CHAPTER XIV
THE COLONEL'S TERMS
Passive courage—courage in circumstances in which a man cannot help himself, but must abide with bound hands whatever a frowning fortune and his enemy's spite threaten—is so much higher a virtue than that which carries him through hot emprises, and is so much more common among women, that the palm for bravery may fairly be given to the weaker sex. True, it is not in the first face of danger that a woman shines; time must be given her to string her nerves. But grant time and there is no calamity so dreadful, no fate so abhorrent to trembling humanity, that a woman has not met it smiling: in the sack of cities, or in the slow agony of towns perishing of hunger, in the dungeon, or in the grip of disease.
The bravest men share this gift, and some whom the shock of conflict appals. Cammock and the Bishop belonged to the former class. Seized in a moment of activity, certain only that they were in hostile hands, and hurried, blind and helpless, to an unknown doom, they might have been pardoned had they succumbed to despair. But they did not succumb. The habit of danger, and a hundred adventures and escapes, had hardened them; they felt more rage than fear. Stunned for a moment by the audacity of the attack, and humiliated by its success, they had not been dragged a hundred yards before they began to reason and to calculate the chances. If the purpose of those into whose hands they had fallen were to murder them they would have been piked on the spot. On the other hand, if their captors' object was to deliver them to English justice, it was a long way to the Four Courts, and farther to Westminster. Weeks, if not months, must elapse before they stood at the bar on a capital charge; much water must flow under the bridges, and many a thing might happen, by force or fraud, in the interval.
So, half-stifled and bitterly chagrined as they were, they did not waste their strength in a vain resistance. They allowed themselves to be pushed this way and pulled that, took what care they could of their limbs, and for their thoughts gave as many to vengeance as to safety. They had known many reverses in many lands. They did not believe that this was the end. And presently it would be their turn.
With the third of the prisoners it was otherwise. The courage of the Irish is more conspicuous in the advance than in the retreat; and even of that recklessness in fight, that joy in the conflict, which is their birthright and their fame, Flavia had taken more than her woman's share. In James McMurrough's mean and narrow nature there was small room for the generous passions. Unlike his sister, he would have struck the face of no man in whose power he lay; nor was he one to keep a stout heart when his hands were bound. Conscience does not always make cowards. But he knew into whose hands he had fallen, he knew the fate to which he had himself consigned Colonel John—or would have consigned him but for self-interest—and his heart was water, his knees were aspens, his hair rose, as, helpless, he pictured in livid hues the fate that now awaited himself.
As he had meant to do to the other, it would be done to him! He felt the cruel pike rend the gasping throat; he had heard that it was the most painful death that a man could die, and that the shrieks of men dying on the pike-point could be heard a mile! Or would they throw him, bound and blind as he was, into the sullen lake—yes, that was it! They were carrying him that way, they were taking him to the lake.
And once and twice, in the insanity of fear, he fought with his bonds until the blood came, even throwing himself down, until the men, out of patience, pricked him savagely, and drove him, venting choked cries of pain, to his feet again. After the second attempt, if attempt that could be called which had no reasoning behind it, but only sheer animal fear, he staggered on, beaten, hopeless. He was aware that Colonel John was not with them; and then, again, that he was with them; and then—they were on the wide track now between the end of the lake and the sea—that they were proceeding with increased caution. That might have given a braver man hope, the hope of rescue. But rescue had itself terrors for The McMurrough. His captors, if pressed, might hasten the end, or his friends might strike him in themêlée. And so, with every furlong of the forced journey, he died a fresh death.
And the furlongs seemed interminable, quickly and roughly as he was hurried along. In his terror the pains of his position, the heat, the friction of the rough sacking, the want of air, went for little. But at last he heard the fall of the waves on the shore, gorse pricked his legs or tripped him up, the men about him spoke louder, he caught a distant hail. Laughter, and exclamations of triumph reached him, and the voices of men who had won in spite of odds.
Then a boat grated on the pebbles, he was lifted into it, and thrust down in the bottom. He felt it float off, and heard the measured sound of the oars in the thole-pins. A few moments elapsed, the sound of the oars ceased, the boat bumped something. He was raised to his feet, his hands were unbound, he was set on a rope-ladder, and bidden to climb. Obeying with shaking knees, he was led across what he guessed to be a deck, and down steep stairs. Then his head was freed from the sack, and, sweating, dishevelled, pale with exhaustion and fear, he looked about him.
The fog was still thick outside, turning day into twilight, and the cabin lamp had been lit and swung above the narrow table, filling the lowbrowed, Dutch-like interior with a strong but shifting light. Behind the table Colonel John and the skipper leant against a bulkhead; before them, on the nearer side of the table, were ranged the three captives. Behind these, again, the dark, grinning faces of the sailors, with their tarred pigtails and flashing eyes, filled the doorway; and, beyond doubt, viewed under the uncertain light of the lamp, they showed a wild and savage crew. As James McMurrough looked, his hopes, which had risen during the last few minutes, sank. Escape, or chance of escape, there was none. He was helpless, and what those into whose hands he had fallen determined, he must suffer. For a moment his heart stood still, his mouth gaped, he swayed on his feet. Then he clutched the table and steadied himself.
"I am—giddy," he muttered.
"I am sorry that you have been put to so much inconvenience," Colonel John answered civilly.
The words, the tone, might have reassured him, if he had not suspected a devilish irony. Even when Colonel John proceeded to direct one of the men to open a porthole and admit more air, he derived no comfort from the attention. But steady! Colonel John was speaking again.
"You, too, gentlemen," he said, addressing Cammock and the Bishop, "I am sorry that I have been forced to put you to so much discomfort. But I saw no other way of effecting my purpose. And," he went on with a smile, "if you ask my warranty for acting as I have acted——"
"I do!" the Bishop said between his teeth. The Admiral said nothing, but breathed hard.
"Then I can only vouch," the Colonel answered, "the authority by virtue of which you seized me yesterday. I give you credit, reverend father, and you, Admiral, for a belief that in acting as you did you were doing your duty; that in creating a rising here you were serving a cause which you think worthy of sacrifice—the sacrifice of others as well as of yourselves. But I tell, you, as frankly, I feel it my duty to thwart that purpose and prevent that rising; and for the moment fortune is with me. The game, gentlemen, is for the present in my hand; the move is mine. Now I need hardly say," Colonel John continued, with an appearance almost ofbonhomie, "that I do not wish to proceed to extremities, or to go farther than is necessary to secure my purpose. We might set sail for the nearest garrison port, and I might hand you over to the English authorities, assured that they would pay such a reward as would compensate the shipmaster. But far be it from me to do that! I would have no man's blood on my hands. And though I say at once I would not shrink, were there no other way of saving innocent lives, from sending you to the scaffold——"
"A thousand thanks to you!" the Bishop said. But, brave man as he was, the irony in his voice masked relief; and not then, but a moment later, he passed his handkerchief across his brow. Cammock said nothing, but the angry, bloodshot eyes which he fixed on the Colonel lost a little of their ferocity.
"I say, I would not shrink from doing that," Colonel John continued mildly, "were it necessary. Fortunately for us all, it is not necessary. Still I must provide against your immediate return, against immediate action on your part. I must see that the movement which will die in your absence is not revived by any word from you, or by tidings of you! To that end, gentlemen, I must put you to the inconvenience of a prolonged sea-voyage."
"If I could speak with you in private?" the Bishop said.
"You will have every opportunity," Colonel John answered, smiling, "of speaking to Captain Augustin in private."
"Still, sir, if I could see you alone I think I could convince you——"
"You shall have every opportunity of convincing Captain Augustin," Colonel John returned, smiling more broadly, "and of convincing him by the same means which I venture to think, reverend sir, you would employ with me. To be plain, he will take you to sea for a certain period, and at the end of that time, if your arguments are sufficiently weighty, he will land you at a convenient harbour on the French shore. He will be at the loss of his cargo, and that loss I fear you will have to make good. Something, too, he may charge by way of interest, and for your passage." By this time the sailors were on the broad grin. "A trifle, perhaps, for landing dues. But I have spoken with him to be moderate, and I doubt not that within a few weeks you, Admiral Cammock, will be with your command, and the reverend father will be pursuing his calling in another place."
For a moment there was silence, save for a titter from the group of seamen. Then Cammock laughed—a curt, barking laugh. "A bite!" he said. "A d——d bite! If I can ever repay it, sir, I will! Be sure of that!"
Colonel John bowed courteously.
The Bishop took it otherwise. The veins on his forehead swelled, and he had much ado to control himself. The truth was, he feared ridicule more than he feared danger, perhaps more than he feared death; and such an end to such an enterprise was hard to bear. To have set forth to raise the south of Ireland, to have undertaken a diversion that would never be forgotten, that, on the contrary, would be marked by historians as a main factor in the restoration of the house of Stuart—to have embarked on such an enterprise and to be deported like any troublesome villager delivered to the pressgang for his hamlet's good! To end thus! It was too much.
"Is there no alternative?" he asked, barely able to speak for the chagrin that took him by the throat.
"One, if you prefer it," Colonel Sullivan answered suavely. "You can take your chance with the English authorities. For myself, I lean to the course I have suggested."
"If money were paid down—now? Now, sir?"
"It would not avail."
"Much money?"
"No."
The Bishop glared at him for a few seconds. Then his face relaxed, his eyes grew mild, his chin sank on his breast. His fingers drummed on the table. "His will be done!" he said—"His will be done! I was not worthy."
His surrender seemed to sting Cammock. Perhaps in the course of their joint adventures he had come to know and to respect his companion, and felt more for him than for himself.
"If I had you on my quarter-deck for only half an hour," he growled, "I would learn who was the better man! Ah, my man, I would!"
"The doubt flatters me," Colonel John answered, viewing them both with great respect; for he saw that, bad or good, they were men. Then, "That being settled," he continued, "I shall ask you, gentlemen, to go on deck for a few moments, that I may say a word to my kinsman."
"He is not to go with us?"
"That remains to be seen," Colonel John replied, a note of sternness in his voice. Still they hesitated, and he stood; but at last, in obedience to his courteous gesture, they bowed, turned—with a deep sigh on the Bishop's part—and clambered up the companion. The seamen had already vanished at a word from Augustin, who himself proceeded to follow his prisoners on deck.
"Sit down!" Colonel Sullivan said, the same sternness in his voice. And he sat down on his side of the table, while James McMurrough, with a sullen look but a beating heart, took his seat on the other. The fear of immediate death had left the young man; he tried to put on an air of bravado, but with so little success that if his sister had seen him thus she had been blind indeed if she had not discerned, between these two men seated opposite to one another, the difference that exists between the great and the small, the strong and the infirm of purpose.
It was significant of that difference that the one was silent at will, while the other spoke because he had not the force to be silent.
"What are you wanting with me?" the young man asked.
"Is it not you," Colonel John answered, with a piercing look, "will be wanting to know where O'Sullivan Og is—O'Sullivan Og, whom you sent to do your bidding this morning?"
The young man turned a shade paler, and his bravado fell from him. His breath seemed to stop. Then, "Where?" he whispered—"where is he?"
"Where, I pray, Heaven," Colonel John answered, with the same solemnity, "may have mercy upon him."
"He is not dead?" The McMurrough cried, his voice rising on the last word.
"I have little doubt he is," the Colonel replied. "Dead, sir! And the men who were with him—dead also, or the most part of them. Dead, James McMurrough, on the errand they went for you."
The shock of the news struck the young man dumb, and for some moments he stared at the Colonel, his face colourless. At length, "All dead?" he whispered. "Not all?"
"For what I know," Colonel John replied. "Heaven forgive them!" And, in half a dozen sentences, he told him what had happened. Then, "They are the first fruits," he continued sternly, "God grant that they be the last fruits of this reckless plot! Not that I blame them, who did but as they were bid. Nor do I blame any man, nor any woman who embarked on this—reckless as it was, foolish as it was—with a single heart, either in ignorance of the things that I know, or knowing them, for the sake of an end which they set above their own lives. But—but"—and Colonel John's voice grew more grave—"there was one who had neither of these two excuses. There was one who was willing to do murder, not in blind obedience, nor for a great cause, but to serve his own private interest and his own advantage!"
"No! no!" the young man cried, cowering before him. "It is not true!"
"One who was ready to do murder," Colonel John continued pitilessly, "because it suited him to remove a man!"
"No! no!" the wretched youth cried, almost grovelling before him. "It was all of them!—it was all!"
"It was not all!" Colonel John retorted; but there was a keenness in his face which showed that he had still something to learn.
"It was—those two-on deck!" The McMurrough cried eagerly. "I swear it was! They said—it was necessary."
"They were one with you in condemning! Be it so! I believe you! But who spared?"
"I!" The McMurrough cried, breathlessly eager to exculpate himself. "It was I alone. I! I swear it. I sent the boy!"
"You spared? Yes, and you alone!" the Colonel made answer. "So I thought, and out of your own mouth you are condemned. You spared because you learned that I had made a will, and you feared lest that which had passed to me in trust might pass to a stranger for good and all! You spared because it was—because you thought it was to your interest, your advantage to spare! I say, out of your own mouth you are condemned."
James McMurrough had scarcely force to follow the pitiless reasoning by which the elder man convicted him. But his conscience, his knowledge of his own motives, filled the hiatus, and what his tongue did not own his colourless face, his terrified eyes, confessed.
"You have fallen into our hands," Colonel John continued, grave as fate. "Why should we not deal with you as you would have dealt with us? No!"—the young man by a gesture had appealed to those on deck, to their escape, to their impunity—"no! They may have consented to my death; but as the judge condemns, or the soldier kills; you—you, for your private profit and advantage. Nevertheless, I shall not deal so with you. You can go as they are going—abroad, to return at a convenient season, and I hope a wiser man. Or——"
"Or—what?" the young man cried hurriedly.
"Or you can stay here," Colonel John continued, "and we will treat the past as if it had not been. But on a condition."
James's colour came back. "What'll you be wanting?" he muttered, averting his gaze.
"You must swear that you will not pursue this foolish plan further. That first."
"What can I be doing withoutthem?" was the sullen answer.
"Very true," Colonel John rejoined. "But you must swear also, my friend, that you will not attempt anything against me, nor be party to anything."
"What'd I be doing?"
"Don't lie!" the Colonel replied, losing his temper for a single instant. "You know what you have done, and therefore what you'd be likely to do. I've no time to bandy words, and you know how you stand. Swear on your hope of salvation to those two things, and you may stay. Refuse, and I make myself safe by your absence. That is all I have to say."
The young man had the sense to know that he was escaping lightly. The times were rough, the district was lawless, he had embarked—how foolishly he saw—on an enterprise too high for him. He was willing enough to swear that he would not pursue that enterprise further. But the second undertaking stuck in his gizzard. He hated Colonel John. For the past wrong, for the past defeat, above all for the present humiliation, ay, and for the very magnanimity which spared him, he, the weak spirit, hated the strong with a furious, if timid malignity.
"I'm having no choice," he said, shrugging his shoulders.
"Very good," Colonel John answered curtly. And, going to the door, he called Bale from his station by the hatchway, and despatched him to the Bishop and to Admiral Cammock, requesting them to do him the honour to descend.
They came readily enough, in the hope of some favourable turn. But the Colonel's words quickly set them right.
"Gentlemen," he said politely, "I know you to be men of honour in private life. For this reason I have asked you to be present as witnesses to the bargain between my cousin and myself. Blood is thicker than water: he has no mind to go abroad, and I have no mind to send him against his will. But his presence, after what has passed, is a standing peril to myself. To meet this difficulty, and to free me from the necessity of banishing him, he is ready to swear by all he holds sacred, and upon his honour, that he will attempt nothing against me, nor be a party to it. Is that so, sir?" the speaker continued. "Do you willingly, in the presence of these gentlemen, give that undertaking?"
The young man, with averted eyes and a downcast face, nodded.
"I am afraid I must trouble you to speak," Colonel John said.
"I do," he muttered, looking at no one.
"Further, that you will not within six months attempt anything against the Government?" Colonel John continued.
"I will not."
"Very good. I accept that undertaking, and I thank these gentlemen for their courtesy in condescending to act as witnesses. Admiral Cammock and you, reverend father," Colonel John continued, "it remains but to bid you farewell, and to ask you to believe"—the Colonel paused—"that I have not pushed further than was necessary the advantage I gained."
"By a neat stroke, Colonel Sullivan," the Bishop replied, with a rather sour smile, "not to say a bold one. I'm not denying it. But one, I'd have you notice, that cannot be repeated."
"Maybe not," the Colonel answered. "I am content to think that for some time to come I have transferred your operations, gentlemen, to a sphere where I am not concerned for the lives of the people."
"There are things more precious than lives," the Bishop said.
"I admit it. More by token I'm blaming you little—only you see, sir, I differ. That is all."
With that Colonel Sullivan bowed and left the cabin, and The McMurrough, who had listened to the colloquy with the air of a whipped hound, slunk after him. On deck the Colonel and Augustin talked apart for a moment, then the former signed to the young man to go down into the boat, which lay alongside with a couple of men at the oars, and Bale seated in the sternsheets. The fog still hung upon the water, and the land was hidden. The young man could not see where they lay.
After the lapse of a minute or two Colonel John joined him, and the rowers pushed off, while Augustin and the crew leant over the rail to see them go, and to send after them a torrent of voluble good wishes. A very few, strokes of the oars brought the passengers within misty view of the land; in less than two minutes after leaving theCormorantthe boat grated on the rocks, and the Colonel, James McMurrough, and Bale landed. The young man made out that they were some half-mile eastward of Skull Harbour.
Bale stayed to exchange a few words with the seamen, while Colonel John and The McMurrough set off along the beach. They had not walked fifty yards before the fog isolated them; they were alone. And astonishment filled the young man, and grew as they walked. Did Colonel John, after all that had happened, mean to return to Morristown? to establish himself calmly—he, alone—in the midst of the conspirators whose leaders he had removed?
It seemed incredible! For though he, James McMurrough, thirst for revenge as he might, was muzzled by his oath, what of the others? What of Sir Donny and old Timothy Burke? What of the two O'Beirnes? Nay, what of his sister, whom he could fancy more incensed, more vindictive, more dangerous than them all? What, finally, of the barbarous rout of peasants, ready to commit any violence at a word from him?
And still the Colonel walked on by his side. And now they were in sight of Skull—of the old tower and the house by the jetty, looming large through the dripping mist. And at last Colonel John spoke.
"It was fortunate that I made my will as I came through Paris," he said.
CHAPTER XV
FEMINA FURENS
The Irish of that day, with all their wit and all their courage, had the bad habit of looking abroad for leaders. Colonel John had run little risk of being wrong in taking for granted that the meeting at the Carraghalin, mysteriously robbed of the chiefs from over-seas, whose presence had brought the movement to a head, would disperse; either amid the peals of Homeric laughter that in Ireland greet a monster jest, or, in sadder mood, cursing the detested Saxon for one more added to the many wrongs of a downtrodden land.
Had Flavia indeed escaped, had the raid which Colonel Sullivan had so audaciously conceived failed to embrace her, the issue might have been different. Had she appeared upon the scene at the critical moment, her courage and enthusiasm might have supported the spirits of the assemblage and kept it together. But Uncle Ulick had not the force to do this: much less had old Timothy Burke or Sir Donny. Uncle Ulick, we know, expected little good from the rising; he was prepared for any, the worst mishap; while the faith of the older men in any change for the better was not robust enough to stand alone or to resist the first blast of doubt.
Their views indeed were more singular than cheerful.
"Very like," Sir Donny said, with a fallen under-lip, "the ould earth's opened her mouth and swallowed them. She's tired, small blame to her, with all the heretics burdening her and tormenting her—the cream of hell's fire to them!"
"Whisht, man!" the other answered. "Be easy; you're forgetting one's a bishop. Small chance of the devil's tackling him, and, like enough the holy water and all ready to his hand!"
"Then I'm not knowing what it is," the first pronounced hopelessly.
"There you speak truth, Sir Donny," Tim Burke answered. "Is it they can be losing their way in the least taste of fog there is, do you think?"
"And the young lady knowing the path, so that she'd be walking it blindfold in the dark!"
"I'm fearing, then, it will be the garr'son from Tralee," was Uncle Ulick's contribution. And he shook his head. "The saints be between us and them, and grant we'll not be seeing more of them than we like, and sooner!"
"Amen to that same!" replied old Timothy Burke, with an uneasy look behind him.
There was nothing comforting in this. And the messengers sent to learn what was amiss and why the expected party did not arrive had as little cheer to give. They could learn nothing. On which Uncle Ulick and his fellows rubbed their heads: the small men wondered. A few panic-stricken, began to slip away, but the mass were faithful. An hour went by in this trying uncertainty, and a second and part of a third; and messengers departed and came, and there were rumours and alarms, and presently something like the truth got abroad; and there was talk of pursuit, and a band of young stalwarts was detailed and sent off. Still the greater part of the assemblage, with Irish patience, remained seated in ranks on the slopes of the hills, the women with their drugget shawls drawn over their heads, the men with their frieze coats hanging loose about them. The chill mist which clung to the hillsides, and the atmosphere of doubt which overhung all, were a poor exchange for the roaring bonfires, the good cheer, the enthusiasm, the merriment of the previous evening. But the Irish peasant, if he be less staunch at the waiting—even as he is more forward in the hand-to-hand than his Scottish cousins—has the peasant's gift of endurance; and in the most trying hours—in ignorance, in doubt, in danger—has often held his ground in dependence on his betters, with a result pitiful in the reading. For too often the great have abandoned the little, the horse has borne off the rider, and the naked footman, surprised, surrounded, out-matched, and put to the sword, has paid for all.
But on this day a time came, about high noon, when the assemblage—and the fog—began at last to melt. Sir Donny was gone, and old Tim Burke of Maamtrasna. They had slipped homewards, by little-known tracks across the peat hags; and, shamefaced and fearful of the consequences, the spirit all gone out of them, had turned their minds to oaths and alibis. They had been in trouble before, and were taken to know; and their departure sapped the O'Beirnes' resolution, whose uneasy faces as they talked together spread the contagion. Uncle Ulick and several of the buckeens were away on the search; the handful of Spanish seamen had returned to the house or to the ship: there was no one to check the defection when it set in. An hour after Sir Donny had slipped away, the movement which might have meant so much to so many was spent. The slopes about the ruined gables which they called Carraghalin, and which were all that remained of the once proud abbey, had returned to their wonted solitude; where hundreds had sat a short hour before the eagle hovered, the fox turned his head and scented the wind. Even the house at Morristown had so far become itself again that a scarcity, rather than a plenitude of life, betrayed the past night of orgy; and a quietness beyond the ordinary, the things that had been dreamed. The garrison of Tralee, the Protestant Settlement at Kenmare, facts which had been held distant and negligible in the first flush of hope and action, now seemed to the fearful fancy many an Irish mile nearer and many a shade more real.
Doubtless, in the minds of some, a secret thankfulness that, after all, they were not required to take the leap, relieved the disappointment and lessened the shame. They were well out of an ugly scrape, they reflected; well clear of the ugly shadow of the gallows—always supposing that no informer appeared. It might even be the hand of Providence, they thought, that had removed their leaders, and so held them back. They might think themselves happy to be quit of it for the fright.
But there was one—one who found no such consolation; one to whom the issue was pure loss, a shameful defeat, the end of hopes, the defeat of prayers that had never risen to heaven more purely than that morning.
Flavia sat with her eyes on the dead peat that cumbered the hearth—for in the general excitement the fire had been suffered to go out—and in a stupor of misery refused to be comforted. Of her plans, of her devotion, of her lofty resolves, this was the result. She had aspired, God knew how honestly and earnestly, for her race downtrodden and her faith despised, and this was the bitter fruit. Nor was it only the girl's devotion to her country and to her faith that lay sore wounded: her vanity suffered, and perhaps more keenly. The enterprise that was to have glorified the name of McMurrough, that was to have raised that fallen race, that was to have made that distant province blessed among the provinces of Ireland, had come to an end, derisive and contemptible, before it was born. Her spirit, unbroken by experience and untrained to defeat, fearing before all things ridicule, dashed itself against the dreadful conviction, the dreadful fact. She could hardly believe that all was over. She could hardly realise that the cup was no longer at her lip, that the bird had escaped from the hand. But she looked from the window; and, lo, the courtyard which had hummed and seethed was dead and silent. In one corner a knot of men were carrying out the arms and the powder, and were preparing to bury them. In another, a woman—it was Sullivan Og's widow—sat weeping. It was theHic jacetof the great Rising that was to have been, and that was to have regenerated Ireland!
And "You must kill him!" she cried, with livid cheeks and blazing eyes. "If you do not, I will!"
Uncle Ulick, who had heard the story of the ambush, and beyond doubt was one of those who felt more relief than disappointment, stretched his legs uneasily. He longed to comfort her, but he did not know what to say. Moreover, he was afraid of her in this mood.
"You must kill him!" she repeated.
"We'll talk of that," he said, "when we see him."
"You must kill him!" the girl repeated passionately. "Or I will! If you are a man, if you are an Irishman, if you are a Sullivan, kill him, the shame of your race! Or I will!"
"If he had been on our side," Uncle Ulick answered soberly, "instead of against us, I'm thinking we should have done better."
The girl drew in her breath sharply, pierced to the quick by the thought. Simultaneously the big man started, but for another reason. His eyes were on the window, and they saw a sight which his mind declined to believe. Two men had entered the courtyard—had entered with astonishing, with petrifying nonchalance, as it seemed to him. For the first was Colonel Sullivan. The second—but the second slunk at the heels of the first with a hang-dog air—was James McMurrough.
Fortunately Flavia, whose eyes were glooming on the cold hearth and the extinct ashes, fit image of her dead hopes, had her back to the casement. Uncle Ulick rose. His thoughts came with a shock against the possibility that Colonel John had the garrison of Tralee at his back! But, although The McMurrough had all the appearance of a prisoner, Ulick thrust away the notion as soon as it occurred. To clear his mind, he looked to see how the men engaged in getting out the powder were taking it. They had ceased to work, and were staring with all their eyes. Something in their bearing and their attitudes told Uncle Ulick that the notion which had occurred to him had occurred to them, and that they were prepared to run at the least alarm.
"His blood be on his own head!" he muttered. But he did not say it in the tone of a man who meant it.
"Amen!" she cried, her back still turned to the window, her eyes brooding on the cold hearth. The words fell in with her thoughts.
By this time Colonel Sullivan was within four paces of the door. In a handturn he would be in the room, he would be actually in the girl's presence—and Uncle Ulick shrank from the scene which must follow. Colonel John was, indeed, and plainly, running on his fate. Already the O'Beirnes, awakening from their trance of astonishment, were closing in behind him with grim faces; and short of the garrison of Tralee the big man saw no help for him; well-nigh—so strongly did even he feel on the matter—he desired none. But Flavia must have no part in it. In God's name, let the girl be clear of it!
The big man took two steps to the door, opened it, slipped through, and closed it behind him. His breast as good as touched that of Colonel Sullivan, who was on the threshold. Behind the Colonel was James McMurrough; behind James were the two O'Beirnes and two others, of whose object, as they cut off the Colonel's retreat, no man who saw their faces could doubt.
For once, in view of the worse things that might happen in the house, Ulick was firm. "You can't come in!" he said, his face pale and frowning. He had no word of greeting for the Colonel. "You can't come in!" he repeated, staring straight at him.
The Colonel turned and saw the four men with arms in their hands spreading out behind him. He understood. "You had better let me in," he said gently. "James will talk to them."
"James——"
"You had better speak to them," Colonel John continued, addressing his companion. "And you, Ulick——"
"You can't come in," Ulick repeated grimly.
James McMurrough interposed in his harshest tone. "An end to this!" he cried. "Who the devil are you to bar the door, Ulick! And you, Phelim and Morty, be easy a minute till you hear me speak."
Ulick still barred the way. "James," he said, in a voice little above a whisper, "you don't know——"
"I know enough!" The McMurrough answered violently. It went sadly against the grain with him to shield his enemy, but so it must be. "Curse you, let him in!" he continued fiercely; they were making his task more hard for him. "And have a care of him," he added anxiously. "Do you hear? Have a care of him!"
Uncle Ulick made a last feeble attempt. "But Flavia," he said. "Flavia is there and——"
"Curse the girl!" James answered. "Get out of the road and let the man in! Is this my house or yours?"
Ulick yielded, as he had yielded so often before. He stood aside. Colonel John opened the door and entered.
The rest happened so quickly that no movement on his part could have saved him. Flavia had heard their voices in altercation—it might be a half minute, it might be a few seconds before. She had risen to her feet, she had recognised the voice of one of the speakers—he had spoken once only, but that was enough—she had snatched up the naked sword that since the previous morning had leant in the chimney corner. As Colonel John crossed the threshold—oh, dastardly audacity, oh, insolence incredible, that in the hour of his triumph he should soil that threshold!—she lunged with all the force of her strong young arm at his heart.
With such violence that the hilt struck his breast and hurled him bodily against the doorpost; while the blade broke off, shivered by contact with the hard wood.
Uncle Ulick uttered a cry of horror. "My G——d!" he exclaimed, "you have killed him!"
"His blood——"
She stopped on the word. For instead of falling Colonel John was regaining his balance. "Flavia!" he cried—the blade had passed through his coat, missing his breast by a bare half-inch. "Flavia, hold! Listen! Listen a moment!"
But in a frenzy of rage, as soon as she saw that her blow had failed, she struck at him with the hilt and the ragged blade that remained—struck at his face, struck at his breast, with cries of fury almost animal. "Wretch! wretch!" she cried—"die! If they are cowards, I am not! Die!"
The scene was atrocious, and Uncle Ulick, staring open-mouthed, gave no help. But Colonel Sullivan mastered her wrists, though not until he had sustained a long bleeding cut on the jaw. Even then, though fettered, and though he had forced her to drop the weapon, she struggled desperately with him—as she had struggled when he carried her through the mist. "Kill him! kill him!" she shrieked. "Help! help!"
The men would have killed him twice and thrice if The McMurrough, with voice and blade and frantic imprecations and the interposition of his own body, had not kept the O'Beirnes and the others at bay—explaining, deprecating, praying, cursing, all in a breath. Twice a blow was struck at the Colonel through the doorway, but one fell short and the other James McMurrough parried. For a moment the peril was of the greatest: the girl's cries, the sight of her struggling in Colonel John's grip, wrought the men almost beyond James's holding. Then the strength went out of her suddenly, she ceased to fight, and but for Colonel Sullivan's grasp she would have fallen her length on the floor. He knew that she was harmless then, and he thrust her into the nearest chair. He kicked the broken sword under the table, staunched the blood that trickled fast from his cheek; last of all, he looked at the men who were contending with James in the doorway.
"Gentlemen," he said, breathing a little quickly, but in no other way betraying the strait through which he had passed, "I shall not run away. I shall be here to answer you to-morrow, as fully as to-day. In the meantime I beg to suggest"—again he raised the handkerchief to his cheek and staunched the blood—"that you retire now, and hear what The McMurrough has to say to you: the more as the cases and the arms I see in the courtyard lie obnoxious to discovery and expose all to risk while they remain so."
His surprising coolness did more to check them than The McMurrough's efforts. They gaped at him in wonder. Then one uttered an imprecation.
"The McMurrough will explain if you will go with him," Colonel John answered patiently, "I say again, gentlemen, I shall not run away."
"If you mean her any harm——"
"I mean her no harm."
"Are you alone?"
"I am alone."
So far Morty. But Phelim O'Beirne was not quite satisfied. "If a hair of her head be hurt——" he growled, pushing himself forward, "I tell you, sir——"
"And I tell you!" James McMurrough retorted, repelling him. "What are the hairs of her head to you, Phelim O'Beirne? Am I not him that's her brother? A truce to your prating, curse you, and be coming with me. I understand him, and that is enough!"
"But His Reverence——"
"His Reverence is as safe as you or me!" James retorted. "If it were not so, are you thinking I'd be here? Fie on you!" he went on, pushing Phelim through the door; "you are good at the talking now, when it's little good it will be doing! But where were you this morning when a good blow might have saved all?"
"Could I be helping it, when——?"
The voices passed away, still wrangling, across the courtyard. Uncle Ulick stepped to the door and closed it. Then he turned and spoke his mind.
"You were wrong to come back, John Sullivan," he said, the hardness of his tone bearing witness to his horror of what had happened. "Shame on you! It is no thanks to you that your blood is not on the girl's hands, and the floor of your grandfather's house! You're a bold man, I allow. But the fox made too free with the window at last, and, take my word for it, there are a score of men, whose hands are surer than this child's, who will not rest till they have had your life! And after what has happened, can you wonder? Be bid and go then; be bid, and go while the breath is firm in you!"
Colonel John did not speak for a moment, and when he did answer, it was with a severity that overbore Ulick's anger, and in a tone of contempt that was something new to the big man. "If the breath be firm in those whom you, Ulick Sullivan," he said—"ay, you, Ulick Sullivan—and your fellows would have duped, it is enough for me! For myself, whom should I fear? The plotters whose childish plans were not proof against the simplest stratagem? The conspirators"—his tone grew more cutting in its scorn—"who took it in hand to pull down a throne and were routed by a Sergeant's Guard? The poor puppets who played at a game too high for them, and, dreaming they were Sarsfields or Montroses, danced in truth to others' piping? Shall I fear them," he continued, the tail of his eye on the girl, who, sitting low in her chair, writhed involuntarily under his words—"poor tools, poor creatures, only a little less ignorant, only a little more guilty than the clods they would have led to the crows or the hangman? Is it these I am to fear; these I am to flee from? God forbid, Ulick Sullivan! I am not the man to flee from shadows!"
His tone, his manner, the truth of his words—which were intended to open the girl's eyes, but did in fact increase her burning resentment—hurt even Uncle Ulick's pride. "Whisht, man," he said bitterly. "It's plain you're thinking you're master here!"
"I am," Colonel John replied sternly. "I am, and I intend to be. Nor a day too soon! Where all are children, there is need of a master! Don't look at me like that, man! And for my cousin, let her hear the truth for once! Let her know what men who have seen the world think of the visions, from which she would have awakened in a dungeon, and the poor fools, her fellow-dupes, under the gibbet! A great rising for a great cause, if it be real, man, if it be earnest, if it be based on forethought and some calculation of the chances, God knows I hold it a fine thing, and a high thing! But the rising of a child with a bladder against an armed man, a rising that can ruin but cannot help, I know not whether to call it more silly or more wicked! Man, the devil does his choicest work through fools, not rogues! And, for certain, he never found a choicer morsel or fitter instruments than at Morristown yesterday."
Uncle Ulick swore impatiently. "We may be fools," he growled. "Yet spare the girl! Spare the girl!"
"What? Spare her the truth?"
"All! Everything!" Uncle Ulick cried, with unusual heat. "Cannot you see that she at least meant well!"
"Such do the most ill," Colonel John retorted, with sententious severity. "God forgive them—and her!" He paused for a moment and then, in a lighter tone, he continued, "As I do. As I do gladly. Only there must be an end of this foolishness. The two men who knew in what they worked and had reason in their wrong-doing are beyond seas. We shall see their faces no more. The McMurrough is not so mad as to wish to act without them. He"—with a faint smile—"is not implacable. You, Ulick, are not of the stuff of whom martyrs are made, nor are Mr. Burke and Sir Donny. But the two young men outside"—he paused as if he reflected—"they and three or four others are—what my cousin now listening to me makes them. They are tow, if the flame be brought near them. And therefore—and therefore," he repeated still more slowly, "I have spoken the truth and plainly. To this purpose, that there may be an end."
Flavia had sat at first with closed eyes, in a state next door to collapse, her head inclined, her arms drooping, as if at any moment she might sink to the floor. But in the course of his speaking a change had come over her. The last heavings of the storm, physical and mental, through which she had passed, still shook her; now a quiver distorted her features, now a violent shudder agitated her from head to foot. But the indomitable youth in her, and the spirit which she had inherited from some dead forefather, were not to be long gainsaid. Slowly, as she listened—and mainly under the influence of indignation—her colour had returned, her face grown more firm, her form more stiff. In truth Colonel John had adopted the wrong course with her. He had been hard—knowing men better than women—when he should have been mild; he had browbeaten where he should have forgiven. And so at his last declaration, "There must be an end," she rose to her feet, and spoke. And speaking, she showed that neither the failure of her attempt on him, nor the bodily struggle with him, horribly as it humiliated her in the remembrance, had quelled her courage.
"An end!" she said, in a voice vibrating with emotion. "Yes, but it will be an end for you! Children, are we? Well, better that, a thousand times better that, than be so old before our time, so cold of heart and cunning of head that there is naught real for us but that we touch and see, nothing high for us but that our words will be measuring, nothing worth risk but that we are safe to gain! Children, are we?" she continued, with deep passion. "But at least we believe! At least we own something higher than ourselves—a God, a Cause, a Country! At least we have not bartered all—all three and honour for a pittance of pay, fighting alike for right or wrong, betraying alike the right and wrong! Children? May be! But, God be thanked, we are warm, the blood runs in us——"
"Flavia!"
"I say the blood runs in us!" she repeated. "And if we are foolish, as you say, we are wiser yet than one"—she looked at him with a strange and almost awful steadfastness—"who in his wisdom thinks that a traitor can walk our Irish soil unharmed, or one go back and forth in safety who has ruined and shamed us! You have escaped my hand! But I know that all your boasted wisdom will not lengthen your life till the moon wanes!"
He had tried to interrupt her once—eagerly, vividly, as one who would defend himself. He answered her now after another fashion: perhaps he had learnt his lesson. "If God wills," he said simply, "it will be so; it will be as you say. And the road will lie open to you. Only while I live, Flavia, whether I love this Irish soil or not, or my country, or my honour, the storm shall not break here, nor the house fall from which we spring!"
"While you live!" she repeated, with a dreadful smile. "I tell you, I tell you," and she extended her hand towards him, "the winding-sheet is high upon your breast, and the salt dried that shall lie upon your heart."