Chapter Thirty Six.

The fight in Kilgorman.

I had not long to wait before the footsteps sounded in the long passage which led to the kitchen, and a dim streak of light appeared at the doorway. Two of the company, rather by their voices than their faces, I recognised—one as Martin, the other as Jake Finn, the treasurer of the rebels, whom I had last seen in this very place on the night that Paddy Corkill was appointed to waylay and shoot his honour on the Black Hill Road. The other two, who carried cutlasses at their belts, were strangers to me, but seemed to be men of importance in the rebel business. Evidently a fifth man was expected.

“Sure, he’ll come,” said one.

“It’s myself met him this blessed day no farther than Malin, and he promised he’d be here.”

“Did he know this about Gorman?”

“How should he? Sure, I didn’t know it myself. Besides, he’s just from the Foyle, and our news doesn’t travel east.”

“How will he take it?”

“Whisht!” cried Martin. “There he is.”

Three low taps sounded at the window, and Martin, taking the candle, hurried down the passage to admit the new arrival.

The other three men advanced to the door.

A quick, jaunty step sounded down the passage. The door opened, the men drew themselves up and saluted, Martin held the candle above his head, and there entered—Tim! At the sight of him the great fount of brotherhood that was in me welled up and nearly overflowed.

Tim was in the dress of a merchant sailor, and very handsome he looked, although the cut of his beard gave him a half-foreign look. His frame was knit harder than when I saw him last. His open face, tanned by the weather, was as fearless and serene as ever, and the toss of his head and the spring of his step were those rather of the boy I had known on Fanad years ago than of the dangerous rebel on whose head a price was set.

“Well, boys,” said he, as Martin replaced the light on the table, “what’s the best of your news?”

“Faith, that you’re welcome, Tim Gallagher,” replied Finn; “and it’s right glad we are to get our captain.”

“’Deed if it pleasures you to call me captain, you may,” said Tim; “but I’ve no time to spend in these parts. I have business that won’t keep. How goes the cause since I was here last?”

“Badly enough,” replied one of the men. “The boys are slack, and we’ve been desperately thwarted by traitors and dirty informers and the English gang.”

“And, saving your presence,” said Martin, “we’ve to thank your own brother Barry for some of that same trouble. It was him who thwarted us on the Black Hill Road, and nearly spoilt our trip to Holland—”

“Barry?” said Tim sharply. “What of him? He’s no ‘dirty informer.’ What’s all this about Black Hill Road and Holland?”

“’Deed, Tim,” said Finn, “it’s an old story, and has been righted by now. You mind his honour, Maurice Gorman of Knockowen?”

“Mind him? of course I do—a coward that blew hot and cold, and led the boys on to mischief only to betray them. Yes; I mind Maurice Gorman.”

This invective seemed greatly to encourage the men present, who had evidently feared Tim might for some reason have harboured a regard for their victim.

“It was him was to be settled with on the Black Hill Road a year ago; and settled he would have been but for Barry.”

Tim’s anger, I could see, was rising.

“Settled?” he said; “do you mean murdered?”

“Shot, any way. He got off that time; and a purty use he made of his chance, hanging boys by the dozen, and giving us no peace at all, at all. But since the young lady was lost to him—”

“What?” exclaimed Tim again; “how lost?”

“Didn’t we have her over the seas to Holland for a hostage? And ever since he durstn’t do a hand’s turn against us. But he wouldn’t come in for all that, or pay the money. It was Barry as nearly spoilt that game for us too; for he spirited the girl away in Holland, and if it hadn’t been for some of the boys who got hold of her again in Dublin, she’d have been clane lost to Ireland for all our trouble.”

“You dogs!” cried Tim, starting forward with his hand on his sword. “You mean to say you carried away an innocent girl to spite her father? You’re a shame to your country!”

They looked at him in amazement. Then the speaker went on,—

“Sure, all’s fair in war. The girl’s safe enough.” (Here Martin laughed in a sinister fashion.) “And now that all is settled up with Maurice Gorman at last—”

“Is Maurice Gorman dead, then?” asked Tim, controlling himself with a mighty effort, as was plain by his white lips and flashing eyes.

“He is so. We had him watched day and night, and on Sunday came our chance. He’s gone to his account; and it’s not six hours since he was put out of harm’s way under the turf. By Saint Patrick, but it’s a grand day for Ireland this.”

“And you mean to tell me,” said Tim, in a voice which made his hearers shift on their feet uncomfortably—“you mean to tell me that you dare to commit murder and outrage like this in the name of Ireland?”

“Why, what’s amiss? Wasn’t it yourself was saying with your own lips the Gorman was a dirty coward?” retorted one of the group testily.

“And that means the same to you as saying a man should be shot in the dark without a word of warning, and his innocent daughter carried off, who never did a hand’s turn in the place that wasn’t kindly and good?”

Guess who it was that loved Tim as he spoke those words?

“It’s no time to be squeamish,” persisted the man who had first spoken. “It’s a blow for the good of the country, and there’s them will give us credit for it, if you don’t.”

“You curs! I give you credit for being the meanest cowards unhung. And I don’t mind telling anybody as much. Pray, is it you and the like of you I’m captain to?”

“When we chose you, we thought you were for the people,” snarled Martin.

“Then take back your choice, you crew of blackguards,” cried Tim, now in a towering rage. “I’ve nothing to do with such as you. No more has Ireland, thank God!”

“That’s well enough,” said Finn savagely; “but what’s done is done, and in your name too, whether you like it or not. You should have let us know in time if your stomach wasn’t strong enough for the work.”

“My name! The girl carried away in my name, and her father murdered. How dare you, you dirty whelp, you!”

And he struck Finn across the cheek with his hand.

Instantly the scene became one of wild uproar. The blow was all the men had wanted to give vent to the bitter resentment which Tim’s contemptuous reproaches had called up. As long as the quarrel was one of words, they were sullen but cowed. Now it was come to blows, events befell rapidly. Ere I could push my way into the room, sword in hand—in truth, more rapidly than I can narrate it—Tim, my brave, impulsive brother, had sent one of the rascals to his last account, and had stepped to the wall, with his back there, holding the others at sword’s point.

Martin—that malign spirit, fated to thwart and injure me at all points—more cunning than his comrades, had stepped back behind the other two while Tim was engaged with them, poised a long knife above his head, and at the moment when Tim was lunging at the nearest of his assailants, I saw the brute, as in a nightmare, strike with all his might. The cowardly blow struck Tim full on the forehead, and brought him down with a crash on the floor. I had sprung at Martin’s raised arm, but, alas! had just missed him by a flash of time.

“Take that for many an old score!” I shouted, as I brought him down on the instant with a cut which laid him bleeding and prostrate at my feet.

Then stepping across Tim’s senseless body, I let out at the other two.

My sudden appearance—for I seemed to have dropped from the clouds—amazed and paralysed them. They were too terror-stricken to show much fight; and it was as well for them, for I was in a killing mood, and could have sent them to their last reckoning with a relish had they invited me. As it was, with white faces they backed to the door, and presently howled for mercy.

“It’s Barry himsilf!” exclaimed Finn. “Be aisy now Barry darlint, and don’t harm a defenceless man.” And he dropped his weapon on the floor.

The other man laid down his knife and tried to edge through the door; but I stopped him.

“Now you are here,” said I, “you shall stay here till I please. Help me to lift Tim; and the first of you that stirs for anything else is a dead man.”

We lifted Tim tenderly—I could see, now that the heat of passion was cooled, that the men really respected him and deplored the upshot of the unexpected encounter—and we laid him gently on the table. My heart almost stopped beating as I noted the ghastly pallor of his face and saw the blood running over his temple. He opened his eyes in a dazed way for a moment; but if he saw me he did not know me. I bandaged his wound as best I could, and soaking my kerchief in a pool of rain-water, which had oozed through and on to the window-ledge, moistened his parched lips.

“Now,” said I, sternly enough, stooping over Martin, on whom—with hardly a ray of pity for him in my heart, I fear—I could see the hand of death was laid, “one question for you: where is Maurice Gorman’s daughter?”

Martin half opened his eyes. I think he saw the gleam of my pistol, which, though still in my hand, I had no intention of using. A convulsive look of terror passed over his face as he muttered thickly,—

“Take that thing away, for mercy’s sake, and you shall know all. We took her and Biddy to the priest’s at Killurin; but Father Murphy would have nothing to say to us. We didn’t know what to do. So we—we—we—ah, Lord, forgive all.”

There was a painful pause. For a moment I thought his secret would die with him. Then he murmured, pointing to the ceiling with his thumb, “We brought her here!”

“What?” I cried in amazement; “Miss Kit is in this house now?”

Martin raised himself with difficulty on his elbow, fumbled feebly in his belt, and handed me a rusty key. Before I could seize it he fell back on the floor, and I had to take the key from his dead hand.

In the midst of my woe a wild throb of joy shot through me as I realised what this unlooked-for news meant.

As I looked from Martin to his dead comrade, and from him to my poor bruised Tim, from whom, as I feared, life was rapidly ebbing away, my mind was filled with the pathos and a sense of the useless suffering of it all. Addressing the two men who only a minute or two ago were his assailants and mine, but who now stood with downcast faces, I said,—

“Boys, I don’t doubt that ye are both acting from what ye consider to be a sense of duty to old Ireland, and maybe even to your Maker, in all this terrible bloodshed and unhappiness. To my thinking it’s a sadly mistaken sense of duty, and will only land you and the dear country in shame and misery. But that is not here or there. Let us part without hatred. You will find a passage here to the sea,” said I, showing them the opening by the fireplace through which I had entered the room; “and in a cave at the end of the passage you will find a boat. Carry your dead to it, and see them taken to their places.”

Both men said gravely, as in a chorus, “God save Ireland!” to which I could utter, though in a different sense from theirs, “Amen!”

Then they did as I bade them, and laboriously carried away their dead comrades.

I turned to Tim. He was stirring slowly and feebly. I took off my coat and rolled it into a pillow for his head. Presently he opened his eyes, and a smile like the smile of an angel passed over his face.

“Barry,” said he, “dear old Barry, and is it you, my brother?”

I bent over him and kissed his cheek.

“Methinks, Barry dear,” said he, “I have struck my last blow for beloved Ireland. God bless her! But it has been a paltry, poor bit of work—all that I have been able to do.”

“Cheer up, Tim, my boy, keep up your heart; we’ll soon have you right again,” said I, though my own heart misgave me as I spoke. “Do you know, Tim, that I have just heard that Kit is here, in this house, now—”

“Kit? Dear old Barry!” He took my hand in his and held it there, but all the strength was gone from his grip. I saw that he read my secret. “Now that her father is dead, Barry, this is her house,” he said, trying to smile.

“No, Tim. This house and these lands are yours.”

His face seemed to flush at this.

“Is that so? are you sure?” said he. “As sure as that I am here.”

“And it is I who am heir to the estates?”

“It is. You are a rich man, for your father besides had land in England with your mother.”

Tim’s eyes were wide open. He lay silent for a time. “Barry, boy,” he said, now almost fainting for lack of blood, “we have always been brothers, haven’t we? even when we differed and fought when we were boys, eh? Nothing, nothing can unbrother you and me, Barry. I hand on all my rights to you and Kit—God bless ye both!”

His eyes closed wearily, but on his face there came again the happy smile of boyhood.

“Tim dear, shall I bring Kit down?—if, indeed, she is here.”

“No, Barry, no; this is no place to bring a lady to, nor am I in a condition to see any lady.”

As I looked at the blood-stained floor and table, and the walls which bore marks of the fray, I could not but agree with him. It was easy to see also that poor Tim’s moments were numbered. His eyes were sunk deep in his head, his face was pallid, and his breathing became more and more difficult. His lips moved in broken utterance, but I saw he was not addressing me; there was a far-off, unworldly expression in his eyes. I could hear him murmur,—

“Ah, the tragedy! ah, the farce of it all!—I dreamed of a free, happy country, of a free, happy people prospering and blessed when the tyrant was overthrown—I thought I could help on this glorious time; and what happens? I am struck down by the hand of a friend in a miserable squabble; inglorious, farcical!—O Ireland, Ireland! the follies of your own children may be a greater curse to you in the days to come than have been the crimes of the stranger who has usurped your rights.”

While I held his hand, stooping over him, with a heart too full for speech, he opened his eyes again, and said,—

“Barry, brother, you have forgiven me for that stone I threw at ye on Fanad Head?—ay, and the poor old mother is gone, and father too—and the guns are in Kilgorman—and Wolfe Tone is coming—and the French are preparing to deliver us; yes, they are on the way—and a time of joy is coming to Ireland—Barry, Barry, do ye hear the rustle of silk by the hearthstone? Do ye think the ghost is here?—I hear something—put but the light, boy, and lie close—there, there—my God, it is mother!” and he swooned away.

I thought he was dead, and I began to pray, when I heard him murmur,—

“Barry, are ye there, dear?—I can’t see ye at all, at all. Why don’t ye light the lamp?—there is no air!—open the window!—light, light, give me light!” and he fell back dead.

It was the bitterest, saddest moment of my life. Yet I felt a curious envy of him. He was out of the whirl and confusion and chaos of our unhappy time! Peace be with him! I loved him as my own soul, with a love which was not weakened but made only more pathetic to me that his ideals for the happiness of our loved country were not my ideals.

But there was comfort for me—of a kind I perhaps little deserved—close at hand. When I had drawn my coat over Tim’s face, I rushed upstairs, calling aloud as I went,—

“Kit, Kit, I am coming! where are you, Kit?”

Then by-and-by I heard, far off, from a remote attic up in the roof of the rambling old building to which I had never before penetrated—I heard, faintly, a voice calling me by name, which fell on my heart like sweetest music. And when the rusty key had turned in the rusty old lock, and the crazy door was pushed open, I found a pair of arms flung tightly about my neck, and a pair of lips pressed close against mine, with cries of “Thank God, Barry! thank God, Barry! you are here at last.”

It was a meeting of smiles and tears, of most delicious joy, with a background of infinite sadness.

Kit and Biddy McQuilkin were quickly brought by me to more comfortable quarters in Knockowen, and where they were more likely to have better protection. Captain Felton, on my signal, came ashore from the Gnat, and I found in him a friend indeed. He urged me to take Kit and Biddy to the house of his aunt (the widow of one of the canons of Salisbury Cathedral), who lived a peaceful life in one of the quaint old houses in the Close of that lovely cathedral city—at any rate until quieter times for Ireland. Not only this, but he managed so that Kit and Biddy and I were landed at Stranraer, on the Scottish coast, bearing letters from him to his aunt, who received us hospitably, and in whose care I was content to leave my beloved one, with a lighter heart concerning her than I had experienced during all the years I had known her.

I am not going to detail here all the bloody work of the next few months in our loved country. The wars of brothers are best left untold. Of the terrible doings in the north and south and west, but especially in County Wexford, at Enniscorthy and Vinegar Hill, where blood was spilt like water, we had enough, and more than enough, in the public prints, and on the loud tongue of rumour, at the time. But I was in the sea-fight off Lough Swilly, when we made mincemeat of the French squadron in October of that black year 1798, and pluckier fighting against enormous odds than was done on that day by the French frigate Hoche I had never seen, nor ever again wish to see. It was courage worthy of a better cause.

It was for the part I had in that affair that, later on, to my joy, I received my promotion, and gained the coveted right to place the honoured word “captain” after my name. With the defeat of the French expeditions in the west and north, and the capture and subsequent tragic death of the heroic if erratic genius Wolfe Tone, and after many weary days of suffering on the part of Ireland’s noblest sons and daughters, there came gradually a modifying of the brutal spirit of hatred and bloodshed throughout the land. And with the better and more kindly understanding between the peoples there came by-and-by a measure of peace and prosperity and a calm after the long period of storm and disturbance.

In the spring of 1799 Kit and I were wedded in Salisbury. My friend Captain Felton was my “best man.” At first our home was in Belfast, but we made frequent expeditions to Knockowen and Kilgorman as the countryside became more settled; for the place, in spite of all that had passed, had a fascination for both of us. And as the painful associations died away, we have long since returned to Donegal. There for many a day we and our little ones—beloved Tim and Kit and Eileen—have made our home by the side of our lovely lough, as happy a home as any to be found throughout Ireland, in a renovated and regenerated Kilgorman.

The End.