Produced by Al Haines
LOVE OF BROTHERS
BY
KATHARINE TYNAN
Author of "The Middle Years," "The Years of the Shadows," "The West
Wind," "Miss Gascoigne," etc., etc.
LONDON
CONSTABLE & COMPANY LTD.
1919
CONTENTS
CHAP.
I O'GARAS OF CASTLE TALBOT
II PATSY REMEMBERS
III A TEA PARTY
IV FROM THE PAST
V THE HAVEN
VI STELLA
VII BRADY'S BULL
VIII SIR SHAWN SEES A GHOST
IX THE LETTER
X MRS. WADE
XI THE ONLY PRETTY RING-TIME
XII MOTHER-LOVE
XIII THE OLD LOVE
XIV STELLA GOES VISITING
XV THE SHADOW
XVI THE DEAD HAND
XVII MISS BRENNAN
XVIII THE DAUGHTER
XIX ANGER CRUEL AS DEATH
XX SIR SHAWN HAS A VISITOR
XXI STELLA IS SICK
XXII A SUDDEN BLOW
XXIII THE HOME-COMING
XXIV THE SICK WATCHERS
XXV IN WHICH TERRY FINDS A DEAD MAN
XXVI MOTHER AND DAUGHTER
XXVII THE STORY IS TOLD
XXVIII THE VIGIL
XXIX THE LAKH OF RUPEES
INTRODUCTORY
It was a night of bright moonlight that made for pitchy shadows under
wall or tree.
Patsy Kenny was looking for the goat, she having broken her tether. He
had been driven forth by his fierce old grandfather with threats of the
most awful nature if he should return without the goat.
The tears were not yet dry on Patsy's small face. He had kneaded them
in with his knuckles, but the smears caused by the process were not
visible in the moonlight, even if there had been any one to see them.
It was not only the hardship of being driven out when the meal of hot
potatoes was on the table, to search for that "ould divil" of a goat,
and his sense of the injustice which had put the blame of the goat's
straying on to his narrow shoulders. The old, in Patsy's knowledge of
them, were crabbed and unjust. That was something for the young to
take in the day's work. It was Patsy's fears of the supernatural that
kept him creeping along in the shadow of the hedge, now and again
stopping to weep a little over his troubles, or to listen fearfully
like a frightened hare before going on again.
Why, close to the road by which he must go to seek the goat there was
the tomb in which Captain Hercules O'Hart lay buried. People about
Killesky did not take that road if they could help it. The tomb was a
terror to all those who must pass the road by night, and to their
horses if they were riding or driving. It was well known that no horse
would pass by the tomb without endeavouring to avoid it, and if forced
or cajoled into accomplishing the passage, would emerge trembling and
sweating. Some unimaginative person had suggested that the terror of
the horses was due to the thunder of the invisible waterfall where the
river tumbled over its weir, just below the Mount on which old Hercules
had chosen to be buried. The horses knew better than that. Nothing
natural said the people would make a horse behave in such a way. The
dumb beast knew what it saw and that was nothing good.
The anguish of Patsy's thoughts caused him suddenly to "bawl" as he
would have put it himself.
"Isn't it an awful thing?" he asked, addressing the quiet bog-world
under the moon, "to think of a little lad like me havin' to be out in
the night facin' all them ghosts and that ould heart-scald of a man
burnin' his knees at home be the fire? What'll I do at all if that
tormint of a goat is up strayin' on the Mount? It would be like what
the divil 'ud do to climb up there, unless it was to be the churchyard
below, and all them ould bones stickin' up through the clay.
"There isn't wan out this night but meself," he went on. "It's awful
to think of every wan inside their houses an' me wanderin' about be me
lone. It isn't wan ghost but twinty I might meet betune this an' the
cross-roads, let alone fairies and pookas. Won't I just welt the divil
out o' the oul' goat when I ketch her?"
A little whinny close to him made him look round with a fearful hope.
He saw neither pooka nor fairy, but the long horns of the animal he was
in search of.
He snatched joyfully at her chain, forgetting all his anger. Indeed
none knew better than the goat Patsy's gentleness with all living
creatures. Her mouth was full of grass. He remembered his
grandfather's speech as he tethered the little goat on the bare
hillside above the house.
"My poor girl," he had said, "you've got little enough to ate, but then
you've a beautiful view."
"Sure she strayed," said Patsy in extenuation, "because she was hungry,
the creature."
So he had not had to leave the brightly lit bog-road for that black
tunnel of trees just beyond which led to old Hercules' tomb, and the
well where the woman fell in and the fields where old Michael Halloran,
who had been steward and general overseer to the O'Harts, was reputed
to be seen night after night--hedging and fencing the lands and he
years dead.
"You was a good little goat," said Patsy in his great relief. "Come
home now and I'll milk you: and maybe that cross ould man would let me
have a sup o' tay for my supper."
He had pulled the goat down the bank into the dry ditch. It was a good
thing he had stopped to "bawl," else maybe he'd have missed the goat
who had been having her fill of Mrs. McEnroe's after-grass. Still he
wondered now at his temerity since the bawlin' might have brought
_them_ upon him disturbin' their sleep that way.
He suddenly caught the sound of horses' feet coming along the bog-road
towards him. He stopped and listened, holding firmly on to the goat.
The bog-road was light as day. Two people were walking their horses
side by side, a dog at their heels. "It'll be Mr. Terence Comerford,
an' Sir Shawn O'Gara, comin' home together," Patsy said to himself.
"What at all would be keepin' them out till this hour of the night,
unless it was to be talkin' to Bridyeen Sweeney? Quare ways young
gentlemen has that they'd be talkin' to a poor girl an' maybe turnin'
her head, let alone settin' the neighbours to talkin' about her. God
help her."
In this musing, be it said, Patsy was but repeating the talk of his
elders, although he was naturally what is called an old-fashioned child.
He crouched low in the ditch while the horses came on at a walking
pace. The riders were talking, one in a low voice, so low that Patsy
could not make out what he said. This one was slender and young. The
other, young also, but big and burly, was riding a horse which
apparently did not like the walking pace. She--it was a mare--curveted
and caracoled in the road, which was one reason why Patsy could not
hear what was being said. The boy peered out, with fear in his heart.
The knowledge of horses was born in him. His father had been
stud-groom to Mr. Comerford of Inch. By and by Patsy meant to escape
from his old tyrant and become a stable-boy at Inch or at Castle
Talbot. Perhaps in time he might come to be stud-groom, though that
was a dizzy height towards which as yet his imagination hardly carried
him.
"Mr. Terence has drink taken," said Patsy, in his own mind. "He's not
steady in the saddle. An', glory be to goodness, it's Spitfire he's
ridin'." Patsy was at home in many stables where the grooms and
stable-helpers condescended to accept his willing aid in running
messages or the like. "What would the Misthress or Miss Mary say if
they was to see him now? Look well to him, Sir Shawn, look well to
him, or it's killin' himself he'll be!"
This apostrophe was unspoken. Mr. Terence Comerford had brought
Spitfire under control and she walked more soberly. The talk had
ceased for moment. It broke out again. As the riders went on their
way Sir Shawn's voice sounded as though he was pleading hard with his
friend. They had always been the most attached and devoted friends
from boyhood.
Terence Comerford's laugh came back borne upon a little wind.
"It'll be," said Patsy in his thoughts, "that Sir Shawn'll be biddin'
Mr. Terence to have sinse. A quare thing it is, and he all but
promised to Miss Mary that he'd be down at Dowd's every night since she
and the Misthress went to Dublin, talking to poor Bridyeen. 'Tis
sorrow the crathur'll have, no less, if she goes listenin' to Mr.
Terence. 'Tis a wonder Sir Shawn wouldn't be givin' him better advice.
Unless it was to be--there's some do be sayin' he's fond of Miss Mary
too."
All gossip of his elders, told round the turf-fire at night when Patsy
was supposed to be fast asleep in the settle bed, instead of "cockin'
his ears" for grown people's talk.
He peered out with wide eyes in the direction the riders had taken.
His small bullet head and narrow shoulders threw a shadow on the
moonlit road.
"Sir Shawn 'ud have a right to be seein' Mr. Terence home to Inch
itself," he thought. "It isn't alone ould Hercules an' the river
tumblin' over the weir an' the terrible dark road, but there's ould
Halloran's ghost on the long avenue to Inch, and there's the ghost of
the minister's wife by the churchyard. And Spitfire, that would take
fright at a pinkeen much less a ghost, under him, and Mr. Terence be
the way of him none too steady."
Mr. Terence's laughter came back on the wind, and was caught up and
repeated by something that lurked in the Wood of the Echoes, as the
people called it, which grew on a spit of solid land that reached out
into the bog. Those echoes were difficult to explain. Why should a
little wood of slender trees within a low wall catch and fling back
human voices?
The echo repeating that mocking laughter, out there in the bog, was a
new element of terror to Patsy. He had better be getting away from
this queer unlucky place before the riders were out of hearing. The
little old grandfather, with his blazing eyes of wrath and the stick
concealed somewhere behind his coat-tails, his most familiar aspect to
Patsy, was better than this solitude, with that old Echo across the bog
there cackling in that unchancy way. Soon, very soon, the lower road,
overhung with trees, pitch-black, where one had to pass by old
Hercules' tomb, just above the fall of the river over its weir, would
swallow Mr. Terence, while Sir Shawn's way would wind upwards towards
the mountains. Unless indeed Sir Shawn was to go home to Inch with Mr.
Terence, seeing he was riding Spitfire and so many perils to be passed,
and him not too steady by the look of him.
Patsy trotted along in the wake of the riders, his bare feet making a
soft padding noise in the dust of the road. His way was Sir Shawn's
way. The wealth of the world would not have induced Patsy to go down
under the black shade of the trees into the assemblage of all the
ghosts.
The little goat followed with docility at his heels, uttering now and
again a plaintive bleat of protest at the pace.
Suddenly there came a sound which, filling Patsy's heart with a
concrete terror, banished all the shadowy terrors. It was the sharp
slash of a whip, followed by the sound of a horse in mad flight.
"It's Spitfire, it's Spitfire!" cried Patsy to the moon and the stars.
"She'll kill Mr. Terence. The world knows she'd never take the whip."
It seemed to him as though there were two horses in the headlong
flight, but he could not be sure. He stumbled along, sobbing in his
haste and calling out inarticulate appeals to Heaven, to Sir Shawn, to
save Mr. Terence, while the clatter of the horses' feet died in the
distance. He even forgot his terror of the dark road which closed
about him as he followed on Spitfire's track. It might be that Sir
Shawn was catching up with the runaway horse, ready to snatch at the
bridle if only he could be in time.
Suddenly Patsy, sobbing and shaking, cannoned into some one, something,
in the darkness of the trees. A man's voice cursed him low and
deep,--no ghostly voice, nor that of the countryside, an unfamiliar
voice and speech to Patsy. His slender little body was caught in a
fierce grip. He was lifted and dashed on to the road. If it had been
a stony road, instead of the yielding bog, there would have been an end
of Patsy's story. As it was he lay very quietly, while the little goat
went home without him.
CHAPTER I
O'GARAS OF CASTLE TALBOT
Patsy Kenny, stud-groom to Sir Shawn O'Gara, a quiet man, devoted to
his horses and having a wonderful way with them, sometimes allowed his
mind to wander back to the night Mr. Terence Comerford was killed and
the days that followed.
He could recall the inquest on poor Mr. Terence, himself, with a
bandaged head, keeping the one eye he had available fixed on the
gentleman who asked him questions. He knew that Sir Shawn O'Gara was
present, his face marble pale and his eyes full of a strange anguish.
Well, that was not to be wondered at. The gentleman who asked the
questions made sympathetic references to the unusual friendship between
Sir Shawn and Mr. Comerford. Patsy had been aware of the nervous
tension in Sir Shawn's face, the occasional quiver of a nostril, "Like
as if he was a horse, a spirity one, aisy frightened, like Spitfire,"
Patsy had thought.
He remembered that tense anguish of Sir Shawn's face now, as he sat on
the trunk of a fallen tree in the paddock of the foals at Castle
Talbot. The foals were running with their mothers, exquisite
creatures, of the most delicate slenderness. The paddock was full of
the lush grass of June. The mares were contentedly grazing. Now and
again one lifted her head and sniffed the air with the wind in her
mane, as if at the lightest sound she would take fright.
Patsy had had a hard tussle that morning with an ill-tempered horse he
was breaking, and he felt tired out. He had no idea of compelling a
horse with a whip. Sir Shawn had bought this horse at a fair a short
time before. He was jet-black and they had called him Mustapha. That
was Master Terry's name for him, a queer heathenish name to Patsy's
mind, but all Master Terry did and all the mistress, Master Terry's
mother did, was right in Patsy's eyes, so Mustapha the horse was called.
He was certainly an ill-tempered brute, with a lot of the devil in him,
but Patsy Kenny was never angry with a horse; it was an invaluable
quality in a stud-groom. Patsy was wont to say that when he found a
horse wicked he looked for the man. There was no evidence of the man
so far as their record of Mustapha went. He had been bought from a
little old man as pink as a baby and with a smiling innocence of
aspect, so small that when Mustapha tossed his head the little man,
hanging on by the rope-bridle, was lifted in the air and dropped again.
"That crathur," said Patsy to himself, "would never have done the horse
a wrong. I wonder where he got him from an' who had the rearin' of
him. I'm surprised the master cared to handle him. He's as like as
two pins to Spitfire. Where was it they said Spitfire went? Some
mountainy man bought her for a five-pound note I've heard tell."
He pulled out a fine red handkerchief and mopped his forehead with it.
He'd had two hours of it trying to "insinse some rayson" into
Mustapha's head. He had not made much progress. Mustapha was still
kicking and squealing in his loose-box. The sounds reached Patsy Kenny
where he sat on his log and made him sad. Gentle as he was he thought
he had an understanding of even Mustapha. The ears back, the whites of
the eyes showing, the wild nostrils, the tense muscles under the skin
of black satin, were something of an unhappiness in his mind. Some
time or other Mustapha must have been ill-treated.
He put his head down on his hand. He was really tired out. So he was
unaware of the approach over the grass towards him of two people till
their shadows fell upon him and he looked up.
"That brute has taken it out of you, Patsy," said the elder man, who
had a curious elegance of face and figure. Years had not coarsened Sir
Shawn O'Gara. He was still slight and active. His white hair was in
almost startling contrast with the darkly foreign face, the small black
moustache, the dark eyes, almost too large and soft and heavily lashed
for a man's eyes.
The boy who was with him was very unlike his father. He had taken
after his mother, who had once been Mary Creagh, of whom some one had
said she had the colour of the foxes. The boy had his mother's reddish
brown eyes and hair, something of the same colour underlying his fair
skin as it did hers. He had the white, even teeth, the flashing and
radiant smile. Mary Creagh had been a beautiful girl, with a look of
motherliness even in her immature girlhood. As a wife and mother that
aspect of her beauty had developed. Many a strange confidence had been
brought to Mary Creagh, and later to Lady O'Gara. She had a way of
opening hearts and lips with that soft, steadfast glance of hers. Her
full bosom looked as though it were made for a child's head or a man's
to rest upon.
"He'll come round, he'll come round," said Patsy. "He'll have been
hurted some time or another. Whin he gets to know me he'll be biddable
enough."
"Oh, I know your theories," Sir Shawn said, a smile breaking over the
melancholy of his face. "You'll never give in that a horse could be
cursed with a natural ill-temper. But there are ill-tempered people:
why not ill-tempered horses?"
"Bedad, I dunno!" said Patsy, scratching his head thoughtfully. He
stood up with a jerk. It had occurred to him suddenly that he was
sitting while the gentlemen were standing. "I never could see inside a
human. I don't know how it is at all that I can see the mind of a
horse."
"You're a wonderful man, Patsy," said the boy gaily. "You are wasted
as our stud-groom. The scientific beggars would like to get hold of a
man who could see into the mind of a horse. Only we couldn't spare
you. I'm afraid Mustapha would only listen to reason from you, and
I've set my heart on riding him this Autumn."
"You won't do that, Master Terry, till I've had a good many more talks
with the horse. I'd be sorry to see you ridin' him yet, sir."
Terry O'Gara, brilliant in white flannels,--he had been playing tennis
with his mother's distant young cousin, Eileen Creagh--seemed to draw
the afternoon sun on to his spotlessness. Patsy Kenny, a little dazed
with fatigue, blinked at his whiteness against the green grass.
A mare came trotting up to them with her foal. The mare allowed
herself to be fondled, but the little foal was very wild and cantered
away when they tried to stroke him.
The big paddock was a pleasant sight with the mares and their foals
wandering over the young grass. The trees surrounding the paddock had
not yet lost their first fresh green: and the white red-roofed
stabling, newly built to accommodate the racing stud, made a vivid high
light against the coppices.
The three wandered on from one mare and foal to another. Patsy,
chewing a straw, offered the opinion that Magda's foal was the best of
the lot. Magda belonged to her Ladyship.
"There won't be a foal in it like that little wan," said Patsy, looking
at a tall chestnut foal, the slender legs of which seemed as though
they might break with a little pressure, so delicate were they. "The
filly won't be in it, Master Terry, wid your Mamma's horse. I've never
seen a better foal. He'll win the Derby yet. Woa, Magda, woa, my
beauty."
He was trying to get close to the mare, she being restive. Suddenly
she uttered a joyous whinny and started off down the field, the little
foal at her heels, the long manes of both flying in the wind.
"She knows her Ladyship has sugar for her. An' there's Miss Eileen. I
never knew a young lady as much afraid of a horse as Miss Eileen. You
should tache her better, Master Terry."
They stood by a gate to look at the horses which at a little distance
beyond a small enclosure hung their long sleek noses across a five-foot
paling. The points of the horses had to be discussed. Patsy had quite
forgotten his fatigue. He opened the gate and they crossed the narrow
strip between that and the paling. A second gate was opened and they
passed through.
While they were looking at the horses they were joined by Lady O'Gara
and Miss Creagh, the latter, a delicately fair girl with a mass of fine
golden hair caught up with many hairpins a-top of her small head,
keeping close to Lady O'Gara.
Lady O'Gara was laughing. Her husband sometimes called her the
Laughing Goddess. She had two aspects to her beauty--one when she was
soft and motherly, the other when she rallied those she loved and
sparkled with merriment. Her still beautiful copper-coloured hair had
hardly a white thread in it. She was very charming to look at in her
matronly beauty.
"I've had to defend poor Eileen from the mares," she said. "They were
impudent, crowding around me for sugar and sticking their noses in my
pocket. Magda and Brunette nearly came to blows. I had to push them
off with my whip. Poor Eileen!"
"I'm so sorry you were frightened," Terry O'Gara said, drawing a little
nearer to the girl and looking into her blue eyes.
The others had gone on.
"You won't be afraid with me," said the boy, who had just passed out of
Sandhurst; and was feeling immensely proud of his commission and his
sword and all they betokened, although he talked lazily about "cutlery"
and the pleasure of getting into mufti, making his mother's eyes dance.
"If you like, we will keep behind," he said. "If you are not
accustomed to it, it is rather alarming to be caught into a herd of
horses. My mother is so used to them that she cannot imagine any one
being afraid."
The horses were coming in a long string from the other end of the
paddock, whinnying and neighing, shaking the ground as they came. The
girl drew back towards the hedge.
"It's only rough love," the boy said. "Patsy Kenny can do anything
with the horses. They quarrel if he takes more notice of one than
another."
"They won't hurt your mother?" the girl said anxiously. "There she is
in the midst of them. Is it safe?"
"Quite safe. Nothing will happen to Mother while Father and Patsy
Kenny are there. What a frightened child you are!"
Miss Creagh's soft red mouth widened into a smile which had amusement
in it. She was six years older than the boy who called her a
frightened child. The smile was gone before he could see it.
"I'm afraid I'm rather a coward," she said meekly. "Father has always
said that it was absurd for a soldier's daughter to be alarmed of so
many things."
Terry O'Gara thought at the moment that it was the most beautiful and
appealing thing in the world for a girl to be frightened of many
things, when the girl happened to be as pretty as Eileen Creagh, and he
was the valiant youth who was to protect her from her terrors.
Although he liked the feeling of protecting her he fell in with her
suggestion that they should go back and talk to the foals. Miss Creagh
was certainly a coward, for she cried out when a horse showed any
evidence of friendliness; but when Terry suggested that they should go
to the garden and look for strawberries she did not fall in with the
suggestion.
"Let us wait for your mother here," she said, having gained the safe
shelter of the space between the palings and the gate. "You are sure
she is quite safe? Just look at her among those wild horses! There
couldn't be ... an accident?"
He laughed at her terrors.
"Mother was born in a stable, so to speak," he said. "She has a way
with the horses. But how fond you are of her! I am so grateful to you
for appreciating my mother as she deserves."
"She is an angel," said the girl fervently.
"Well, I think so." He laughed rather shyly. "It would not be easy
for a boy to have better parents. Father is quite unlike Mother, of
course ... but ... I have a tremendous admiration for him, all the
same. I'll tell you a secret. I believe up to this time I have wanted
more than anything else to please my father. When I had to work for
exams. I hated, or any stunt of that kind, when I--oh, I oughtn't to be
talking about myself. It isn't that I love Mother less, but Mother is
so happy. She would always find something good in my failures.
But--to see Father's face light up...!"
"He looks rather sad," Miss Creagh said wistfully.
"Yes, though he can be uncommonly jolly. We have had such rags
together in London. Why, here is Shot." He stooped to fondle the head
of a beautiful red setter. "He must have got shut up in the garden.
What I can't understand about Shot is his indifference to you."
"He knows that in my secret heart I'm afraid of dogs,--a dreadful
admission, isn't it? I think it was our old nurse. I can always
remember her driving a dog out of the nursery. 'Nasty thing!' she used
to say. 'You shall not come near my baby.' I suppose I got the idea
quite in babyhood that a dog was something noxious. Not that the
others minded. The house was always full of dogs."
"Oh, you'll get over that. Won't she, Shot? Do you think his hair and
eyes are like my Mother's?"
"Like?" Miss Creagh was puzzled. "Oh, surely not! How could a dog's
hair and eyes be like a person's. Your beautiful mother! It seems
such an odd comparison."
"Oh, well--Shot is beautiful too."
Despite his infatuation Terry felt a little disappointed in Miss Creagh.
Sir Shawn and Lady O'Gara had gone on into the next paddock, which
belonged to the young mares. There was a momentary excitement. One of
the horses had got through after them and was racing up and down
between the hurdles whinnying loudly. By the time he was secured and
put back in his proper quarters the young people were out of sight.