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 nobody. 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 ashore 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.
It was a nasty, sudden squall, with a shower of hail and half a cap of wind in it. Luckily it was straight behind us. Had we been crossing it, it would have caught us badly. As it was, although it gave us a great toss, and now and then sent a drenching wave over our backs and heads, we were in no real peril. Our only difficulty was that, unless it eased off before we came within reach of Knockowen, we should have to cross it to get home. But that was far enough away yet.
Miss Kit, who for all her pretty bragging had had little commerce in the mighty deep, sat still for a while, startled by the sudden violence of the wind and the onslaught of the waves behind us. But as soon as she discovered that all the harm they did was to wet her pretty head and drench her boxes, and when, moreover, she satisfied herself by a chance glance or two at my face that there was nothing to fear, she began to enjoy the novel experience, and even laughed to see how the boat tore through the water.
“Why can’t we go on like this, straight out to the open sea?” said she.
“We could do many a thing less easy,” said I. “It’s well Knockowen’s no nearer the open sea than it is.”
“Why?”
“If it was as far as Kilgorman,” said I, “we’d meet the tide coming in, and then it would be a hard sea to weather.”
“Kilgorman!” said she, catching at the name; “were you ever there, Barry?”
“Once,” said I guiltily, “when I should not have been. And I suffered for it.”
“How? what happened?”
“Indeed, Miss Kit; it’s not for the likes of you to hear; and his honour would be mad if he knew of it.”
“You think I’m a tell-tale,” said she. “I’m your mistress, and I order you to tell me.”
“Faith, then, I saw a ghost, mistress!”
She laughed, and pleasant the sound was amid the noise of the storm.
“You won’t make me believe you’re such a fool as that,” said she. “It’s only wicked people who see ghosts.”
“Sure, then, I’m thinking it’ll be long till you see one, Miss Kit. But mind now; we must put her a little away from the wind to make Knockowen. Sit fast, and don’t mind a wave or two.”
Now began the dangerous part of our voyage. The moment we put her head in for Knockowen, the waves began to break heavily over the stern, sometimes almost knocking the tiller from my hand, sometimes compelling us to run back into the wind to save being swamped.
She did not talk any more, but sat very quiet, watching each wave as it came, and looking up now and again at my face, as if to read our chances there. You may be sure I looked steady enough, so as not to give her a moment’s more uneasiness than she need. But, for all that, I was concerned to see how much water we shipped, and how much less easily the boat travelled in consequence.
Quit the helm I durst not. Yet how could I ask her to perform so menial a task as to bail the boat? But it soon went past the point of standing on ceremony.
“Begging your pardon, Miss Kit,” said I, “there’s a can below the seat you’re on. If you could use it a bit to get quit of some of the water, it would help us.”
She was down on her knees on the floor of the boat at once, bailing hard.
“Are we in danger of sinking?” said she, looking up.
“No, surely; but we’re better without water in the boat.”
Whereat she worked till her arm ached, and yet made little enough impression on the water, which, with every roll we took, swung ankle deep from side to side, and grew every minute.
We wanted a mile of Knockowen still, and I was beginning to think there would be nothing for it but to put out again before the wind, and run the risk of meeting the heavy sea in the open, when the wind suddenly shifted a point, and came up behind us once more. It was a lucky shift for us, for my little mistress was worn-out with her labour, and a few more broadsides might have swamped us.
As it was, we could now run straight for home, and a few minutes would see us alongside the little pier of Knockowen.
I helped her back to her seat beside me, and drew the tarpaulin around her.
Her face, which had been anxious enough for a while, cleared as suddenly as the wind had shifted.
“I declare, Barry, I was afraid just now.”
“So you might be; and no shame to you for it,” said I.
“Are you ever afraid?” said she.
“Ay, I was at Kilgorman that night.”
Again she laughed.
“I’d as soon be afraid of a real peril as of a silly fancy,” said she. “I mean to go and see Kilgorman one day.”
“Not with my good-will, mistress,” said I.
“Well, without it then, Mr Barry Gallagher,” she replied with a toss of the head which fairly abashed me, and made me remember that after all I was but a servant-man in my lady’s house. The sea, blessings on it! levels all things, and I had almost forgotten this little lady was my mistress. But I recalled it now, and still more when, ten minutes later, we ran alongside his honour’s jetty, and my fair crew was taken out of my hands by her parents, while I was left to carry up the dripping baggage, and seek my supper as best I could.