oh, what’s to be done now?” asked kate, rising to her feet and casting a puzzled look about her. “sure, me wits are abroad entirely.”
no answer seemed forthcoming. as far inland as the eye could stretch, even to the gray crown of dunkelly, no sign of human habitation was to be seen. the jutting headland of the three castles on which she stood—with the naked primeval cliffs; the roughly scattered boulders framed in scrub-furze too stunted and frightened in the presence of the sea to venture upon blossoms; the thin ashen-green grass blown flat to earth in the little sheltered nooks where alone its roots might live—presented the grimmest picture of desolation she had ever seen. an undersized sheep had climbed the rocks to gaze upon the intruders—an animal with fleece of such a snowy whiteness that it looked like an imitation baa-baa from a toy-shop—and kate found herself staring into its vacuous face with sympathy, so helplessly empty was her own mind of suggestions.
“’tis two oirish miles to the nearest house,” said murphy, in a despondent tone.
kate turned to the young man, and spoke wistfully:
“if you’ll stop here, i’ll go for help,” she said.
the young man from houghton county laughed aloud.
“if there’s any going to be done, i guess you’re not the one that’ll do it,” he answered. “but, first of all, let’s see where we stand exactly. how did you come here, anyhow?”
“we rowed around from—from our home—a long way distant in that direction,” pointing vaguely toward dunmanus bay, “and our boat was left there at the nearest landing point, half a mile from here.”
“ah, well, that’s all right,” said the young man. “it would take an hour to get anybody over here to help, and that would be clean waste of time, because we don’t need any help. i’ll just tote him over on my back, all by my little self.”
“ah—you’d never try to do the likes of that!” deprecated the girl.
“why not?” he commented, cheerfully—and then, with a surprise which checked further protest, she saw him tie his game-bag round his waist so that it hung to the knee, get murphy seated up on the rock against which he had learned, and then take him bodily on his back, with the wounded foot comfortably upheld and steadied inside the capacious leathern pouch.
“‘why not,’ eh?” he repeated, as he straightened himself easily under the burden; “why he’s as light as a bag of feathers. that’s one of the few advantages of living on potatoes. now you bring along the gun—that’s a good girl—and we’ll fetch up at the boat in no time. you do the steering, murphy. now, then, here we go!”
the somber walls of the three castles looked down in silence upon this strange procession as it filed past under their shadows—and if the gulls which wheeled above and about the moss-grown turrets described the spectacle later to the wraiths of the dead-and-gone o’mahonys and to the enchanted horse-shaped woman in the lake, there must have been a general agreement that the parish of kilmoe had seen never such another sight before, even in the days of the mystic tuatha de danaan.
the route to the boat abounded to a disheartening degree in rough and difficult descents, and even more trying was the frequent necessity for long d茅tours to avoid impossible barriers of rock. moreover, murphy turned out to be vastly heavier than he had seemed at the outset. hence the young man, who had freely enlivened the beginning of the journey with affable chatter, gradually lapsed into silence; and at last, when only a final ridge of low hills separated them from the strand, confessed that he would like to take off his coat. he rested for a minute or two after this had been done, and wiped his wet brow.
“who’d think the sun could be so hot in april?” he said. “why, where i come from, we’ve just begun to get through sleighing.”
“what is it you’d be slaying now?” asked kate, innocently. “we kill our pigs in the late autumn.”
the young man laughed aloud as he took murphy once more on his back.
“potato-bugs, chiefly,” was his enigmatic response.
she pondered fruitlessly upon this for a brief time, as she followed on with the gun and coat. then her thoughts centered themselves once more upon the young stranger himself, who seemed only a boy to look at, yet was so stout and confident of himself, and had such a man’s way of assuming control of things, and doing just what he wanted to do and what needed to be done.
muirisc did not breed that sort of young man. he could not, from his face, be more than three or four and twenty—and at that age all the men she had known were mere slow-witted, shy and awkward louts of boys, whom their fathers were quite free to beat with a stick, and who never dreamed of doing anything on their own mental initiative, except possibly to “boo” at the police or throw stones through the windows of a boycotted shop, evidently there were young men in the big unknown outside world who differed immeasurably from this local standard.
oh, that wonderful outside world, which she was never going to see! she knew that it was sinful and godless and pressed down and running over with abominations, because the venerable nuns of the hostage’s tears had from the beginning told her so, but she was conscious of a new and less hostile interest in it, all the same, since it produced young men of this novel type. then she began to reflect that he was like robert emmett, who was the most modern instance of a young man which the limits of convent literature permitted her to know about, only his hair was cut short, and he was fair, and he smiled a good deal, and—and lo, here they were at the boat! she woke abruptly from her musing day-dream.
the tide had gone out somewhat, and left the dingey stranded on the dripping sea-weed. the young man seated murphy on a rock, untied the game-bag and put on his coat, and then in the most matter-of-fact way tramped over the slippery ooze to the boat, pushed it off into the water and towed it around by the chain to the edge of a little cove, whence one might step over its side from a shore of clean, dry sand. he then, still as if it were all a matter of course, lifted murphy and put him in the bow of the boat, and asked kate to sit in the stern and steer.
“i can talk to you, you know, now that your sitting there,” he said, with his foot on the end of the oar-seat, after she had taken the place indicated. “oh—wait a minute! we were forgetting the gun and bag.”
he ran lightly back to where these things lay upon the strand, and secured them; then, turning, he discovered that murphy had scrambled over to the middle seat, taken the oars, and pushed the boat off. suspecting nothing, he walked briskly back to the water’s edge.
“shove her in a little,” he said, “and i’ll hold her while you get back again into the bow. you mustn’t think of rowing, my good man.”
but murphy showed no sign of obedience. he kept his burnt, claw-shaped hands clasped on the motionless, dipped oars, and his eager, bird-like eyes fastened upon the face of his young mistress. as for kate, she studied the bottom of the boat with intentness, and absently stirred the water over the boat-side with her finger-tips.
“get her in, man! don’t you hear?” called the stranger, with a shadow of impatience, over the six or seven feet of water which lay between him and the boat. “or you explain it to him,” he said to kate; “perhaps he doesn’t understand me—tell him i’m going to row!”
in response to this appeal, kate lifted her head, and hesitatingly opened her lips to speak—but the gaunt old boatman broke in upon her confused silence:
“ah, thin—i understand well enough,” he shouted, excitedly, “an’ i’m thankful to ye, an’ the longest day i live i’ll say a prayer for ye—an’ sure ye’re a foine grand man, every inch of ye, glory be to the lord—an’ it’s not manny w’u’d ’a’ done what ye did this day—and the blessin’ of the lord rest an ye; but—” here he suddenly dropped his high shrill, swift-chasing tones, and added in quite another voice—“if it’s the same to you, sir, we’ll go along home as we are.”
“what nonsense!” retorted the young man. “my time doesn’t matter in the least—and you’re not fit to row a mile—let alone a long distance.”
“it’s not with me fut i’ll be rowin’,” replied murphy, rounding his back for a sweep of the oars.
“can’t you stop him, miss—eh—young lady!” the young man implored from the sands.
hope flamed up in his breast at sight of the look she bent upon murphy, as she leaned forward to speak—and then sank into plumbless depths. perhaps she had said something—he could not hear, and it was doubtful if the old boatman could have heard either—for on the instant he had laid his strength on the oars, and the boat had shot out into the bay like a skater over the glassy ice.
it was a score of yards away before the young man from houghton county caught his breath. he stood watching it—be it confessed—with his mouth somewhat open and blank astonishment written all over his ruddy, boyish face. then the flush upon his pink cheeks deepened, and a sparkle came into his eyes, for the young lady in the boat had risen and turned toward him, and was waving her hand to him in friendly salutation. he swung the empty game-bag wildly about his head in answer, and then the boat darted out of view behind a jutting ridge of umber rocks, and he was looking at an unbroken expanse of gently heaving water—all crystals set on violet satin, under the april sun.
he sent a long-drawn sighing whistle of bewilderment after the vanished vision.
not a word had been exchanged between the two in the boat until after kate, yielding at the last moment to the temptation which had beset her from the first, waved that unspoken farewell to her new acquaintance and saw him a moment later abruptly cut out of the picture by the intervening rocks. then she sat down again and fastened a glare of metallic disapproval, so to speak, upon murphy. this, however, served no purpose, since the boatman kept his head sagaciously bent over his task, and rowed away like mad.
“i take shame for you, murphy!” she said at last, with a voice as full of mingled anguish and humiliation as she could manage to make it.
“is it too free i am with complete strangers?” asked the guileful murphy, with the face of a trusting babe.
“’tis the rudest and most thankless old man in all west carbery that ye are!” she answered, sharply.
“luk at that now!” said murphy, apparently addressing the handles of his oars. “an’ me havin’ the intintion to burnin’ two candles for him this very night!”
“candles is it! murphy, once for all, ’t is a bad trick ye have of falling to talking about candles and ‘hail marys’ and such holy matters, whinever ye feel yourself in a corner—and be sure the saints like it no better than i do.”
the aged servitor rested for a moment upon his oars, and, being conscious that evasion was of no further use, allowed an expression of frankness to dominate his withered and weather-tanned face.
“well, miss,” he said, “an’ this is the truth i’m tellin’ ye—‘t was not fit that he should be sailin’ in the boat wid you.”
kate tossed her head impatiently.
“and how long are you my director in—in such matters as these, murphy?” she asked, with irony.
the old man’s eyes glistened with the emotions which a sudden swift thought conjured up.
“how long?” he asked, with dramatic effect.
“sure, the likes of me c’u’d be no directhor at all—but ’tis a dozen years since i swore to his honor, the o’mahony himself, that i’d watch over ye, an’ protect ye, an’ keep ye from the lightest breath of harrum—an’ whin i meet him, whether it be the lord’s will in this world or the nixt, i’ll go to him an’ i’ll take off me hat, an’ i’ll say: ‘yer honor, what old murphy putt his word to, that same he kep!’ an’ is it you, miss katie, that remimbers him that well, that ’u’d be blamin’ me for that same?”
“i don’t know if i’m so much blaming you, murphy,” said kate, much softened by both the matter and the manner of this appeal, “but ’tis different, wit’ this young man, himself an o’mahony by name.”
“faith, be the same token, ’tis manny thousands of o’mahonys there are in foreign parts, i’m tould, an’ more thousands of ’em here at home, an’ if it’s for rowin’ ’em all on dunmanus bay ye’d be, on the score of their name, ’tis grand new boats we’d want.”
kate smiled musingly.
“did you mind, murphy,” she asked, after a pause, “how like the sound of his speech was to the o’mahony’s?”
“that i did not!” said murphy, conclusively.
“ah, ye’ve no ears, man! i was that flurried at the time, i couldn’t think what it was—but now, whin it comes back to me, it was like talking to the o’mahony himself. there was that one word, ‘onistinjun,’ that the o’mahony had forever on his tongue. surely you noticed that!”
“all americans say that same,” murphy explained carelessly. “’t is well known most of ’em are discinded from the injuns. ’tis that they m’ane.” it did not occur to kate to question this bold ethno-philological proposition. she leant back in her seat at the stern, absent-mindedly toying with the ribbons of her hat, and watching the sky over murphy’s head.
“poor, dear old o’mahony!” she sighed at last.
“amin to that miss!” murmured the boatman, between strokes.
“’t is a year an’ more now, murphy, since we had the laste sign in the world from him. ah, wirra! i’m beginnin’ to be afraid dead ’tis he is!”
“keep your heart, miss; keep your heart!” crooned the old boatman, in what had been for months a familiar phrase on his lips. “sure no mortial man ever stepped fut on green sod that ’ud take more killin’ than our o’mahony. why, coleen asthore, wasn’t he foightin’ wid the french, against the prooshians, an’ thin wid the turkeys against the rooshians, an’ bechune males, as ye’d say, didn’t he bear arms in spain for the catholic king, like the thunderin’ rare old o’mahony that he is, an’ did ever so much as a scratch come to him—an’ him killin’ an’ destroyin’ thim by hundreds? ah, rest aisy about him, miss katie!”
the two had long since exhausted, in their almost daily talks, every possible phase of this melancholy subject. it was now april of 1879, and the last word received from the absent chief had been a hastily scrawled note dispatched from adrianople, on new year’s day of 1878—when the turkish army, beaten finally at plevna and decimated in the schipka, were doggedly moving backward toward the bosphorus. since that, there had been absolute silence—and kate and murphy had alike, hoping against hope, come long since to fear the worst. though each strove to sustain confidence in the other, there was no secret between their hearts as to what both felt.
“murphy,” said kate, rousing herself all at once from her reverie, “there’s something i’ve been keeping from you—and i can’t hold it anny longer. do ye mind when malachy wint away last winter?”
“faith i do,” replied the boatman. (malachy, be it explained, had followed the o’mahony in all his wanderings up to the autumn of 1870, when, in a skirmish shortly after sedan, he had lost an arm and, upon his release from the hospital, had been sent back to muirisc.) “i mind that he wint to amerriky.”
“well, thin,” whispered kate, bending forward as if the very waves had ears, “it’s just that he didn’t do. i gave him money, and i gave him the o’mahony’s ring, and sint him to search the world over till he came upon his master, or his master’s grave—and i charged him to say only this: ‘come back to muirisc! ’tis kate o’mahony wants you!’ and now no one knows this but me confessor and you.”
the boatman gazed earnestly into her face.
“an’ why for did ye say: ‘come back?’” he asked.
“ah thin—well—‘tis o’daly’s hard d’alin’s wid the tinants, and the failure of the potatoes these two years and worse ahead and the birth of me little step-brother—and—”
“answer me now, katie darlint?” the old man adjured her, with glowing eyes and solemn voice. “is it the convint ye’re afraid of for yoursilf? is it of your own free will you’re goin’ to take your vows?”
the girl had answered this question more than once before, and readily enough. now, for some reason which she could not have defined to herself, she looked down upon the gliding water at her side, and meditatively dipped her fingers into it, and let a succession of little waves fling their crests up into her sleeve—and said nothing at all.
