"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.