The Wild Geese, Stanley John Weyman [best books to read for beginners txt] 📗

a diversion which would further their plans in Europe; and the last cared only for Flavia.

But James McMurrough and Flavia herself, and Sir Donny and old Timothy Burke and the O'Beirnes and the two or three small gentry, Sullivans or McCarthys, who had also come in--and in a degree Uncle Ulick-these saw nothing hopeless in the plan. That plan, as announced, was first to fall upon Tralee in combination with a couple of sloops said to be lying in Galway Bay; and afterwards to surprise Kenmare. Masters of these places, they would have the Kerry peninsula behind them, and no enemy within it; for the Crosbys and the Pettys, and the handful of English settlers who lived there, could offer no resistance. So much done, they proposed to raise the old standard, to call Connaught to their aid, to cry a crusade. Spain would reinforce them through a score of ports--was not Galway City half Spanish already?--Ireland would rise as one man. And faith, as Sir Donny said, before the Castle tyrants could open their eyes, or raise their heads from the pillow, they'd be seeing themselves driven into the salt ocean!

So, while the house-walls gave back the ruddy glare of the torches, and the bare-footed, bare-headed, laughing colleens damped the thatch, and men confessed in one corner and kissed their girls in another, and the smiths in a third wrought hard at the pike-heads--so the struggle depicted itself to more than one! Among others to Flavia, as, half trembling, half triumphant, she looked down from a window on the strange riot, and told herself that the time was come! To James as he strode to and fro, fancying himself Montrose, sweeping eastwards like a flame. To the O'Beirnes and the O'Loughlins and their like. Great when the fight was done would be the glory of Kerry! The cocks of Clare would crow no more, and undying would be the fame of the McMurrough line, descended from the old Wicklow kings!

Meanwhile Cammock and the Bishop walked in the dark in the garden, a little apart from the turmoil, and, wrapped in their cloaks, talked in low voices; debating much of Sicily and Naples and the Cardinal and the Mediterranean fleet, and at times laughing at some court story. But they said, strange to tell, no word of Tralee, or of Kenmare, or of Dublin Castle, or even of Connaught. They were no visionaries. They had to do with greater things than these, and in doing them knew that they must spend to gain. The lives of a few score peasants, living in wretchedness already, the ruin of half a dozen hamlets, the desolation of such a God-forsaken country-side as this, which was but bog and hill at best, and where it rained two days in three--what were these beside the diversion of a single squadron from the great pitched fight, already foreseen, where the excess of one battleship might win an empire, and its absence might ruin nations?

So while the fire at the head of the lake blazed high, and band after band of the "boys" came in, thirsting for fight, and while song and revelry lorded it in the forecourt and on the strand, and not whisky only but cognac, taken from Captain Augustin's sloop, flowed freely, the two men pacing the walk behind the Florence yews gave scarce a thought to the present moment. They had planned this move in conjunction with other and more important moves. It was made or in the making; and forthwith their thoughts and their speech left it, to deal with the next move and the one beyond, and with the end of all their moves--St. Germains or St. James's. And one other man, and one only, because his life had been passed on their wider plane, and he could judge of the relative value of Connaught and Kent, divined the trend of their thoughts, and understood the deliberation, almost the sense of duty with which they prepared to sacrifice their pawns.

Colonel Sullivan sat in the upper room of one of the two towers that flanked the entrance to the forecourt. Bale was with him, and the two, with the door doubly locked upon them and guarded by a sentry whose crooning they could hear, shared such comfort as a pitcher of water and a gloomy outlook afforded. The darkness hid the medley of odds and ends, of fishing-nets, broken spinning-wheels and worn-out sails, which littered their prison; but the inner of the two slit-like windows that lighted the room admitted a thin shaft of firelight that, dancing among the uncovered rafters, told of the orgy below. Bale, staring morosely at the crowd about the fire, crouched in the splay of the window, while the Colonel, in the same posture at the other window, gazed with feelings not more cheerful on the dark lake.

He was concerned for himself and his companion; for he knew that frightened folk are ever the most cruel. But he was more gravely concerned for those whose advocate he had made himself--for the ignorant cotters in their lowly hovels, the women, the children, upon whom the inevitable punishment would fall. He doubted, now that it was too late, the wisdom of the course he had taken; and, blaming himself for precipitation, he fancied that if he had acted with a little more guile, a little more reticence, a little less haste, his remonstrance might have had greater weight.

There are some whom a life spent in camps and amid bloody scenes, hardens; and others, a few, who emerge from the ordeal with souls passionately inclined to mercy and justice. Colonel John was of the latter--a black swan. For at this moment, lying, and aware that he lay, in some peril of his life, he was more troubled by the evil plight of the helpless, whose cabins had given him a foster-mother, and made him welcome in his youth, whose blood, too, he shared, than by his own uncertain prospects.

William Bale, as was natural, was far from sharing this view. "May the fire burn them!" he muttered, his ire excited by some prank of the party below. "The Turks were polite beside these barefoot devils!"

"You'd have said the other thing at Bender," the Colonel answered, turning his head.

"Ay, your honour," Bale returned; "a man never knows when he is well off."

His master laughed. "I'd have you apply that now," he said.

"So I would if it weren't that I've a kind of a scunner of those black bog-holes," Bale said. "To be planted head first 's no proper end of a man, to my thinking; and if there's not something of the kind in these ragamuffins' minds I'm precious mistaken.

"Pooh, man, you're frightening yourself," the Colonel answered. But the room was dank and chill, the lake without lay lonely, and the picture which Bale's words called up was not pleasant to the bravest. "It's a civilised land, and they'd not think of it!"

"There's one, and that's the young lady's brother," Bale answered darkly, "would not pull us out by the feet! I'll swear to that. Your honour's too much in his way, if what they say in the house is true."

"Pooh!" the Colonel answered again. "We're of one blood."

"Cain and Abel," Bale said. "There's example for it." And he chuckled.

The Colonel scolded him anew. But having done so he could not shake off the impression which the man's words had made on him. While he lived he was a constant and an irritating check upon James McMurrough. If the young man saw a chance of getting rid of that check, was he one to put it from him? Colonel John's face grew long as he pondered the question; he had seen enough of James to feel considerable doubt about the answer. The fire on the height above the lake had died down, the one on the strand was a bed of red ashes. The lake lay buried in darkness, from which at intervals the cry of an owl as it moused along the shore rose mournfully.

But Colonel John was not one to give way to fears that might be baseless. "Let us sleep," he said, shrugging his shoulders. And he lay down where he was, pillowing his head on a fishing-net. Bale said nothing, but examined the door before he stretched himself across the threshold.

Half an hour after dawn they were roused. It was a heavy trampling on the stairs that awakened them. The door was quickly unlocked, it was thrown open, and the hairy face of O'Sullivan Og, who held it wide, looked in. Behind him were two of the boys with pikes--frowsy, savage, repellent figures, with drugget coats tied by the sleeves about their necks.

"You'll be coming with us, Colonel, no less," Og said.

Colonel John looked at him. "Whither, my man?" he asked coolly. He and Bale had got to their feet at the first alarm.

"Och, sure, where it will be best for you," Og replied, with a leer.

"Both of us?" the Colonel asked, in the same hard tone.

"Faith, and why'd we be separating you, I'd be asking."

Colonel John liked neither the man's tone nor his looks. But he was far above starting at shadows, and he guessed that resistance would be useless. "Very good," he said. "Lead on."

"Bedad, and if you'll be doing that same, we will," O'Sullivan Og answered with a grin.

The Colonel and Bale found their hats--they'd been allowed to bring nothing else with them--and they went down the stairs. In the gloom before the door of the tower waited two sturdy fellows, barefoot and shock-headed, with musquetoons on their shoulders, who seemed to be expecting them. Round the smouldering embers of the fire a score of figures lay sleeping in the open, wrapped in their frieze coats. As many others sat with their backs against the wall, and their chins sunk on their breasts. The sun was not yet up, and all things were wrapt in a mist that chilled to the bone. Even within the narrow bounds of the forecourt, objects at a distance put on queer shapes and showed new faces. Nothing in all that was visible took from the ominous aspect of the two men with the firearms. One for each, Bale thought. And his face, always pallid, showed livid in the morning light.

Without a word the four men formed up round their prisoners, and at once O'Sullivan Og led the way at a brisk pace towards the gate. Colonel John was following, but he had not taken three steps before a thought struck him, and he halted. "Are we leaving the house at once?" he asked.

"We are. And why not, I'm asking."

"Only that I've a message for the McMurrough it will be well for him to have."

"Sure," O'Sullivan Og answered, his manner half wheedling, half truculent, "'tis no time for messages and trifles and the like now, Colonel. No time at all, I tell you. Ye can see that for yourself, I'm thinking, such a morning as this."

"I'm thinking nothing of the kind," the Colonel answered, and he hung back, looking towards the house. Fortunately Darby chose that minute to appear at the door. The butler's face was pale, and showed fatigue; his hair hung in wisps; his clothes were ill-fastened. He threw a glance of contempt, the contempt of the indoor servant, at the sleeping figures, lying here and there in the wet. Thence his eyes travelled on and took in the group by the gate. He started, and wrung his hands in sudden, irrepressible distress. It was as if a spasm seized the man.

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