudgingly, and in a way which robbed his support of all graciousness.

It took me some months to discover all this about my new master.

When first I found myself an inmate of Knockowen, I was so sore with disappointment and anger that I cared about nothing and n.o.body. His honour, whose professions of interest in me were, as I well knew, all hollow, concerned himself very little about my well-being under his roof. Why he had taken me at all I could not guess. But I was sure, whatever the reason, it was because it suited his interest, not mine. I was handed over to the stables, and there they made a sort of groom of me; and presently, because I was a handy lad, I was fetched indoors when company was present, and set to wait at table in a livery coat.

The Knockowen household was a small one, consisting only of his honour and Mistress Gorman and the young lady. Mistress Gorman was a sad woman, who had little enough pleasure in this world, and that not of her husband's making. The man and his wife were almost strangers, meeting only at meal-times, and not always then, to exchange a few formal words, and then separate, one to her lonely chamber, the other to his grounds.

The brightness of the house was all centred in my little lady Kit, who was as remote from her mother's sadness as she was from her father's meanness. From the first she made my life at Knockowen tolerable, and very soon she made it necessary.

I shall not soon forget my first meeting with her. She had been away on a visit when I arrived, and a week later I was ordered to take the boat over to Rathmullan to fetch her home.

It was a long, toilsome journey, in face of a contrary wind, against which the boat travelled slowly, and frequently not without the help of an oar. How I groaned as I beat to and fro up the lough, and how I wished I was away with Tim and father on the _Cigale_.

At last, late in the afternoon, I reached Rathmullan, and made fast my boat to the pier. I was to call at the inn and find my young mistress there.

And there presently I found her, and a bright vision it was for me that dull afternoon. She was a little maid, although she was a month or two my elder. Her dark brown hair fell wildly on her shoulders, and her slight figure, as she stood there gazing at me with her big blue eyes, was full of grace and life. Her lips were pursed into a quaint little smile as she looked at me, and before I could explain who I was, she said,--

"So you are Barry Gallagher? How frightened you look! You needn't be afraid of me, Barry; I don't bite, though you look as if you thought so."

"'Deed, Miss Kit," said I, "and if you did, I'm thinking there's worse things could happen."

She laughed, and then bade me get together her boxes and carry them down to the boat.

Strange! Half-an-hour before I had been groaning over my lot. Now, as I staggered and sweated down to the wharf under her ladyship's baggage, I felt quite lighthearted.

In due time I had all aboard, and called on her to come, which she did, protesting that the water would spoil her new Dublin gown, and that if I sailed home no quicker than I had come, she supposed it would be morning before she got her supper.

This put me on my mettle. I even went ash.o.r.e for a moment to borrow a tarpaulin to lay over her knees, knowing I should have to make a voyage all the way back to-morrow to restore it. Then, when I had her tucked in, and set the ballast trim, I hoisted the sail, and sat beside her, with the tiller in one hand and the sheet in the other.

She soon robbed me of the former; for with the wind behind us it was plain sailing, and she could steer, she said, as well as I.

"Keep a look-out ahead, Barry," she said, "and see if I don't get you to Knockowen in half the time you took to come. I'll give you a lesson in sailing this evening."

Here she had me on a tender point.

"Begging your pardon, Miss Kit, I think not," said I.

"Are you a seaman, then?" she asked.

"I'd give my soul to be one."

"Your soul! It would be cheap at the price."

"I don't know what that means," said I; "but if your ladyship will put the helm a wee taste more to port, we will catch the breeze better--so, so. Keep her at that!"

We slipped merrily through the water for a while; but it made me uneasy to see the clouds sweeping past us overhead, and feel the sting of a drop or two on my cheek.

I hitched the sheet a little closer, and came astern again to where she sat.

"You'll need to let me take her," said I; "there's a squall behind us."

"What of that?" said she. "Can I not steer through a squall?"

"No, Miss Kit," said I; "it takes a man to send her through when the weather gets up. Pull the wrap well about you, and make up your mind for a wetting."

She sniffed a little at my tone.

"I see you are captain of this ship," said she.

"Ay, ay; and I've a valuable freight aboard," said I.

Whereat she gave it up, and sat with her hair waving in the wind and her sailor's wrap about her shoulders.