The Return of the O'Mahony. Frederic Harold
one of the suspected spies.
“Yes, a good deal west,” he growled, curtly.
The other took no offense.
“Sure,” he went on, pleasantly, “the O’Mahonys and the O’Driscolls, not to mintion the McCarthys, chased each other around that counthry yonder at such a divil of a pace it’s hard tellin’ now which belonged to who.”
“Yes, we did hustle round considerable,” assented The O’Mahony, with frigidity.
“You’re manny years away from Ireland, sir?” pursued the man.
“Why?”
“I notice you say ‘yes’ and ‘no.’ It takes a long absence to tache an Irishman that.”
“I’ve been away nearly all my life,” said The O’Mahony, sharply—“ever since I was a little boy and turning on his heel, he walked to the companionway and disappeared down the stairs.
“Faith, I’m bettin’ it’s the gineral himself!” said the other, looking after him.
To have one’s waking vision greeted, on a soft, warm April morning, by the sight of the Head of Kinsale in the sunlight—with the dark rocks capped in tenderest verdure and washed below by milkwhite breakers; with the smooth water mirroring the blue of the sky upon its bosom, yet revealing as well the marbled greens of its own crystalline depths; with the balmy scents of fresh blossoms meeting and mingling in the languorous air of the Gulf Stream’s bringing—can there be a fairer finish to any voyage over the waters of the whole terrestrial ball!
The O’Mahony had been up on deck before any of his fellow-passengers, scanning the novel details of the scene before him. The vessel barely kept itself in motion through the calm waters. The soft land breeze just availed to turn the black column of smoke rising from the funnel into a sort of carboniferous leaning tower. The pilot had been taken on the previous evening. They waited now for the tug, which could be seen passing Roche’s Point with a prodigious spluttering and splashing of side-paddles. Before its arrival, the Moldavian lay at rest within full view of the wonderful harbor—her deck thronged with passengers dressed now in fine shore apparel and bearing bags and rugs, who bade each other good-bye with an enthusiasm which nobody believed in, and edged along as near as possible where the gang-plank would be.
The O’Mahony walked alone down the plank, rebuffing the porters who sought to relieve him of his heavy bags. He stood alone at the prow of the tug, as it waddled and puffed on its rolling way back again, watching the superb amphitheatre of terraced stone houses, walls, groves and gardens toward which he had voyaged these nine long days, with an anxious, almost gloomy face. The Fenians, still closely observing him, grew nervous with fear that this depression forboded a discovery of contra-brand arms in his baggage.
But no scandal arose. The custom officers searched fruitlessly through the long platforms covered with luggage, with a half perfunctory and wholly whimsical air, as if they knew perfectly well that the revolvers they pretended to be looking for were really in the pockets of the passengers. Then other good-byes, distinctly less enthusiastic, were exchanged, and the last bonds of comradeship which life on the Moldavian had enforced snapped lightly as the gates were opened.
Everybody else seemed to know where to go. The O’Mahony stood for so long a time just outside the gates, with his two big valises at his feet and helpless hesitation written all over his face, that even some of the swarm of beggars surrounding him could not wait any longer, and went away giving him up. To the importunities of the others, who buzzed about him like blue-bottles on a sunny window-pane, he paid no heed; but he finally beckoned to the driver of the solitary remaining outside car, who had been flicking his broker, whip invitingly at him, and who now turned his vehicle abruptly round and drove it, with wild shouts of factitious warning, straight through the group of mendicants, overbearing their loud cries of remonstrance with his superior voice, and cracking his whip like mad. He drew up in front of the bags with the air of a lord mayor’s coachman, and took off his shapeless hat in salutation.
“I want to go to the law office of White & Carmody,” The O’Mahony said, brusquely.
“Right, your honor,” the carman answered, dismounting and lifting the luggage to the well of the car, and then officiously helping his patron to mount to his sidelong seat. He sprang up on the other side, screamed “Now thin, Maggie!” to his poor old horse, flipped his whip derisively at the beggars, and started off at a little dog-trot, clucking loudly as he went.
He drove through all the long ascending streets of Queenstown at this shambling pace, traversing each time the whole length of the town, until finally they gained the terraced pleasure-road at the top. Here the driver drew rein, and waved his whip to indicate the splendid scope of the view below—the gray roof of the houses embowered in trees, the river’s crowded shipping, the castellated shore opposite, the broad, island-dotted harbor beyond.
“L’uk there, now!” he said, proudly. “Have yez annything like that in Ameriky?”
The O’Mahony cast only an indifferent glance upon the prospect,
“Yes—but where’s White & Carmody’s office?” he asked. “That’s what I want.”
“Right, your honor,” was the reply; and with renewed clucking and cracking of the dismantled whip, the journey was resumed. That is to say, they wound their way back again down the hill, through all the streets, until at last the car stopped in front of the Queen’s Hotel.
“Is it thrue what they tell me, sir, that the Prisidint is murdhered?” the jarvey asked, as they came to a halt.
“Yes—but where the devil is that law-office?”
“Sure, your honor, there’s no such names here at all,” the carman replied, pleasantly. “Here’s the hotel where gintleman stop, an’ I’ve shown ye the view from the top, an’ it’s plased I am ye had such a clear day for it—and wud ye like to see Smith-Barry’s place, after lunch?”
The stranger turned round on his seat to the better comment upon this amazing impudence, beginning a question harsh of purpose and profane in form.
Then the spectacle of the ragged driver’s placidly amiable face and roguish eye; of the funny old horse, like nothing so much in all the world as an ancient hair-trunk with legs at the corners, yet which was driven with the noise and ostentation of a six-horse team; of the harness tied up with ropes; the tumble-down car; the broken whip; the beggars—all this, by a happy chance, suddenly struck The O’Mahony in a humorous light. Even as his angered words were on the air he smiled in spite of himself. It was a gaunt, reluctant smile, the merest curling of the lips at their corners; but it sufficed in a twinkling to surround him with beaming faces. He laughed aloud at this, and on the instant driver and beggars were convulsed with merriment.
The O’Mahony jumped off the car.
“I’ll run into the hotel and find out where I want to go,” he said. “Wait here.”
Two minutes passed.
“These lawyers live in Cork,” he explained on his return. “It seems this is only Queenstown. I want you to go to Cork with me.”
“Right, your honor,” said the driver, snapping his whip in preparation.
“But I don’t want to drive; it’s too much like a funeral. We ain’t a-buryin’ anybody.”
“Is it Maggie your honor manes? Sure, there’s no finer quality of a mare in County Cork, if she only gets dacent encouragement.”
“Yes; but we ain’t got