Chapter Three.
Waking.
Had it not been for what I dreaded to find at home, my journey back from Derry would have been light enough; for now I was rid of my turnips I had nothing to fear from inquisitive wayfarers. Nor had I cause to be anxious as to the way, for my mare knew she was homeward bound, and stepped out briskly with no encouragement from me.
Indeed I had so little to do that about noon, when we had got off the highroad on to the hill-track, I curled myself up in the straw and fell asleep. Nor did I wake till the cart suddenly came to a standstill, and I felt myself being lifted out of my nest.
At first I thought I was back already at Knockowen, and wondered at the speed the old jade had made while I slept. But as soon as I had rubbed my eyes I found we were still on the hillside, and that my awakers were a handful of soldiers.
They demanded my name and my master’s. When I told them Mr Gorman of Knockowen, they were a thought less rough with me; for his honour was known as a friend of the government. Nevertheless they said they must search my cart, and bade me help them to unload the straw.
I could not help laughing as I saw them so busy.
“What’s the limb laughing at?” said one angrily. “Maybe he’s not so innocent as he looks.”
“’Deed, sir,” said I, “I was laughing at the soldiers I met at Fahan, who thought I’d got guns under his honour’s turnips. I warrant Mr Gorman won’t laugh at that. Maybe it’s guns you’re looking for too. They’re easy hid in a load of straw.”
At this they looked rather abashed, although they thought fit to cuff me for an impudent young dog. And when the straw was all out, and nothing found underneath, it was not a little hard on me that they left me to put it in again myself, roundly rating one another for the sorry figure they cut.
I was too glad to be rid of them to raise much clamour about the straw, and loaded it back as best I could, wondering if all his Majesty’s servants were as wide-awake as the smuggler-catchers of Donegal.
This was my only adventure till about seven o’clock when I sighted the lights of Knockowen, and knew this tedious journey was at an end.
His honour, I was told, was not at home. He had crossed to Fanad to be present at the wake of my poor mother, who, I heard, had died long before my father and Mr Gorman could reach her yesterday. She was to be buried, they told me, on the next day at Kilgorman; and I could guess why there was all this haste. My father was needed to steer the Cigale out of the lough, and his honour would be keen enough to get the funeral over for that reason.
With a very heavy heart I left the weary horse in the stable and betook myself to his honour’s harbour. Only one boat lay there, a little one with a clumsy lug-sail, ill-enough fitted for a treacherous lough like the Swilly. I knew her of old, however, and was soon bounding over the waves, with the dim outline of Fanad standing out ahead in the moonlight.
My heart sank to my boots as I drew nearer and discerned an unusual glow of light from the cabin window, and heard, carried across the water on the breeze, the sounds of singing and the wail of a fiddle. I dreaded to think of the dear body that lay there heedless of all the noise, whose eyes I should never see and whose voice I should never hear more. I could not help calling to mind again the strange words she had last spoken—of her longing to see his honour, of her wandering talk about a dead lassie and the hearthstone, and of some danger that threatened my father. It was all a mystery to me. Yet it was a mystery which, boy as I was, I resolved some day to explain.
The landing-place was full of boats, by which I knew that all the lough-side and many from the opposite shore had come to the wake. His honour’s boat was there among them. So was one belonging to the Cigale.
I felt tempted, instead of entering the cabin, to wander up on to the headland and lie there, looking out to the open sea, and so forget my troubles. But the thought of Tim and my father hindered me, and I clambered up to the cabin.
The door stood open, because, as I thought, so many folk were about it that it would not shut. As I made my way among them I was barely heeded—indeed there were many who did not even know me. I pushed my way into the cabin, in which were stifling heat and smoke and the fumes of whisky. There, on the bed in the corner, where I had seen her last, but now lit up with a glare of candles, lay my poor mother, with her eyes closed and her hands folded across her breast. At the foot of the bed sat my father, haggard and wretched, holding a glass of whisky in his hand, which now and again he put to his lips to give him the Dutch courage he needed. At the bedside stood Tim with a scowl on his face as he glared, first, on the noisy mourners, and then looked down on the white face on the pillow. At the fireplace sat his honour, buried in thought, and not heeding the talk of the jovial priest who sat and stirred his cup beside him. There, too, among the crowd of dirge-singing, laughing, whisky-drinking neighbours, I could see the outlandish-looking skipper of the Cigale.
It was a weird, woeful spectacle, and made me long more than ever for the pure, fresh breezes of the lonely headland. But Tim looked round as I entered, and his face, till now so black and sullen, lit up as he saw me, and he beckoned me to him. When last we parted it had been in anger and shame; now, over the body of our dead mother, we met in peace and brotherly love, and felt stronger each of us by the presence of the other.
My father, half-stupid with sorrow and whisky, roused himself and called out my name.
“Arrah, Barry, my son, are you there? Faith, it’s a sore day for the motherless lad. Howl, boys!”
And the company set up a loud wail in my honour, and pressed round me, to pat me on the head or back and say some word of consolation.
Presently his honour motioned me to him.
“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 grass 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 shore. 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 brass 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 grass. 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 assure 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.