within the next few days the people of muirisc found themselves becoming familiar with the spectacle of two strange figures walking about among their narrow, twisted streets or across the open space of common between the castle and the quay. the sight of new-comers was still unusual enough in muirisc to disturb the minds of the inhabitants—but since the mines had been opened in the district the old-time seclusion had never quite come back, and it was uneasily felt that in the lapse of years even a hotel might come to be necessary.
one of these strangers, a rickety, spindling, weirdeyed man in spectacles, was known to be a cousin of jerry higgins, from america. the story went that he was a great scholar, peculiarly learned in ancient irish matters. muirisc took this for granted all the more readily because he seemed not to know anything else—and watched his shambling progress through the village streets by jerry’s side with something of the affectionate pity which the irish peasant finds always in his heart for the being he describes as a “nathural”.
the other new-comer answered vastly better to muirisc’s conceptions of what a man from america should be like. he was young, fresh-faced and elastic of step—with square shoulders, a lithe, vigorous frame and eyes which looked with frank and cheerful shrewdness at all men and things. he outdid even the most communicative of muirisc’s old white-capped women in polite salutations to passers-by on the highway, and he was amiably untiring in his efforts to lure with pennies into friendly converse the wild little girls of muirisc, who watched him with twinkling, squirrels’ eyes from under their shawls, and whisked off like so many coveys of partridges, at his near approach; the little boys, with the stronger sense of their sex, invariably took his pennies, but no more than their sisters could they be induced to talk.
there was a delightful absence of reserve in this young man from america. muirisc seemed to know everything about him all at once. his name was o’mahony, and his father had been a county-cork man; he was a mining engineer, and had been brought over to europe by a mining company as an expert in copper-ores and the refining of barytes; he was living at goleen, but liked muirisc much better, both from a miner, a logical point of view and socially; he was reckless in the expenditure of money on the cars from goleen and back and on the hire of boatmen at muirisc; he was filled to the top and running over with funny stories, he was a good catholic, he took the acutest interest in all the personal narratives of the older inhabitants, and was free with his tobacco; truly a most admirable young man!
he had been about muirisc and the immediate vicinity for a week or so—breaking up an occasional rock with his hammer when he was sure people were watching him, but more often lounging about in gossip on the main street, or fishing in the harbor with a boatman who would talk—when he made in a casual way the acquaintance of o’daly.
the little old man, white-haired now, but with the blue-black shadows of clean shaving still staining high up his jaws and sunken cheeks, had come down the street, nodding briefly to such villagers as saluted him, and carrying his hands clasped at the buttons on the back of his long-tailed coat. he had heard rumors of this young miner from america, and paused now on the outskirts of a group in front of the cobbler’s shop, whom bernard was entertaining with tales of giant salmon in the waters of lake superior.
“oh, this is mr. o’daly, i believe,” the young man had on the instant interrupted his narrative to remark. “i’m glad to meet you, sir. i’d been thinking of calling on you every day, but i know you’re a busy man, and it’s only since yesterday that i’ve felt that i had real business with you. my name’s o’mahony, and i’m here for the south desmond barytes syndicate. probably you know the name.”
the o’daly found his wrinkled old paw being shaken warmly in the grasp of this affable young man before he had had time to be astonished.
“o’daly’s my name,” he said, hesitatingly. “and you have business with me, you said?”
“i guess you’ll think so!” responded the other. “i’ve just got word from my superiors in london to go ahead, and naturally you’re the first man i want to talk with.” and then they linked arms.
“well,” said the cobbler, as they watched the receding figures of the pair, “my word, there’s more ways of killin’ a dog than chokin’ him wid butter!”
an hour later, bernard sat comfortably ensconced in the easiest chair afforded by the living-room of the castle, with the infant o’daly on his knee and a trio of grown-up people listening in unaffected pleasure to his sprightly talk. he had at the outset mistaken mrs. o’daly for a married sister of kate’s—an error which he managed on the instant to emphasize by a gravely deliberate wink at kate—and now held the mother’s heart completely by his genial attentions to the babe. he had set old o’daly all aglow with eager interest by his eulogy of muirisc’s mineral wealth as against all other districts in west carbery. and all the time, through anecdote, business converse, exchange of theories on the rearing and precocity of infants and bright-flowing chatter on every subject tinder the sun, he had contrived to make kate steadily conscious that she was the true object of his visit. now and again the consciousness grew so vivid that she felt herself blushing over the embroidered altar-cloth at which she worked, in the shadow between the windows.
“well, sir,” said bernard, dandling the infant tenderly as he spoke, “i don’t know what i wouldn’t give to be able, when i go back, to tell my father how i’d seen the o’mahony castles here, and all that, right on the family’s old stamping-ground.”
“yer father died, ye say, manny years ago?” remarked o’daly.
“sure, ‘manny’s not the word for it,” put in mrs. o’daly, with a flattering smile. “he’s but a lad yet, for all he’s seen and done.”
“nobody could grow old in such an air as this,” said the young man, briskly. “you, yourself, bear witness to that, mrs. o’daly. yes, my father died when i was a youngster. we moved out west after the war—i was a little shaver then—and he didn’t live long after that.”
“and would he be in the moines, too?” asked cormac.
“no; in the leather business,” answered bernard, without hesitation. “to the end of his days, he was always counting on coming back here to ireland and seeing the home of the o’mahonys again. to hear him talk, you’d have thought there wasn’t another family in ireland worth mentioning.”
“’t was always that way wid thim o’mahonys,” said o’daly, throwing a significant glance over his wife and step-daughter. “i can spake freely to you, sir; for i’ll be bound ye favor yer mother’s side and ye were not brought up among them; but bechune ourselves, there’s a dale o’ nonsinse talked about thim same o’mahonys. did you ever hear yer father mintion an o’daly?”
“well—no—i can’t say i did,” answered the young man, bending his mind to comprehension of what the old man might be driving at.
“there ye have it!” said cormac, bringing his hand down with emphasis on the table. “sir, ’t is a hard thing to say, but the ingrathitude of thim o’mahonys just passes belafe. sure, ’t was we that made thim. what were they but poyrutts and robbers of the earth, wid no since but for raids an’ incursions, an’ burnin’ down abbeys an’ holy houses, and makin’ war on their neighbors. an’ sure, ’t was we civilized ’em, we o’dalys, that they trate now as not fit to lace up their shoes. ’t was we taught thim o’mahonys to rade an’ write, an’ everything else they knew in learnin’ and politeness. an’ so far as that last-mintioned commodity goes”—this with a still more meaning, sidelong glance toward the women—“faith, a dale of our labor was wasted intoirely.”
even if kate would have taken up the challenge, the young man gave her no time.
“oh, of course,” he broke in, “i’ve heard of the o’dalys all my life. everybody knows about them!”
“luk at that now!” exclaimed cormac, in high triumph. “sure, ’t is ameriky’ll set all of us right, an’ keep the old learning up. ye’ll have heard, sir, of cuchonnacht o’daly, called ‘na sgoile, or ‘of the school’—”
“what, old cocoanut!” cried bernard, with vivacity, “i should think so!”
“’t was he was our founder,” pursued cormac, excitedly. “an’ after him came eight-an’-twinty descindants, all the chief bards of ireland. an’ in comparatively late toimes they had a school at drumnea, in kilcrohane, where the sons of the kings of spain came for their complate eddication, an’ the princes doid there, an’ are buried there in our family vault—sure the ruins of the college remain to this day—”
“you don’t mean to say you’re one of that family, mr. o’daly?” asked bernard, with eagerness.
“’t is my belafe i’m the head of it,” responded cormac, with lofty simplicity. “i’m an old man, sir, an’ of an humble nature, an’ i’d not be takin’ honors on meself. but whin that bye there—that bye ye howld on yer knee—grows up, an’ he the owner of muirisc an’ its moines an’ the fishin’, wid all his eddication an’ foine advantages—sure, if it pl’ases him to asshume the dignity of the o’daly, an’ putt the grand old family wance more where it belongs, i’m thinkin’ me bones ’ll rest the aiser in their grave.”
bernard looked down with an abstracted air at the unpleasantly narrow skull of the child on his knee, with its big ears and thin, plastered ringlets that suggested a whimsical baby-caricature of the mother’s crimps. he heard kate rise behind him, walk across the floor and leave the room with an emphatic closing of the door. to be frank, the impulse burned hotly within him to cuff the infantile head of this future chief of the o’dalys.
“i’ve a pome on the subject, which i composed last aister monday,” o’daly went on, “which i’d be deloighted to rade to ye.”
“unfortunately i must be hurrying along now,” said bernard, rising on the instant, and depositing the child on the floor. “i’m sorry, sir, but—”
“sure, ’t is you do be droivin’ everybody from the house wid yer pomes,” commented mrs. o’daly, ungenerously.
“oh, no, i assure you!” protested the young man. “i’ve often heard of mr. o’daly’s verses, and very soon now i’m coming to get him to read them all to me. have you got some about cocoanut, mr. o’daly?”
“this particular one,” said cormac, doggedly, “trates of a much later period. indeed, ’t is so late that it hasn’t happened at all yit. ’t is laid in futurity, sir, an’ dales wid the grand career me son is to have whin he takes his proud position as the o’daly, the proide of west carbery.”
“well, now, you’ve got to read me that the very first thing when i come next time,” said bernard. then he added, with a smile: “for, you know, i want you to let me come again.”
“sir, ye can’t come too soon or stop too long,” mrs. o’daly assured him. “sure, what wid there bein’ no railway to muirisc an’ no gintry near by, an’ what wid the dale we hear about the o’dalys an’ their supayriority over the o’mahonys, an’ thim pomes, my word, we do be starvin’ for the soight of a new face!”
“then i can’t be too glad that my face is new,” promptly put in bernard, wreathing the countenance in question with beaming amiability. “and in a few days i shall want to talk business with mr. o’daly, too, about the mining rights we shall need to take up.”
“ye’ll be welcome always,” said o’daly.
and with that comforting pledge in his ears, the young man shook hands with the couple and made his way out of the room.
“don’t trouble yourselves to come out,” he begged. “i feel already at home all over the house.”
“now that’s a young man of sinse,” said the o’daly, after the door had closed behind their visitor. “’t is not manny ye’ll foind nowadays wid such intelligince insoide his head.”
“nor so comely a face on the outside of it,” commented his wife.
at the end of the hallway this intelligent young man was not surprised to encounter kate, and she made no pretense of not having waited for him. yet, as he approached, she moved to pass by.
“’t is althered opinions you hold about the o’mahonys and the o’dalys,” she said, with studied coldness and a haughty carriage of her dark head.
he caught her sleeve as she would have passed him.
“see here,” he whispered, eagerly, “don’t you make a goose of yourself. i’ve told more lies and acted more lies generally this afternoon for you than i would for all the other women on earth boiled together. sh-h! just you keep mum, and we’ll see you through this thing slick and clean.”
“i want no lies told for me, or acted either,” retorted kate.
her tone was proud enough still, but the lines of her face were relenting.
“no, i don’t suppose for a minute you do,” he murmured back, still holding her sleeve, and with his other hand on the latch. “you’re too near an angel for that. i tell you what: suppose you just start in and do as much praying as you can, to kind o’ balance the thing. it’ll all be needed; for as far as i can see now, i’ve got some regular old whoppers to come yet.”
then the young man released the sleeve, snatched up the hand at the end of that sleeve, kissed it, and was gone before kate could say another word.
when she had thought it all over, through hours of seclusion in her room, she was still very much at sea as to what that word would have been had time been afforded her in which to utter it.
