The Wild Geese
by Stanley John Weyman · English · Gutenberg #29100 · 558,947 chars · public domain (US)
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Title: The Wild Geese
Author: Stanley John Weyman
Release date: June 11, 2009 [eBook #29100]
Most recently updated: January 5, 2021
Language: English
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE WILD GEESE ***
Produced by Colin Bell, Brownfox and the Online Distributed
Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net
THE WORKS OF STANLEY J. WEYMAN
VOL. XX
THE WILD GEESE
Thin Paper Edition of
Stanley J. Weyman's Novels
(Author's Complete Edition)
In 20 Volumes
Arranged Chronologically
With an Introduction in the First
Volume by Mr. Weyman
In clear type and handy size
To range with Henry Seton Merriman's Novels
Fcap. 8vo, Gilt Top, in Cloth and Leather
Vol. 1. The House of the Wolf.
" 2. The New Rector.
" 3. The Story of Francis Cludde.
" 4. A Gentleman of France.
" 5. The Man in Black.
" 6. Under the Red Robe.
" 7. My Lady Rotha.
" 8. Memoirs of a Minister of France.
" 9. The Red Cockade.
" 10. Shrewsbury.
Vol. 11. The Castle Inn.
" 12. Sophia.
" 13. Count Hannibal.
" 14. In Kings' Byways.
" 15. The Long Night.
" 16. The Abbess of Vlaye.
" 17. Starvecrow Farm.
" 18. Chippinge.
" 19. Laid up in Lavender.
" 20. The Wild Geese.
LONDON:
SMITH, ELDER & CO. and
LONGMANS GREEN & CO.
THE WILD GEESE
BY
STANLEY J. WEYMAN
LONDON:
SMITH, ELDER & CO.
(_For the United Kingdom_)
IN CONJUNCTION WITH CASSELL AND CO., LTD.; HODDER AND
STOUGHTON; METHUEN AND CO., WARD, LOCK AND CO., AND
LONGMANS GREEN & CO.
(_For the British Possessions and Foreign Countries_)
1911
1908 July 1st Edition
" Aug. 2nd Impression
" Oct. 3rd Impression
1910 July 4th Impression
" Nov. 5th Impression
1911 Mar. 6d. Edition
" Oct. 6th (Author's Complete Edition)
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. ON BOARD THE "CORMORANT" SLOOP 1
II. MORRISTOWN 15
III. A SCION OF KINGS 27
IV. "STOP THIEF!" 42
V. THE MESS-ROOM AT TRALEE 57
VI. THE MAÎTRE D'ARMES 72
VII. BARGAINING 90
VIII. AN AFTER-DINNER GAME 103
IX. EARLY RISERS 119
X. A COUNCIL OF WAR 136
XI. A MESSAGE FOR THE YOUNG MASTER 154
XII. THE SEA MIST 171
XIII. A SLIP 187
XIV. THE COLONEL'S TERMS 202
XV. FEMINA FURENS 218
XVI. THE MARPLOT 235
XVII. THE LIMIT 251
XVIII. A COUNTERPLOT 268
XIX. PEINE FORTE ET DURE 285
XX. AN UNWELCOME VISITOR 301
XXI. THE KEY 320
XXII. THE SCENE IN THE PASSAGE 336
XXIII. BEHIND THE YEWS 350
XXIV. THE PITCHER AT THE WELL 368
XXV. PEACE 378
CHAPTER I
ON BOARD THE "CORMORANT" SLOOP
Midway in that period of Ireland's history during which, according to
historians, the distressful country had none--to be more precise, on a
spring morning early in the eighteenth century, and the reign of George
the First, a sloop of about seventy tons burthen was beating up Dingle
Bay, in the teeth of a stiff easterly breeze. The sun was two hours
high, and the grey expanse of the bay was flecked with white horses
hurrying seaward in haste to leap upon the Blasquets, or to disport
themselves in the field of ocean. From the heaving deck of the vessel
the mountains that shall not be removed were visible--on the northerly
tack Brandon, on the southerly Carntual; the former sunlit, with
patches of moss gleaming like emeralds on its breast, the latter dark
and melancholy, clothed in the midst of tradition and fancy that in
those days garbed so much of Ireland's bog and hill.
The sloop had missed the tide, and, close hauled to the wind, rode deep
in the ebb, making little way with each tack. The breeze hummed through
the rigging. The man at the helm humped a shoulder to the sting of the
spray, and the rest of the crew, seven or eight in number--tarry,
pigtailed, outlandish sailor men--crouched under the windward rail. The
skipper sat with a companion on a coil of rope on the dry side of the
skylight, and at the moment at which our story opens was oblivious
alike of the weather and his difficulties. He sat with his eyes fixed
on his neighbour, and in those eyes a wondering, fatuous admiration. So
might a mortal look if some strange hap brought him face to face with a
centaur.
"Never?" he murmured respectfully.
"Never," his companion answered.
"My faith!" Captain Augustin rejoined. He was a cross between a
Frenchman and an Irishman. For twenty years he had carried wine to
Ireland, and returned laden with wool to Bordeaux or Cadiz. He knew
every inlet between Achill Sound and the Head of Kinsale, and was so
far a Jacobite that he scorned to pay duty to King George. "Never? My
faith!" he repeated, staring, if possible, harder than ever.
"No," said the Colonel. "Under no provocation, thank God!"
"But it's _drôle_," Captain Augustin rejoined. "It would bother me
sorely to know what you do."
"What we all should do," his passenger answered gently. "Our duty,
Captain Augustin. Our duty! Doing which we are men indeed. Doing which,
we have no more to do, no more to fear, no more to question." And
Colonel John Sullivan threw out both his hands, as if to illustrate the
freedom from care which followed. "See! it is done!"
"But west of Shannon, where there is no law?" Augustin answered. "Eh,
Colonel? And in Kerry, where we'll be, the saints helping, before
noon--which is all one with Connaught? No, in Kerry, what with
Sullivans, and Mahonies, and O'Beirnes, that wear coats only for a
gentleman to tread upon, and would sooner shoot a friend before
breakfast than spend the day idle, _par ma foi_, I'm not seeing what
you'll be doing there, Colonel."
"A man may protect himself from violence," the Colonel answered
soberly, "and yet do his duty. What he may not do--is this. He may not
go out to kill another in cold blood, for a point of honour, or for
revenge, or to sustain what he has already done amiss! No, nor for
vanity, or for the hundred trifles for which men risk their lives and
seek the lives of others. I hope I make myself clear, Captain
Augustin?" he added courteously.
He asked because the skipper's face of wonderment was not to be
misread. And the skipper answered, "Quite clear!" meaning the reverse.
Clear, indeed? Yonder were the hills and bogs of Kerry--lawless,
impenetrable, abominable--a realm of Tories and rapparees. On the sloop
itself was scarce a man whose hands were free from blood. He, Augustin,
mild-mannered as any smuggler on the coast, had spent his life between
fleeing and fighting, with his four carronades ever crammed to the
muzzle, and his cargo ready to be jettisoned at sight of a cruiser. And
this man talked as if he were in church! Talked--talked--the skipper
fairly gasped. "Oh, quite clear!" he mumbled. "Quite clear!" he
replied. "But it's an odd creed."
"Not a creed, my friend," Colonel Sullivan replied precisely. "But the
result of a creed. The result, thank God, of more creeds than one."
Captain Augustin cast a wild eye at the straining, shrieking rigging;
the sloop was lurching heavily. But whether he would or no, his eye
fluttered back and rested, fascinated, on the Colonel's face. Indeed,
from the hour, ten days earlier, which had seen him mount the side in
the Bordeaux river, Colonel John Sullivan had been a subject of growing
astonishment to the skipper. Captain Augustin knew his world tolerably.
In his time he had conveyed many a strange passenger from strand to
strand: haggard men who ground their shoulders against the bulkhead,
and saw things in corners; dark, down-looking adventurers, whose hands
flew to hilts if a gentleman addressed them suddenly; gay young sparks
bound on foreign service and with the point of honour on their lips, or
their like, returning old and broken to beg or cut throats on the
highway--these, and men who carried their lives in their hands, and men
who went, cloaked, on mysterious missions, and men who wept as the
Irish coast faded behind them, and men, more numerous, who wept when
they saw it again--he knew them all! All, he had carried them, talked
with them, learned their secrets, and more often their hopes.
But such a man as this he had never carried. A man who indeed wore
outlandish fur-trimmed clothes, and had seen, if his servant's sparse
words went for aught, outlandish service; but who neither swore, nor
drank above measure, nor swaggered, nor threatened. Who would not dice,
nor game--save for trifles. Who, on the contrary, talked of duty, and
had a peaceful word for all, and openly condemned the duello, and was
mild as milk and as gentle as an owl. Such a one seemed, indeed, the
fabled "phaynix," or a bat with six wings, or any other prodigy which
the fancy, Irish or foreign, could conceive.
Then, to double the marvel, the Colonel had a servant, a close-tongued
fellow, William Bale by name, and reputed an Englishman, who, if he was
not like his master, was as unlike other folk. He was as quiet-spoken
as the Colonel, and as precise, and as peaceable. He had even been
heard to talk of his duty. But while the Colonel was tall and spare,
with a gentle eye and a long, kindly face, and was altogether of a
pensive cast, Bale was short and stout, of a black pallor, and very
forbidding. His mouth, when he opened it--which was seldom--dropped
honey. But his brow scowled, his lip sneered, and his silence invited
no confidence.
Such being the skipper's passenger, and such his man, the wonder was
that Captain Augustin's astonishment had not long ago melted into
contempt. But it had not. For one thing, a seaman had been hurt, and
the Colonel had exhibited a skill in the treatment of wounds which
would not have disgraced an experienced chirurgeon. Then in the Bay the
sloop had met with half a gale, and the passenger, in circumstances
which the skipper knew to be more trying to landsmen than to himself,
had maintained a serenity beyond applause. He had even, clinging to the
same ring-bolt with the skipper, while the south-wester tore overhead
and the gallant little vessel lay over wellnigh to her beam-ends,
praised with a queer condescension the conduct of the crew.
"This is the finest thing in the world," he had shouted, amid the roar
of things, "to see men doing their duty! I would not have missed this
for a hundred crowns!"
"I'd give as much to be safe in Cherbourg," had been the skipper's grim
reply as he watched his mast.
But Augustin had not forgotten the Colonel's coolness. A landsman, for
whom the trough of the wave had no terrors, and the leeward breakers,
falling mountain high on Ushant, no message, was not a man to be
despised.
Indeed, from that time the skipper had begun to find a charm in the
Colonel's gentleness and courtesy. He had fought against the feeling,
but it had grown upon him. Something that was almost affection began to
mingle with and augment his wonder. Hence the patience with which, with
Kerry on the beam, he listened while the Colonel sang his siren song.
"He will be one of the people called Quakers," the skipper thought,
after a while. "I've heard of them, but never seen one. Yes, he will be
a Quaker."
Unfortunately, as he arrived at this conclusion a cry from the
steersman roused him. He sprang to his feet. Alas! the sloop had run
too far on the northerly tack, and simultaneously the wind had shifted
a point to the southward. In the open water this had advantaged her;
but she had been allowed to run into a bight of the north shore and a
line of foam cut her off to the eastward, leaving small room to tack.
She might still clear the westerly rocks and run out to sea, but the
skipper saw--with an oath--that this was doubtful, and with a seaman's
quickness he made up his mind.
"Keep her on!--keep her on!" he roared, "you son of a _maudite mère_!
Child of the accursed! We must run into Skull haven! And if the men of
Skull take so much as an iron bolt from us, and I misdoubt them, I'll
keel-haul you, son of the _Diable_! I'll not leave an inch of skin upon
you!"
The man, cowering over the wheel, obeyed, and the little vessel ran up
the narrowing water--in which she had become involved--on an even keel.
The crew were already on their feet, they had loosened the sheet, and
squared the boom; they stood by to lower the yard. All--the skipper
with a grim face--stood looking forward, as the inlet narrowed, the
green banks closed in, the rocks that fringed them approached. Silently
and gracefully the sloop glided on, more smoothly with every moment,
until a turn in the passage opened a small land-locked haven. At the
head of the haven, barely a hundred yards above high-water mark, stood
a ruined tower--the Tower of Skull--and below this a long house of
stone with a thatched roof.
It was clear that the sloop's movements had been watched from the
shore, for although the melancholy waste of moor and mountain disclosed
no other habitation, a score of half-naked barefoot figures were
gathered on the jetty; while others could be seen hurrying down the
hillside. These cried to one another in an unknown tongue, and with
shrill eldritch voices, which vied with the screams of the gulls
swinging overhead.
"Stand by to let go the kedge," Augustin cried, eyeing them gloomily.
"We are too far in now! Let go!--let go!"
But the order and the ensuing action at once redoubled the clamour on
shore. A dozen of the foremost natives flung themselves into crazy
boats, that seemed as if they could not float long enough to reach the
vessel. But the men handled them with consummate skill and with equal
daring. In a twinkling they were within hail, and a man, wearing a long
frieze coat, a fisherman's red cap, and little besides, stood up in the
bow of the nearest.
"You will be coming to the jetty, Captain?" he cried in imperfect
English.
The skipper scowled at him, but did not answer.
"You will come to the jetty, Captain," the man repeated in his high,
sing-song voice. "Sure, and you've come convenient, for there's no one
here barring yourselves."
"And you're wanting brandy!" Augustin muttered bitterly under his
breath. He glanced at his men, as if he meditated resistance.
But, "Kerry law! Kerry law!" the man cried. "You know it well, Captain!
It's not I'll be answerable if you don't come to the jetty."
The skipper, who had fallen ill at Skull once before, and got away with
some loss, hoping that he might never see the place again, knew that he
was in the men's power. True, a single discharge of his carronades
would blow the boats to pieces; but he could not in a moment warp his
ship out through the narrow passage. And if he could, he knew that the
act would be bloodily avenged if he ever landed again in that part of
Ireland. He swore under his breath, and the steersman who had wrought
the harm by holding on too long wilted under his eye. The crew looked
other ways.
At length he yielded, and sulkily gave the order, the windlass was
manned, and the kedge drawn up. Fenders were lowered, and the sloop
slid gently to the jetty side.
In a twinkling a score of natives swarmed aboard. The man in the frieze
coat followed more leisurely, and with such dignity as became the owner
of a stone-walled house. He sauntered up to the skipper, a leer in his
eye. "You will have lost something the last time you were here,
Captain?" he said. "It is not I that will be responsible this time
unless the stuff is landed."
Augustin laughed scornfully. "The cargo is for Crosby of Castlemaine,"
he said. And he added various things which he hoped would happen to
himself if he landed so much as a single tub.
"It's little we know of Crosby here," the other replied; and he spat on
the deck. "And less we'll be caring, my dear. I say it shall be landed.
Here, you, Darby Sullivan, off with the hatch!"
Augustin stepped forward impulsively, as if he had a mind to throw the
gentleman in the frieze coat into the sea. But he had not armed himself
before he came on deck, the men of Skull outnumbered his crew two to
one, and, savage and half-naked as they were, were furnished to a man
with long sharp skenes and the skill to use them. If resistance had
been possible at any time, he had let the moment pass. The nearest
Justice lived twelve Irish miles away, and had he been on the spot he
would, since he was of necessity a Protestant, have been as
helpless--unless he brought the garrison of Tralee at his back--as a
churchwarden in a Synod of Cardinals. The skipper hesitated, and while
he hesitated the hatches were off, and the Sullivans swarmed down like
monkeys. Before the sloop could be made fast, the smaller kegs were
being tossed up, and passed over the side, a line was formed on land,
and the cargo, which had last seen the sun on the banks of the Garonne,
was swiftly vanishing in the maw of the stone house on the shore.
The skipper's rage was great, but he could only swear, and O'Sullivan
Og, the man in the frieze coat, who bore him an old grudge, grinned in
mockery. "For better custody, Captain!" he said. "For better custody!
Under my roof, _bien_! And when you will to go again there will be the
dues to be paid, the little dues over which we quarrelled last time!
And all will be rendered to a stave!"
"You villain!" the Captain muttered under his breath. "I understand!"
Turning--for the sight was more than he could bear--he found his
passenger at his elbow.
The Colonel, if his face went for anything, liked the proceedings
almost as little as the skipper. His lips were tightly closed, and he
frowned.
"Ay," Augustin cried bitterly--for the first instinct of the man who is
hurt is to hurt another--"now you see what it is you've come back to!
It's rob, or be robbed, this side of Tralee, and as far as the devil
could kick you beyond it! I wish you well out of it! But I suppose it
would take more than this to make you draw that long hanger of yours?"
The Colonel cast a troubled eye on him. "Beyond doubt," he said, "it is
the duty of a man to assist in defending the house of his host. And in
a sense and measure, the goods of his host"--with an uneasy look at the
fast-vanishing cargo, which was leaping from hand to hand so swiftly
that the progress of a tub from the hold to the house was as the flight
of a swallow--"are the house of his host. I do not deny that," he
continued precisely, "but----"
"But in this instance," the sea-captain struck in with a sneer,
contempt for the first time mastering wonder, "in this instance?"
"In this instance," the Colonel repeated with an unmistakable blush, "I
am not very free to act. The truth is, Captain Augustin, these folk are
of my kin. I was born not many miles from here"--his eye measured the
lonely landscape as if he compared it with more recent scenes--"and,
wrong or right, blood is thicker than wine. So that frankly, I am not
clear that for the sake of your Bordeaux, I'm tied to shed blood that
might be my forbears'!"
"Or your grandmother's," Augustin cried, with an open sneer.
"Or my grandmother's. Very true. But if a word to them in season----"
"Oh, d--n your words," the skipper retorted disdainfully.
He would have said more, but at that moment it became clear that
something was happening on shore. On the green brow beside the tower a
girl mounted on horseback had appeared; at a cry from her the men had
stopped work. The next moment her horse came cantering down the slope,
and with uplifted whip she rode in among the men. The whip fell twice,
and down went all the tubs within reach. Her voice, speaking, now Erse,
now Kerry English, could be heard upbraiding the nearest, commanding,
threatening, denouncing. Then on the brow behind her appeared in turn a
man--a man who looked gigantic against the sky, and who sat a horse to
match. He descended more slowly, and reached the girl's side as
O'Sullivan Og, in his frieze coat, came to the front in support of his
men.
For a full minute the girl vented her anger on Og, while he stood sulky
but patient, waiting for an opening to defend himself. When he obtained
this, he seemed to the two on the deck of the sloop to appeal to the
big man, who said a word or two, but was cut short by the girl. Her
voice, passionate and indignant, reached the deck; but not her words.
"That should be Flavia McMurrough!" the Colonel murmured thoughtfully,
"And Uncle Ulick. He's little changed, whoever's changed! She has a
will, it seems, and good impulses!"
The big man had begun by frowning on O'Sullivan Og. But presently he
smiled at something the latter said, then he laughed; at last he made a
joke himself. At that the girl turned on him; but he argued with her. A
man held up a tub for inspection, and though she struck it pettishly
with her whip, it was plain that she was shaken. O'Sullivan Og pointed
to the sloop, pointed to his house, grinned. The listeners on the deck
caught the word "Dues!" and the peal of laughter that followed.
Captain Augustin understood naught of what was going forward. But the
man beside him, who did, touched his sleeve. "It were well to speak to
her," he said.
"Who is she?" the skipper asked impatiently. "What has she to do with
it?"
"They are her people," the Colonel answered simply--"or they should be.
If she says yea, it is yea; and if she says nay, it is nay. Or, so it
should be--as far as a league beyond Morristown."
Augustin waited for no more. He was still in a fog, but he saw a ray of
hope; this was the Chatelaine, it seemed. He bundled over the side.
Alas! he ventured too late. As his feet touched the slippery stones of
the jetty, the girl wheeled her horse about with an angry exclamation,
shook her whip at O'Sullivan Og--who winked the moment her back was
turned--and cantered away up the hill. On the instant the men picked up
the kegs they had dropped, a shrill cry passed down the line, and the
work was resumed.
But the big man remained; and the skipper, with the Colonel at his
elbow, made for him through the half-naked kernes. He saw them coming,
however, guessed their errand, and, with the plain intention of
avoiding them, he turned his horse's head.
But the skipper, springing forward, was in time to seize his stirrup.
"Sir," he cried, "this is robbery! _Nom de Dieu_, it is thievery!"
The big man looked down at him with temper. "Oh, by G--d, you must pay
your dues!" he said. "Oh yes, you must pay your dues!"
"But this is robbery."
"Sure it's not that you must be saying!"
The Colonel put the skipper on one side. "By your leave," he cried,
"one word! You don't know, sir, who I am, but----"
"I know you must pay your dues!" Uncle Ulick answered, parrot-like. "Oh
yes, you must pay your dues!" He was clearly ashamed of his _rôle_,
however; for as he spoke he shook off the Colonel's hold with a pettish
gesture, struck his horse with his stick, and cantered away over the
hill. In a twinkling he was lost to sight.
"_Vaurien!_" cried Captain Augustin, shaking his fist after him. But he
might as well have sworn at the moon.
CHAPTER II
MORRISTOWN
It was not until the Colonel had passed over the shoulder above the
stone-walled house that he escaped from the jabber of the crowd and the
jeers of the younger members of this savage tribe, who, noting
something abnormal in the fashion of the stranger's clothes, followed
him a space. On descending the farther slope, however, he found himself
alone in the silence of the waste. Choosing without hesitation one of
two tracks, ill-trodden, but such as in that district and at that
period passed for roads, he took his way along it at a good pace.
A wide brown basin, bog for the most part, but rising here and there
into low mounds of sward or clumps of thorn-trees, stretched away to
the foot of the hills. He gazed upon it with eyes which had been
strained for years across the vast unbroken plains of Central Europe,
the sandy steppes of Poland, the frozen marshes of Lithuania; and
beside the majesty of their boundless distances this view shrank to
littleness. But it spoke to more than his eyes; it spoke to the heart,
to feelings and memories which time had not blunted, nor could blunt.
The tower on the shoulder behind him had been raised by his wild
forefathers in the days when the Spaniard lay at Smerwick; and, mean
and crumbling, still gave rise to emotions which the stern battlements
of Stralsund or of Rostock had failed to evoke. Soil and sky, the lark
which sang overhead, the dark peat-water which rose under foot, the
scent of the moist air, the cry of the curlew, all spoke of home--the
home which he had left in the gaiety of youth, to return to it a grave
man, older than his years, and with grey hairs flecking the black. No
wonder that he stood more than once, and, absorbed in thought, gazed on
this or that, on crag and moss, on the things which time and experience
had so strangely diminished.
The track, after zig-zagging across a segment of the basin that has
been described, entered a narrow valley, drained by a tolerable stream.
After ascending this for a couple of miles, it disclosed a view of a
wider vale, enclosed by gentle hills of no great height. In the lap of
this nestled a lake, on the upper end of which some beauty was
conferred by a few masses of rock partly clothed by birch-trees,
through which a stream fell sharply from the upland. Not far from these
rocks a long, low house stood on the shore.
The stranger paused to take in the prospect; nor was it until after the
lapse of some minutes, spent in the deepest reverie, that he pursued
his way along the left-hand bank of the lake. By-and-by he was able to
discern, amid the masses of rock at the head of the lake, a grey tower,
the twin of that Tower of Skull which he had left behind him; and a
hundred paces farther he came upon a near view of the house.
"Two-and-twenty years!" he murmured. "There is not even a dog to bid me
welcome!"
The house was of two stories, with a thatched roof. Its back was to the
slopes that rose by marshy terraces to the hills. Its face was turned
to the lake, and between it and the water lay a walled forecourt, the
angle on each side of the entrance protected by a tower of an older
date than the house. The entrance was somewhat pretentious, and
might--for each of the pillars supported a heraldic beast--have seemed
to an English eye out of character with the thatched roof. But, as if
to correct this, one of the beasts was headless, and one of the gates
had fallen from its hinges. In like manner the dignity of a tolerably
spacious garden, laid out beside the house, was marred by the proximity
of the fold-yard, which had also trespassed, in the shape of sundry
offices and hovels, on the forecourt.
On the lower side of the road opposite the gates half a dozen stone
steps, that like the heraldic pillars might have graced a more stately
mansion, led down to the water. They formed a resting-place for as many
beggars, engaged in drawing at empty pipes; while twice as many old
women sat against the wall of the forecourt and, with their drugget
cloaks about them, kept up a continual whine. Among these, turning
herself now to one, now to another, moved the girl whom the Colonel had
seen at the landing-place. She held her riding-skirt uplifted in one
hand, her whip in the other, and she was bare-headed. At her elbow,
whistling idly, and tapping his boots with a switch, lounged the big
man of the morning.
As the Colonel approached, taking these things in with his eyes, and
making, Heaven knows what comparisons in his mind, the man and the maid
turned and looked at him. The two exchanged some sentences, and the man
came forward to meet him.
"Sir," he said, not without a touch of rough courtesy, "if it is for
hospitality you have come, you will be welcome at Morristown. But if it
is to start a cry about this morning's business, you've travelled on
your ten toes to no purpose, and so I warn you."
The Colonel looked at him. "Cousin Ulick," he said, "I take your
welcome as it is meant, and I thank you for it."
The big man's mouth opened wide. "By the Holy Cross!" he said, "if I'm
not thinking it is John Sullivan!"
"It is," the Colonel answered, smiling. And he held out his hand.
Uncle Ulick grasped it impulsively. "And it's I'm the one that's glad
to see you," he said. "By Heaven, I am! Though I didn't expect you, no
more than I expected myself! And, faith," he continued, grinning as if
he began to see something humorous as well as surprising in the
arrival, "I'm not sure that you will be as welcome to all, John
Sullivan, as you are to me."
"You were always easy, Ulick," the other answered with a smile, "when
you were big and I was little."
"Ay? Well, in size we're much as we were. But--Flavia!"
The girl, scenting something strange, was already at his elbow. "What
is it?" she asked, her breath coming a little quickly. "Who is it?"
fixing her eyes on the new-comer's face.
Uncle Ulick chuckled. "It's your guardian, my jewel," he said. "No
less! And what he'll say to what's going on I'll not be foretelling!"
"My guardian?" she repeated, the blood rising abruptly to her cheek.
"Just that," Ulick Sullivan answered humorously. "Just that, my
darling. It's John Sullivan come back from Sweden. And, as I've told
him, I'm not sure that all at Morristown will be as glad to see him as
I am." At which Uncle Ulick went off into a peal of Titanic laughter.
But that which amused him did not appear to amuse his niece, She stood
staring at Colonel Sullivan as if she were far more surprised than
pleased. At length, and with a childish dignity, she held out her hand.
"If you are Colonel John Sullivan," she said, in a thin voice, "you are
welcome at Morristown."
He might have laughed at the distance of her tone. But he merely bowed,
and with the utmost gravity. "I thank you," he answered. And then,
addressing Ulick Sullivan, "I need not say that I had your
communication," he continued, "with the news of Sir Michael's death and
of the dispositions made by his will. I could not come at once, but
when I could I did, and I am here. Having said so much," he went on,
turning to the girl and looking at her with serious kindness, "may I
add that I think it will be well if we leave matters of business on one
side until we know one another?"
"Well, faith, I think we'd better," Ulick Sullivan replied. And he
chuckled. "I do think so, bedad!"
The girl said nothing, and when he had chuckled his fill restraint fell
upon the three. They turned from one another and looked across the
lake, which the wind, brisk at sea, barely ruffled. Colonel Sullivan
remarked that they had a little more land under tillage than he
remembered, and Ulick Sullivan assented. And then again there was
silence, until the girl struck her habit with her whip and cried
flippantly, "Well, to dinner, if we are to have dinner! To dinner!" She
turned, and led the way to the gate of the forecourt.
The man who followed was clever enough to read defiance in the pose of
her head and resentment in her shoulders. When a beggar-woman, more
importunate than the rest, caught hold of her skirt, and Flavia flicked
her with the whip as she would have flicked a dog, he understood. And
when the dogs in the court fell upon her in a troop and were kicked to
right and left, and when a babe, that, clothed in a single shift, was
crawling on hands and knees upon the threshold, was removed in the same
manner--but more gently--still he understood.
There were other dogs in the stone-paved hall; a hen too, finding its
food on the floor and strutting here and there as if it had never known
another home. On the left of the door, an oak table stood laid for the
mid-day meal; on the right, before a carved stone chimney-piece, under
which a huge log smouldered on the andirons, two or three men were
seated. These rose on the entrance of the young mistress-they were
dependants of the better class, for whom open house was kept at
Morristown when business brought them thither. And, so far, all was
well. Yet it may be that on the instant eyes which had been blind to
defects were opened by the presence of this stranger from the outer
world. For Flavia's voice was hard as she asked old Darby, the butler,
if The McMurrough was in the house.
"Faith, I believe not," said he. "His honour, nor the other quality,
have not returned from the fishing."
"Well, let him know when he comes in," she rejoined, "that Colonel John
Sullivan has arrived from Sweden, and," she added with a faint sneer,
"it were well if you put on your uniform coat, Darby."
The old butler did not hear the last words. He was looking at the
new-comer. "Glory be to God, Colonel," he said; "it's in a field of
peas I'd have known you! True for you, you're as like the father that
bred you as the two covers of a book! It's he was the grand gentleman!
I was beyond the Mahoney's great gravestone when he shot Squire Crosby
in the old church-yard of Tralee for an appetite to his breakfast! More
by token, he went out with the garrison officer after his second bottle
that same day that ever was--and the creature shot him in the knee--bad
luck to him for a foreigner and a Protestant--and he limped to his
dying day!"
The girl laughed unkindly. "You're opening your mouth and putting your
foot in it, Darby," she said. "If the Colonel is not a foreigner----"
"And sure he couldn't be that, and his own father's son!" cried the
quick-witted Irishman. "And if, bad luck, he's a Protestant, I'll never
believe he's one of them through-and-through d----d black Protestants
that you and I mean! Glory be to God, it's not in the Sullivans to be
one of them!"
The Colonel laughed as he shook the old servant's hand; and Uncle Ulick
joined in the laugh. "You're a clever rogue, Darby," he said. "Your
neck'll never be in a rope, but your fingers will untie the knot! And
now, where'll you put him?"
Flavia tapped her foot on the floor; foreseeing, perhaps, what was
coming.
"Put his honour?" Darby repeated, rubbing his bald head. "Ay, sure,
where'll we put him? May it be long before the heavens is his bed!
There's the old master's room, a grand chamber fit for a lord, but
there's a small matter of the floor that is sunk and lets in the
rats--bad cess to the dogs for an idle, useless pack. And there's the
Count's room would do finely, but the vagabonds have never mended the
thatch that was burned the last drinking, and though 'twas no more than
the width of a flea's leap, the devil of a big bowl of water has it let
in! The young master's friends are in the South, but the small room
beyond that has the camp truckle that Sir Michael brought from the ould
wars: that's dry and snug! And for the one window that's airy, sure,
'tis no drawback at this sayson."
"It will do very well for me, Darby," the Colonel said, smiling.
"Well," Darby answered, rubbing his head, "the Cross be between us and
harm, I'm not so sure where's another. The young masther----"
"That will do, Darby!" the girl cried impatiently. And then, "I am
sorry, Colonel Sullivan," she continued stiffly, "that you should be so
poorly lodged--who are the master of all. But doubtless," with an
irrepressible resentment in her voice, "you will be able presently to
put matters on a better footing."
With a formal curtsey she left them then, and retreated up the stairs,
which at the rear of the hall ascended to a gallery that ran right and
left to the rooms on the first floor.
Colonel Sullivan turned with Uncle Ulick to the nearest window and
looked out on the untidy forecourt. "You know, I suppose," he said, in
a tone which the men beside the fire, who were regarding him curiously,
could not hear, "the gist of Sir Michael's letters to me?"
Uncle Ulick drummed with his fingers on the window-sill. "Faith, the
most of it," he said.
"Was he right in believing that her brother intended to turn Protestant
for the reasons he told me?"
"It's like enough, I'm thinking."
"Does she know? The girl?"
"Not a breath! And I would not be the one to tell her," Uncle Ulick
added, with some grimness.
"Yet it may be necessary?"
Uncle Ulick shook his fist at a particularly importunate beggar who had
ventured across the forecourt. "It's a gift the little people never
gave me to tell unpleasant things," he said. "And if you'll be told by
me, Colonel, you'll travel easy. The girl has a spirit, and you'll not
persuade her to stand in her brother's light, at all, at all! She has
it fast that her grandfather wronged him--and old Sir Michael was
queer-tempered at times, God forbid I should say the other! The gift to
her will go for nothing, you'll see!"
"She must be a very noble girl."
"Devil a better has He made!"
"But if her grandfather was right in thinking so ill of his grandson?"
"I'm not saying he wasn't," Uncle Ulick muttered.
"Then we must not let her set the will aside."
Ulick Sullivan shrugged his shoulders. "Let?" he said. "Faith! it's but
little it'll be a question of that! James is for taking, and she's for
giving! He's her white swan, and to her mind, sleeping or waking, as
Darby says, he'd tread on eggs and sorra a chick the less! Let? Who's
to hinder?"
"You."
"It's easiness has been my ruin, and faith! it's too late to change."
"Then I?"
Uncle Ulick smiled. "To be sure," he said slily, "there's you,
Colonel."
"The whole estate is mine, you see, in law."
"Ay, but there's no law west of Tralee," Uncle Ulick retorted. "That's
where old Sir Michael made his mistake. Anywhere through the length and
breadth of old Ireland, if 'twas in the Four Courts themselves, and all
the garrison round you, you'd be on honour, Colonel, to take no
advantage. But here it would not be the cold shoulder and a little
unpleasantness, and a meeting or two on the ground, that's neither here
nor there--that you'd be like to taste. I'd not be knowing what would
happen if it went about that you were ousting them that had the right,
and you a Protestant. He's not the great favourite, James McMurrough,
and whether he or the girl took most 'd be a mighty small matter. But
if you think to twist it, so as to play cuckoo--though with the height
of fair meaning and not spying a silver penny of profit for yourself,
Colonel--I take leave to tell you, he's a most unpopular bird."
"But, Sir Michael," the Colonel, who had listened with a thoughtful
face, answered, "left all to me to that very end--that it might be
secured to the girl."
"Sorrow one of me says no!" Ulick rejoined. "But----"
"But what?" the Colonel replied politely. "The more plainly you speak
the more you will oblige me."
But all that Ulick Sullivan could be brought to say at that
moment--perhaps he knew that curious eyes were on their conference--was
that Kerry was "a mighty queer country," and the thief of the world
wouldn't know what would pass there by times. And besides, there were
things afoot--faith, and there were, that he'd talk about at another
time.
Then he changed the subject abruptly, asking the Colonel if he had seen
a big ship in the bay.
"What colours?" the Colonel asked--the question men ask who have been
at sea.
"Spanish, maybe," Uncle Ulick answered. "Did you sight such a one?"
But the Colonel had seen no big ship.
CHAPTER III
A SCION OF KINGS
The family at Morristown had been half an hour at table, and in the
interval a man of more hasty judgment than Colonel Sullivan might have
made up his mind on many points. Whether the young McMurrough was
offensive of set purpose, and because an unwelcome guest was present,
or whether he merely showed himself as he was--an unlicked cub--such a
man might have determined. But the Colonel held his judgment in
suspense, though he leaned to the latter view of the case. He knew that
even in England a lad brought up among women was apt to develop a
quarrelsome uncouthness, a bearishness, intolerable among men of the
world. How much more likely, he reflected, was this to be the case when
the youth belonged to a proscribed race, and lived, a little chieftain
among his peasants, in a district wild and remote, where for a league
each way his will was law. The Colonel made allowances, and, where need
was, he checked his indignation. If he blamed any one, he let his
censure rest on the easy temper of Uncle Ulick. The giant could have
shaken the young man, who was not over robust, with a single finger;
and at any time in the last ten years might have taught him a lifelong
lesson.
At their first sitting down the young man had shown his churlishness.
Beginning by viewing the Colonel in sulky silence, he had answered his
kinsman's overtures only by a rude stare or a boorish word. His
companions, two squireens of his own age, and much of his own kidney,
nudged him from time to time, and then the three would laugh in such a
way as to make it plain that the stranger was the butt of the jest.
Presently, overcoming the reluctant impression which Colonel John's
manners made upon him, the young man found his tongue, and, glancing at
his companions to bring them into the joke, "Much to have where you
come from, Colonel?" he asked.
"As in most places," the Colonel replied mildly, "by working for it, or
earning it after one fashion or another. Indeed, my friend, country and
country are more alike, except on the outside, than is thought by those
who stay at home."
"You've seen a wealth of countries, I'm thinking?" the youth asked with
a sneer.
"I have crossed Europe more than once."
"And stayed in none?"
"If you mean----"
"Faith, I mean you've come back!" the young man exclaimed with a loud
laugh, in which his companions joined. "You'll mind the song"--and with
a wink he trolled out,
"In such contempt in short I fell,
Which was a very hard thing,
They devilish badly used me there,
For nothing but a farthing.
"You're better than that, Colonel, for the worst we can say of you is,
you's come back a penny!"
"If you mean a bad one, come home," the Colonel rejoined, taking the
lad good-humouredly--he was not blind to the flush of indignation which
dyed Flavia's cheeks--"I'll take the wit for welcome. To be sure, to
die in Ireland is an Irishman's hope, all the world over."
"True for you, Colonel!" Uncle Ulick said. And "For shame, James," he
continued, speaking with more sternness than was natural to him.
"Faith, and if you talked abroad as you talk at home, you'd be for
having a pistol-ball in your gizzard in the time it takes you to say
your prayers--if you ever say them, my lad!"
"What are my prayers to you, I'd like to know?" James retorted
offensively.
"Easy, lad, easy!"
The young man glared at him. "What is it to you," he cried still more
rudely, "whether I pray or no?"
"James! James!" Flavia pleaded under her breath.
"Do you be keeping your feet to yourself!" he cried, betraying her
kindly manoeuvre. "And let my shins be! I want none of your guiding!
More by token, miss, don't you be making a sight of yourself as you did
this morning, or you'll smart for it. What is it to you if O'Sullivan
Og takes our dues for us--and a trifle over? And, sorra one of you
doubt it, if Mounseer comes jawing here, it's in the peat-hole he'll
find himself! Or the devil the value of a cork he gets out of me;
that's flat! Eh, Phelim?"
"True for you, McMurrough!" the youth who sat beside him answered,
winking. "We'll soak him for you."
"So do you be taking a lesson, Miss Flavvy," the young Hector
continued, "and don't you go threatening honest folk with your whip, or
it'll be about your own shoulders it'll fall! I know what's going on,
and when I want your help, I'll ask it."
The girl's lip trembled. "But it's robbery, James," she murmured.
"To the devil with your robbery!" he retorted, casting a defiant eye
round the table. "They'll pay our dues, and what they get back will be
their own!"
"And it's rich they'll be with it!" Phelim chuckled.
"Ay, faith, it's the proud men they'll be that day!" laughed Morty, his
brother. "Sure, when it comes!" with a wink.
"Fine words, my lad," Uncle Ulick replied quietly; "but it's my opinion
you'll fall on trouble, and more than'll please you, with Crosby of
Castlemaine. And why, I'd like to know? 'Tis a grand trade, and has
served us well since I can remember! Why can't you take what's fair out
of it, and let the poor devil of a sea-captain that's supplied many an
honest man's table have his own, and go his way? Take my word for it,
it's ruing it you'll be, when all's done."
"It's not from Crosby of Castlemaine I'll rue it!" James McMurrough
answered arrogantly. "I'll shoot him like a bog-snipe if he's sorra a
word to say to it! That for him, the black sneak of a Protestant!" And
he snapped his fingers. "But his day will soon be past, and we'll be
dealing with him. The toast is warming for him now!"
Phelim slapped his thigh. "True for you, McMurrough! That's the talk!"
"That's the talk!" chorussed Morty.
The Colonel opened his mouth to speak, but he caught Flavia's look of
distress, and he refrained. And "For my part," Morty continued
jovially, "I'd not wait--for you know what! The gentleman's way's the
better; early or late, Clare or Kerry, 'tis all one! A drink of the
tea, a peppered devil, and a pair of the beauties, is an Irishman's
morning!"
"And many's the poor soul has to mourn it--long and bitterly," the
Colonel said. His tender corn being trod upon, he could be silent no
longer. "For shame, sir, for shame!" he added warmly.
Morty stared. "Begorra, and why?" he cried, in a tone which proved that
he asked the question in perfect innocence.
"Why?" Colonel John repeated. And for a moment, in face of prejudices
so strong, and of prepossessions so deeply rooted, he paused. Then,
"Why?" he repeated. "Can you ask me when you know how many a life as
young as yours--and I take you to be scarcely, sir, in your
twenties--has been forfeit for a thoughtless word, an unwitting touch,
a look; when you know how many a bride has been widowed as soon as
wedded, how many a babe orphaned as soon as born? And for what? For
what, sir?"
"For the point of honour!" The McMurrough cried. Morty, for his part,
was dumb with astonishment. What talk was this!
"The point of honour?" the Colonel repeated, more slowly, "what is it?
In nine cases out of ten the fear of seeming to be afraid. In the
tenth--the desire to wipe out a stain that blood leaves as deep as
before!"
"Faith, and you surprise me!" Phelim cried with a genuine _naïveté_
that at another time would have provoked a smile. "You do indeed!"
"And Kerry'll more than surprise you," quoth The McMurrough rudely, "if
it's that way you'll be acting! Would you let Crosby of Castlemaine
call you thief?"
"I would not thieve!" the Colonel replied.
There was a stricken silence for a moment. Then The McMurrough sprang
to his feet, his querulous face flushed with rage, his arm raised. But
Ulick's huge hand dragged him down. "Easy, lad, easy," he cried,
restraining the young man. "He's your guest! He's your guest; remember
that!"
"And he spoke in haste," the Colonel said. "I withdraw my words," he
continued, rising and frankly holding out his hand. "I recognise that I
was wrong! I see that the act bears in your eyes a different aspect,
and I beg your pardon, sir."
The McMurrough took the hand, though he took it sullenly; and the
Colonel sat down again. His action, to say nothing of his words, left
Phelim and Morty in a state of amazement so profound that the two sat
staring as if carved out of the same block of wood.
If Colonel John noticed their surprise he seemed in no way put out by
it. "Perhaps," he said gently, "it is wrong to thrust opinions on
others unasked. I think that is so! It should be enough to act upon
them one's self, and refrain from judging others."
No one answered. But one thing was certain: whether he judged them or
not, they were all judging him, with such of their faculties as
remained to them. True, Flavia, save by a single frightened glance when
a quarrel seemed imminent, had not betrayed what she thought--nor now
betrayed what she was thinking. Her eyes were glued to her plate. But
the impression made on the others, not excepting the dependent buckeens
who sat at the board a little apart and took no part in the talk, was
so apparent that an onlooker must have laughed at their bewilderment.
Even Uncle Ulick, whom a steady good humour had steered clear of many a
brawl--so that a single meeting on Aghrim racecourse made up the tale
of his exploits--stared vacantly at his kinsman. Never before had he
heard any one question the right of an Irish gentleman to fight at
pleasure; and for the others whose blood was hotter and younger, for
the three Kerry Cocks, the Conclave had not been more surprised if a
Cardinal had risen and denounced the Papacy, nor an assembly of
half-pay captains been more astonished if one of their number had
denounced the pension system. The Colonel was a Sullivan and an
Irishman, and it was supposed that he had followed the wars. Whence,
then, these strange words, these unheard-of opinions? Morty felt his
cheek flush with the shame which Colonel John should have felt; and
Phelim grieved for the family. The gentleman might be mad; it was
charitable to think he was. But, mad or sane, he was like, they feared,
to be the cause of sad misunderstanding in the country round.
The McMurrough, of a harder and less generous nature than his
companions, felt more contempt than wonder. The man had insulted him
grossly, and had apologised as abjectly; that was his view of the
incident. And he was the first to break the silence. "Sure, it's very
well for the gentleman it's in the family," he said dryly. "Tail up,
tail down, 's all one among friends. But if he'll be so quick with his
tongue in Tralee Market, he'll chance on one here and there that he'll
not blarney so easily! Eh, Morty?"
"I'm fearing so, too," said Phelim pensively. Morty did not answer.
"'Tis a queer world," Phelim added.
"And all sorts in it," The McMurrough cried, his tone more arrogant
than before.
Flavia glanced at him, frowning. "Let us have peace now," she said.
"Peace? Sorrow a bit of war there's like to be in the present company!"
the victor cried. And he began to whistle, amid an awkward silence. The
air he chose was one well known at that day, and when he had whistled a
few bars, one of the buckeens at the lower end of the table began to
sing the words softly.
It was a' for our rightful king
We left fair Ireland's strand!
It was a' for our rightful king
We e'er saw foreign land, my dear,
We e'er saw foreign land!
"My dear, or no, you'll be doing well to be careful!" The McMurrough
said, in a jeering tone, with his eye on the Colonel.
"Pho!" the man replied. "And I that have heard the young mistress sing
it a score of times!"
"Ay, but not in this company!" The McMurrough rejoined.
Colonel John looked round the table. "If you mean," he said quietly,
"that I am a loyal subject of King George, I am that. But what is said
at my host's table, no matter who he is, is safe for me. Moreover, I've
lived long enough to know, gentlemen, that most said is least meant,
and that the theme of a lady's song is more often--sunset than
sunrise!" And he bowed in the direction of the girl.
The McMurrough's lip curled. "Fair words," he sneered. "And easy to
speak them, when you and your d--d Protestant Whigs are on top!"
"We won't talk of Protestants, d--d or otherwise!" Colonel John
replied. And for the first time his glance, keen as the flicker of
steel, crossed The McMurrough's. The younger man's eyes fell. A flush
of something that might have been shame tinged his brow: and though no
one at table save Uncle Ulick understood the allusion, his conscience
silenced him. "I hope," the Colonel continued more soberly, "that a
good Protestant may still be a good Irishman."
"It's not I that have seen one, then!" The McMurrough muttered
churlishly.
"Just as a bad Protestant makes a bad Irishman," the Colonel returned,
with another of those glances which seemed to prove that the old man
was not quite put off.
The McMurrough was silenced. But the cudgels were taken up in an
unexpected quarter. "I know nothing of bad or good," Flavia said, in a
voice vibrating with eagerness, "but only, to our sorrow, of those who
through centuries have robbed us! Who, not content, shame on them! with
shutting us up in a corner of the land that was ours from sea to sea,
deny us even here the protection of their law! Law? Can you call it
law----"
"Heaven be between us and it!" old Darby groaned.
"Can you call it law," she continued with passion, "which denies us all
natural rights, all honourable employments; which drives us abroad,
divides son from father, and brother from brother; which bans our
priests, and forbids our worship, and, if it had its will, would leave
no Catholic from Cape Clear to Killaloe?"
The Colonel looked sorrowfully at her, but made no answer; for to much
of what she said no answer could be made. On the other hand, a murmur
passed round the board; and more than one looked at the stranger with
compressed lips. "If you had your will," the girl continued, with
growing emotion; "if your law were carried out--as, thank God! it is
not, no man's heart being hard enough--to possess a pistol were to be
pilloried; to possess a fowling-piece were to be whipped; to own a
horse, above the value of a miserable garron, were to be robbed by the
first rascal who passed! We must not be soldiers, nor sailors," she
continued; "nay"--with bitter irony--"we may not be constables nor
gamekeepers! The courts, the bar, the bench of our fatherland, are shut
to us! We may have neither school nor college; the lands that were our
fathers' must be held for us by Protestants, and it's I must have a
Protestant guardian! We are outlaws in the dear land that is ours; we
dwell on sufferance where our fathers ruled! And men like you,
abandoning their country, abandoning their creed----"
"God forbid!" the Colonel exclaimed, much moved himself.
"Men like you uphold these things!"
"God forbid!" he repeated.
"But let Him forbid, or not forbid," she retorted, rising from her seat
with eyes that flashed anger through tears, "we exist, and shall exist!
And the time is coming, and comes soon--ay, comes perhaps to-day!--when
we who now suffer for the true faith and the rightful King will raise
our heads, and the Faithful Land shall cease to mourn and honest men to
pine! And, ah"--with upraised face and clasped hands--"I pray for that
day! I pray for that day! I----"
She broke off amid cries of applause, fierce as the barking of wolves.
She struggled for a moment with her overmastering emotion, then, unable
to continue or to calm herself, she turned from the table and fled
weeping up the stairs.
Colonel John had risen. He watched her go with deep feeling; he turned
to his seat again with a sigh. He was a shade paler than before, and
the eyes which he bent on the board were dark with thought. He was
unconscious of all that passed round him, and, if aware, he was
heedless of the strength of the passions which she had unbridled--until
a hand fell on his arm.
He glanced up then and saw that all the men had risen, and were looking
at him--even Ulick Sullivan--with dark faces. A passion of anger
clouded their gaze. Without a word spoken, they were of one mind. The
hand that touched him trembled, the voice that broke the silence shook
under the weight of the speaker's feelings.
"You'll be leaving here this day," the man muttered.
"I?" the Colonel said, taken by surprise. "Not at all."
"We wish you no harm, but to see your back. But you'll be leaving
here."
The Colonel, his first wonder subdued, looked from one to another. "I
am sure you wish me no harm," he said.
"None, but to see your back," the man repeated, while his companions
looked down at the Colonel with a strange fixedness. The Celtic nature,
prone to sudden rage, stirred in them. The stranger who an hour before
had been indifferent to them now wore the face of an enemy. The lake
and the bog--ay, the secret grave yearned for him: the winding-sheet
was high upon his breast. "Stay, and it's but once in your life you'll
be sorry," the man growled, "and faith, that'll be always!"
"But I cannot go," the Colonel answered, as gently as before.
"And why?" the man returned. The McMurrough was not of the speakers,
but stood behind them, glowering at him with a dark face.
"Because," the Colonel answered, "I am in my duty here, my friends. And
the man who is in his duty can suffer nothing."
"He can die," the man replied, breathing hard. The men who were on the
Colonel's side of the table leant more closely about him.
But he seemed unmoved. "That," he replied cheerfully, "is nothing. To
die is but an accident. Who dies in his duty suffers no harm. And were
that not enough--and it is all," he continued slowly, "what harm should
happen to me, a Sullivan among Sullivans? Because I have fared far and
seen much, am I so changed that, coming back, I shall find no welcome
on the hearth of my race, and no shelter where my fathers lie?"
"And are not our hearths cold over many a league? And the graves----"
"Whisht!" a voice broke in sternly, as Uncle Ulick thrust his way
through the group. "The man says well!" he continued. "He's a
Sullivan----"
"He's a Protestant!"
"He is a Sullivan, I say!" Uncle Ulick retorted, "were he the blackest
heretic on the sod! And you, would you do the foul deed for a woman's
wet eye? Are the hearts of Kerry turned as hard as its rocks? Make an
end of this prating and foolishness! And you, James McMurrough, these
are your men and this is your house? Will you be telling them at once
that you will be standing between him and harm, be he a heretic ten
times over? For shame, man! Is it for raising the corp of old Sir
Michael from his grave ye are?"
The McMurrough looked sombrely at the big man. "On you be the risk," he
said sullenly. "You know what you know."
"I know that the seal in the cave and the seal on the wave are one!"
Ulick answered vehemently. "Whisht, man, whisht, and make an end! And
do you, John Sullivan, give no thought to these omadhauns, but come
with me and I'll show you to your chamber. A woman's tear is ever near
her smile. With her the good thought treads ever on the heel of the bad
word!"
"I have little knowledge of them," Colonel John answered quietly.
But when he was above with Uncle Ulick, he spoke. "I hope that this is
but wild talk," he said. "You cannot remember, nor can I, the bad days.
But the little that is left, it were madness and worse than madness to
risk! If you've thought of a rising, in God's name put it from you.
Think of your maids and your children! I have seen the fires rise from
too many roofs, I have heard the wail of the homeless too often, I have
seen too many frozen corpses stand for milestones by the road, I have
wakened to the creak of too many gibbets--to face these things in my
own land!"
Uncle Ulick was looking from the little casement. He turned and showed
a face working with agitation. "And you, if you wore no sword, nor
dared wear one? If you walked in Tralee a clown among gentlefolk, if
you lived a pariah in a corner of pariahs, if your land were the
handmaid of nations, and the vampire crouched upon her breast,
what--what would you do, then?"
"Wait," Colonel John answered gravely, "until the time came."
Uncle Ulick gripped his arm. "And if it came not in your time?"
"Still wait," Colonel John answered with solemnity. "For believe me,
Ulick Sullivan, there is no deed that has not its reward! Not does one
thatch go up in smoke that is not paid for a hundredfold."
"Ay, but when? When?"
"When the time is ripe."
CHAPTER IV
"STOP THIEF!"
A candid Englishman must own, and deplore the fact, that Flavia
McMurrough's tears were due to the wrongs of her country. Broken by
three great wars waged by three successive generations, defeated in the
last of three desperate struggles for liberty, Ireland at this period
lay like a woman swooning at the feet of her captors. Nor were these
minded that she should rise again quickly, or in her natural force. The
mastery which they had won by the sword the English were resolved to
keep by the law.
They were determined that the Irishman of the old faith should cease
to exist; or if he endured, should be _nemo_, no one. Confined to hell
or Connaught, he must not even in the latter possess the ordinary
rights. He must not will his own lands or buy new lands. If his son,
more sensible than he, "_went over_," the father sank into a mere
life-tenant, bound to furnish a handsome allowance, and to leave all
to the Protestant heir. He might not marry a Protestant, he might not
keep a school, nor follow the liberal professions. The priest who
confessed him was banished if known, and hanged if he returned. In a
country of sportsmen he might not own a fowling-piece, nor a horse
worth more than five pounds; and in days when every gentleman carried
a sword at his side, he must not wear one. Finally, his country grew
but one article of great value--wool: and that he must not make into
cloth, but he must sell it to England at England's price--which was
one-fifth of the continental price. Was it wonderful that, such being
Ireland's status, every Roman Catholic of spirit sought fortune
abroad; that the wild geese, as they were called, went and came
unchecked; or that every inlet in Galway, Clare, and Kerry swarmed
with smugglers, who ran in under the green flag with brandy and
claret, and, running out again with wool, laughed to scorn England's
boast that she ruled the waves?
Nor was it surprising that, spent and helpless as the land lay, some
sanguine spirits still clung to visions of a change and of revenge. A
few men, living in the vague remotenesses beyond the bridling Shannon
and its long string of lakes, or on the western shore where the long
rollers broke in spume and the French and Spanish tongues were spoken
more freely than English, still hoped for the impossible. Passing their
lives far from the Castle and the Four Courts, far even from the
provincial capitals, they shut their eyes to facts and dreamed of
triumph. The Sullivans of Morristown and Skull were of these; as were
some of their neighbours. And Flavia was especially of these. As she
looked from her window a day or two after the Colonel's arrival, as she
sniffed the peat reek and plumbed the soft distances beyond the lake,
she was lost in such a dream; until her eyes fell on a man seated
cross-legged under a tree between herself and the shore. And she
frowned. The man sorted ill with her dream.
It was Bale, Colonel John's servant. He was mending some article taken
from his master's wardrobe. His elbow went busily to and fro as he
plied the needle, while sprawling on the sod about him half a dozen
gossoons watched him inquisitively.
Perhaps it was the suggestive contrast between his diligence and their
idleness which irritated Flavia; but she set down her annoyance to
another cause. The man was an Englishman, and therefore an enemy: and
what did he there? Had the Colonel left him on guard?
Flavia's heart swelled at the thought. Here, at least, she and hers
were masters. Here, three hours west of Tralee--and God help the horse
on that road that was not a "lepper"--they brooked no rival. Colonel
John had awakened mixed feelings in her. At times she admired him. But,
admirable or not, he should rue his insolence, if he had it in his mind
to push his authority, or interfere with her plans.
In the meantime she stood watching William Bale, and a desire to know
more of the man, and through him of the master, rose within her. The
house was quiet. The McMurrough and his following had gone to a
cocking-match and race-meeting at Joyce's Corner. She went down the
stairs, took her hood, and crossed the courtyard. Bale did not look up
at her approach, but he saw her out of the corner of his eye, and when
she paused before him he laid down his work and made as if he would
rise.
She looked at him with a superciliousness not natural to her. "Are all
the men tailors where you come from?" she asked. "There, you need not
rise."
"Where I came from last," he replied, "we were all trades, my lady."
"Where was that?"
"In the camp," he answered.
"In Sweden?"
"God knows," he replied. "They raise no landmarks there, between
country and country, or it might be all their work to move them."
For a moment she was silent. Then, "Have you been a soldier long?" she
asked, feeling herself rebuffed.
"Twenty-one years, my lady."
"And now you have done with it."
"It is as his honour pleases."
She frowned. He had a way of speaking that sounded uncivil to ears
attuned to the soft Irish accent and the wheedling tone. Yet the man
interested her, and after a moment's silence she fixed her eyes more
intently on his work. "Did you lose your fingers in battle?" she asked.
His right hand was maimed.
"No," he answered--grudgingly, as he seemed to answer all her
questions--"in prison."
"In prison?" she repeated; "where?"
He cast an upward look at his questioner. "In the Grand Turk's land,"
he said. "Nearer than that, I can't say. I'm no scholar, my lady."
"But why?" she asked, puzzled. "I don't understand."
"Cut off," he said, stooping over his work.
Flavia turned a shade paler. "Why?" she repeated.
"'One God, and Mahomet His prophet'--couldn't swallow it. One finger!"
the man answered jerkily. "Next week--same. Third week----"
"Third week?" she murmured, shuddering.
"Exchanged."
She lifted her eyes with an effort from his maimed hand. "How many were
you?" she inquired.
"Thirty-four." He laughed drily. "We know one another when we meet," he
said. He drew his waxed thread between his finger and thumb, held it up
to the light, then looked askance at the gossoons about him, to whom
what he said was gibberish. They knew only Erse.
The day was still, the mist lay on the lake, and under it the water
gleamed, a smooth pale mirror. Flavia had seen it so a hundred times,
and thought naught of it. But to-day, moved by what she had heard, the
prospect spoke of a remoteness from the moving world which depressed
her. Hitherto the quick pulse and the energy of youth had left her no
time for melancholy, and not much for thought. If at rare intervals she
had felt herself lonely, if she had been tempted to think that the
brother in whom were centred her hopes, her affections, and her family
pride was hard and selfish, rude and overbearing, she had told herself
that all men were so; that all men rode rough-shod over their women.
And that being so, who had a better right to hector it than the last of
the McMurroughs, heir of the Wicklow kings, who in days far past had
dealt on equal terms with Richard Plantagenet, and to whom, by virtue
of that never-forgotten kingship, the Sullivans and Mahonies, some of
the McCarthys, and all the O'Beirnes, paid rude homage? With such
feelings Sir Michael's strange whim of disinheriting the heir of his
race had but drawn her closer to her brother. To her loyalty the act
was abhorrent, was unnatural, was one that could only have sprung, she
was certain, from second childhood, the dotage of a man close on
ninety, whose early years had been steeped in trouble, and who loved
her so much that he was ready to do wrong for her sake.
Often she differed from her brother. But he was a man, she told
herself; and he must be right--a man's life could not be ruled by the
laws which a woman observed. For the rest, for herself, if her life
seemed solitary she had the free air and the mountains; she had her
dear land; above all, she had her dreams. Perhaps when these were
realised--and the time seemed very near now--and a new Ireland was
created, to her too a brighter world would open.
She had forgotten Bale's presence, and was only recalled to every-day
life by the sound of voices. Four men were approaching the house. Uncle
Ulick, Colonel John, and the French skipper were three of these; at the
sight of the fourth Flavia's face fell. Luke Asgill of Batterstown was
the nearest Justice, and of necessity he was a Protestant. But it was
not this fact, nor the certainty that Augustin was pouring his wrongs
into his ears, that affected Flavia. Asgill was distasteful to her,
because her brother affected him. For why should her brother have
relations with a Protestant? Why should he, a man of the oldest blood,
stoop to intimacy with the son of a "middleman," the son of one of
those who, taking a long lease of a great estate and under-letting at
rack rents, made at this period huge fortunes? Finally, if he must have
relations with him, why did he not keep him at a distance from his
home--and his sister?
It was too late, or she would have slipped away. Not that Asgill--he
was a stout, dark, civil-spoken man of thirty-three or four--wore a
threatening face. On the contrary, he listened to the Frenchman's
complaint with a droll air; and if he had not known of the matter
before, his smile betrayed him. He greeted Flavia with an excess of
politeness which she could have spared; and while Uncle Ulick and
Colonel John looked perturbed and ill at ease, he jested on the matter.
"The whole cargo?" he said, with one eye on the Frenchman and one on
his companions. "You're not for stating that, sir?"
"All the tubs," Augustin answered in a passion of earnestness. "What
you call, every tub! Every tub!"
"The saints be between us and harm!" Asgill responded. "Are you hearing
this, Miss Flavia? It's no less than felony that you're accused of, and
I'm thinking, by rights, I must arrest you and carry you to
Batterstown."
"I do not understand," she answered stiffly. "And The McMurrough is not
at home."
"Gone out of the way, eh?" Asgill replied with a deprecatory grin. "And
the whole cargo was it, Captain?"
"All the tubs, perfectly!"
"You'd paid your dues, of course?"
"Dues, _mon Dieu_! But they take the goods!"
"Had you paid your dues?"
"Not already, because----"
"That's unfortunate," Asgill answered in a tone of mock condolence.
"Mighty unfortunate!" He winked at Uncle Ulick. "Port dues, you know,
Captain, must be paid before the ship slips her moorings."
"But----"
"Mighty unfortunate!"
"But what are the dues?" poor Augustin cried, dimly aware that he was
being baited.
"Ah, you're talking now," the magistrate answered glibly. "Unluckily,
that's not in my province. I'm made aware that the goods are held under
lien for dues, and I can do nothing. However, upon payment, of
course----"
"But how much? Eh, sir? How much? How much?"
Luke Asgill, who had two faces, and for once was minded to let both be
seen, enjoyed the Frenchman's perplexity. He wished to stand well with
Flavia, and here was a rare opportunity of exhibiting at once his
friendliness and his powers of drollery. He was surprised, therefore,
and taken aback, when a grave voice cut short his enjoyment.
"Still, if Captain Augustin," the voice interposed, "is willing to pay
a reasonable sum on account of dues?"
The magistrate turned about abruptly. "Eh?" he said. "Oh, Colonel
Sullivan, is it?"
"Then, doubtless, the goods will be released, so that he may perform
his duty to his customer."
Asgill had only known the Colonel a few minutes, and, aware that he was
one of the family, he did not see how to take it. It was as if treason
lifted its head in the camp. He coughed.
"I'd not be denying it," he said. "But until The McMurrough
returns----"
"Such a matter is doubtless within Mr. Sullivan's authority," the
Colonel said, turning from him to Uncle Ulick.
Uncle Ulick showed his embarrassment. "Faith, I don't know that it is,"
he said.
"If Captain Augustin paid, say, twenty per cent. on his bills of
lading----"
"_Ma foi_, twenty per cent.!" the Captain exclaimed in astonishment.
"Twenty--but yes, I will pay it. I will pay even that. Of what use to
throw the handle after the hatchet?"
Luke Asgill thought the Colonel either a fool or very simple. "Well,
I've nothing to say to this, at all!" he said, shrugging his shoulders.
"It's not within my province."
Colonel John looked at the girl in a way in which he had not looked at
her before; and she found herself speaking before she knew it. "Yes,"
she cried impulsively; "let that be done, and the goods be given up!"
"But The McMurrough?" Asgill began.
"I will answer for him," she said impulsively. "Uncle Ulick, go, I beg,
and see it done."
"I will go with you," Colonel Sullivan said. "And doubtless Mr. Asgill
will accompany us, and lend the weight of his authority in the event of
any difficulty arising."
Asgill's countenance fell, and he looked the uncertainty he felt. He
was between two stools, for he had no mind to displease Flavia or
thwart her brother. At length, "No," he said, "I'll not be doing
anything in The McMurrough's absence--no, I don't see that I can do
that!"
Colonel John looked in the same strange fashion at Flavia. "I have
legal power to act, sir," he said, "as I can prove to you in private.
And that being so, I must certainly ask you to lend me the weight of
your authority."
"And I will be d----d if I do!" Asgill cried. There was a change in his
tone, and the reason was not far to seek. "Here's The McMurrough," he
continued, "and he'll say!"
They all turned and looked along the road which ran by the edge of the
lake. With James McMurrough, who was still a furlong away, were the two
O'Beirnes. They came slowly, and something in their bearing, even at
that distance, awoke anxiety.
"They're early from the cocking," Uncle Ulick muttered doubtfully, "and
sober as pigs! What's the meaning of that? There's something amiss, I'm
fearing."
A cry from Flavia proved the keenness of her eyes. "Where is Giralda?"
she exclaimed. "Where is the mare?"
"Ay, what have they done with the mare?" Uncle Ulick said in a tone of
consternation. "Have they lamed her, I'm wondering? The garron Morty's
riding is none of ours."
"I begged him not to take her!" Flavia cried, anger contending with her
grief. Giralda, her grey mare, ascribed in sanguine moments to the
strain of the Darley Arabian, and as gentle as she was spirited, was
the girl's dearest possession. "I begged him not to take her!" she
repeated, almost in tears. "I knew there was danger."
"James was wrong to take her up country," Uncle Ulick said sternly.
"They've claimed her!" Flavia wailed. "I know they have! And I shall
never recover her! I shall never see her again! Oh, I'd rather--I'd far
rather she were dead!"
Uncle Ulick lifted up his powerful voice. "Where's the mare?" he
shouted.
James McMurrough shrugged his shoulders, and a moment later the riders
came up and the tale was told. The three young men had halted at the
hedge tavern at Brocktown, where their road ran out of the road to
Tralee. There were four men drinking in the house, who seemed to take
no notice of them. But when The McMurrough and his companions went to
the shed beside the house to draw out their horses, the men followed,
challenged them for Papists, threw down five pounds in gold, and seized
the mare. The four were armed, and resistance was useless.
The story was received with a volley of oaths and curses. "But by the
Holy," Uncle Ulick flamed up, "I'd have hung on their heels and raised
the country! By G--d, I would!"
"Ay, ay! The thieves of the world!"
"They took the big road by Tralee," James McMurrough explained sulkily.
"What was the use?"
"Were there no men working in the bogs?"
"There were none near by, to be sure," Morty said. "But I'd a notion if
we followed them we might light on one friend or another--'twas in
Kerry, after all!"
"'Twas not more than nine miles English from here!" Uncle Ulick cried.
"That was just what I thought," Morty continued with some hesitation.
"Just that, but----" And his eye transferred the burden to The
McMurrough.
James answered with an oath. "A nice time this to be bringing the
soldiers upon us," he cried, "when, bedad, if the time ever was, we
want no trouble with the Englishry! What's the use of crying over spilt
milk? I'll give you another mare."
"But it'll not be Giralda!" Flavia wailed.
"Sure it's the black shame, it is!" Uncle Ulick cried, his face dark.
"It's enough to raise the country! Ay, I say it, though you're
listening, Asgill. It's more than blood can stand!"
"No one is more sorry than myself," Asgill replied, with a look of
concern. "I don't make the laws, or they'd be other than they are!"
"True for you," Uncle Ulick answered. "I'm allowing that. And it is
true, too, that to make a stir too early would ruin all. I'm afraid you
must be making the best of it, Flavvy! I'd go after them myself, but
the time's not convenient, as you know, and by this they're in Tralee,
bad cess to it, where there's naught to be done. They'll be for selling
her to one of the garrison officers, I'm thinking; and may the little
gentleman in black velvet break his neck for him! Or they'll take her
farther up country, maybe to Dublin."
Flavia's last hopes died with this verdict. She could not control her
tears, and she turned and went away in grief to the house.
Meantime the hangers-on and the beggars pressed upon the gentry,
anxious to hear. The McMurrough, not sorry to find some one on whom to
vent his temper, turned upon them and drove them away with blows of his
whip. The movement brought him face to face with Captain Augustin. The
fiery little Frenchman disdained to give way, in a trice angry words
passed, and--partly out of mischief, for the moment was certainly not
propitious--Asgill repeated the proposal which Colonel John had just
made. The Colonel had stood in the background during the debate about
the mare, but thus challenged he stood forward.
"It's a fair compromise," he argued. "And if Captain Augustin is
prepared to pay twenty per cent----."
"He'll not have his cargo, nor yet a cask!" The McMurrough replied with
a curt, angry laugh. "Loss and enough we've had to-day."
"But----"
"Get me back the mare," the young man cried, cutting the Colonel short
with savage ridicule. "Get me back the mare, and I'll talk. That's all
I have to say."
"It seems to me," Colonel John replied quietly, "that those who lose
should find. Still--still," checking the young man's anger by the very
calmness of his tone, "for Captain Augustin's sake, who can ill bear
the loss, and for your sister's sake, I will see what I can do."
The McMurrough stared. "You?" he cried. "You?"
"Yes, I."
"Heaven help us, and the pigs!" the young man exclaimed. And he laughed
aloud in his scorn.
But Colonel John seemed no way moved. "Yes," he replied. "Only let us
understand one another"--with a look at Uncle Ulick which made him
party to the bargain--"if I return to-morrow evening or on the
following day--or week--with your sister's mare----"
"Mounseer shall have his stuff again to the last pennyworth," young
McMurrough returned with an ironical laugh, "and without payment at
all! Or stay! Perhaps you'll buy the mare?"
"No, I shall not buy her," Colonel John answered, "except at the price
the man gave you."
"Then you'll not get her. That's certain! But it's your concern."
The Colonel nodded, and, turning on his heels, went away towards the
house, calling William Bale to him as he passed.
The McMurrough looked at the Frenchman. He had a taste for tormenting
some one. "Well, monsieur," he jeered, "how do you like your bargain?"
"I do not understand," the Frenchman answered. "But he is a man of his
word, _ma foi_! And they are not--of the common."
CHAPTER V
THE MESS-ROOM AT TRALEE
If England had made of Ireland a desert and called it peace, she had
not marred its beauty. That was the thought in Colonel Sullivan's mind
as he rode eastward under Slieve Mish, with the sun rising above the
lower spurs of the mountain, and the lark saluting the new-born
radiance with a song attuned to the freshness of the morning. Where his
road ascended he viewed the sparkling inlet spread far to the
southward; and where the track dipped, the smooth slopes on either side
ran up to grey crags that, high above, took strange shapes, now of
monstrous heads, now of fantastic towers. As his sure-footed nag forded
the brown bog-stream, long-shanked birds rose silently from the pools,
and he marked with emotion the spots his boyhood had known: the shallow
where the dog-wolf--so big that it had become a fable--died biting, and
the cliff whence the sea-eagle's nest had long bidden him defiance.
Bale rode behind him, taciturn, comparing, perhaps, the folds of his
native Suffolk hills with these greener vales. They reached the hedge
tavern, where the mare had been seized, and they stayed to bait their
horses, but got no news. About eight they rode on; and five long Irish
miles nearer Tralee, though still in a wild and lonely country, they
viewed from the crest of a hill a piece of road stretched ribbon-like
before them, and on it a man walking from them at a great pace. He had
for companion a boy, who trotted beside him.
Neither man nor boy looked back, and it did not seem to be from fear of
the two riders that they moved so quickly. The man wore a loose drugget
coat and an old jockey-cap, and walked with a stout six-foot staff.
Thus armed and dressed he should have stood in small fear of robbers.
Yet when Colonel John's horse, the tread of its hoofs deadened by the
sod road, showed its head at his shoulder, and he sprang aside, he
turned a face of more vivid alarm than seemed necessary. And he crossed
himself.
Colonel John touched his hat. "I give you good morning, good man," he
said.
The walker raised his hand to his cap as if to return the salute, but
lowered it without doing so. He muttered something.
"You will be in haste?" Colonel John continued. He saw that the sweat
stood in beads on the man's brow, and the lad's face was tear-stained.
"I've far to go," the man muttered. He spoke with a slight foreign
accent, but in the west of Ireland this was common. "The top of the
morning to you."
Plainly he wished the two riders to pass on, but he did not slacken his
speed for a moment. So for a space they went abreast, the man, with
every twenty paces, glancing up suspiciously. And now and again, the
boy, as he ran or walked, vented a sob.
The Colonel looked about him. The solitude of the valley was unbroken.
No cabin smoked, no man worked within sight, so that the haste of these
two, their sweating faces, their straining steps, seemed portentous.
"Shall I take up the lad?" Colonel John asked.
Plainly the man hesitated. Then, "You will be doing a kindness," he
panted. And, seizing the lad in two powerful arms, he swung him to the
Colonel's stirrup, who, in taking him, knocked off the other's
jockey-cap.
The man snatched it up and put it on with a single movement. But
Colonel John had seen what he expected.
"You walk on a matter of life and death?" he said.
"It is all that," the man answered; and this time his look was defiant.
"You are taking the offices, father?"
The man did not reply.
"To one who is near his end, I suspect?"
The priest--for such he was--glanced at the weapon Colonel John wore.
"You can do what you will," he said sullenly. "I am on my duty."
"And a fine thing, that!" Colonel John answered heartily. He drew rein,
and, before the other knew what he would be at, he was off his horse.
"Mount, father," he said, "and ride, and God be with you!"
For a moment the priest stared dumbfounded. "Sir," he said, "you wear a
sword! And no son of the Church goes armed in these parts."
"If I am not one of your Church I am a Christian," Colonel John
answered. "Mount, father, and ride in God's name, and when you are
there send the lad back with the beast."
"The Mother of God reward you!" the priest cried fervently, "and turn
your heart in the right way!" He scrambled to the saddle. "The blessing
of all----"
The rest was lost in the thud of hoofs as the horse started briskly,
leaving Colonel John standing alone upon the road beside Bale's
stirrup. The servant looked after the retreating pair, but said
nothing.
"It's something if a man serves where he's listed," Colonel John
remarked.
Bale smiled. "And don't betray his own side," he said. He slipped from
his saddle.
"You think it's the devil's work we've done?" Colonel John asked.
But Bale declined to say more, and the two walked on, one on either
side of the horse, master or man punching it when it showed a desire to
sample the herbage. A stranger, seeing them, might have thought that
they were wont to walk thus, so unmoved were their faces.
They had trudged the better part of two miles when they came upon the
horse tethered by the reins to one of two gate-pillars, which stood
gateless beside the road. Colonel John got to his saddle, and they
trotted on. Notwithstanding which it was late in the afternoon when
they approached the town of Tralee.
In those days it was a town much ruined. The grim castle of the
Desmonds, scene of the midnight murder which had brought so many woes
on Ireland, still elbowed the grey Templars Cloister, and looked down,
as it frowned across the bay, on the crumbling aisles and squalid
graves of the Abbey. To Bale, as he scanned the dark pile, it was but a
keep--a mere nothing beside Marienburg or Stettin--rising above the
hovels of an Irish town. But to the Irishman it stood for many a bitter
memory and many a crime, besides that murder of a guest which will
never be forgotten. The Colonel sighed as he gazed.
Presently his eyes dropped to the mean houses which flanked the
entrance to the town; and he recognised that if all the saints had not
vouchsafed their company, the delay caused by the meeting with the
priest had done somewhat. For at that precise moment a man was riding
into the town before them, and the horse under the man was Flavia
McMurrough's lost mare.
Colonel John's eye lightened as he recognised its points. With a sign
to Bale he fell in behind the man and followed him through two or three
ill-paved and squalid streets. Presently the rider passed through a
loop-holed gateway, before which a soldier was doing sentry-go. The two
followed. Thence the quarry crossed an open space surrounded by dreary
buildings which no military eye could take for aught but a barrack
yard. The two still followed--the sentry staring after them. On the far
side of the yard the mare and its rider vanished through a second
archway, which appeared to lead to an inner court. The Colonel, nothing
intimidated, went after them. Fortune, he thought, had favoured him.
But as he emerged from the tunnel-like passage he raised his head in
astonishment. A din of voices, an outbreak of laughter and revelry,
burst in a flood of sound upon his ears. He turned his face in the
direction whence the sounds came, and saw three open windows, and at
each window three or four flushed countenances. His sudden emergence
from the tunnel, perhaps his look of surprise, wrought an instant's
silence, which was followed by a ruder outburst.
"Cock! cock! cock!" shrieked a tipsy voice, and an orange, hurled at
random, missed the Colonel's astonished face by a yard. The mare which
had led him so far had disappeared, and instinctively he drew bridle.
He stared at the window.
"Mark one!" cried a second roisterer, and a cork, better aimed than the
orange, struck the Colonel sharply on the chin. A shout of laughter
greeted the hit.
He raised his hat. "Gentlemen," he remonstrated, "gentlemen----"
He could proceed no further. A flight of corks, a renewed cry of "Cock!
cock! cock!" a chorus of "Fetch him, Ponto! Dead, good dog! Find him,
Ponto!" drowned his remonstrances. Perhaps in the scowling face at his
elbow--for William Bale had followed him and was looking very fierce
indeed--the wits of the --th found more amusement than in the master's
mild astonishment.
"Who the devil is he?" cried one of the seniors, raising his voice
above the uproar. "English or Irish?"
"Irish for a dozen!" a voice answered. "Here, Paddy, where's your
papers?"
"Ay, be jabers!" in an exaggerated brogue; "it's the broth of a boy he
is, and never a face as long as his in ould Ireland!"
"Gentlemen," the Colonel said, getting in a word at last. "Gentlemen, I
have been in many companies before this, and----"
"And by G--d, you shall be in ours!" one of the revellers retorted. And
"Have him in! Fetch him in!" roared a dozen voices, amid much laughter.
In a twinkling half as many young fellows had leapt from the windows,
and surrounded him. "Who-whoop!" cried one, "Who-whoop!"
"Steady, gentlemen, steady!" the Colonel said, a note of sternness in
his voice. "I've no objection to joining you, or to a little timely
frolic, but----"
"Join us you will, whether or no!" replied one, more drunken or more
turbulent than the rest. He made as if he would lay hands on the
Colonel, and, to avoid violence, the latter suffered himself to be
helped from his saddle. In a twinkling he was urged through the
doorway, leaving his reins in Bale's hand, whose face, for sheer wrath
and vindictiveness, was a picture.
Boisterous cries of "Hallo, sobersides!" and "Cock, cock, cock!"
greeted the Colonel, as, partly of his own accord and partly urged by
unceremonious hands, he crossed the threshold, and shot forward into
the room.
The scene presented by the apartment matched the flushed faces and the
wandering eyes which the windows had framed. The long table was strewn
with flasks and glasses and half-peeled fruit, the floor with empty
bottles. A corner of the table had been cleared for a main at hazard;
but to make up for this the sideboard was a wilderness of broken meats
and piled-up dishes, and an overturned card-table beside one of the
windows had strewn the floor with cards. Here, there, everywhere on
chairs, on hooks, were cast sword-belts, neckcloths, neglected wigs.
A peaceful citizen of that day had as soon found himself in a bear-pit;
and even the Colonel's face grew a trifle longer as hands, not too
gentle, conducted him towards the end of the table. "Gentlemen,
gentlemen," he began, "I have been in many companies, as I said before,
and----"
"A speech! Old Gravity's speech!" roared a middle-aged, bold-eyed man,
who had suggested the sally from the windows, and from the first had
set the younger spirits an example of recklessness. "Hear to him!" He
filled a glass of wine and waved it perilously near the Colonel's nose.
"Old Gravity's speech! Give it tongue!" he cried. "The flure's your
own, and we're listening."
Colonel John eyed him with a slight contraction of the features. But
the announcement, if ill-meant, availed to procure silence. The more
sober had resumed their seats. He raised his head and spoke.
"Gentlemen," he said--and it was strange to note the effect of his look
as his eyes fell first on one and then on another, fraught with a
dignity which insensibly wrought on them. "Gentlemen, I have been in
many companies, and I have found it true, all the world over, that what
a man brings he finds. I have the honour to speak to you as a soldier
to soldiers----"
"English or Irish?" asked a tall sallow man--sharply, but in a new
tone.
"Irish!"
"Oh, be jabers!" from the man with the wineglass.
But the Colonel's eye and manner had had their effect, and "Let him
speak!" the sallow man said. "And you, Payton, have done with your
fooling, will you?"
"Well, hear to him!"
"I have been in many camps and many companies, gentlemen," the Colonel
resumed, "and those of many nations. But wherever I have been I have
found that if a man brought courtesy with him, he met with courtesy at
the hands of others. And if he brought no offence, he received none. I
am a stranger here, for I have been out of my own country for a score
of years. On my return you welcome me," he smiled, "a little
boisterously perhaps, but I am sure, gentlemen, with a good intent. And
as I have fared elsewhere I am sure I shall fare at your hands."
"Well, sure," from the background, "and haven't we made you welcome?"
"Almost too freely," the Colonel replied, smiling good-humouredly. "A
peaceable man who had not lived as long as I have might have found
himself at a loss in face of so strenuous a welcome. Corks, perhaps,
are more in place in bottles----"
"And a dale more in place out of them!" from the background.
"But if you will permit me to explain my errand, I will say no more of
that. My name, gentlemen, is Sullivan, Colonel John Sullivan of Skull,
formerly of the Swedish service, and much at your service. I shall be
still more obliged if any of you will be kind enough to inform me who
is the purchaser----"
Payton interrupted him rudely. "Oh, d--n! We have had enough of this!"
he cried. "Sink all purchasers, I say!" And with a drunken crow he
thrust his neighbour against the speaker, causing both to reel. How it
happened no one saw--whether Payton himself staggered in the act, or
flung the wine wantonly; but somehow the contents of his glass flew
over the Colonel's face and neckcloth.
Half a dozen men rose from their seats. "Shame!" an indignant voice
cried.
Among those who had risen was the sallow man. "Payton," he said
sharply, "what did you do that for?"
"Because I chose, if you like!" the stout man answered. "What is it to
you? I am ready to give him satisfaction when he likes, and where he
likes, and no heel-taps! And what more can he want? Do you hear, sir?"
he continued in a bullying tone. "Sword or pistols, before breakfast or
after dinner, drunk or sober, Jack Payton's your man. D--n me, it shall
never be said in my time that the --th suffered a crop-eared Irishman
to preach to them in their own mess-room! You can send your friend to
me when you please. He'll find me!"
The Colonel was wiping the wine from his chin and neckcloth. He had
turned strangely pale at the moment of the insult. More than one of
those who watched him curiously--and of such were all in the room,
Payton excepted--and who noted the slow preciseness of his movements
and the care with which he cleansed himself, albeit his hand shook,
expected some extraordinary action.
But no one looked for anything so abnormal or so astonishing as the
course he took when he spoke. Nothing in his bearing had prepared them
for it; nor anything in his conduct which, so far, had been that of a
man of the world not too much at a loss even in the unfavourable
circumstances in which he was placed--circumstances which would have
unnerved many a one.
"I do not fight," he said. "Your challenge is cheap, sir, as your
insult."
Payton stared. He had never been more astonished in his life. "Good
L--d!" he cried. "You do not fight? Heaven and earth! and you a
soldier!"
"I do not fight."
"After that, man! Not--after----" He did not finish the sentence, but
laughed with uplifted chin, as at some great joke.
"No," Colonel John said between his teeth.
And then no one spoke. A something in Colonel John's tone and manner, a
something in the repression of his voice, sobered the spectators, and
turned that which might have seemed an ignominy, a surrender, into a
tragedy. And a tragedy in which they all had their share. For the
insult had been so wanton, so gross, so brutal, that there was not one
of the witnesses who had not felt shame, not one whose sympathy had not
been for a moment with the victim, and who did not experience a pang on
his account as he stood, mild and passive, before them.
Payton alone was moved only by contempt. "Lord above us, man!" he
cried, finding his voice again. Are you a Quaker? If so, why the devil
do you call yourself a soldier?"
"I am no Quaker," Colonel John answered, "but I do not fight duels."
"Why?"
"If I killed you," the Colonel replied, eyeing him steadily, "would it
dry my neckcloth or clean my face?"
"No!" Payton retorted with a sneer, "but it would clean your honour!"
He had felt the reprehension in the air, he had been conscious for a
few seconds that he had not the room with him; but the perception made
him only the more arrogant now that he felt his feet again. "It would
prove, man, that, unlike the beasts that perish, you valued something
more than your life!"
"I do."
"What?" Payton asked with careless disdain.
"Among other things, my duty." Payton laughed brutally. "Why, by the
powers, you _are_ a preacher!" he retorted. "Hang your duty, sir, and
you for a craven! Give me acts, not words! It's a man's duty to defend
his honour, and you talk of your neckcloth! There's for a new
neckcloth!" He pulled out a half-crown and flung it, with an insulting
gesture, upon the table. "Show us your back, and for the future give
gentlemen of honour--a wide berth! You are no mate for them!"
The act and the words were too strong for the stomachs of the more
generous among his hearers. A murmur, an undoubted murmur rose--for if
Payton was feared he was not loved; and the sallow-faced man, whose
name was Marsh, spoke out. "Easy, Payton," he said. "The gentleman----"
"The gentleman, eh?"
"Did not come here of his own accord, and you've said enough, and done
enough! For my part----"
"I didn't ask for your interference!" the other cried insolently.
"Well, anyway----"
"And I don't want it! And I won't have it; do you hear, Marsh?" Payton
repeated menacingly. "You know me, and I know you."
"I know that you are a better fencer and a better shot than I am,"
Marsh replied, shrugging his shoulders, "and I daresay than any of us.
We are apt to believe it, anyway. But----"
"I would advise you to let that be enough," Payton sneered.
It was then that the Colonel, who had stood silent during the
altercation of which he was the subject, spoke--and in a tone somewhat
altered. "I am much obliged to you, sir," he said, addressing the
sallow-faced man, "but I will cause no further trouble. I crave leave
to say one word only, which may come home to some among you. We are
all, at times, at the mercy of mean persons. Yes, sir, of mean
persons," the Colonel repeated, raising his voice and speaking in a
tone so determined--he seemed another man--that Payton, in the act of
seizing a decanter to hurl at him, hesitated. "For any but a mean
person," Colonel John continued, drawing himself up to his full height,
"finding that he had insulted one who could not meet him on even
terms--one who could not resent the insult in the manner
intended--would have deemed it all one as if he had insulted a
one-armed man, or a blind man, and would have set himself right by an
apology."
At that word Payton found his voice. "Hang your apology!" he cried
furiously.
"By an apology," the Colonel repeated, fixing him with eyes of
unmeasured contempt, "which would have lowered him no more than an
apology to a woman or a child. Not doing so, his act dishonours himself
only, and those who sit with him. And one day, unless I mistake not,
his own blood, and the blood of others, will rest upon his head."
With that word the speaker turned slowly, walked with an even pace to
the door, and opened it, none gainsaying him. On the threshold he
paused and looked back. Something, possibly some chord of superstition
in his breast which his adversary's last words had touched, held Payton
silent: and silent the Colonel's raised finger found him.
"I believe," Colonel John said, gazing solemnly at him, "that we shall
meet again." And he went out.
Payton turned to the table, and, with an unsteady hand, filled a glass.
He read disapprobation in the eyes about him, but he had shaken the
momentary chill from his own spirits, and he stared them down. "Sink
the old Square-Toes!" he cried. "He got what he deserved! Who'll throw
a main with me?"
"Thirty guineas against your new mare, if you like?"
"No, confound you," Payton retorted angrily. "Didn't I say she wasn't
for sale?"
CHAPTER VI
THE MAÎTRE D'ARMES
Beyond doubt Colonel John had got himself off the scene with a certain
amount of dignity. But with all that he had done and suffered in the
lands beyond the Baltic and the Vistula, he had not yet become so
perfect a philosopher as to be indifferent to the opinion held of him
by others. He was, indeed, as he retired, as unhappy as a more ordinary
man might have been in the same case. He knew that he was no craven,
that he had given his proofs a score of times. But old deeds and a
foreign reputation availed nothing here. And it was with a deep sense
of vexation and shame that he rode out of the barrack-yard. Why, oh
why! had he been so unlucky as to enter it? He was a man, after all,
and the laughter of the mess-room, the taunts of the bully, burned his
ears.
Nor were his spirits low on his account only. The cruelty of man to
man, the abuse of strength by those who had it, and the pains of those
who had it not, the crookedness of the world in which the weak go to
the wall--thoughts of these things weighed him down. But more, and more
to the purpose, he saw that after what had happened, his chances of
success in the enterprise which had brought him to town, and which was
itself but a means to an end, were lessened. It might not be possible
to pursue that enterprise any farther. This was a mortifying thought,
and accounted for the melancholy face with which he sought the inn, and
supped; now wishing that he had not done this or that, now pondering
how he might turn the flank of a misfortune which threatened to shatter
all his plans.
For if he was anxious to recover the mare, his anxiety did not rest
there. Her recovery was but a step to other things; to that influence
at Morristown which would make him potent for good; to that
consideration which would enable him to expel foolish councils, and
silence that simmering talk of treason which might at any moment boil
up into action and ruin a countryside. But he knew that he could only
get the mare from those who held her by imposing himself upon them; and
to do this after what had happened seemed impossible. The story would
be told, must be told: it would be carried far and wide. Such things
were never hid; and he had come off so ill, as the world viewed things,
he had cut so poor a figure, that after this he could hope for nothing
from his personal influence here or at Morristown. Nothing, unless he
could see himself right at Tralee.
He brooded long over the matter, and at length--but not until after his
meal--he hit on a plan, promising, though distasteful. He called Bale,
and made inquiries through that taciturn man; and next morning he sat
late at his breakfast. He had learned that the garrison used the inn
much, many of the officers calling there for their "morning"; and the
information proved correct. About ten he heard heavy steps in the
stone-paved passage, spurs rang out an arrogant challenge, voices
called for Patsy and Molly, and demanded this or that. By-and-by two
officers, almost lads, sauntered into the room in which he sat, and,
finding him there, moved with a wink and a grin to the window. They
leant out, and he heard them laugh; he knew that they were discussing
him before they turned to the daily fare--the neat ankles of a passing
"colleen," the glancing eyes of the French milliner over the way, or
the dog-fight at the corner. The two remained thus, half eclipsed as
far as the Colonel was concerned, until presently the sallow-faced man
sauntered idly into the room.
He did not see the Colonel at once, but the latter rose and bowed, and
Marsh, a little added colour in his face, returned the salute--with an
indifferent grace. It was clear that, though he had behaved better than
his fellows on the previous day, he had no desire to push the
acquaintance farther.
Colonel John, however, gave him no chance. Still standing, and with a
grave, courteous face, "May I, as a stranger," he said, "trouble you
with a question, sir?"
The two lady-killers at the window heard the words and nudged one
another, with a stifled chuckle at their comrade's predicament. Captain
Marsh, with one eye on them, assented stiffly.
"Is there any one," the Colonel asked, "in Tralee--I fear the chance is
small--who gives fencing lessons?--or who is qualified to do so?"
The Captain's look of surprise yielded to one of pitying comprehension.
He smiled--he could not help it; while the young men drew in their
heads to hear the better.
"Yes," he answered, "there is."
"In the regiment, I presume?"
"He is attached to it temporarily. If you will inquire at the Armoury
for Lemoine, the Maître d'Armes, he will oblige you, I have no doubt.
But----"
"If you please?" the Colonel said politely, seeing that Marsh
hesitated.
"If you are not a skilled swordsman, I fear that it is not one lesson,
or two, or a dozen, will enable you to meet Captain Payton, if you have
such a thing in your mind, sir. He is but little weaker than Lemoine,
and Lemoine is a fair match with a small-sword for any man out of
London. Brady in Dublin, possibly, and perhaps half a dozen in England
are his betters, but----" he stopped abruptly, his ear catching a
snigger at the window. "I need not trouble you with that," he concluded
lamely.
"Still," the Colonel answered simply, "a long reach goes for much, I
have heard, and I am tall."
Captain Marsh looked at him in pity, and he might have put his
compassion into words, but for the young bloods at the window, who, he
knew, would repeat the conversation. He contented himself, therefore,
with saying rather curtly, "I believe it goes some way." And he turned
stiffly to go out.
But the Colonel had a last question to put to him. "At what hour," he
asked, "should I be most likely to find this--Lemoine, at leisure?"
"Lemoine?"
"If you please."
Marsh opened his mouth to answer, but found himself anticipated by one
of the youngsters. "Three in the afternoon is the best time," the lad
said bluntly, speaking over his shoulder. He popped out his head again,
that his face, swollen by his perception of the jest, might not betray
it.
But the Colonel seemed to see nothing. "I thank you," he said, bowing
courteously.
And re-seating himself, as Marsh went out, he finished his breakfast.
The two at the window, after exploding once or twice in an attempt to
stifle their laughter, drew in their heads, and, still red in the face,
marched solemnly past the Colonel, and out of the room. His seat, now
the window was clear, commanded a view of the street, and presently he
saw the two young bloods go by in the company of four or five of their
like. They were gesticulating, nor was there much doubt, from the
laughter with which their tale was received, that they were retailing a
joke of signal humour.
That did not surprise the Colonel. But when the door opened a moment
later, and Marsh came hastily into the room, and with averted face
began to peer about for something, he was surprised.
"Where the devil's that snuff-box!" the sallow-faced man exclaimed.
"Left it somewhere!" Then, looking about him to make sure that the door
was closed. "See, here sir," he said awkwardly, "it's no business of
mine, but for a man who has served as you say you have, you're a d----d
simple fellow. Take my advice and don't go to Lemoine's at three, if
you go at all."
"No?" the Colonel echoed.
"Can't you see they'll all be there to guy you?" Marsh retorted
impatiently. He could not help liking the man, and yet the man seemed a
fool! The next moment, with a hasty nod, he was gone. He had found the
box in his pocket.
Colonel Sullivan smiled, and, after carefully brushing the crumbs from
his breeches, rose from the table. "A good man," he muttered. "Pity he
has not more courage." The next moment he came to attention, for slowly
past the window moved Captain Payton himself, riding Flavia's mare, and
talking with one of the young bloods who walked at his stirrup.
The man and the horse! The Colonel began to understand that something
more than wantonness had inspired Payton's conduct the previous night.
Either he had been privy from the first to the plot to waylay the
horse; or he had bought it cheaply knowing how it had been acquired;
or--a third alternative--it had been placed in his hands, to the end
that his reputation as a fire-eater might protect it. In any event, he
had had an interest in nipping inquiry in the bud; and, learning who
the Colonel was, had acted on the instant, and with considerable
presence of mind.
The Colonel looked thoughtful; and though the day was fine for
Ireland--that is, no more than a small rain was falling--he remained
within doors until five minutes before three o'clock. Bale had employed
the interval in brushing the stains of travel from his master's
clothes, and combing his horseman's wig with particular care; so that
it was a neat and spruce gentleman who at five minutes before three
walked through Tralee, and, attending to the directions he had
received, approached a particular door, a little within the barrack
gate.
Had he glanced up at the windows he would have seen faces at them;
moreover, a suspicious ear might have caught, as he paused on the
threshold, a scurrying of feet, mingled with stifled laughter. But he
did not look up. He did not seem to expect to see more than he found,
when he entered--a great bare room with its floor strewn with sawdust
and its walls adorned here and there by a gaunt trophy of arms. In the
middle of the floor, engaged apparently in weighing one foil against
another, was a stout, dark-complexioned man, whose light and nimble
step, as he advanced to meet his visitor, gave the lie to his weight.
Certainly there came from a half-opened door at the end of the room a
stealthy sound as of rats taking cover. But Colonel John did not look
that way. His whole attention was bent upon the Maître d'Armes, who
bowed low to him. Clicking his heels together, and extending his palms
in the French fashion, "Good-morning, sare," he said, his southern
accent unmistakable. "I make you welcome."
The Colonel returned his salute less elaborately. "The Maître d'Armes
Lemoine?" he said.
"Yes, sare, that is me. At your service!"
"I am a stranger in Tralee, and I have been recommended to apply to
you. You are, I am told, accustomed to give lessons."
"With the small-sword?" the Frenchman answered, with the same gesture
of the open hands. "It is my profession."
"I am desirous of brushing up my knowledge--such as it is."
"A vare good notion," the fencing-master replied, his black beady eyes
twinkling. "Vare good for me. Vare good also for you. Always ready, is
the gentleman's motto; and to make himself ready, his high recreation.
But, doubtless, sare," with a faint smile, "you are proficient, and I
teach you nothing. You come but to sweat a little." An observant person
would have noticed that as he said this he raised his voice above his
usual tone.
"At one time," Colonel John replied with simplicity, "I was fairly
proficient. Then--this happened!" He held out his right hand. "You
see?"
"Ah!" the Frenchman said in a low tone, and he raised his hands. "That
is ogly! That is vare ogly! Can you hold with that?" he added,
inspecting the hand with interest. He was a different man.
"So, so," the Colonel answered cheerfully.
"Not strongly, eh? It is not possible."
"Not very strongly," the Colonel assented. His hand, like Bale's,
lacked two fingers.
Lemoine muttered something under his breath, and looked at the Colonel
with a wrinkled brow. "Tut--tut!" he said, "and how long are you like
that, sare?"
"Seven years."
"Pity! pity!" Lemoine exclaimed. Again he looked at his visitor with
perplexed eyes. After which, "Dam!" he said suddenly.
The Colonel stared.
"It is not right!" the Frenchman continued, frowning. "I--no! Pardon
me, sare, I do not fence with _les estropiés_. That is downright! That
is certain, sare. I do not do it."
If the Colonel had been listening he might have caught the sound of a
warning cough, with a stir, and a subdued murmur of voices--all
proceeding from the direction of the inner room. But he had his back to
the half-opened door and he seemed to be taken up with the
fencing-master's change of tone. "But if," he objected, "I am willing
to pay for an hour's practice?"
"Another day, sare. Another day, if you will."
"But I shall not be here another day. I have but to-day. By-and-by," he
continued with a smile as kindly as it was humorous, "I shall begin to
think that you are afraid to pit yourself against a _manchot_!"
"Oh, la! la!" The Frenchman dismissed the idea with a contemptuous
gesture.
"Do me the favour, then," Colonel John retorted. "If you please?"
Against one of the walls were three chairs arranged in a row. Before
each stood a boot-jack, and beside it a pair of boot-hooks; over it,
fixed in the wall, were two or three pegs for the occupant's wig,
cravat, and cane. The Colonel, without waiting for a further answer,
took his seat on one of the chairs, removed his boots, and then his
coat, vest, and wig, which he hung on the pegs above him.
"And now," he said gaily, as he stood up, "the mask!"
He did not see the change--for he seemed to have no suspicion--but as
he rose, the door of the room behind him became fringed with grinning
faces. Payton, the two youths who had leant from the window of the inn
and who had carried his words, a couple of older officers, half a dozen
subalterns, all were there--and one or two civilians. The more grave
could hardly keep the more hilarious in order. The curtain was ready to
go up on what they promised themselves would be the most absurd scene.
The stranger who fought no duels, yet thought that a lesson or two
would make him a match for a dead-hand like Payton--was ever such a
promising joke conceived? The good feeling, even the respect which the
Colonel had succeeded in awakening for a short time the evening before,
were forgotten in the prospect of such a jest.
The Frenchman made no further demur. He had said what he could, and it
was not his business to quarrel with his best clients. He took his
mask, and proffered a choice of foils to his antagonist, whose figure,
freed from the heavy coat and vest of the day, and the overshadowing
wig, seemed younger and more supple than the Frenchman had expected. "A
pity, a pity!" the latter said to himself. "To have lost, if he ever
was professor, the joy of life!"
"Are you ready?" Colonel John asked.
"At your service, sare," the Maître d'Armes replied--but not with much
heartiness. The two advanced each a foot, they touched swords, then
saluted with that graceful and courteous engagement which to an
ignorant observer is one of the charms of the foil. As they did so, and
steel grated on steel, the eavesdroppers in the inner room ventured
softly from ambush--like rats issuing forth; soon they were all
standing behind the Colonel, the sawdust, and the fencers' stamping
feet as they lunged or gave back, covering the sound of their
movements.
They were on the broad grin when they came out. But it took them less
than a minute to discover that the entertainment was not likely to be
so extravagantly funny as they had hoped. The Colonel was not, strictly
speaking, a tyro; moreover, he had, as he said, a long reach. He was no
match indeed for Lemoine, who touched him twice in the first bout and
might have touched him thrice had he put forth his strength. But he did
nothing absurd. When he dropped his point, therefore, at the end of the
rally, and, turning to take breath came face to face with the gallery
of onlookers, the best-natured of these felt rather foolish. But
Colonel John seemed to find nothing surprising in their presence. He
saluted them courteously with his weapon. "I am afraid I cannot show
you much sport, gentlemen," he said.
One or two muttered something--a good day, or the like. The rest
grinned unmeaningly. Payton said nothing, but, folding his arms with a
superior air, leant, frowning haughtily, against the wall.
"_Parbleu_," said Lemoine, as they rested. "It is a pity. The wrist is
excellent, sare. But the pointing finger is not--is not!"
"I do my best," the Colonel answered, with cheerful resignation. "Shall
we engage again?"
"At your pleasure."
The Frenchman's eye no longer twinkled; his gallantry was on its
mettle. He was grave and severe, fixing his gaze on the Colonel's
attack, and remaining blind to the nods and shrugs and smiles of
amusement of his patrons in the background. Again he touched the
Colonel, and, alas! again; with an ease which, good-natured as he was,
he could not mask.
Colonel John, a little breathed, and perhaps a little chagrined also,
dropped his point. Some one coughed, and another tittered.
"I think he will need another lesson or two," Payton remarked, speaking
ostensibly to one of his companions, but loudly enough for all to hear.
The man whom he addressed made an inaudible answer. The Colonel turned
towards them.
"And--a new hand," Payton added in the same tone.
Even for his henchman the remark was almost too much. But the Colonel,
strange to say--perhaps he really was very simple--seemed to find
nothing offensive in it. On the contrary, he replied to it.
"That was precisely," he said, "what I thought when this"--he indicated
his maimed hand--"happened to me. And I did my best to procure one."
"Did you succeed?" Payton retorted in an insolent tone.
"To some extent," the Colonel replied, in the most matter-of-fact
manner. And he transferred the foil to his left hand.
"Give you four to one," Payton rejoined, "Lemoine hits you twice before
you hit him once."
Colonel John had anticipated some of the things that had happened. But
he had not foreseen this. He was quick to see the use to which he might
put it, and it was only for an instant that he hesitated. Then "Four to
one?" he repeated.
"Five, if you like!" Payton sneered.
"If you will wager," the Colonel said slowly, "if you will wager the
grey mare you were riding this morning, sir----"
Payton uttered an angry oath. "What do you mean?" he said.
"Against ten guineas," Colonel John continued carelessly, bending the
foil against the floor and letting it spring to its length again, "I
will make that wager."
Payton scowled at him. He was aware of the other's interest in the
mare, and suspected, at least, that he had come to town to recover her.
And caution would have had him refuse the snare. But his toadies were
about him, he had long ruled the roast, to retreat went against the
grain; while to suppose that the man had the least chance against
Lemoine was absurd. Yet he hesitated. "What do you know about the
mare?" he said coarsely.
"I have seen her. But of course, if you are afraid to wager her,
sir----"
Payton answered to the spur. "Bah! Afraid?" he cried contemptuously.
"Done, with you!"
"That is settled," the Colonel replied. "I am at your service," he
continued, turning to the Maître d'Armes. "I trust," indicating that he
was going to fence with his left hand, "that this will not embarrass
you?"
"No! But it is interesting, by G--d, it is vare interesting," the
Frenchman replied. "I have encountered _les gauchers_ before, and----"
He did not finish the sentence, but saluting, he assumed an attitude a
little more wary than usual. He bent his knees a trifle lower, and held
his left shoulder somewhat more advanced, as compared with his right.
The foils felt one another, and "Oh, va, va!" he muttered. "I
understand, the droll!"
For half a minute or so the faces of the onlookers reflected only a
mild surprise, mingled with curiosity. But the fencers had done little
more than feel one another's blades, they had certainly not exchanged
more than half a dozen serious passes, before this was changed, before
one face grew longer and another more intent. A man who was no fencer,
and therefore no judge, spoke. A fierce oath silenced him. Another
murmured an exclamation under his breath. A third stooped low with his
hands on his hips that he might not lose a lunge or a parry. For
Payton, his face became slowly a dull red. At length, "Ha!" cried one,
drawing in his breath. And he was right. The Maître d'Armes' button,
sliding under the Colonel's blade, had touched his opponent. At once,
Lemoine sprang back out of danger, the two points dropped, the two
fencers stood back to take breath.
For a few seconds the Colonel's chagrin was plain. He looked, and was,
disappointed. Then he conquered the feeling, and he smiled. "I fear you
are too strong for me," he said.
"Not at all," the Frenchman made answer. "Not at all! It was fortune,
sare. I know not what you were with your right hand, but you are with
the left vare strong, of the first force. It is certain."
Payton, an expert, had been among the earliest to discern, with as much
astonishment as mortification, the Colonel's skill. With a sudden
sinking of the heart, he had foreseen the figure he would cut if
Lemoine were worsted; he had endured a moment of great fear. But at
this success he choked down his apprehensions, and, a sanguine man, he
breathed again. One more hit, one more success on Lemoine's part, and
he had won the wager! But with all he could do he could no longer bear
himself carelessly. Pallid and troubled, he watched, biting his lip;
and though he longed to say something cutting, he could think of
nothing. Nay, if it came to that, he could not trust his voice, and
while he still faltered, seeking for a gibe and finding none, the two
combatants had crossed their foils again. Their tense features, plain
through the masks, as well as their wary movements, made it clear that
they played for a victory of which neither was confident.
By this time the rank and file of the spectators had been reinforced by
the arrival of Marsh; who, discovering a scene so unexpected, and
quickly perceiving that Lemoine was doing his utmost, wondered what
Payton's thoughts were. Apart from the wager, it was clear that if
Lemoine had not met his match, the Captain had; and in the future would
have to mend his manners in respect to one person present. Doubtless
many of those in the room, on whose toes Payton had often trodden, had
the same idea, and felt secret joy, pleased that the bully of the
regiment was like to meet with a reverse and a master.
Whatever their thoughts, a quick rally diverted them, and riveted all
eyes on the fencers. For a moment thrust and parry followed one another
so rapidly that the untrained gaze could not distinguish them or trace
the play. The spectators held their breath, expecting a hit with each
second. But the rally died away again, neither of the players had got
through the other's guard; and now they fell to it more slowly, the
Colonel, a little winded, giving ground, and Lemoine pressing him.
Then, no one saw precisely how it happened, whiff-whaff, Lemoine's
weapon flew from his hand and struck the wall with a whirr and a
jangle. The fencing-master wrung his wrist. "_Sacre!_" he cried,
between his teeth, unable in the moment of surprise to control his
chagrin.
The Colonel touched him with his button for form's sake, then stepped
rapidly to the wall, picked up the foil by the blade, and courteously
returned it to him. Two or three cried "Bravo," but faintly, as barely
comprehending what had happened. The greater part stood silent in sheer
astonishment. For Payton, he remained dumb with mortification and
disgust; and if he had the grace to be thankful for anything, he was
thankful that for the moment attention was diverted from him.
Lemoine, indeed, the person more immediately concerned, had only eyes
for his opponent, whom he regarded with a queer mixture of approval and
vexation. "You have been at Angelo's school in Paris, sare?" he said,
in the tone of one who stated a fact rather than asked a question.
"It is true," the Colonel answered, smiling. "You have guessed it."
"And learned that trick from him?"
"I did. It is of little use except to a left-handed man."
"Yet in play with one not of the first force it succeeds twice out of
three times," Lemoine answered. "Twice out of three times, with the
right hand. _Ma foi!_ I remember it well! I offered the master twenty
guineas, Monsieur, if he would teach it me. But because"--he held out
his palms pathetically--"I was right-handed, he would not."
"I am fortunate," Colonel John answered, bowing, and regarding his
opponent with kind eyes, "in being able to requite your good nature. I
shall be pleased to teach it you for nothing, but not now. Gentlemen,"
he continued, giving up his foil to Lemoine, and removing his mask,
"gentlemen, you will bear me witness, I trust, that I have won the
wager?"
Some nodded, some murmured an affirmative, others turned towards
Payton, who, too deeply chagrined to speak, nodded sullenly. How
willingly at that moment would he have laid the Colonel dead at his
feet, and Lemoine, and the whole crew, friends and enemies! He gulped
something down. "Oh, d--n you!" he said, "I give it you! Take the mare,
she's in the stable!"
At that a brother officer touched his arm, and, disregarding his
gesture of impatience, drew him aside. The intervener seemed to be
reminding him of something; and the Colonel, not inattentive, and
indeed suspicious, caught the name "Asgill" twice repeated. But Payton
was too angry to care for minor consequences, or to regard anything but
how he might most quickly escape from the scene of defeat and the eyes
of those who had witnessed his downfall. He shook off his adviser with
a rough hand.
"What do I care?" he answered with an oath. "He must shoe his own
cattle!" Then, with a poor show of hiding his spite under a cloak of
insouciance, he addressed the Colonel. "The mare is yours," he said.
"You've won her. Much good may she do you!"
And he turned on his heel and went out of the armoury.
CHAPTER VII
BARGAINING
The melancholy which underlies the Celtic temperament finds something
congenial in the shadows that at close of day fall about an old ruin.
On fine summer evenings, and sometimes when the south-wester was
hurling sheets of rain from hill to hill, and the birch-trees were
bending low before its blast, Flavia would seek the round tower that
stood on the ledge beside the waterfall. It was as much as half a mile
from the house, and the track which scaled the broken ground to its
foot was rough. But from the narrow terrace before the wall the eye not
only commanded the valley in all its length, but embraced above one
shoulder a distant view of Brandon Mountain, and above the other a peep
of the Atlantic. Thither, ever since she could remember, she had
carried her dreams and her troubles; there, with the lake stretched
below her, and the house a mere Noah's ark to the eye, she had cooled
her hot brow or dried her tears, dwelt on past glories, or bashfully
thought upon the mysterious possibilities of that love, of that joint
life, of that rosy-hued future, to which the most innocent of maidens
must sometimes turn their minds.
It was perhaps because she often sought the tower at sunset, and he had
noted the fact, that Luke Asgill's steps bore him thither on an evening
three days after the Colonel's departure for Tralee. Asgill had
remained at Morristown, though the girl had not hidden her distaste for
his presence. But to all her remonstrances The McMurrough had replied,
with his usual churlishness, that the man was there on business--did
she want to recover her mare, or did she not? And she had found nothing
more to say. But the most slavish observance on the guest's part, and
some improvement in her brother's conduct--which she might have rightly
attributed to Asgill's presence--had not melted her. She, who had
scarcely masked her reluctance to receive a Protestant kinsman, was not
going to smile on a Protestant of Asgill's past and reputation; on a
man whose father had stood hat in hand before her grandfather, and
whose wealth had been wrung from the sweat of his fellow peasants.
Be that as it might, Asgill did not find her at the tower. But he was
patient; he thought that she might still come, and he waited, sitting
low, with his back against the ruined wall, that she might not see him
until it was too late for her to retreat. By-and-by he heard footsteps
mounting the path; his face reddened, and he made as if he would rise.
Remembering himself, however, he sat down again, with such a look in
his eyes as comes into a dog's when it expects to be beaten. But the
face that rose above the brow was not Flavia's, but her brother's. And
Asgill swore.
The McMurrough understood, grinned, and threw himself on the ground
beside him. "You'll be wishing me in the devil's bowl, I'm thinking,"
he said. "Yet, faith, I'm not so sure--if you're not a fool. For it's
certain I am, you'll never touch so much as the sole of her foot
without me."
"I'm not denying it," the other answered sulkily.
"So it's mighty little use your wishing me away!" The McMurrough
continued, stretching himself at his ease. "You can't get her without
me; nor at all, at all, but on my terms! It would be a fine thing for
you, no doubt, if you could sneak round her behind my back! Don't I
know you'd be all for old Sir Michael's will then, and I might die in a
gutter, for you! But an egg, and an egg's fair sharing."
"Have I said it was any other?" Asgill asked gloomily.
"The old place is mine, and I'm minded to keep it."
"And if any other marries her," Asgill said quietly, "he will want her
rights."
"Well, and do you think," the younger man answered in his ugliest
manner, "that if it weren't for that small fact, Mister Asgill----"
"And the small fact," Asgill struck in, "that before your grandfather
died I lent you a clear five hundred, and I'm to take that, that's my
own already, in quittance of all!"
"Well, and wasn't it that same I'm saying?" The McMurrough retorted.
"If it weren't for that, and the bargain we've struck, d'you think that
I'd be letting my sister and a McMurrough look at the likes of you? No,
not in as many Midsummer Days as are between this and world without
end!"
The look Asgill shot at him would have made a wiser man tremble. But
The McMurrough knew the strength of his position.
"And if I were to tell her?" Asgill said slowly.
"What?"
"That we've made a bargain about her."
"It's the last strand of hope you'd be breaking, my man," the younger
man answered briskly. "For you'd lose my help, and she'd not believe
you--though every priest in Douai backed your word!"
Asgill knew that that was true, and though his face grew dark he
changed his tone. "Enough said," he replied pacifically. "Where'll we
be if we quarrel? You want the old place that is yours by right. And I
want--your sister." He swallowed something as he named her; even his
tone was different. "'Tis one and one. That's all."
"And you're the one who wants the most," James replied cunningly.
"Asgill, my man, you'd give your soul for her, I'm thinking."
"I would."
"You would, I believe. By G--d," he continued, with a leer, "you're
that fond of her I'll have to look to her! Hang me, my friend, if I let
her be alone with you after this. Safe bind, safe find. Women and fruit
are easily bruised."
Asgill rose slowly to his feet. "You scoundrel!" he said in a low tone.
And it was only when The McMurrough, surprised by his movement, turned
to him, that the young man saw that his face was black with
passion--saw, indeed, a face so menacing, that he also sprang to his
feet. "You scoundrel!" Asgill repeated, choking on the words. "If you
say a thing like that again--if you say it again, do you hear?--I'll do
you a mischief. Do you hear? Do you hear?"
"What in the saints' names is the matter with you?" The McMurrough
faltered.
"You're not fit to breathe the air she breathes!" Asgill continued,
with the same ferocity. "Nor am I! But I know it, thank God! And you
don't! Why, man," he continued, still fighting with the passion that
possessed him, "I wouldn't dare to touch the hem of her gown without
her leave! I wouldn't dare to look in her face if she bade me not!
She's as safe with me as if she were an angel in heaven! And you
say--you; but you don't understand!"
"Faith and I don't," The McMurrough answered, his tone much lowered.
"That's true for you!" When it came to a collision of wills the other
was his master.
"No," Asgill repeated. "But don't you talk like that again, or harm
will come of it. I may be what you say--I may be! But I wouldn't lay a
finger on your sister against her will--no, not to be in Paradise!"
"I thought you didn't believe in Paradise," the younger man muttered
sulkily, striving to cover the check he had received.
"There's a Paradise I do believe in," Asgill answered. "But never mind
that." He sat down again.
Strange to relate, he meant what he said. Many changes corrupt loyalty,
and of evil times evil men are the natural fruit. In nearly all
respects Asgill was as unscrupulous a man as the time in which he lived
and the class from which he sprang could show. Following in the steps
of a griping, miserly sire, he had risen to his present station by
oppression and chicanery; by crushing the weak and cajoling the strong.
And he was prepared to maintain his ground by means as vile and a hand
as hard. But he loved; and--strange anomaly, bizarre exception, call it
what you will--somewhere in the depths of his earthly nature a spark of
good survived, and fired him with so pure an ardour that at the least
hint of disrespect to his mistress, at a thought of injury to her, the
whole man rose in arms. It was a strange, yet a common inconsistency;
an inconstancy to evil odd enough to set The McMurrough marvelling,
while common enough to commend itself to a thinking mind.
"Enough of that!" Asgill repeated after a moment's pause. While he did
not fear, it did not suit him to break with his companion. "And,
indeed, it was not of your sister I was thinking when I said where'd we
be if we quarrelled. For it's not I'll be the cuckoo to push you out,
McMurrough, lad. But a man there is will play the old grey bird yet, if
you let him be. And him with the power and all."
"D'you mean John Sullivan?"
"I mean that same, my jewel."
The young man laughed derisively. He had resumed his seat by the
other's side. "Pho!" he said, "you'll be jesting. For the power, it's
but a name. If he were to use, were it but the thin end of it, it would
run into his hand! The boys would rise upon him, and Flavvy'd be the
worst of them. It's in the deep bog he'd be, before he knew where he
was, and never'd he come out, Luke Asgill! Sure, I'm not afraid of
him!"
"You've need to be!" Asgill said soberly.
"Pho! It takes more than him to frighten me! Why, man, he's a soft
thing, if ever there was one! He'll not say boh! to a goose with a
pistol in its hand!"
"And that might be, if you weren't such a fool as ye are, McMurrough!"
Asgill answered. "No, but hear me out, lad!" he continued earnestly. "I
say he might not harm you, if you had not the folly we both know of in
your mind. But I tell you freely I'll be no bonnet to it while he
stands by. 'Tis too dangerous. Not that I believe you are much in
earnest, my lad, whatever others may think--what's your rightful king
to you, or you to him, that you should risk aught? But whether you go
into it out of pure devilment, or just to keep right with your
sister----"
"Which is why you stand bonnet for it," McMurrough struck in, with a
grin.
"That's possible. But I do that, my lad, because I hope naught may come
of it, but just a drinking of healths and the like. So, why should I
play the informer and get myself misliked? But you--you may find
yourself deeper in it than you think, and quicker than you think, while
all the time, if the truth were told"--with a shrewd look at the
other--"I believe you've little more heart for it than myself."
The young man swore a great oath that he was in it body and soul, swore
it by the bones of his ten toes. But he laughed before the words were
out of his mouth. And "I don't believe you," Asgill said coolly. "You
know, and I know, what you were ready to do when the old man was alive,
and if it had paid you properly. And you'd do the same now, if it paid
you now. So what are the wrongs of the old faith to you that you should
risk all for them? Or the rights of the old Irish, for the matter of
that? But this being so, and you but half-hearted, I tell you, it is
too dangerous a game to play for groats. And while John Sullivan's
here, that makes it more dangerous, I'll not play bonnet!"
"What'll he know of it, at all, at all?" James McMurrough asked
contemptuously. And he took up a stone and flung it over the edge.
"With a Spanish ship off the coast," Asgill answered, "and you know who
likely to land, and a preaching, may be, next Sunday, and pike-drill at
the Carraghalin to follow--man, in three days you may have smoking
roof-trees, and 'twill be too late to cry 'Hold!' Stop, I say, stop
while you can, and before you've all Kerry in a flame!"
James McMurrough turned with a start. His face--but the light was
beginning to fail--seemed a shade paler. "How did you know there was
pike-drill?" he cried sharply. "I didn't tell you."
"Hundreds know it."
"But you!" McMurrough retorted. It was plain that he was disagreeably
surprised.
"Did you think I meant nothing when I said I played bonnet to it?"
"You know a heap too much, Luke Asgill!"
"And could make a good market of it?" Asgill answered coolly. "That's
what you're thinking, is it? And it's Heaven's truth I could--if you'd
not a sister."
"And a care for your own skin."
"Faith," Asgill answered with humorous frankness, "and I'm plain with
you, that stands for something in it. For it's a weary way west of
Athlone we are!"
"And the bogs are deep," McMurrough said, with a sidelong look.
"Maybe," Asgill replied, shrugging his shoulders. "But that I've not
that in my mind--I'm giving you proof, James McMurrough. Isn't it I am
praying you to draw out of it in time, for all our sakes? If you mean
nothing but to keep sweet with your sister, you're playing with fire,
and so am I! And we'd best see it's not carried too far, as it's like
to be before we know it. But if you are fool enough to be in earnest,
which I'll never believe, d'you think to overturn the Protestant
Succession with a few foreigners and a hundred of White-boys that
wouldn't stand before the garrison of Tralee? You've neither money nor
men nor powder. Half a dozen broken captains who must starve if there's
no fighting afoot, as many more who've put their souls in the priests'
hands and see with their eyes--these and a few score boys without a
coat to their backs or breeches to their nakedness--d'you think to oust
old Malbrouk with these?"
"He's dead!"
"He's not, my jewel; and if he be he's left more of his kidney. No; if
you must be a fool, be a fool with your eyes open! I tell you old
Ireland had her lesson thirty years back, and if you were Sarsfield
himself, and called on 'em to rise against the Saxon to-day, you'd not
find as many follow you as would take a sessions town!"
"You know a heap of things, Asgill," James McMurrough answered
disdainfully. But he looked his discomfiture.
"I do. And more by token, I know this!" Asgill retorted. He had risen
to depart, and the two stood with their faces close together. "This!"
he repeated, clapping one hand on the other. "If you're a fool, I'm a
bigger! By Heaven, I am! Or what would I be doing? Why, I'd be pressing
you into this, by the Lord, I would, in place of holding you back! And
then when the trouble came, as come it would, and you'd to quit, my
lad, and no choice but to make work for the hangman or beg a crust over
seas, and your sister 'd no more left than she stood up in, and small
choice either, it's then she'd be glad to take Luke Asgill, as she'll
barely look at now! Ay, my lad, I'd win her then, if it were but as the
price of saving your neck! There's naught she'd not do for you, and I'd
ask but herself."
James McMurrough stared at him, confounded. For Asgill spoke with a
bitterness as well as a vehemence that betrayed how little he cared for
the man he addressed--whether he swung or lived, begged or famished.
His tone, his manner, his black look, all made it plain that the scheme
he outlined was no sudden thought, but a plan long conceived, often
studied, and put aside with reluctance. For the listener it was as if,
the steam clearing away, he'd a glimpse of the burning pit of a
volcano, on the shelving side of which he stood. He shuddered, and his
countenance changed. A creature of small vanities and small vices,
utterly worthless, selfish, and cruel, but as weak as water, he quailed
before this glimpse of elemental passion, before this view of a soul
darker than his own. And it was with a poor affectation of defiance
that he made his answer.
"And what for, if it's as easy as you say, don't you do it?" he
stammered.
Asgill groaned. "Because--but there, you wouldn't understand--you
wouldn't understand! Still, if you must be knowing, there's ways of
winning would be worse than losing!"
The McMurrough's confidence began to return. "You're grown scrupulous,"
he sneered, half in jest, half in earnest.
Asgill's answer flung him down again. "You may thank your God I am!" he
replied, with a look that scorched the other.
"Well--well," McMurrough made an effort to mutter--he was thoroughly
disconcerted--"at any rate, I'm obliged to you for your warning."
"You will be obliged to me," Asgill replied, resuming his ordinary
manner, "if you take my warning, as to the big matter; and also as to
your kinsman, John Sullivan. For, I tell you, I'm afraid of him."
"Of him?" James cried.
"Ay, of him. Have a care, have a care, man, or he'll out-general you.
See if he doesn't poison your sister against you! See if he does not
make this hearth too hot for you! As long as he's in the house there's
danger. I know the sort," Asgill continued shrewdly, "and little by
little, you'll see, he'll get possession of her--and it's weak is your
position as it is, my lad."
"Pho!"
"'Tis not 'pho'! And in a week you'll know it, and be as glad to see
his back as I should be to-day!"
"What, a man who has not the spirit to go out with a gentleman!"
"A man you mean," Asgill retorted, showing his greater shrewdness, "who
has the spirit to say that he won't go out!"
"Sure, and I've not much opinion of a man of that kind," McMurrough
exclaimed.
"I have. He'll stand, or I'm mistaken, for more than'll spoil your
sport--and mine," Asgill replied. "I'd not have played the trick about
your sister's mare, good trick as it was, if I'd known he'd be here. It
seemed the height of invention when you hit upon it, and no better way
of commending myself. But I misdoubt it now. Suppose this Colonel
brings her back?"
"But Payton's staunch."
"Ah, I hold Payton, sure enough," Asgill answered, "in the hollow of my
hand, James McMurrough. But there's accident, and there's what not, and
if in place of my restoring the mare to your sister, John Sullivan
restored her--faith, my lad, I'd be laughing on the other side of my
face. And if he told what I'll be bound he knows of you, it would not
suit you either!"
"It would not," The McMurrough replied, with an ugly look which the
gloaming failed to mask. "It would not. But there's small chance of
that."
"Things happen," Asgill answered in a sombre tone. "Faith, my lad, the
man's a danger. D'you consider," he continued, his voice low, "that
he's owner of all--in law; and if he said the word, devil a penny
there'd be for you! And no marriage for your sister but with his good
will. And if Morristown stood as far east of Tralee as it stands
west--glory be to God for it!--I'm thinking he'd say that word, and
there'd be no penny for you, and no marriage for her, but you'd both be
hat in hand to him!"
McMurrough's face showed a shade paler through the dusk.
"What would you have me do?" he muttered.
"Quit this fooling, this plan of a rising, and give him no handle.
That, any way."
"But that won't rid us of him?" McMurrough said, in a low voice.
"True for you. And I'll be thinking about that same. If it is to be
done, it's best done soon--I'm with you there. He's no footing yet, and
if he vanished 'twould be no more than if he'd never come. See the
light below? There! It's gone. Well, that way he'd go, and little more
talk, if 'twere well plotted."
"But how?" The McMurrough asked nervously.
"I will consider," Asgill answered.
CHAPTER VIII
AN AFTER-DINNER GAME
Easiness, the failing of the old-world Irishman, had been Uncle Ulick's
bane through life. It was easiness which had induced him to condone a
baseness in his nephew which he would have been the first to condemn in
a stranger. And again it was easiness which had beguiled him into
standing idle while the brother's influence was creeping like
strangling ivy over the girl's generous nature; while her best
instincts were being withered by ridicule, her generosity abused by
meanness, and her sense of right blunted by such acts of lawlessness as
the seizure of the smuggling vessel. He feared, if he did not know,
that things were going ill. He saw the blighting shadow of Asgill begin
to darken the scene. He believed that The McMurrough, unable to raise
money on the estate--since he had no title--was passing under Asgill's
control. And still he had not raised his voice.
But, above all, it was easiness which had induced Uncle Ulick to
countenance in Flavia those romantic notions, now fast developing into
full-blown plans, which he, who had seen the world in his youth, should
have blasted; which he, who could recall the humiliation of Boyne Water
and the horrors of '90, he, who knew somewhat, if only a little, of the
strength of England and the weakness of Ireland, should have been the
first to nip in the bud.
He had not nipped them. Instead, he had allowed the reckless patriotism
of the young O'Beirnes, the predatory instincts of O'Sullivan Og, the
simulated enthusiasm--for simulated he knew it to be--of the young
McMurrough to guide the politics of the house and to bring it to the
verge of a crisis. The younger generation and their kin, the Sullivans,
the Mahoneys, the O'Beirnes, bred in this remote corner, leading a wild
and almost barbarous life, deriving such sparks of culture as reached
them from foreign sources and through channels wilder than their life,
were no judges of their own weakness or of the power opposed to them.
But he was. He knew, and had known, that it became him, as the Nestor
of the party, to point out the folly of their plans. Instead, he had
bowed to the prevailing feeling. For--be it his excuse--he, too, was
Irish! He, too, felt his heart too large for his bosom when he dwelt on
his country's wrongs. On him, too, though he knew that successful
rebellion was out of the question, Flavia's generous indignation, her
youth, her enthusiasm, wrought powerfully. And at times, in moments of
irritation, he, too, saw red, and dreamed of a last struggle for
freedom.
At this point, at a moment when the crisis, grown visible, could no
longer be masked, had arrived John Sullivan, a man of experience. His
very aspect sobered Uncle Ulick's mind. The latter saw that only a
blacker and more hopeless night could follow the day of vengeance of
which he dreamt; and he sat this evening--while Asgill talked on the
hill with The McMurrough--he sat this evening by the light of the
peat-fire, and was sore troubled. Was it, or was it not, too late? He
occupied the great chair in which Sir Michael had so often conned his
Scudery of winter evenings; but though he filled the chair, he knew
that he had neither the will nor the mastery of its old owner. If it
had not passed already, the thing might easily pass beyond his staying.
Meanwhile, Flavia sat on a stool on the farther side of the
blaze--until supper was on the board they used no other light--brooding
bitterly over the loss of her mare; and he knew that that incident
would not make things more easy. For here was tyranny brought to an
every-day level; oppression that pricked to the quick! The Saxons, who
had risen for a mere poundage against their anointed king, did not
scruple to make slaves, ay, real slaves, of a sister and a more ancient
people! But the cup was full and running over, and they should rue it!
A short day and they would find opposed to them the wrath, the fury,
the despair of a united people and an ancient faith. Something like
this Flavia had been saying to him.
Then silence had fallen. And now he made answer.
"I'm low at heart about it, none the less," he said. "War, my girl, is
a very dreadful thing." He had in his mind the words Colonel John had
used to him on that subject.
"And what is slavery?" she replied. There were red spots in her cheeks,
and her eyes shone.
"But if the yoke be made heavier, my jewel, and not lighter?"
"Then let us die!" she answered. "Let there be an end! For it is time.
But let us die free! As it is, do we not blush to own that we are
Irish? Is not our race the handmaid among nations? Then let us die!
What have we to live for? Our souls they will not leave us, our bodies
they enslave, they take our goods! What is left, Uncle Ulick?" she
continued passionately.
"Just to endure," he said sadly, "till better times. Or what if we make
things worse? Believe me, Flavvy, the last rising----"
"Rising!" she cried. "Rising! Why do you call it that? It was no
rising! It was the English who rose, and we who remained faithful to
our king. It was they who betrayed, and we who paid the penalty for
treason! Rising!"
"Call it what you like, my dear," he answered patiently, "'tis not
forgotten."
"Nor forgiven!" she cried fiercely.
"True! But the spirit is broken in us. If it were not, we should have
risen three years back, when the Scotch rose. There was a chance then.
But for us by ourselves there is no chance and no hope. And in this
little corner what do we know or hear? God forgive us, 'tis only what
comes from France and Spain by the free-traders that we'll be hearing."
"Uncle Ulick!" she answered, looking fixedly at him, "I know where you
get that from! I know who has been talking to you, and who"--her voice
trembled with anger--"has upset the house! It's meet that one who has
left the faith of his fathers, and turned his back on his country in
her trouble--it is well that he should try to make others act as he has
acted, and be false as he has been false! Caring for nothing himself,
cold, and heartless----"
He was about to interrupt her, but on the word the door opened and her
brother and Asgill entered, shaking the moisture from their coats. It
had begun to rain as they returned along the edge of the lake. She
dashed the tears from her eyes and was silent.
"Sure, and you've got a fine colour, my girl," The McMurrough said.
"Any news of the mare?" he continued, as he took the middle of the
hearth and spread his skirts to the blaze, Asgill remaining in the
background. Then, as she shook her head despondently--the presence of
Asgill had driven her into herself--"Bet you a hundred crowns to one,
Asgill," he said, with a grin, "cousin Sullivan don't recover her!"
"I couldn't afford to take it," Asgill answered, smiling. "But if Miss
Flavia had chosen me for her ambassador in place of him that's
gone----"
"She might have had a better, and couldn't have had a worse!" James
said, with a loud laugh. "It's supper-time," he continued, after he had
turned to the fire, and kicked the turfs together, "and late, too!
Where's Darby? There's never anything but waiting in this house. I
suppose you are not waiting for the mare? If you are, it's empty
insides we'll all be having for a week of weeks."
"I'm much afraid of that," Uncle Ulick answered, as the girl rose.
Uncle Ulick could never do anything but fall in with the prevailing
humour.
Flavia paused half-way across the floor and listened. "What's that?"
she asked, raising her hand for silence. "Didn't you hear something? I
thought I heard a horse."
"You didn't hear a mare," her brother retorted, grinning. "In the
meantime, miss, I'd be having you know we're hungry. And----"
He stopped, startled by a knock on the door. The girl hesitated, then
she stepped to it, and threw it wide. Confronting her across the
threshold, looking ghostly against the dark background of the night, a
grey horse threw up its head and, dazzled by the light, started back a
pace--then blithered gently. In a twinkling, before the men had grasped
the truth, Flavia had sprung across the threshold, her arms were round
her favourite's neck, she was covering its soft muzzle with kisses.
"The saints defend us!" Uncle Ulick cried. "It is the mare!"
In his surprise The McMurrough forgot himself, his rôle, the company.
"D--n!" he said. Fortunately Uncle Ulick was engrossed in the scene at
the door, and the girl was outside. Neither heard.
Asgill's mortification, as may be believed, was a hundred times deeper.
But his quicker brain had taken in the thing and its consequences on
the instant. And he stood silent.
"She's found her way back!" The McMurrough exclaimed, recovering
himself.
"Ay, lad, that must be it," Uncle Ulick replied. "She's got loose and
found her way back to her stable, heaven be her bed! And them that took
her are worse by the loss of five pounds!"
"Broken necks to them!" The McMurrough cried viciously.
But at that moment the door, which led to the back of the house and the
offices, opened, and Colonel John stepped in, a smile on his face. He
laid his damp cloak on a bench, hung up his hat and whip, and nodded to
Ulick.
"The Lord save us! is it you've brought her back?" the big man
exclaimed.
The Colonel nodded. "I thought"--he looked towards the open door--"it
would please her to find the creature so!"
The McMurrough stood speechless with mortification. It was Asgill who
stepped forward and spoke. "I give you joy, Colonel Sullivan," he said.
"It is small chance I thought you had."
"I can believe you," the Colonel answered quietly. If he did not know
much he suspected a good deal.
Before more could be said Flavia McMurrough turned herself about and
came in and saw Colonel Sullivan. Her face flamed hotly, as the words
which she had just used about him recurred to her; she could almost
have wished the mare away again, if the obligation went with her. To
owe the mare to him! Yes, she would have preferred to lose the mare!
But the thing was done, and she found words at last; but cold words. "I
am very much obliged to you," she said, "if it was really you who
brought her back."
"It was I who brought her back," he answered quietly, hurt by her words
and manner, but hiding the hurt. "You need not thank me, however; I did
it very willingly."
She felt the meanness of her attitude, and "I do thank you!" she said,
straining at warmth, but with poor success. "I am very grateful to you,
Colonel Sullivan, for the service you have done me."
"And wish another had done it!" he answered, with the faintest tinge of
reproach in his voice. It was a slip from his usual platform, but he
could not deny himself.
"No! But that you would serve another as effectively," she responded.
He did not see her drift. And "What other?" he asked.
"Your country," she replied. And, turning to the door again, she went
out into the night, to see that the mare was safely disposed.
The four men looked at one another, and Uncle Ulick shrugged his
shoulders, as much as to say, "We all know what women are!" Then
feeling a storm in the air, he spoke for the sake of speaking. "Well,
James," he said, "she's got her mare, and you've lost your wager. It's
good-bye to the brandy, anyway. And, faith, it'll be good news for the
little French captain. For you, John Sullivan, I give you joy. You'll
amend us all at this rate, and make Kerry as peaceable as the Four
Courts out of term time! Sure, and I begin to think you're one of the
Little People!" As he spoke he slapped Colonel John on the shoulders.
"About the brandy," The McMurrough said curtly. "Things are by way of
being changed, I'd have you know. And I'm not going to forgo a good
ship----"
"No, no, a bet's a bet," Uncle Ulick interposed hurriedly. "Mr. Asgill
was here, and----"
"I'm with you," Asgill said. "Colonel Sullivan's won the right to have
his way, and it's better so too, and safer. Faith and I'm glad," he
continued cordially, "for there might have been trouble, and now
there'll be none!"
"Well, it's not I'll tell O'Sullivan Og," James McMurrough retorted.
"It's little he'll like to give up the stuff, and, in my opinion," he
added sullenly, "there's more than us will have a word to say to it
before it's given up. But you can judge of that for yourselves."
"Mr. Crosby, of Castlemaine----"
"Oh, d--n! It's little he'll count in a week from this!"
"Still, I've no doubt Colonel Sullivan will arrange it," Asgill
answered smoothly. It was evident that he thought The McMurrough was
saying too much. "Sure he's managed a harder thing."
There was a gleam in his eye and a something sinister in the tone as he
said it; but the words were hearty, and Colonel John made no demur. And
Darby, entering at that moment with a pair of lights in tall
candlesticks--which were silver, but might have been copper--caused a
welcome interruption. A couple of footboys, with slipshod feet and bare
ankles, bore in the meats after him and slapped them down on the table;
at the same moment the O'Beirnes and two or three more of the "family"
entered from the back. Their coming lightened the air. They had to hear
the news, and pass their opinion upon it. Questions were asked: Where'd
the Colonel light on the cratur, and how'd he persuaded the Protestant
rogues--ah, be jabbers, begging his honour's pardon entirely!--how'd he
persuaded the rogues to give her up? Colonel John refused to say, but
laughingly. The O'Beirnes and the others were in a good humour, pleased
that the young mistress had recovered her favourite, and inclined to
look more leniently on the Colonel. "Faith, and it's clear that you're
a Sullivan!" quoth one. "There's none like them to put the comether on
man and beast!"
This was not much to the taste of The McMurrough or of Asgill, who,
inwardly raging, saw the interloper founding a reputation on the ruse
which they had devised for another end. It was abruptly and with an ill
grace that the master of the house cut short the scene and bade all sit
down if they wanted their meat.
"What are we waiting for?" he continued querulously. "Where's the girl?
Stop your jabbering, Martin! And Phelim----"
"Sure, I believe the mare's got from her," Uncle Ulick cried. "I heard
a horse, no farther back than this moment."
"I'm wishing all horses in Purgatory," The McMurrough replied angrily.
"And fools too! Where's the wench gone? Anyway, I'm beginning. You can
bide her time if you like!"
And begin he did. The others, after looking expectantly at the
door--for none dared treat Flavia as her brother treated her--and after
Asgill had said something about waiting for her, fell to also, one by
one. Presently the younger of the slipshod footboys let fall a
dish--fortunately the whole service was of pewter, so no harm was
done--and was cursed for awkwardness. Where was Darby? He also had
vanished.
The claret began to go round in the old Spanish silver jug--for no
house in the west lacked Bordeaux in those days; it was called in
London coffee-houses Irish wine. Still, neither Flavia nor the butler
returned, and many were the glances cast at the door. By-and-by the
Colonel--who felt that a cloud hung over the board, as over his own
spirits--saw, or fancied that he saw, an odd thing. The door--that
which led to the back of the house--opened, as if the draught moved it;
it remained open a space, then in a silent, ghostly fashion it fell-to
again. The Colonel laid down his knife, and Uncle Ulick, whose eyes had
followed his, crossed himself. "That's not lucky," the big man said,
his face troubled. "The saints send it's not the white horse of the
O'Donoghues has whisked her off!"
"Don't be for saying such unchancy things, Mr. Sullivan!" Phelim
answered, with a shiver. And he, too, crossed himself. "What was it, at
all, at all?"
"The door opened without a hand," Uncle Ulick explained. "I'm fearing
there's something amiss."
"Not with this salmon," James McMurrough struck in contemptuously. "Eat
your supper and leave those tales to the women!"
Uncle Ulick made no reply, and a moment later Darby entered, slid round
the table to Uncle Ulick's side, and touched his shoulder. Whether he
whispered a word or not Colonel John did not observe, but forthwith the
big man rose and went out.
This time it was James McMurrough who laid down his knife. "What in the
name of the Evil One is it?" he cried, in a temper. "Can't a man eat
his meat in peace, but all the world must be tramping the floor?"
"Oh, whisht! whisht!" Darby muttered, in a peculiar tone.
James leapt up. He was too angry to take a hint. "You old fool!" he
cried, heedless of Asgill's hand, which was plucking at his skirts.
"What is it? What do you mean with your 'whishts' and your nods?
What----"
But the old butler had turned his back on his master, and gone out in a
panic. Fortunately at this moment Flavia showed at the door. "The
fault's mine, James," she said, in a clear, loud tone. And the Colonel
saw that her colour was high and her eyes were dancing. "I couldn't
bear to leave her at once, the darling! That was it; and besides, I
took a fear----"
"The pastern's right enough," Uncle Ulick struck in, entering behind
her and closing the door with the air of a big man who does not mean to
be trifled with. "Sound as your own light foot, my jewel, and sounder
than James's head! Be easy, be easy, lad," he continued, with a trifle
of sternness. "Sure, you're spoiling other men's meat, and forgetting
the Colonel's present, not to speak of Mr. Asgill, that, being a
Justice, is not used to our Kerry tantrums!"
Possibly this last was a hint, cunningly veiled. At any rate, The
McMurrough took his seat again with a better grace than usual, and
Asgill made haste to take up the talk. The Colonel reflected; nor did
he find it the least odd thing that Flavia, who had been so full of
distress at the loss of her mare, said little of the rescuer's
adventures, nor much of the mare herself. Yet the girl's eyes sparkled,
and her whole aspect was changed in the last hour. She seemed, as far
as he could judge, to be in a state of the utmost excitement; she had
shaken off the timidity which her brother's temper too often imposed on
her, and with it her reticence and her shyness before strangers. All
the Irish humour in her fluttered to the surface, and her tongue ran
with an incredible gaiety. Uncle Ulick, the O'Beirnes, the buckeens,
laughed frank admiration--sometimes at remarks which the Colonel could
not understand, sometimes at more obvious witticisms. Asgill was her
slave. Darby, with the familiarity of the old servant, chuckled openly
and rubbed his hands at her sallies; the footboys guffawed in corners,
and more than one dish rolled on the floor without drawing down a
rebuke. Even her brother regarded her with unwilling amusement, and did
not always refrain from applause.
Could all this, could the change in her spring from the recovery of the
mare, of which she said scarce a word? Colonel John could hardly
believe it; and, indeed, if such were the case, she was ungrateful.
For, for the recoverer of her favourite she had no words, and scarce a
look. Rather, it seemed to him that there must be two Flavias: the one
shy, modest, and, where her country was not assailed, of a reserve
beyond reproach; the other Flavia, a shoot of the old tree, a hoyden, a
castback to Sir Michael's wild youth and the gay days of the
Restoration Court.
He listened to her drollery, her ringing laugh, her arch sayings with
some blame, but more admiration. After all, what had he a right to
expect in this remote corner of the land, cut off by twenty leagues of
bog and mountain from modern refinement, culture, thought, in this old
tribal house, the last refuge of a proscribed faith and a hated race?
Surely, no more than he found--nay, not a tithe of that he found. For,
listening with a kindlier heart--even he, hurt by her neglect, had
judged her for a while too harshly--he discerned that at her wildest
and loudest, in the act of bandying cryptic jests with the buckeens,
and uttering much that was thoughtless--Flavia did not suffer one light
or unmaidenly word to pass her lips.
He gave her credit for that; and in the act he learned, with a
reflection on his stupidity, that there was method in her madness; ay,
and meaning--but he had not hitherto held the key to it--in her jests.
On a sudden--he saw now that this was the climax to which she had been
leading up--she sprang to her feet, carried away by her excitement.
Erect, defiant--nay, triumphant--she flung her handkerchief into the
middle of the table, strewn as it was with a medley of glasses and
flasks and disordered dishes.
"Who loves me, follows me!" she cried, a queer exultation in her
tone--"across the water!"
They pounced on the kerchief, like dogs let loose from the leash--every
man but the astonished Colonel. For an instant the place was a
pandemonium, a Babel. In a twinkling the kerchief was torn, amid cries
of the wildest enthusiasm, into as many fragments as there were men
round the table.
"All!--all!" she cried, still standing erect, and hounding them on with
the magic of her voice, while her beautiful face blazed with
excitement. "All--but you?"--with which, for the briefest space, she
turned to Colonel John. Her eyes met his. They asked him a defiant
question: they challenged the answer.
"I do not understand," he replied, taken by surprise. But indeed he did
understand only too well. "Is it a game?"
The men were pinning the white shreds on their coats above their
hearts--even her brother, obedient for once. But at that word they
turned as one man to him, turned flushed, frowning faces and passionate
eyes on him. But Flavia was before them; excitement had carried her
farther than she had meant to go, yet prudence had not quite left her.
"Yes, a game!" she cried, laughing, a note too high. "Don't you know
the Lady's Kerchief?"
"No," he said soberly; he was even a little out of countenance.
"Then no more of it," Uncle Ulick cried, interposing, with a ring of
authority in his voice. "For my part, I'm for bed. Bed! We're all
children, bedad, and as fond of a frolic! And I'm thinking I'm the
worst. The lights, Darby, the lights, and pleasant dreams to you! After
all--
The spoke that is to-day on top,
To-morrow's on the ground.
Sure, and I'll swear that's true!"
"And no treason!" The McMurrough answered him, with a grin. "Eh,
Asgill?"
And so between them they removed Colonel John's last doubt--if he had
one.
CHAPTER IX
EARLY RISERS
Colonel Sullivan had returned from Tralee in high spirits. He had
succeeded beyond his hopes in the task he had set himself to perform,
and he counted with confidence on gaining by that means a sound footing
and a firm influence in the house. But as he sat in his room that
evening, staring at the rushlight, with the night silent about him, he
feared, nay, he almost knew, that his success came too late. Something
had happened behind his back, some crisis, some event; and that which
he had done was as if it were undone, and that which he had gained
availed nothing.
It was plain--whatever was obscure--that the play of the Lady's
Kerchief was a cover for matter more serious. Those who had taken part
in it had scarcely deigned to pretend. Colonel John had been duller
than the dullest if he had not seen in the white shreds for which the
men had scrambled, and which they had affixed with passion to their
coats, the white Cockade of the Pretender; or found in Uncle Ulick's
couplet--uttered while in a careless fashion he affected disguise,
The spoke that is to-day on top,
To-morrow's on the ground,
one of those catchwords which suited the taste of the day, and served
at once for a passport and a sentiment.
But Colonel John knew that many a word was said over the claret which
meant less than nothing next morning; and that many a fair hand passed
the wine across the water-bowl--the very movement did honour to a
shapely arm--without its owner having the least intention of
endangering those she loved for the sake of the King across the Water.
He knew that a fallen cause has ever two sets of devotees--those who
talk and those who act: the many, in other words, who sing the songs
and drink the toasts, and delight in the badges of treason--in the
sucked orange, the sprig of oak, the knot of white ribbon, the
fir-planting; and the few who mean more than they say, who mean, and
sternly, to be presently the Spoke on Top.
Consequently he knew that he might be wrong in dotting the i's and
crossing the t's of the scene which he had witnessed. Such a scene
might mean no more than a burst of high spirits: in nine cases out of
ten it would not be followed by action, nor import more than that
singing of "'Twas a' for our rightful King!" which had startled him on
his arrival. In that house, in the wilds of Kerry, sheer loyalty could
not be expected. The wrongs of the nation were too recent, the high
seas were too near, the wild geese came and went too freely--wild geese
of another feather than his. Such outbursts as he had witnessed were no
more than the safety-valves of outraged pride. The ease with which
England had put down the Scotch rising a few years before--to say
nothing of the fate of those who had taken part in it--must deter all
reasonable men, whatever their race or creed, from entering on an
undertaking beyond doubt more hopeless.
For Ireland was not as Scotland. Scarcely a generation had passed since
she had felt the full weight of the conqueror's hand; and if she
possessed, in place of the Highland mountains, vast stretches of
uncharted bog and lake, to say nothing of a thousand obscure inlets,
she had neither the unbroken clan-feeling nor the unbroken national
spirit of the sister country. Scotland was still homogeneous, she still
counted for a kingdom, her soil was still owned by her own lords and
worked by her own peasants. She had suffered no massacre of Drogheda or
of Wexford; no Boyne, no Aghrim, no vast and repeated confiscations.
Whereas Ireland, a partitioned and subject land, which had suffered
during the last two centuries horrors unspeakable, still cowered like a
whipped dog before its master, and was as little likely to rebel.
Colonel John leant upon such arguments; and, disappointed and alarmed
as he was by Flavia's behaviour, he told himself that nothing was
seriously meant, and that with the morning light things would look more
cheerful.
But when he awoke, after a feverish and disturbed sleep, the faint
grisly dawn that entered the room was not of a character to inspirit.
He turned on his side to sleep again if he could; but in the act, he
discovered that the curtain which he had drawn across the window was
withdrawn. He could discern the dark mass of his clothes piled on a
chair, of his hat clinging like some black bat to the whitewashed wall,
of his valise and saddle-bags in the corner--finally of a stout figure
bent, listening, at the door.
An old campaigner, Colonel John was not easily surprised. Repressing
the exclamation on his lips, he rose to his elbow and waited until the
figure at the door straightened itself, and, turning towards him,
became recognisable as Uncle Ulick. The big man crossed the floor, saw
that he was awake, and, finger on lip, enjoined silence. Then he
pointed to the clothes on the chair, and brought his mouth near the
Colonel's ear.
"The back-door!" he whispered. "Under the yews in the garden! Come!"
And leaving the Colonel staring and mystified, he crept from the room
with a stealth and lightness remarkable in one so big. The door closed,
the latch fell, and made no sound.
Colonel John reflected that Uncle Ulick was no romantic young person to
play at mystery for effect. There was a call for secrecy therefore. The
O'Beirnes slept in a room divided from his only by a thin partition;
and to gain the stairs he must pass the doors of other chambers, all
inhabited. As softly as he could, and as quickly, he dressed himself.
He took his boots in his hand; his sword, perhaps from old habit, under
his other arm; in this guise he crept from the room and down the dusky
staircase. Old Darby and an underling were snoring in the cub, which in
the daytime passed for a pantry, and both by day and night gave forth a
smell of sour corks and mice: but Colonel John slid by the open door as
noiselessly as a shadow, found the back-door--which led to the
fold-yard--on the latch, and stepped out into the cool, dark morning,
into the sobering freshness and the clean, rain-washed air.
The grass was still grey-hued, the world still colourless and
mysterious, the house a long black bulk against a slowly lightening
sky. Only the earliest sparrows were twittering; in the trees only the
most wakeful rooks were uttering tentative caws. The outburst of joy
and life and music which would attend the sun's rising was not yet.
Colonel John paused on the doorstep to draw on his boots, then he
picked his way delicately to the leather-hung wicket that broke the
hedge which served for a fence to the garden. On the right of the
wicket a row of tall Florence yews, set within the hedge, screened the
pleasaunce, such as it was, from the house. Under the lee of these he
found Uncle Ulick striding to and fro and biting his finger-nails in
his impatience.
He wrung the Colonel's hand and looked into his face. "You'll do me the
justice, John Sullivan," he said, with a touch of passion, "that never
in my life have I been overhasty? Eh? Will you do me that?"
"Certainly, Ulick," Colonel John answered, wondering much what was
coming.
"And that I'm no coward, where it's not a question of trouble?"
"I'll do you that justice, too," the Colonel answered. He smiled at the
reservation.
The big man did not smile. "Then you'll take my word for it," he
replied, "that I'm not speaking idly when I say you must go."
Colonel John lifted his eyebrows. "Go?" he answered. "Do you mean now?"
"Ay, now, or before noon!" Uncle Ulick retorted. "More by token," he
continued with bitterness, "it's not that you might go on the instant
that I've brought you out of our own house as if we were a couple of
rapparees or horse-thieves, but that you might hear it from me who wish
you well, and would warn you not to say nay--instead of from those who
may be 'll not put it so kindly, nor be so wishful for you to be taking
the warning they give."
"Is it Flavia you're meaning?"
"No; and don't you be thinking it," Uncle Ulick replied with a touch of
heat. "Nor the least bit of it, John Sullivan! The girl, God bless her,
is as honest as the day, if----"
"If she's not very wise!" Colonel John said, smiling.
"You may put it that way if you please. For the matter of that, you'll
be thinking she's not the only fool at Morristown, nor the oldest, nor
the biggest. And you'll be right, more shame to me that I didn't use
the prudent tongue to them always, and they young! But the blood must
run slow, and the breast be cold, that sees the way the Saxons are
mocking us, and locks the tongue in silence. And sure, there's no more
to be said, but just this--that there's those here you'll be wise not
to see! And you'll get a hint to that end before the sun's high."
"And you'd have me take it?"
"You'd be mad not to take it!" Uncle Ulick replied, frowning. "Isn't it
for that I'm out of my warm bed, and the mist not off the lake?"
"You'd have me give way to them and go?"
"Faith, and I would!"
"Would you do that same yourself, Ulick?"
"For certain."
"And be sorry for it afterwards!"
"Not the least taste in life!" Uncle Ulick asseverated.
"And be sorry for it afterwards," Colonel John repeated quietly.
"Kinsman, come here," he continued with unusual gravity. And taking
Uncle Ulick by the arm he led him to the end of the garden, where the
walk looked on the lake and bore some likeness to a roughly made
terrace. Pausing where the black masses of the Florence yews, most
funereal of trees, still sheltered their forms from the house, he stood
silent. The mist moved slowly on the surface of the water and crawled
about their feet. But the sky to eastward was growing red, the lower
clouds were flushed with rose-colour, the higher hills were warm with
the coming of the sun. Here and there on the slopes which faced them a
cotter's hovel stood solitary in its potato patch or its plot of oats.
In more than one place three or four cottages made up a tiny hamlet,
from which the smoke would presently rise. To English eyes, to our
eyes, the scene, these oases in the limitless brown of the bog, had
been wild and rude; but to Colonel John, long familiar with the
treeless plains of Poland and the frozen flats of Lithuania, it spoke
of home, it spoke of peace and safety and comfort, and even of a narrow
plenty. The soft Irish air lapped it, the distances were mellow,
memories of boyhood rounded off all that was unsightly or cold.
He pointed here and there with his hand; and with seeming irrelevance.
"You'd be sorry afterwards," he said, "for you'd think of this, Ulick.
God forbid that I should say there are no things for which even this
should be sacrificed. God forbid I should deny that even for this too
high a price may be paid. But if you play this away in wantonness--if
that which you are all planning come about, and you fail, as they
failed in Scotland three years back, and as you will, as you must fail
here--it is of this, it is of the women and the children under these
roofs that will go up in smoke, that you'll be thinking, Ulick, at the
last! Believe me or not, this is the last thing you'll see! It's to a
burden as well as an honour you're born where men doff caps to you; and
it's that burden will lie the black weight on your soul at the last.
There's old Darby and O'Sullivan Og's wife--and Pat Mahony and Judy
Mahony's four sons--and Mick Sullivan and Tim and Luke the Lamiter--and
the three Sullivans at the landing, and Phil the crowder, and the seven
tenants at Killabogue--it's of them, it's of them"--as he spoke his
finger moved from hovel to hovel--"and their like I'm thinking. You cry
them and they follow, for they're your folks born. But what do they
know of England or England's strength, or what is against them, or the
certain end? They think, poor souls, because they land their spirits
and pay no dues, and the Justices look the other way, and a bailiffs
life here, if he'd a writ, would be no more worth than a woodcock's,
and the laws, bad and good, go for naught--they think the black
Protestants are afraid of them! While you and I, you and I know,
Ulick," he continued, dropping his voice, "'tis because we lie so poor
and distant and small, they give no heed to us! We know! And that's our
burden."
The big man's face worked. He threw out his arms. "God help us!" he
cried.
"He will, in His day! I tell you again, as I told you the hour I came,
I, who have followed the wars for twenty years, there is no deed that
has not its reward when the time is ripe, nor a cold hearth that is not
paid for a hundredfold!"
Uncle Ulick looked sombrely over the lake. "I shall never see it," he
said. "Never, never! And that's hard. Notwithstanding, I'll do what I
can to quiet them--if it be not too late."
"Too late?"
"Ay, too late, John. But anyway, I'll be minding what you say. On the
other hand, you must go, and this very day that ever is."
"There are some here that I must not be seeing?" Colonel John said
shrewdly.
"That's it."
"And if I do not go, Ulick? What then, man?"
"Whisht! Whisht!" the big man cried in unmistakable distress. "Don't
say the word! Don't say the word, John, dear."
"But I must say it," Colonel John answered, smiling. "To be plain,
Ulick, here I am and here I stay. They wish me gone because I am in the
way of their plans. Well, and can you give me a better reason for
staying?"
What argument Ulick would have used, what he was opening his mouth to
say, remains unknown. Before he could reply the murmur of a voice near
at hand startled them both. Uncle Ulick's face fell, and the two turned
with a single movement to see who came.
They discerned, in the shadow of the wall of yew, two men, who had just
passed through the wicket into the garden.
The strangers saw them at the same moment, and were equally taken by
surprise. The foremost of the two, a sturdy, weather-beaten man, with a
square, stern face and a look of power, laid his hand on his
cutlass--he wore a broad blade in place of the usual rapier. The other,
whom every line of his shaven face, as well as his dress, proclaimed a
priest--and perhaps more than a priest--crossed himself, and muttered
something to his companion. Then he came forward.
"You take the air early, gentlemen," he said, the French accent very
plain in his speech, "as we do. If I mistake not," he continued,
looking with an easy smile at Colonel John, "your Protestant kinsman,
of whom you told me, Mr. Sullivan? I did not look to meet you, Colonel
Sullivan; but I do not doubt you are man of the world enough to excuse,
if you cannot approve, the presence of the shepherd among his sheep.
The law forbids, but----" still smiling, he finished the sentence with
a gesture in the air.
"I approve all men," Colonel John answered quietly, "who are in their
duty, father."
"But wool and wine that pay no duty?" the priest replied, turning with
a humorous look to his companion, who stood beside him unsmiling. "I'm
not sure that Colonel Sullivan extends the same indulgence to
free-traders, Captain Machin."
Colonel John looked closely at the man thus brought to his notice. Then
he raised his hat courteously. "Sir," he said, "the guests of the
Sullivans, whoever they be, are sacred to the Sullivans."
Uncle Ulick's eyes had met the priest's, as eyes meet in a moment of
suspense. At this he drew a deep breath of relief. "Well said," he
muttered. "Bedad, it is something to have seen the world!"
"You have served under the King of Sweden, I believe?" the ecclesiastic
continued, addressing Colonel John with a polite air. He held a book of
offices in his hand, as if his purpose in the garden had been merely to
read the service.
"Yes."
"A great school of war, I am told?"
"It may be called so. But I interrupt you, father, and with your
permission I will bid you good-morning. Doubtless we shall meet again."
"At breakfast, I trust," the ecclesiastic answered, with a certain air
of intention. Then he bowed and they returned it, and the two pairs
gave place to one another with ceremony, Colonel John and Ulick passing
out through the garden wicket, while the strangers moved on towards the
walk which looked over the lake. Here they began to pace up and down.
With his hand on the house door Uncle Ulick made a last attempt. "For
God's sake, be easy and go," he muttered, his voice unsteady, his eyes
fixed on the other's, as if he would read his mind. "Leave us to our
fate! You cannot save us--you see what you see, you know what it means.
And for what I know, you know the man. You'll but make our end the
blacker."
"And the girl?"
Uncle Ulick tossed his hands in the air. "God help her!" he said.
"Shall not we too help her?"
"We cannot."
"It may be. Still, let us do our duty," Colonel John replied. He was
very grave. Things were worse, the plot was thicker, than he had
feared.
Uncle Ulick groaned. "You'll not be bidden?" he said.
"Not by an angel," Colonel John answered steadfastly. "And I've seen
none this morning, but only a good man whose one fault in life is to
answer to all men 'Sure, and I will!'"
Uncle Ulick started as if the words stung him. "You make a jest of it!"
he said. "Heaven send we do not sorrow for your wilfulness. For my
part, I've small hope of that same." He opened the door, and, turning
his back upon his companion, went heavily, and without any attempt at
concealment, past the pantry and up the stairs to his room. Colonel
John heard him slip the bolt, and, bearing a heavy heart himself, he
knew that the big man was gone to his prayers.
To answer "Yes" to all comers and all demands is doubtless, in the
language of Uncle Ulick, a mighty convenience, and a great softener of
the angles of life. But a time comes to the most easy when he must
answer "No," or go open-eyed to ruin. Then he finds that from long
disuse the word will not shape itself; or if uttered, it is taken for
naught. That time had come for Uncle Ulick. Years ago his age and
experience had sufficed to curb the hot blood about him. But he had
been too easy to dictate while he might; he had let the reins fall from
his hands; and to-day he must go the young folks' way--ay, go, seeing
all too plainly the end of it.
It was not his fate only. Many good men in the '15 and the '45, ay, and
in the war of La Vendée, went out against their better judgment, borne
along by the energy of more vehement spirits--went out, aware, as they
rode down the avenue, and looked back at the old house, that they would
see it no more; that never again except in dreams would they mount from
the horse-block which their grandsires' feet had hollowed, walk through
the coverts which their fathers had planted, or see the faces of the
aged serving-men who had taught their childish fingers to hold the
reins and level the fowling-piece!
But Colonel John was of another kind and another mind. Often in the
Swedish wars had he seen a fair country-side changed in one day into a
waste, from the recesses of which naked creatures with wolfish eyes
stole out at night, maddened by their wrongs, to wreak a horrid
vengeance on the passing soldier. He knew that the fairest parts of
Ireland had undergone such a fate within living memory; and how often
before, God and her dark annals alone could tell! Therefore he was
firmly minded, as firmly minded as one man could be, that not again
should the corner of Kerry under his eyes, the corner he loved, the
corner entrusted to him, suffer that fate.
Yet when he descended to breakfast, his face told no tale of his
thoughts, and he greeted with a smile the unusual brightness of the
morning. As he stood at the door, that looked on the courtyard, he had
a laughing word for the beggars--never were beggars lacking at the door
of Morristown. Nor as he sunned himself and inhaled with enjoyment the
freshness of the air did any sign escape him that he marked a change.
But he was not blind. Among the cripples and vagrants who lounged about
the entrance he detected six or eight ragged fellows whose sunburnt
faces were new to him and who certainly were not cripples. In the
doorway of one of the two towers that fronted him across the court
stood O'Sullivan Og, whittling a stick and chatting with a sturdy idler
in seafaring clothes. The Colonel could not give his reason, but he had
not looked twice at these two before he got a notion that there was
more in that tower this morning than the old ploughs and the broken
boat which commonly filled the ground floor, or the grain which was
stored above. Powder? Treasure? He could not say which or what; but he
felt that the open door was a mask that deceived no one.
And there was a stir, there was a bustle in the court; a sparkle in the
eyes of some as they glanced slyly and under their lashes at the house,
a lilt in the tread of others as they stepped to and fro. He divined
that hands would fly to caubeens and knees seek the ground if a certain
face showed at a window: moreover, that that at which he merely guessed
was no secret to the barefooted colleens who fed the pigs, or the
barelegged urchins who carried the potatoes. Some strange change had
fallen upon Morristown, and imbued it with life and hope and movement.
He was weighing this when he caught the sound of voices in the house,
and he turned about and entered. The priest and Captain Machin had
descended and were standing with Uncle Ulick warming themselves before
the wood fire. The McMurrough, the O'Beirnes, and two or three
strangers--grim-looking men who had followed, a glance told him, the
trade he had followed--formed a group a little apart, yet near enough
to be addressed. Asgill was not present, nor Flavia.
"Good-morning, again," Colonel John said. And he bowed.
"With all my heart, Colonel Sullivan," the priest answered cordially.
And Colonel John saw that he had guessed aright: the speaker no longer
took the trouble to hide his episcopal cross and chain, or the ring on
his finger. There was an increase of dignity, too, in his manner. His
very cordiality seemed a condescension.
Captain Machin bowed silently, while The McMurrough and the O'Beirnes
looked darkly at the Colonel. They did not understand: it was plain
that they were not in the secret of the morning encounter.
"I see O'Sullivan Og is here," the Colonel said, addressing Uncle
Ulick. "That will be very convenient."
"Convenient?" Uncle Ulick repeated, looking blank.
"We can give him the orders as to the Frenchman's cargo," the Colonel
said calmly.
Uncle Ulick winced. "Ay, to be sure! To be sure, lad," he answered. But
he rubbed his head, like a man in a difficulty.
The Bishop seemed to be going to ask a question. Before he could speak,
however, Flavia came tripping down the stairs, a gay song on her lips.
Half way down, the song, light and sweet as a bird's, came to a sudden
end.
"I am afraid I am late!" she said. And then--as the Colonel
supposed--she saw that more than the family party were assembled: that
the Bishop and Captain Machin were there also, and the strangers--and,
above all, that he was there. She descended the last three stairs
silently, but with a heightened colour, moved proudly into the middle
of the group, and curtsied before the ecclesiastic till her knee
touched the floor.
He gave her his hand to kiss, with a smile and a murmured blessing. She
rose with sparkling eyes.
"It is a good morning!" she said, as one who having done her duty could
be cheerful.
"It is a very fine morning," the Bishop answered in the same spirit.
"The sun shines on us, as we would have him shine. And after breakfast,
with your leave, my daughter, and your brother's leave, we will hold a
little council. What say you, Colonel Sullivan?" he continued, turning
to the Colonel. "A family council? Will you join us?"
The McMurrough uttered an exclamation, so unexpected and strident, that
the words were not articulate. But the Bishop understood them, for, as
all turned to him, "Nay," he said, "it shall be for the Colonel to say.
But it's ill arguing with a fasting man," he continued genially, "and
by your leave we will return to the matter after breakfast!"
"I am not for argument at all," Captain Machin said. It was the first
time he had spoken.
CHAPTER X
A COUNCIL OF WAR
The meal had been eaten, stolidly by some, by others with a poor
appetite, by Colonel John with a thoughtful face. Two men of family,
but broken fortunes, old Sir Donny McCarthy of Dingle, and Timothy
Burke of Maamtrasna, had joined the party--under the rose as it were,
and neither giving nor receiving a welcome. Now old Darby kept the door
and the Bishop the hearth; whence, standing with his back to the
glowing peat, he could address his audience with eye and voice. The
others, risen from the table, had placed themselves here and there,
Flavia near the Bishop and on his right hand, Captain Machin on his
left; The McMurrough, the two O'Beirnes, Sir Donny and Timothy Burke,
with the other strangers, sat in a knot by the window. Uncle Ulick with
Colonel Sullivan formed a third group. The courtyard, visible through
the windows, seethed with an ever-increasing crew of peasantry,
frieze-coated or half bare, who whooped and jabbered, now about one of
their number, now about another. Among them moved some ten or twelve
men of another kidney--seamen with ear-rings and pigtails, bronzed
faces and gaudy kerchiefs, who listened but idly, and with the contempt
of the mercenary, but whose eyes seldom left the window behind which
the conference sat, and whose hands were never far from the hilt of a
cutlass or the butt of a pistol. The sun shone on the crowd and the
court, and now and then those within the house caught through the
gateway the shimmer of the lake beyond. The Irish air was soft, the hum
of voices cheerful; nor could anything less like a secret council, less
like a meeting of men about to commit themselves to a dark and
dangerous enterprise, be well imagined.
But no one was deceived. The courage, the enthusiasm, that danced in
Flavia's eyes were reflected more darkly and more furtively in a score
of faces, within the room and without. To enjoy one hour of triumph, to
wreak upon the cursed English a tithe of the wrongs, a tithe of the
insults, that their country had suffered, to be the spoke on top, were
it but for a day, to die for Ireland if they could not live for her, to
avenge her daughters outraged and her sons beggared--could man own
Irish blood, and an Irish name, and not rise at the call?
If there were such a man, oh! cowardly, mean, and miserable he seemed
to Flavia McMurrough. And much she marvelled at the patience, the
consideration, the arguments which the silver-tongued ecclesiastic
brought to bear upon him. She longed, with a face glowing with
indignation, to disown him--in word and deed. She longed to denounce
him, to defy him, to bid him begone, and do his worst.
But she was a young plotter, and he who spoke from the middle of the
hearth with so much patience and forbearance, was an old one, proved by
years of peril, and tempered by a score of failures; a man long
accustomed to play with the lives and fortunes of men. He knew better
than she what was at stake to win or lose; nor was it without
forethought that he had determined to risk much to gain Colonel
Sullivan. The same far-sight and decision which had led him to take a
bold course on meeting the Colonel in the garden, now lent him patience
to win, if win he might, one whose value in the enterprise on which
they were embarking he set at the highest. To his mind, and to Machin's
mind, the other men in the room, ay, and the woman, so fair and
enthusiastic, were but tools to be used, puppets to be danced. But this
man--for among soldiers of fortune there is a camaraderie, so that they
are known to one another by repute from the Baltic to Cadiz--was a
coadjutor to be gained. He was one whose experience, joined with an
Irish name, might well avail them much.
Colonel John might refuse, he might be obdurate. But in that event the
Bishop's mind was made up. Flavia supposed that if the Colonel held
out, he would be dismissed; that he would go out from among them a
cowardly, mean, miserable creature--and so an end. But the speaker made
no mistake. He had chosen to grip the nettle danger, and he knew that
gentle measures were no longer possible. He must enlist Colonel
Sullivan, or--but it has been said that he was one hardened by long
custom, and no novice in dealing with the lives of men.
"If it be a question only of the chances," he said, after some beating
about the bush, "if I am right in supposing that it is only that which
withholds Colonel Sullivan from joining us----"
"I do not say it is," Colonel John replied very gravely. "Far from it,
sir. But to deal with it on that basis: while I can admire, reverend
sir, the man who is ready to set his life on a desperate hazard to gain
something which he sets above that life, I take the case to be
different where it is a question of the lives of others. Then I say the
chances must be weighed--carefully weighed, and tried in the balance."
"However sacred the cause and high the aim?"
"I think so."
The Bishop sighed, his chin sinking on his breast. "I am sorry," he
said, in a voice that sufficiently declared his depression--"I am
sorry."
"That we cannot see alike in a matter so grave? Yes, sir, so am I."
"No. That I met you this morning."
"I am not sorry," Colonel John replied, stoutly refusing to see the
other's meaning. "For--hear me out, I beg. You and I have seen the
world and can weigh the chances. Your friend, too, Captain Machin"--he
pronounced the name in an odd tone--"he too knows on what he is
embarked and how he will stand if the result be failure. It may be that
he already has his home, his rank, and his fortune in foreign parts,
and will be little the worse if the worst befall."
"I?" Machin cried, stung out of his taciturnity. And he rose with an
air of menace from his seat. "Let me tell you, sir, that I fling back
the insinuation!"
But the Colonel refused to listen. He proceeded as if the other were
not speaking. "You, reverend sir, yourself," he continued, "you too
know, and well, on what you are embarking, its prospects and the issue
for you, if it fail. But, you--I give you credit for it--are by your
profession and choice devoted to a life of danger. You are willing, day
by day and hour by hour, to run the risk of death. But these, my cousin
there"--looking with a kind eye at Flavia--"she----"
"Leave me out!" she cried passionately. And she rose to her feet, her
face on fire. "I separate myself from you! I, for my part, ask no
better than to suffer for my country!"
"She thinks she knows, but she does not know," the Colonel continued
quietly, unmoved by her words. "She cannot guess what it is to be cast
adrift--alone, a woman, penniless, in a strange land. And yet that at
the best--and the worst may be unspeakably worse--must be her fate if
this plot miscarry! For others, The McMurrough and his friends
yonder"--he indicated the group by the window--"they also are
ignorant."
The McMurrough sprang to his feet, spluttering with rage. "D--n you,
sir, speak for yourself!" he cried.
"They know nothing," the Colonel continued, quite unmoved, "of that
force against which they are asked to pit themselves, of that stolid
power over sea, never more powerful than now! And so to pit themselves,
that losing they will lose their all!"
"The saints will be between us and harm!" the eldest of the O'Beirnes
cried, rising in his wrath. "It's speak for yourself I say too!"
"And I!"
"And I!" others of the group roared with gestures of defiance. "We are
not the boys to be whistled aside! To the devil with your ignorance!"
And one, stepping forward, snapped his fingers close to the Colonel's
face. "That for you!--that for you!" he cried. "Now, or whenever you
will, day or night, and sword or pistol! To the devil with your
impudence, sir; I'd have you know you're not t
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