Part 46 (2/2)
”I have had no success, Mike. Have you fared better?”
”I have not found her yet, your honour, but I have great hopes of doing so. Larry Callaghan died four years ago, and the woman of the house she occupied said that Mrs. Rooney moved, with his widow and children, to some other part of the town. She knew little about them, seeing that she only went into the house after they had left; but her husband worked in the same yard as Larry did, and she thought that he would be able to find out, from some of the old hands, where the widow Callaghan had moved to. She said she would ask her husband when he came home to his dinner, and maybe he would be able to give her some news.
”And so, your honour has learned nothing about yourself?”
”Nothing, Mike, except that I am certainly not the son of Murroch Kennedy, who was a cousin of the gentleman I called on. I was a.s.sured that he was a single man, when he went to France. However, he gave me a list of the princ.i.p.al branches of the Kennedy family, but there is no hurry about starting to see them, and I will certainly wait here till you find your sister, which should not be many days, for some of Callaghan's fellow workmen are almost sure to know where his widow lives.”
Mike went out, at seven o'clock that evening, and returned half an hour later.
”I have got the address, your honour. She and the widow Callaghan have got a little place outside the town, and take in was.h.i.+ng there, and are going on nicely.”
”I am pleased to hear it, I am sure, Mike. I have but small hope that she will be able to give any useful information, but for your sake, I am glad that you have found a sister whom you have not seen for so many years. I suppose you will go up there, at once.”
”I will that. They will have done their work, and we shall have a comfortable talk, whereas she would not thank me if I were to drop in when she was busy at the washtub.”
”Well, you might ask her to come down, tomorrow morning, to see me. Of course, she shall not be a loser by giving up her morning's work.”
”Whisht, your honour! When she knows how much you have done for me, and how you have treated me, she would willingly lose a week's work to give you pleasure. Well, I will be off at once.”
It was eleven o'clock before Mike returned.
”We have had a great talk, your honour, me and Norah. She would not believe at first that I was her brother, and in truth, I found it hard to credit that she was Norah, who was a purty colleen when I saw her last; but when we had convinced each other that we were both who we said we were, matters went on pleasantly. I told her some of my adventures with you, and that, by the same token, I had a hundred gold pieces that the Baron of Pointdexter had given me, sewn up in a belt round my waist, where it has been ever since I got it, except when we went into battle, or on that expedition to Scotland, when, as your honour knows, I always put it in with the agent in your name, seeing that I would rather, if I was killed, know that your honour would have it, instead of its being taken by some villain searching the dead. I told her that, if she and Mrs.
Callaghan wanted to take a bigger place, I would share it with her, and that quite settled the matter, in her mind, that I was her brother. She said, as I knew she would, that she would come and talk to you for a week, if you wanted it; and she will be here tomorrow, at nine o'clock.”
”That is very satisfactory. I am afraid nothing will come of our talk; but still, one may get a clue to other Kennedys who were present at the siege of Limerick.”
Punctually at nine o'clock, Mike ushered his sister into Desmond's sitting room.
”I am glad to see you, Mrs. Rooney. Your brother has been with me for three years, and has rendered me very many services, and I regard him as a friend, rather than as a servant. I am glad that he has found his sister, from whom he had been so long parted.”
”Mike has been telling me how good you have been to him, and that he would go through fire and water for you, and that you have had some wonderful adventures together. He said you wanted to speak to me about the siege of Limerick. If there is anything that I can tell you, your honour, I will do so gladly.”
”What I want to know is, what Kennedys were at the siege?”
”There was Murroch Kennedy, and Phelim, who was always called 'Red Kennedy', on account of his colour; and James and Fergus. I knew all those, because they were friends of my master's. It may be that there were many others, but they were unbeknown to me.”
”Am I like any of them?”
The woman looked at him searchingly.
”You are not, sir; but you are mighty like my master, barring, of course, that he was a man ten years older than yourself. But the more I look at you, the more I see the likeness.”
”I did not know that you had a master, Mrs. Rooney. I thought that you were there with your husband.”
”So I was, your honour; but when he was kilt I was left alone, saving for a child that had been born a fortnight before; and what with the bad smells of the place, and the sound of the cannon, and the fact of my grief, he pined away all at once, and died a week after me husband. It is well-nigh starving we all were. Even the fighting men had scarce enough food to keep their strength up, and a lone woman would have died from hunger. So I was mighty glad, when a friend of mine told me that there was an officer's lady who had had a baby, and, being but weak and ailing, wanted a foster mother for it; so I went at once and got the place, and was with her for a month.
”Her husband was killed three weeks after I went there, and the blow was too much for her, and she died a week later. A fortnight after that came the peace, and as everything was in confusion, what wid our soldiers all going away to France, and the persecutions and slaughterings, I took the child with me and went down to my cousin Larry's here. Av course, I could not part with it, and I could not make my way alone across the country, so I came down here with the troops. I was not strong myself, and it was a year later before I was able to take it to its friends.”
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