The O'Donoghue Part 26

"I wonder it did na kill him!" exclaimed M'Nab in horror.

"No, no, my hand is too steady for that. I aimed at least two inches above his head--it might have grazed his hair."

"By my word, I'll no' play the eaves-dropper wi' you, Mark; or, at least, I'd like to draw the charge o' your pistols first."

"She can have my room," said Mark, not heeding the speech. "I'll take that old tower they call the guard-room; I fancy I shall not be dispossessed for a considerable time,"--and the youth left the chamber to look after the arrangements he spoke of.

"'Tis what I tould you," said Kerry, as he drew his stool beside the kitchen fire; "I was right enough, she's coming back again to live here--I was listening at the door, and heerd it all."

"And she's laving the blessed nunnery!" exclaimed Mrs. Branagan, with a holy horror in her countenance--"desarting the elegant place, with the priests, and monks, and friars, to come here again, in the middle of every wickedness and divilment--ochone! ochone!"

"What wickedness and what divilment are you spaking about?" said Kerry, indignantly, at the aspersion thus cast on the habits of the house.

Mrs. Branagan actually started at the bare idea of a contradiction, and turned on him a look of fiery wrath, as she said:--

"Be my conscience you're bould to talk that way to me!--What wickedness!

Isn't horse-racing, card-playing, raffling, wickedness? Isn't drinking and swearin' wickedness? Isn't it wickedness to kill three sheep a week, and a cow a fortnight, to feed a set of dirty spalpeens of grooms and stable chaps? Isn't it wickedness--botheration to you--but I wouldn't be losing my time talking to you! When was one of ye at his duties? Answer me that. How much did one of ye pay at Ayster or Christmas, these ten years? Signs on it, Father Luke hasn't a word for ye when he comes here--he trates ye with contimpt."

Kerry was abashed and terrified. He little knew when he pulled up the sluice-gate, the torrent that would flow down; and now, would have made any "amende," to establish a truce again; but Mrs. Branagan was a woman, and, having seen the subjugation of her adversary, her last thought was mercy.

"Wickedness, indeed! It's fifty years out of purgatory, sorra less, to live ten years here, and see what goes on."

"Divil a lie in it," chimed in Kerry, meekly; "there's no denying a word you say."

"I'd like to see who'd dare deny it--and, sign's on it, there's a curse on the place--nothing thrives in it."

"Faix, then, ye mustn't say that, any how," said Kerry, insinuatingly: "_you_ have no rayson to spake again it. 'Twas Tuesday week last I heerd Father Luke say--it was to myself he said it--'How is Mrs. Branagan, Kerry?' says he. 'She's well and hearty, your reverence,' says I. 'I'll tell you what she is, Kerry,' says he, 'she's looking just as I knew her five-and-thirty years ago; and a comelier, dacenter woman wasn't in the three baronies. I remember well,' says he, 'I seen her at the fair of Killarney, and she had a cap with red ribbons.' Hadn't ye a cap with red ribbons in it?" A nod was the response.

"True for him, ye see he didn't forget it; and says he, 'She took the shine out of the fair; she could give seven pounds, and half a distance, to ere a girl there, and beat her after by a neck.'"

"What's that ye're saying?" said Mrs. Branagan, who didn't comprehend the figurative language of the turf, particularly when coming from Father Luke's lips.

"I'm saying ye were the purtiest woman that walked the fair-green," said Kerry, correcting his phraseology.

"Father Luke was a smart little man then himself, and had a nate leg and foot."

"Killarney was a fine place I'm tould," said Kerry, with a dexterous shift to change the topic. "I wasn't often there myself, but I heerd it was the iligant fair entirely."

"So it was," said Mrs. Branagan; "there never was the kind of sport and divarsion wasn't there. It begun on a Monday and went through the week; and short enough the time was. There was dancing, and fighting, and singing, and 'stations,' up to Aghadoe and down again on the bare knees, and a pilgrimage to the holy well--three times round that, maybe after a jig two hours long; and there was a dwarf that tould fortunes, and a friar that sould gospels agin fever, and fallin' sickness, and ballad-singers, and play-actors. Musha, there never was the like of it;"

and in this strain did, she pour forth a flood of impa.s.sioned eloquence on the recollection of those carnal pleasures and enjoyments which, but a few minutes before, she had condemned so rigidly in others, nor was it till at the very close of her speech that she suddenly perceived how she had wandered from her text; then with a heavy groan she muttered--"Ayeh!

we're sinful craytures, the best of us."

Kerry responded to the sentiment with a fac-simile sigh, and the peace was ratified.

"You wouldn't believe now what Miss Kate is bringing over with her--faix, you wouldn't believe it."

"Maybe a monkey," said Mrs. Branagan, who had a vague notion that France lay somewhere within the tropics.

"Worse nor that."

"Is it a bear?" asked she again.

"No, but a French maid, to dress her hair, and powder her, and put patches on her face."

"Whisht, I tell you," cried Mrs. Branagan, "and don't be talking that way. Miss Kate was never the one to turn to the likes of them things."

"'Tis truth I'm telling ye then; I heerd it all between the master and Master Mark, and afterwards with ould Sir Archy, and the three of them is in a raal fright about the maid; they say she'll be the divil for impidence."

"Will she then!" said Mrs. Branagan, with an eye glistening in antic.i.p.ation of battle.

"The never a day's peace or ease we're to have again, when she's here--'tis what the master says. 'I pity poor Mrs. Branagan,' says he; 'she's a quiet crayture that wont take her own part, and----'"

"Won't I? Be my conscience, we'll soon see that."

"Them's his words--'and if Kerry and she don't lay their heads together to make the place too hot for her, she'll bully the pair of them.'"

"Lave it to myself--lave it to me alone, Kerry O'Leary."

"I was thinking that same, ma'am," said Kerry, with a droll leer as he spoke; "I'd take the odds on you any day, and never ask the name of the other horse."

"I'll lay the mark of my fingers on her av she says 'pays,'" said Mrs.

Branagan, with an energy that looked like truth.

Meanwhile, Kerry, perceiving that her temper was up, spared nothing to aggravate her pa.s.sion, retailing every possible and impossible affront the new visitor might pa.s.s off on her, and expressing the master's sorrows at the calamities awaiting her.

"If she isn't frightened out of the country at once, there's no help for it," said he at last. "I have a notion myself, but sure maybe it's a bad one."

"What is it then?--spake it out free."

"'Tis just to wait for the chaise--she'll come in a chaise, it's likely."

But what was Kerry's plan, neither Mrs. Branagan nor the reader are destined to hear, for at that moment a loud summons at the hall door--a very unusual sound--announced the arrival of a stranger; Kerry, therefore, had barely time for a hasty toilet with a pocket-comb, before a small fragment of looking-gla.s.s he carried in his pocket, as he hastened to receive the visitor.

CHAPTER XVII. KATE O'DONOGHUE

Before Kerry O'Leary had reached the hall, the object around whose coming all his schemes revolved, was already in her uncle's arms.

"My dear, dear Kate!" said the old man, as he embraced her again and again, while she, overcome by a world of conflicting emotions, concealed her face upon his shoulder.

"This is Mark, my dearest girl--cousin Mark."

The girl looked up, and fixed her large full eyes upon the countenance of the young man, as, in an att.i.tude of bashful hesitation, he stood, uncertain how far the friendship of former days warranted his advances.

She, too, seemed equally confused; and when she held out her hand, and he took it half coldly, the meeting augured but poorly for warmth of heart on either side.

"And Herbert--where is he?" cried she eagerly, hoping to cover the chilling reception by the inquiry--"and my uncle Archy----"