Love of Brothers Part 30

There was a wild surmise in Patsy's eyes. Not for many a year had that tragedy been spoken of in his hearing.

"I would not recall it," Lady O'Gara went on in her gentle voice, "only that Sir Felix tells me some man has been saying that Sir Shawn flogged Mr. Comerford's horse, using words as he did so which proved that he knew the horse would not take the whip and that he had it in his mind to kill Mr. Comerford."

"Who was the man said the likes of that?" asked Patsy, his eyes suddenly red.

"It was a sort of ... tramping person," said Sir Felix, putting on his pince-nez the better to see Patsy. "He has been in these parts before.

A most unprepossessing person. Quite a bad lot, I should say."

"A foxy man with a hanging jowl," said Patsy. "Not Irish by his speech. Seems like as if he'd curse you if you come his way. No whiskers,--a bare-faced man."

"That would be his description."

"It's a quare thing," said Patsy in a slow ruminating voice, "that for all the rage I felt agin him, so that I wanted to throttle him wid me two hands, I never thought of him with the man that was there the night Mr. Terence Comerford was killed. Did you notice the big hairy hands of him? They all but choked me that night. I thought I'd cause enough to hate him when he came my way again because o' the poor girl and the child. I could scarce keep my hands off him. The villain! I'd rather kill him than a rat in the stable yard."

"You seem to have a very accurate idea about the person who has made this grotesque charge against your master," Sir Felix said in his pompous way. "Your feelings do you credit, but still ... I should not proceed to violence."

"Please tell Sir Felix what happened that night, Patsy," Lady O'Gara said. She had stood up and gone a little way towards the window. She spoke in a quiet voice. Only one who was devoted to her, as Patsy was, could have guessed the control she was exercising over herself.

Patsy's eyes, in the shadow of the lamp, sent her a look of mute protecting pity and tenderness.

"'Tis, sir, that I was in the ditch that night." Patsy turned his cap about in his hands. "I was lookin' for the goat an' she draggin' her chain an' the life frightened out of me betwixt the black night and the ghosts and the terrible cross ould patch I had of a grandfather, that said he'd flog me alive if I was to come home without the goat. I was blowin' on me hands for the cowld an' shakin' wid fright o' bein' me lone there; an' not a hundred yards between me an' that place where the ould Admiral's ghost walks. When I heard the horses' feet comin' my heart lifted up, once I was sure it wasn't ghosts they was. They pa.s.sed me whin I was sittin' in the ditch. No sooner was they gone by than I let a bawl out o' me, an' I ran after them for company, for it come over me how I was me lone in that dark place. You see, your Honour, I was only a bit of a lad, an' th' ould grandfather had made me nervous-like. Just then I caught the bleat of the goat an' I was overjoyed, for I thought I'd ketch her an' creep home behind Sir Shawn an' the walkin' horse. They parted company where the roads met, an' I heard Sir Shawn trottin' his horse up the road in front o' me, an'

Spitfire--that was Mr. Comerford's horse--was unaisy an' refusin' the dark road under the trees. You couldn't tell what the crathur saw, G.o.d help us all! No horse liked that road. Thin I heard Spitfire clatterin' away in the dark an' I ran, draggin' the little goat after me to get past the place where the unchancy ould road dips down.

Somewan cannoned into me runnin' out o' the dark road. I couldn't see his face, but he cursed me, an' I felt his hairy hands round me neck and me scratchin' and tearin' at them. It was that villain that's comin' here to annoy the master, or I think it was. Mind you, I never seen him. But he took me up be me little coat an' he dashed me down on the road an' nigh knocked the life out o' me. The next thing I knew I was lying in the bed at home an' me sore from head to foot, an' able to see only out o' wan eye be rayson of a bandage across the other: an' me grandfather an' the neighbours wor sayin' that Mr. Terence Comerford was kilt, and that Sir Shawn O'Gara was distracted with grief. But the quarest thing at all was hearin' the ould man sayin' that I was a good little boy, after all the divils and villains he'd called me, as long as I could remember."

Patsy stopped, still turning his hat about in his hands, his velvety eyes fixed on Lady O'Gara, where she stood leaning by the mantelpiece, her face turned away, one slender foot resting on the marble kerb. If Sir Felix had been aware of the expression of the eyes he might have been startled, but even the pince-nez were not equal to that.

"Thank you very much," he said. "That story should knock the bottom out of our friend's statement. Merely vexatious; I said so to D.I.

Fury. Sir Shawn and Mr. Comerford parted in perfect amity?"

"Like brothers," said Patsy with emphasis, "as they wor ever an'

always. Sure the master was never the same man since. I often heard the people sayin' how it was the love of brothers was betwixt them, an'

more, for many a blood brother doesn't fret for his brother as the master fretted for Master Terence. He was never the same man since."

CHAPTER XXIII

THE HOME-COMING

After Sir Felix had gone off, profuse in his apologies, and anathematizing Mr. Fury's zeal, Lady O'Gara went to a desk in the corner of the drawing-room, a Sheraton desk which she did not often use. She found a tiny key and unlocked a little cupboard door between the pigeon-holes. She felt about the back of one of the three little drawers it contained and brought out a sliding well, one of the innocent secret receptacles which are so easily discovered by any one who has the clue. She drew out a little bundle of yellow papers from it--newspaper cuttings. These she took to the lamp and proceeded to read with great care.

Once or twice she knitted her fair brows over something as she read; but, on the whole, she seemed satisfied as she put the papers back into their secret place, locked the little door and put away the key.

Then she remembered that she had not given Patsy his orders.

She went to Sir Shawn's office-room and wrote them out. While she put the second one in its envelope Patsy tapped at the door and came in, closing it carefully behind him.

"No wan 'ud be expectin' the master home from the Wood o' the Hare yet," he said. "'Tis a good step an' Sir John Fitzgerald would be very sorry to part with him after he'd carried him in for his lunch. Maybe 'tis staying to dinner he'd be."

Lady O'Gara looked at her watch.

"It's quite early," she said; "not much after six."

"'Tis a dark night," said Patsy. "Maybe 'tis the way they'll be persuadin' him to wait till the moon rises. Sorra a bit she'll show her face till nine to-night."

Mary O'Gara's heart sank. She knew that Patsy was nervous.

"He may come at any moment," she said. "I don't think he'll wait for the rising of the moon."

"It isn't like the troubled times," said Patsy, "an' you listenin'

here, an' me listenin' by the corner o' the stable-yard where the wind brings the sounds from the bog-road whin 'tis in that quarter. Your Ladys.h.i.+p had great courage. An' look at all you must ha' went through whin we was at the War!"

He looked compa.s.sionately at her as he went towards the door.

"I'll be sendin' a boy wid this message," he said. "Or maybe Georgie an' me would be steppin' down there. It's lonesome for the child to be sittin' over his books all day whin I'm busy."

He opened the door, looked into the empty hall and came back.

"I wouldn't be troublin' the master wid them ould stories," he said.

"Didn't I tell my story fair!"

"You did, Patsy. There were some things in it were not in the evidence you gave at the time."

"See that now! T'ould mimiry of me's goin'. Still, there wasn't much differ?"

There was some anxiety in his voice as he asked the question.

"Nothing much. You said nothing long ago of running towards the upper road after Sir Shawn."

"Sure where else would I be runnin' to? It isn't the lower road I'd be takin'--now is it your Ladys.h.i.+p! It wouldn't be likely."

"I suppose it wouldn't," she said, slightly smiling.

"I remember it like as if it was yesterday, the sound of the horse's hoofs climbin' and then the clatter that broke out on the lower road whin Spitfire took the bit between his teeth an' bolted. I'll put the stopper on that villain's lies. I'd like to think the master wouldn't be troubled wid them."

"I'm afraid he'll have to hear them, Patsy. Sir Felix was obliged to issue a summons. It might have been worse if Sir Felix had not been a friend."

"The divil shweep that man, Fury," said Patsy with ferocity. "If he hadn't been a busy-body an' stirrer-up of trouble, he'd have drowned that villain in a bog-hole."

He went off, treading delicately on his toes, which was his way of showing sympathetic respect, and Lady O'Gara returned to the drawing-room.

She was very uneasy. She tried reading, but her thoughts came between her and the page. Writing was no more helpful. She went to the piano.

Music at least, if it did not soothe her, would prevent her straining her ears in listening for sounds outside.

The butler came and took away the tea-things, made up the fire and departed in the noiseless way of the trained servant. Her hands on the keys broke unconsciously into the solemn music of Chopin's Funeral March. She took her hands off the piano with a s.h.i.+ver as she realized her choice and began something else, a mad, merry reel to which the feet could scarcely refrain from dancing. But her heart did not dance.

The music fretted her, keeping her from listening. After a while she gave up the pretence of it and went back to the fireside, to the sofa on which she and Shawn had sat side by side while she comforted him.

She could have thought she felt the weight of his head on her shoulder, that she smelt the peaty smell of his home-spuns. He would be disturbed, poor Shawn, by what she had to tell him. It would be an intolerable ordeal if he should be dragged to the Petty Sessions Court to refute the preposterous charge of being concerned in the death of the man he had loved more than a brother.. Poor Shawn! She listened.

Was that the sound of a horse coming? He would be so disturbed!