It may have been the law of nature, it may have been the chastening of God, that Michael Herican and Mary Carrol should come, in later years, to love each other. It was simply fitting, to all human sight, that it should be so; and it was so. The father and the mother thanked God for it, day by day, and bestowed upon them such tokens of encouragement as the bashful lovers could comfortably receive. The boy Bernard, when he heard of it, (and there could be no secrets in Easky,) threw up his cap for joy, and the old village crones for once smiled on the prospects of a happiness they had never known. Only Davanagh appeared displeased, but his abuse of the poor girl had been so extreme for years that it could scarcely suffer any increase, and all the influence he exerted over her or them was by his ruthless fist and cursing tongue. This at last ceased; for ears less patient than her own received his stinging insults, and a blow, quicker than his drunken arm could parry, stretched him upon the ground to rise no more.
Mary Carrol reached her twentieth birthday. She was a frail, delicate girl, below the middle height, and with that beautiful but strange union of large blue eyes and pearly complexion with jet black hair and lashes which tells at once of the pure Irish blood. We should not have called her handsome; perhaps no one would, except those who loved her, and in whose sight no disfigurement or disease could have made her homely. But she was one of those superior natures which solitude and suffering must unite with Christian culture to produce; and the whole neighborhood, for this, and not for her beauty, claimed her as its favorite and charm. Michael had grown to be a stalwart man, half a head taller than his sire, and his fellows said that none among them promised better for diligence and success than he. His devotion to Mary Carrol knew no bounds, and she, in turn, cherished scarcely a thought apart from him. Her mother had rapidly grown old and broken. Grief, and that yearning for the dead which is stronger than any sorrow, had made her an aged woman long before her time, and the fond daughter, between her and the one hope of her young life, had no third wish or joy. Her only trouble was for her brother. The wild elements of his father's nature became more apparent in him every day, and, though he loved his mother and half-sister with an almost inhuman passionateness, they frequently found it impossible to restrain his turbulent and curbless will. The stern control of a seafaring life seemed to be their only chance of saving him, and so, at little more than twelve years old, he was torn away from home and friends and sent out on a coasting merchantman to be subdued. This parting nearly broke his mothers's heart, but her discipline of suffering had been borne too long and patiently for her to rebel now. It was only another drop to her full cup of bitterness, when, a few months later, news came, by word of mouth from a sailor in Dromore, that the merchantman had foundered in the stormy Irish Sea.
It would be beyond the power of human pen to describe how these lone women now clung to Michael Herican. His father went down to the grave in peace, and he had none but them, as they had none but him. Already the one looked on him as a husband and the other as a son. When a few more successful voyages were over, and when the humble necessaries, which even an Easky maid could not become a wife without providing, were completed, the benediction of the church was to fulfil the promise of their hearts, and give them irrevocably to each other in the sight of God and man.
It was an ill-starred day for Michael Herican and the Carrols when the Widow Moran and her daughter came to live in Easky. Pierre Moran, deceased, had been a small shopkeeper in Sligo, where he had amassed a little competence, and, now that he was dead, his widow returned to her native village to pass her remaining life among her former neighbors. There were few among them who had not known more or less about the reckless girl who ran away with the half-French half-Irish shopman, twenty years ago, and her name and memory was none of the best among those virtuous villagers. But she cared less for this because she had enough of filthy lucre to command exterior respect, and it was better, so she thought, to be highest among the lowly than to be low among the high. In coming to Easky she had had two ends in view: to queen it over her former associates, and to secure a steady and good husband for her daughter. Kitty Moran was like her mother, but without her mother's faults. She was a girl of dash and spirit, and with a pride as quick and a nature as impressible as her mother was emotionless. She was a thorough brunette, with a brunette's violence and passion, with a brunette's power to love and power to hate. In actual beauty no maiden of the neighborhood could vie with her, and she had just enough of city polish and refinement to give her an appearance of superiority to those around her. Between her and Mary Carrol the angels would not have hesitated in choosing—unless, indeed, they were those ancient sons of God who took wives from among the daughters of men because they saw that they were fair, and then, like men, they would have chosen wrongly.
It was not many days before the Widow Moran heard of Michael Herican, or many weeks before she had decided that he should be the husband of her child. True, she knew of his betrothal, for his name was rarely spoken unconnected with the name of Mary Carrol, but this made no difference. The pale-faced step-daughter of the drunken Davanagh was of no consequence to her, and to the right or wrong of her designs she never gave a thought. Whatever she wished, she determined to have. Whatever she determined to have, she set herself industriously to secure. So when she marketed, it was Michael's boat from which she purchased. When there was a message to send to Sligo, or packages from thence to be brought home to her, it was Michael's boat that carried it. When she had work to be done around her cottage, it waited until Michael had an idle day, and then he was hired to do it. Well skilled, as every woman is, in arts like these, she used her knowledge and her chances all too well.
It is but just to say that Kitty Moran had no share in her mother's wicked plans. She was young and gay. Michael Herican was the finest young man in the village. It was not disagreeable to her to watch him and to talk with him, as he worked by her directions in the little garden, or to sit beside him at their noontide meal. Unconsciously, she grew to miss him when he was away at sea, to have a welcome for him in her heart when he came home, to look for him with impatience when she knew that his vocation brought him back to her. Before she was aware of it, she loved him; and when she realized her love, she threw herself into it, as her one absorbing passion, without a dream of its results or a suspicion of her error. She would not, for an empire, have deliberately wronged the patient girl whom, by the stern law of contraries, she had already learned to cherish, but to her love there was no limit, no moderation. She could not help loving Michael Herican, and no more could she mete out or restrain her love. So, when it mastered her, it was her master, and her reason and her conscience were whirled away before the rushing tide of passion like bubbles on the bosom of a cataract.
How Michael Herican came to love this new maiden not even he himself could tell. Rochefoucault says, "It is in man's power neither to love nor to refrain from loving." And false as this may be as a general law of life, there are cases in which it appears almost divinely true. It was so in his. He simply could not help it. When he compared the calm, deep, tried affection of the heart that had been his for years with the tumultuous outburst of this impetuous soul, his judgment taught him there ought to be no such comparison between them. He never had one doubt as to his duty. He fought nobly and manfully against the spell that seemed to be upon him. He would gladly have left Easky, and have stretched his voyages beyond the northern seas; but he could not leave Mary and her mother there alone. He thought of hastening his marriage, thereby to put an end to all possibility of faithlessness, (and this is what he should have done,) but he had no reason for it that he dared to give. It was a fearful trial for him, and would have bred despair in stronger hearts than his, if such there be. He became lax and careless in his business, harsh and moody in his intercourse with others. A few tattling croakers, here and there, wiser than the rest, laid the evil at the Widow Moran's door; but they could give no proof when asked for it, and the frowns and chidings of the neighborhood soon put them down.
In this way things went on for months. The day drew near when the wedding-feast should usher in a new life to the waiting pair. It was a drawing near of doom to him. The enchantment had not weakened by indulgence. The siren's song was as soft and seductive as when its first notes took possession of his soul. Feeling as he did toward Kathleen Moran, he would not marry Mary Carrol, although from his heart of hearts he could have sworn that his love for her had known no change or diminution. Nor did he dare to tell her that the fascinations of the stranger had enchained him; for he knew that he was all she had, and all she loved. But it could not go on thus always, and he knew it. Something must be done. Had it been the mere sacrifice of himself, he would not have hesitated for a moment. As little did he hesitate between marrying where he did not love supremely, and not marrying at all. He had a conscience, and when his conscience decided between these, and told him that he must not marry Mary Carrol, it compelled him also to go to her and in plain words tell her so.