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

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