the young man from houghton county, strolling along behind these three men, all so busily occupied with one another, had, of a sudden, conceived the notion of dropping silently out of the party.
he had put the idea into execution and was secure from observation on the farther side of the ditch, before the question of what he should do next shaped itself in his mind. indeed, it was not until he had made his way to the little old-fashioned pier and come to an enforced halt among the empty barrels, drying nets and general marine odds and ends which littered the landing-stage, that he knew what purpose had brought him hither.
but he perceived it now with great clearness. what other purpose, in truth, did existence itself contain for him?
“i want to be rowed over at once to that vessel there,” he called out to john pat, who made one of a group of muirisc men, in white jackets and soft black hats, standing beneath him on the steps. as he descended and took his seat in one of the waiting dingeys, he noted other clusters of villagers along the shore, all concentrating an eager interest upon the yawl-rigged craft which lay at anchor in the harbor. they pointed to it incessant as they talked, and others could be seen running forward across the green to join them. he had never supposed muirisc capable of such a display of animation.
“the people seem tickled to death to get the o’mahony back again,” he remarked to john pat, as they shot out under the first long sweep of the oars.
“they are, sir,” was the stolid response.
“did your brother come back with him—that one-armed man who went after him—malachy, i think they called him?”
“he did, sur,” said pat, simply.
“well”—bernard bent forward impatiently—“tell me about it! where did he find him? what do people say?”
“they do be saying manny things,” responded the oarsman, rounding his shoulders to the work.
bernard abandoned the inquiry, with a grunt of discouragement, and contented himself perforce by watching the way in which the strange craft waxed steadily in size as they sped toward her. in a minute or two more, he was alongside and clambering up a rope-ladder, which dangled its ends in the gently heaving water.
save for a couple of obviously foreign sailors lolling in the sunshine upon a sail in the bows, there was no one on deck. as he looked about, however, in speculation, the apparition of a broad, black hat, with long, curled plumes, rose above the companionway. he welcomed it with an exclamation of delight, and ran forward with outstretched hands.
the wearer of the hat, as she stepped upon the deck and confronted this demonstration, confessed to surprise by stopping short and lifting her black brows in inquiry. bernard sheepishly let his hands fall to his side before the cool glance with which she regarded him.
“is it viewing the vessel you are?” she asked. “her jigger lug-sail is unusual, i’m told.”
the young man’s blue eyes glistened in reproachful appeal.
“what do i know about lugger jig-sails, or care, either,” he asked. “i hurried here the moment i heard, to—to see you!”
“’t is flattered i am, i’m sure,” said kate, dryly, looking away from him to the brown cliffs beyond.
“come, be fair!” bernard pleaded. “tell me what the matter is. i thought i had every reason to suppose you’d be glad to see me. it’s plain enough that you are not; but you—you might tell me why. or no,” he went on, with a sudden change of tone, “i won’t ask you. it’s your own affair, after all. only you’ll excuse the way i rushed up to you. i’d had my head full of your affairs for days past, and then your disappearance—they thought you were drowned, you know—and i—i—”
the young man broke off with weak inconclusiveness, and turned as if to descend the ladder again. but john pat had rowed away with the boat, and he looked blankly down upon the clear water instead.
kate’s voice sounded with a mellower tone behind him.
“i wouldn’t have ye go in anger,” she said.
bernard wheeled around in a flash.
“anger!” he cried, with a radiant smile chasing all the shadows from his face. “why, how on earth could i be angry with you? no; but i was going away most mightily down in the mouth, though—that is,” he added, with a rueful kind of grin, “if my boat hadn’t gone off without me. but, honestly, now, when i drove in here this morning from skibbereen, i felt like a victorious general coming home from the wars. i’d done everything i wanted to do. i had the convent business blocked, and i had o’daly on the hip; and i said to myself, as we drove along: ‘she’ll be glad to see me.’ i kept saying that all the while, straight from skibbereen to muirisc. well, then—you can guess for yourself—it was like tumbling backward into seven hundred feet of ice-water!”
kate’s face had gradually lost its implacable rigidity, and softened now for an instant into almost a smile.
“so much else has happened since that drive of yours,” she said gently. “and what were ye doing at skibbereen?”
“well, you’ll open your eyes!” predicted bernard, all animation once again; and then he related the details of his journey to skibbereen and cashel, of his interviews with the prelates and of the manner in which he had, so to speak, wound up the career of the convent of the hostage’s tears. “it hadn’t had any real, rightdown legitimate title to existence, you know,” he concluded, “these last five hundred years. all it needed was somebody to call attention to this fact, you see, and, bang, the whole thing collapsed like a circus-tent in a cyclone!”
the girl had moved over to the gunwale, and now leaning over the rail, looked meditatively into the water below.
“and so,” she said, with a pensive note in her voice, “there’s an end to the historic convent of the o’mahonys! no other family in ireland had one—’t was the last glory of our poor, hunted and plundered and poverty-striken race; and now even that must depart from us.”
“well—hang it all!” remonstrated bernard—“it’s better that way than to have you locked up all your life. i feel a little blue myself about closing up the old convent, but there’s something else i feel a thousand times more strongly about still.”
“yes—isn’t it wonderful?—the return of the o’mahony!” said kate. “oh, i hardly know still if i’m waking or not. ’t was all like a blessid vision, and ’t was supernatural in its way; i’ll never believe otherwise. there was i on the strand yonder, with the talisman he’d given me in me arms, praying for his return—and, behold you there was this boat of his forninst me! oh! never tell me the age of miracles is past?”
“i won’t—i promise you!” said bernard, with fervor. “i’ve seen one myself since i’ve been here. it was at the three castles. i had my gun raised to shoot a heron, when an enchanted fairy—”
“nothing to do but he’d bring me on board,” kate put in, hastily. “old murphy swam out to him ahead of us, screaming wid delight like one possessed. and we sat and talked for hours—he telling strange stories of the war’s he’d been in wid the french, and thin wid don carlos, and thin the turks, and thin wid some outlandish people in a turkish province—until night fell, and he wint ashore. and whin he came back he brought o’daly wid him—where in the lord’s name he found him passes my understanding, and thin we up sail and beat down till we stood off three castle head. there we lay all night—o’mahony gave up his cabin to me—and this morning back we came again. and now—the lord be praised!—there’s an ind to all our throubles!”
“well,” said bernard, with deliberation, “i’m glad. i really am glad. although, of course, it’s plain enough to see, there’s an end to me, too.”
a brief time of silence passed, as the two, leaning side by side on the rail, watched the slow rise and sinking of the dull-green wavelets.
“you’re off to ameriky, thin?” kate finally asked, without looking up.
the young man hesitated.
“i don’t know yet,” he said, slowly. “i’ve got a curious hand dealt out to me. i hardly know how to play it. one thing is sure, though: hearts are trumps.”
he tried to catch her glance, but she kept her eyes resolutely bent upon the water.
“you know what i want to say,” he went on, moving his arm upon the rail till there was the least small fluttering suggestion of contact with hers. “it must have said itself to you that day upon the mountain-top, or, for that matter, why, that very first time i saw you i went away head over heels in love. i tell you, candidly, i haven’t thought or dreamed for a minute of anything else from that blessed day. it’s all been fairyland to me ever since. i’ve been so happy! may i stay in fairyland, kate?”
she made no answer. bernard felt her arm tremble against his for an instant before it was withdrawn. he noted, too, the bright carmine flush spring to her cheek, overmantle her dark face and then fade away before an advancing pallor. a tear glittered among her downcast lashes.
“you mustn’t deny me my age of miracles!” he murmuringly pleaded. “it was a miracle that we should have met as we did; that i should have found you afterward as i did; that i should have turned up just when you needed help the most; that the stray discovery of an old medi忙val parchment should have given me the hint what to do. oh, don’t you feel it, kate? don’t you realize, too, dear, that there was fate in it all? that we belonged from the beginning to each other?”
very white-faced and grave, kate lifted herself erect and looked at him. it was with an obvious effort that she forced herself to speak, but her words were firm enough and her glance did not waver.
“unfortunately,” she said, “your miracle has a trick in it. even if ’t would have pleased me to believe in it, how can i, whin ’t is founded on desate.”
bernard stared at her in round-eyed wonderment.
“how ‘deceit’?” he stammered. “how do you mean? is it about kidnapping o’daly? we only did that—”
“no, ’t is this,” said kate—“we ‘ll be open with each other, and it’s a grief to me to say it to you, whom i have liked so much, but you ‘re no o’ma-hony at all.”
the young man with difficulty grasped her meaning.
“well, if you remember, i never said i knew my father was one of the o’mahonys, you know. all i said was that he came from somewhere in county cork. surely, there was no deceit in that.”
she shook her head.
“no; what ye said was that your name was o’mahony.”
“well, so it is. good heavens! that isn’t disputed, is it?”
“and you said, moreover,” she continued, gravely, “that your father knew our o’mahony as well almost as he knew himsilf.”
“oh-h!” exclaimed bernard, and fell thereupon into confused rumination upon many thoughts which till then had been curiously subordinated in his mind.
“and, now,” kate went on, with a sigh, “whin i mintion this to the o’mahony himself, he says he never in his life knew any one of your father’s name. o’daly was witness to it as well.”
bernard had his elbows once more on the rail. he pushed his chin hard against his upturned palms and stared at the skyline, thinking as he had never been forced to think before.
“surely there was no need for the—the misstatement,” said kate, in mournful recognition of what she took to be his dumb self-reproach. “see now how useless it was—and a thousand times worse than useless! see how it prevints me now from respecting you and being properly grateful to you for what you’ve done on me behalf, and—and—”
she broke off suddenly. to her consternation she had discovered that the young man, so far from being stricken speechless in contrition, was grinning gayly at the distant landscape.
turning with abruptness she walked indignantly aft. cormac o’daly had come up from below, and stood wistfully gazing landward over the taffrail. she joined him, and stood at his side flushed and wrathful.
bernard was not wholly able to chase the smile from his face as he rose and sauntered over toward her. she turned her back as he approached and tapped the deck nervously with her foot. nothing dismayed, he addressed himself to o’daly, who seemed unable to decide whether also to look the other way or not.
“good morning, sir,” he said affably. “you’re quite a stranger, mr. o’daly.”
kate, at his first word, had walked briskly away up the deck. cormac’s little black eyes snapped viciously at the intruder.
“at laste i’m not such a stranger,” he retorted, “but that me thrue name is known, an’ i’m here be the invitation of the owner.”
“i’m sorry you take things so hard, mr. o’daly,” said bernard. “an easy disposition would come very handy to you, seeing the troubles you ’ve got to go through with yet.”
the small man gazed apprehensively at his tormentor.
“i don’t folly ye,” he stammered.
“i’m going to propose that you shall follow me, sir,” replied the young man in an authoritative tone. “i understand that in conversation last night between your step-daughter and you and the—the owner of this vessel, the question of my name was brought up, and that it was decided that i was a fraud. now, i’m not much given to making a fuss, but there are some things, especially at certain times, that i can’t stand—not for one little minute. this is one of ’em. now i’m going to suggest that we hail one of those boats there and go ashore at once—you and miss kate and i—and clear this matter up without delay.”
“we’ll remain here till the o’mahony returns!” said o’daly, stiffly. “’t was his request. ’t is no interest of mine to clear the matther up, as you call it.”
“well, it was no interest of mine, mr. o’daly,” remarked bernard, placidly, “to go over the mining contracts you’ve made as trustee during the past dozen years and figure out all the various items of the estate’s income; but i’ve done it. it makes a very curious little balance-sheet. i had intended to fetch it down with me to-day and go over it with you in your underground retreat.”
“in the devil’s name, who are you?” snarled cormac, with livid face and frightened eyes. “that’s just what i proposed we should go right and settle. if you object, why, i shall go alone. but in that case, it may happen that i shall have to discuss with the gentleman who has just arrived the peculiarities of that balance-sheet i spoke of. what do you think, eh?”
o’daly did not hesitate.
“sur, i’ll go wid you,” he said. “the o’mahony has no head for figures. ’t would be flat injustice to bother him wid ’em, and he only newly landed.” bernard walked lightly across the deck, humming a little tune to himself as he advanced, and baiting a short foot from where kate stood.
“o’daly’s going ashore with me,” he remarked. “he dare not!” she answered, over her shoulder. “the o’mahony bade him stop here.”
“well, this is more or less of a free country, and he’s changed his mind. he’s going with me. i—i want you to come, too.”
“’tis loikely!” she said, with a derisive sniff.
“kate,” he said, drawing nearer to her by a step and speaking in low, earnest tones, “i hate to plead this sort of thing; but you have nothing but candid and straightforward friendship from me. i’ve done a trifle of lying for you, perhaps, but none to you. i’ve worked for you as i never worked for myself. i’ve run risks for you which nothing else under the sun would have tempted me into. all that doesn’t matter. leave that out of the question. i did it because i love you. and for that selfsame reason i come now and ask this favor of you. you can send me away afterward, if you like; but you can’t bear to stop here now, thinking these things of me, and refusing to come out and learn for yourself whether they are true or false, for that would be unfair, and it’s not in your blood—in our blood—to be that.”
the girl neither turned to him nor spoke, but he could see the outline of her face as she bowed her head and gazed in silence at the murmuring water; and something in this sight seemed to answer him.
he strode swiftly to the other side of the vessel, and exultantly waved his handkerchief in signal to the boatmen on the shore.
