The O’Mahony sat once more in the living-room of his castle--sat
very much at his ease, with a cigar between his teeth, and his feet
comfortably stretched out toward the blazing bank of turf on the stone
hearth.
A great heap of papers lay upon the table at his elbow--the contents of
O’Daly’s strong-box, the key to which he had brought with him from
the vessel--but not a single band of red tape had been untied. The
O’Mahony’s mood for investigation had exhausted itself in the work
of getting the documents out. His hands were plunged deep into his
trousers’ pockets now, and he gazed into the glowing peat.
His home-coming had been a thing to warm the most frigid heart. His own
beat delightedly still at the thought of it. From time to time there
reached his ears from the square without a vague braying noise, the
sound of which curled his lips into the semblance of a grin. It seemed
so droll to him that Muirisc should have a band--a fervent half-dozen
of amateurs, with ancient and battered instruments which successive
generations of regimental musicians bad pawned at Skibbereen or Bantry,
and on which they played now, neither by note nor by ear, but solely by
main strength.
The tumult of discord which they produced was dreadful, but The O’Mahony
liked it. He had been pleasurably touched, too, by the wild enthusiasm
of greeting with which Muirisc had met him when he disclosed himself on
the main street, walking up to the police-station with Major Snaffle
and Jerry. All the older inhabitants he knew, and shook hands with. The
sight of younger people among them whom he did not know alone kept alive
the recollection that he had been absent twelve long years. Old and
young alike, and preceded by the hurriedly summoned band, they had
followed him in triumphal procession when he came down the street
again, with the liberated Jerry and Linsky at his heels. They were still
outside, cheering and madly bawling their delight whenever the bandsmen
stopped to take breath. Jerry, Linsky and the one-armed Malachy were
out among them, broaching a cask of porter from the castle cellar; Mrs.
Fergus and Mrs. Sullivan were in the kitchen cutting up bread and meat
to go with the drink.
No wonder there were cheers! Small matter for marvel was it, either,
that The O’Mahony smiled as he settled down still more lazily in his
arm-chair and pushed his feet further toward the fire.
Presently he must go and fetch O’Daly and Kate from the vessel--or no,
when Jerry came in he would send him on that errand. After his long
journey The O’Mahony was tired and sleepy--all the more as he had sat up
most of the night, out on deck, talking with O’Daly. What a journey
it had been! Post-haste from far away, barbarous Armenia, where the
faithful Malachy had found him in command of a Turkish battalion,
resting after the task of suppressing a provincial rebellion. Home
they had wended their tireless way by Constantinople and Malta and
mistral-swept Marseilles, and thence by land across to Havre. Here,
oddly enough, he had fallen in with the French merchant to whom he had
sold the _Hen Hawk_ twelve years before--the merchant’s son had served
with him in the Army of the Loire three years later, and was his
friend--and he had been able to gratify the sudden fantastic whim of
returning as he had departed in the quaint, flush-decked, yawl-rigged
old craft. It all seemed like a dream!
“If your honor plazes, there’s a young gintleman at the dure--a Misther
O’Mahony, from America--w’u’d be afther having a word wid ye.”
It was the soft voice of good old Mrs. Sullivan that spoke.
The O’Mahony woke with a start from his complacent day-dream. He drew
his feet in, sat upright, and bit hard on his cigar for a minute in
scowling reflection.
“Show him in,” he said, at last, and then straightened himself
truculently to receive this meddling new-comer. He fastened a stern and
hostile gaze upon the door.
Bernard seemed to miss entirely the frosty element in his reception. He
advanced with a light step, hat in hand, to the side of the hearth, and
held one hand with familiar nonchalance over the blaze, while he nodded
amiably at his frowning host.
“I skipped off rather suddenly this morning,” he said, with a pleasant
half-smile, “because I didn’t seem altogether needful to the party for
the minute, and I had something else to do. I’ve dropped in now to say
that I’m as glad as anybody here to see you back again. I’ve only been
about Muirisc a few weeks, but I already feel as if I’d been born
and brought up here. And so I’ve come around to do my share of the
welcoming.”
“You _seem_ to have made yourself pretty much at home, sir,” commented
The O’Mahony, icily.
“You mean putting O’Daly down in the family vault?” queried the young
man. “Yes, perhaps it was making a little free, but, you see, time
pressed. I couldn’t be in two places at once, now, could I? And while
I went off to settle the convent business, there was no telling what
O’Daly mightn’t be up to if we left him loose; so I thought it was best
to take the liberty of shutting him up. You found him there, I judge,
and took him out.”
The O’Mahony nodded curtly, and eyed his visitor with cool disfavor.
“As long as you’re here, sir, you might as well take a seat,” he said,
after a minute’s pause. “That ’s it. Now, sir, first of all, perhaps
you wouldn’t mind telling me who you are and what the devil you mean,
sir, by coming here and meddling in this way with other people’s private
affairs.”
“Curious, isn’t it,” remarked the young man from Houghton County,
blandly, “how we Americans lug in the word ‘sir’ every other breath?
They tell me no Englishman ever uses it at all.”
The O’Mahony stirred in his chair.
“I’m not as easy-going a man or as good-natured as I used to be, my
young friend,” he said, with an affectation of calm, through which ran a
threatening note.
“I shouldn’t have thought it,” protested Bernard. “You seemed the pink
of politeness out there in the graveyard this morning. But I suppose
years of campaigning--”
“See here!” the other interposed abruptly. “Don’t fool with me. It’s
a risky game! Unless you want trouble, stop monkeying and answer my
question straight: Who are you?”
The young man had ceased smiling. His face had all at once become very
grave, and he was staring at The O’Mahony with wide-open, bewildered
eyes.
“True enough!” he gasped, after his gaze had been so protracted that the
other half rose from his seat in impatient anger. “Why--yes, sir! I’ll
swear to it--well--this _does_ beat all!”
“Your _cheek_ beats all!” broke in The O’Mahony, springing to his feet
in a gust of choleric heat.
Bernard stretched forth a restraining hand.
“Wait a minute,” he said, in evidently sincere anxiety not to be
misunderstood, and picking his words slowly as he went along, “hold
on--I’m not fooling! Please sit down again. I’ve got something
important, and mighty queer, too, to say to you.”
The O’Mahony, with a grunt of reluctant acquiescing, sat down once more.
The two men looked at each other with troubled glances, the one vaguely
suspicious, the other still round-eyed with surprise.
“You ask who I am,” Bernard began. “I’ll tell you. I was a little
shaver--oh, six or seven years old--just at the beginning of the War. My
father enlisted when they began raising troops. The recruiting tent in
our town was in the old hay-market by the canal bridge. It seems to me,
now, that they must have kept my father there for weeks alter he ’d
put his uniform on. I used to go there every day, I know, with my mother
to see him. But there was another soldier there--this is the queer thing
about a boy’s memory--I remember him ever so much better than I do my
own father. It’s--let’s see--eighteen years now, but I’d know him to
this day, wherever I met him. He carried a gun, and he walked all day
long up and down in front of the tent, like a polar bear in his cage.
We boys thought he was the most important man in the whole army. Some of
them knew him--he belonged to our section originally, it seems--and they
said he’d been in lots of wars before. I can see him now, as plainly
as--as I see you. His name was Tisdale--Zeb, I think it was--no, Zeke
Tisdale.”
Perhaps The O’Mahony changed color. He sat with his back to the window,
and the ruddy glow from the peat blaze made it impossible to tell. But
he did not take his sharp gray eye off Bernard’s face, and it never so
much as winked.
“Very interesting,” he said, “but it doesn’t go very far toward
explaining who you are. If I’m not mistaken, _that_ was the question.”
“Me?” answered Bernard, “Oh, yes, I forgot that. Well, sir, I am
the only surviving son of one Hugh O’Mahony, who was a shoemaker in
Tecumseh, who served in the same regiment, perhaps the same company,
with this Zeke Tisdale I’ve told you about, and who, after the War,
moved out to Michigan where he died.”
An oppressive silence settled upon the room. The O’Mahony still looked
his companion straight in the face, but it was with a lack-luster eye
and with the effect of having lost the physical power to look elsewhere.
He drummed with his fingers in a mechanical way on the arms of the
chair, as he kept up this abstracted and meaningless gaze.
There fell suddenly upon this long-continued silence the reverberation
of an exceptionally violent outburst of uproar from the square.
“Cheers for The O’Mahony!” came from one of the lustiest of the now
well-lubricated throats; and then followed a scattering volley of wild
hurroos and echoing yells.
As these died away, a shrill voice lifted itself, screaming:
“Come out, O’Mahony, an’ spake to us! We’re dyin’ for a sight of you!”
The elder man had lifted his head and listened. Then he squinted and
blinked his eyelids convulsively and turned his head away, but not
before Bernard had caught the glint of moisture in his eyes.
The young man had not been conscious of being specially moved by what
was happening. All at once he could feel his pulses vibrating like the
strings of a harp. His heart had come up into his throat. Nothing was
visible to him but the stormy affection which Muirisc bore for this
war-born, weather-beaten old impostor. And, clearly enough, _he_ himself
was thinking of only that.
Bernard rose and stepped to the hearth, instinctively holding one of his
hands backward over the fire, though the room was uncomfortably hot.
“They’re calling for you outside, sir,” he said, almost deferentially.
The remark seemed stupid after he had made it, but nothing else had come
to his tongue.
The lurking softness in his tone caught the other’s ear, and he turned
about fiercely.
“See here!” he said, between his teeth. “How much more of this is there
going to be? I’ll fight you where you stand--here!--now!--old as I
am--or I’ll--I’ll do something else--anything else--but d----m me if I’ll
take any slack or soft-soap from _you!_”
This unexpected resentment of his sympathetic mood impressed Bernard
curiously. Without hesitation, he stretched forth his hand. No
responsive gesture was offered, but he went on, not heeding this. .
“My dear sir,” he said, “they are calling for you, as I said. They
are hollering for ‘The O’Mahony of Muirisc.’ You are The O’Mahony of
Muirisc, and will be till you die. You hear _me!_”
The O’Mahony gazed for a puzzled minute into his young companion’s face.
“Yes--I hear you,” he said, hesitatingly.
“_You_--are The--O’Mahony--of--Muirisc!” repeated Bernard, with a
deliberation and emphasis; “and I’ll whip any man out of his boots who
says you’re not, or so much as looks as if he doubted it!”
The old soldier had put his hands in his pockets and began walking
slowly up and down the chamber. After a time he looked up.
“I s’pose you can prove all this that you’ve been saying?” he asked, in
a musing way.
“No--prove nothing! Don’t want to prove anything!” rejoined Bernard,
stoutly.
Another pause. The elder man halted once more in his meditative pacing
to and fro.
“And you say I _am_ The--The O’Mahony of Muirisc?” he remarked.
“Yes, I said it; I mean it!”
“Well, but--”
“There’s no ‘but’ about it, sir!”
“Yes, there is,” insisted The O’Mahony, drawing near and tentatively
surrendering his hand to the other’s prompt and cordial clasp.
“Supposing it all goes as you say--supposing I _am_ The O’Mahony--what
are _you_ going to be?”
The young man’s eyes glistened and a happy change--half-smile,
half-blush--blossomed all over his face.
“Well,” he said, still holding the other’s hand in his, “I don’t
know just how to tell you--because I am not posted on the exact
relationships; but I’ll put it this way: If it was your daughter that
you ’d left on the vessel there with O’Daly, I’d say that what I
propose to be was your son-in-law. See?”
It was only too clear that The O’Mahony did see. He had frowned at the
first adumbration of the idea. He pulled his hand away now, and pushed
the young man from him.
“No, you don’t!” he cried, angrily. “No, sirree! You can’t make any
such bargain as that with _me!_ Why--I’d ’a’ thought you’d ’a’ known
me better! _Me_, going into a deal, with little Katie to be traded off?
Why, man, you’re a fool!”
The O’Mahony turned on his heel contemptuously and strode up and down
the room, with indignant sniffs at every step. All at once he stopped
short.
“Yes,” he said, as if in answer to an argument with himself, “I’ll tell
you to get out of this! You can go and do what you like--just whatever
you may please--but I’m boss here yet, at all events, and I don’t want
anybody around me who could propose that sort of thing. _Me_ make Kate
marry you in order to feather my own nest! There’s the door, young man!”
Bernard looked obdurately past the outstretched forefinger into the
other’s face.
“Who said anything about your _making_ her marry me?” he demanded. “And
who talked about a deal? Why, look here, colonel”--the random title
caught the ear of neither speaker nor impatient listener--“look at it
this way: They all love you here in Muirisc; they’re just boiling over
with joy because they’ve got you here. That sort of thing doesn’t happen
so often between landlords and tenants that one can afford to bust it up
when it does occur. And I--well--a man would be a brute to have tried to
come between you and these people. Well, then, it’s just the same with
me and Katie. We love each other--we are glad when we’re together; we’re
unhappy when we’re apart. And so I say in this case as I said in the
other, a mane between you and these people. Well, then, it’s just the
same with me and Katie. We love each other--we are glad when we’re
together; we’re unhappy when we’re apart. And so I say in this case as I
said in the other, a man would be a brute--”
“Do you mean to tell me--” The O’Mahony broke in, and then was himself
cut short.
“Yes, I _do_ mean to tell you,” interrupted Bernard; “and, what’s more,
she means to tell you, too, if you put on your hat and walk over to the
convent.” Noting the other’s puzzled glance, he hastened on to explain:
“I rowed over to your sloop, or ship, or whatever you call it, after
I left you this morning, and I brought her and O’Daly back with me on
purpose _to_ tell you.”
Before The O’Mahony had mastered this confusing piece of information,
much less prepared verbal comment upon it, the door was thrust open;
and, ushered in, as it were, by the sharply resounding clamor of the
crowd outside, the burly figure of Jerry Higgins appeared.
“For the love o’ God, yer honor,” he exclaimed, in a high fever of
excitement, “come along out to ‘em! Sure they’re that mad to lay eyes
on ye, they’re ’ating each other like starved lobsters in a pot!
Ould Barney Driscoll’s the divil wid the dhrink in him, an’ there he is
ragin’ up an’ down, wid his big brass horn for a weapon, crackin’ skulls
right an’ left; an’ black Clancy’s asleep in his drum--‘t was Sheehan
putt him into it neck an’ crop--an’ ’t is three constables work to
howld the boys from rollin’ him round in it, an--an--”
“All right, Jerry,” said The O’Mahony; “I’ll come right along.”
He put on his hat and relighted his cigar, in slow and silent
deliberation. He tarried thereafter for a moment or two with an
irresolute air, looking at the smoke-rings abstractedly as he blew them
into the air.
Then, with a sudden decision, he walked over and linked Bernard’s arm
in his own. They went out together without a word. In fact, there was no
need for words.