The Project Gutenberg EBook of Love of Brothers, by Katharine Tynan

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Title: Love of Brothers

Author: Katharine Tynan

Release Date: December 7, 2008 [EBook #27445]

Language: English

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LOVE OF BROTHERS ***

Produced by Al Haines

LOVE OF BROTHERS

BY

KATHARINE TYNAN

Author of "The Middle Years," "The Years of the Shadows," "The West
Wind," "Miss Gascoigne," etc., etc.

LONDON

CONSTABLE & COMPANY LTD.

1919

CONTENTS

CHAP.

I O'GARAS OF CASTLE TALBOT II PATSY REMEMBERS III A TEA PARTY IV FROM THE PAST V THE HAVEN VI STELLA VII BRADY'S BULL VIII SIR SHAWN SEES A GHOST IX THE LETTER X MRS. WADE XI THE ONLY PRETTY RING-TIME XII MOTHER-LOVE XIII THE OLD LOVE XIV STELLA GOES VISITING XV THE SHADOW XVI THE DEAD HAND XVII MISS BRENNAN XVIII THE DAUGHTER XIX ANGER CRUEL AS DEATH XX SIR SHAWN HAS A VISITOR XXI STELLA IS SICK XXII A SUDDEN BLOW XXIII THE HOME-COMING XXIV THE SICK WATCHERS XXV IN WHICH TERRY FINDS A DEAD MAN XXVI MOTHER AND DAUGHTER XXVII THE STORY IS TOLD XXVIII THE VIGIL XXIX THE LAKH OF RUPEES

INTRODUCTORY

It was a night of bright moonlight that made for pitchy shadows under wall or tree.

Patsy Kenny was looking for the goat, she having broken her tether. He had been driven forth by his fierce old grandfather with threats of the most awful nature if he should return without the goat.

The tears were not yet dry on Patsy's small face. He had kneaded them in with his knuckles, but the smears caused by the process were not visible in the moonlight, even if there had been any one to see them. It was not only the hardship of being driven out when the meal of hot potatoes was on the table, to search for that "ould divil" of a goat, and his sense of the injustice which had put the blame of the goat's straying on to his narrow shoulders. The old, in Patsy's knowledge of them, were crabbed and unjust. That was something for the young to take in the day's work. It was Patsy's fears of the supernatural that kept him creeping along in the shadow of the hedge, now and again stopping to weep a little over his troubles, or to listen fearfully like a frightened hare before going on again.

Why, close to the road by which he must go to seek the goat there was the tomb in which Captain Hercules O'Hart lay buried. People about Killesky did not take that road if they could help it. The tomb was a terror to all those who must pass the road by night, and to their horses if they were riding or driving. It was well known that no horse would pass by the tomb without endeavouring to avoid it, and if forced or cajoled into accomplishing the passage, would emerge trembling and sweating. Some unimaginative person had suggested that the terror of the horses was due to the thunder of the invisible waterfall where the river tumbled over its weir, just below the Mount on which old Hercules had chosen to be buried. The horses knew better than that. Nothing natural said the people would make a horse behave in such a way. The dumb beast knew what it saw and that was nothing good.

The anguish of Patsy's thoughts caused him suddenly to "bawl" as he would have put it himself.

"Isn't it an awful thing?" he asked, addressing the quiet bog-world under the moon, "to think of a little lad like me havin' to be out in the night facin' all them ghosts and that ould heart-scald of a man burnin' his knees at home be the fire? What'll I do at all if that tormint of a goat is up strayin' on the Mount? It would be like what the divil 'ud do to climb up there, unless it was to be the churchyard below, and all them ould bones stickin' up through the clay.

"There isn't wan out this night but meself," he went on. "It's awful to think of every wan inside their houses an' me wanderin' about be me lone. It isn't wan ghost but twinty I might meet betune this an' the cross-roads, let alone fairies and pookas. Won't I just welt the divil out o' the oul' goat when I ketch her?"

A little whinny close to him made him look round with a fearful hope. He saw neither pooka nor fairy, but the long horns of the animal he was in search of.

He snatched joyfully at her chain, forgetting all his anger. Indeed none knew better than the goat Patsy's gentleness with all living creatures. Her mouth was full of grass. He remembered his grandfather's speech as he tethered the little goat on the bare hillside above the house.

"My poor girl," he had said, "you've got little enough to ate, but then you've a beautiful view."

"Sure she strayed," said Patsy in extenuation, "because she was hungry, the creature."

So he had not had to leave the brightly lit bog-road for that black tunnel of trees just beyond which led to old Hercules' tomb, and the well where the woman fell in and the fields where old Michael Halloran, who had been steward and general overseer to the O'Harts, was reputed to be seen night after night—hedging and fencing the lands and he years dead.

"You was a good little goat," said Patsy in his great relief. "Come home now and I'll milk you: and maybe that cross ould man would let me have a sup o' tay for my supper."

He had pulled the goat down the bank into the dry ditch. It was a good thing he had stopped to "bawl," else maybe he'd have missed the goat who had been having her fill of Mrs. McEnroe's after-grass. Still he wondered now at his temerity since the bawlin' might have brought them upon him disturbin' their sleep that way.

He suddenly caught the sound of horses' feet coming along the bog-road towards him. He stopped and listened, holding firmly on to the goat. The bog-road was light as day. Two people were walking their horses side by side, a dog at their heels. "It'll be Mr. Terence Comerford, an' Sir Shawn O'Gara, comin' home together," Patsy said to himself. "What at all would be keepin' them out till this hour of the night, unless it was to be talkin' to Bridyeen Sweeney? Quare ways young gentlemen has that they'd be talkin' to a poor girl an' maybe turnin' her head, let alone settin' the neighbours to talkin' about her. God help her."

In this musing, be it said, Patsy was but repeating the talk of his elders, although he was naturally what is called an old-fashioned child.

He crouched low in the ditch while the horses came on at a walking pace. The riders were talking, one in a low voice, so low that Patsy could not make out what he said. This one was slender and young. The other, young also, but big and burly, was riding a horse which apparently did not like the walking pace. She—it was a mare—curveted and caracoled in the road, which was one reason why Patsy could not hear what was being said. The boy peered out, with fear in his heart. The knowledge of horses was born in him. His father had been stud-groom to Mr.