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

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 without _them_?" 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 the _Cormorant_ the 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