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

John betrayed him, she would never forgive herself. Certainly it was unlikely he would; for in that part priests moved freely, the authorities winked at their presence, and it was only within sight of the walls of Tralee or of Galway that the law which proscribed them was enforced. But her experience of Colonel Sullivan--of his activity, his determination, his devilish adroitness--made all things seem possible. He had been firm as fate in the removal of the Bishop and Cammock; he had been turned no jot from his purpose by her prayers, her rage, her ineffectual struggles--she sickened at the remembrance of that moment. He was capable of everything, this man who had come suddenly into their lives out of the darkness of far Scandinavia, himself dark and inscrutable. He was capable of everything, and if he thought fit--but at that point her eyes alighted on a man who was approaching along the lake-road. It was Father O'Hara himself. The priest was advancing as calmly and openly as if no law made his presence a felony, or as if no Protestant breathed the soft Irish air for a dozen leagues about.

Her brother's words had shaken Flavia's nerves. She was courageous, but she was a woman. She flew to meet the priest, and with every step his peril loomed larger before her fluttered spirits. The wretch had said that he would be master, and a master who was a Protestant, a fanatic----

She did not follow the thought to its conclusion. She waved a warning even before she reached the Father. When she did, "Father!" she cried eagerly, "you must get away, and come back after dark!"

The good man's jaw fell. He had been looking forward to good cheer and a good bed, to a rare oasis of comfort in his squalid life. He cast a wary look round him. "What has happened, my daughter?" he stammered.

"Colonel Sullivan!" Flavia gasped. "He is here, and he will certainly give you up."

"Colonel Sullivan?"

"Yes. You were at the Carraghalin? You have heard what happened! He will surely give you up!"

"Are the soldiers here?" the priest asked, with a blanched face.

"No, but he is here! He is in the house, and may come out at any moment," Flavia explained. "Don't you understand?"

"Did he tell you----"

"What?"

"That he would inform?"

"No!" Flavia replied, thinking the man very dull. "But you wouldn't trust him?"

The priest looked round to assure himself that the landscape held no overt signs of danger. Then he brought back his eyes to the girl's face, and he stroked his thin, brown cheek reflectively. He recalled the scene in the bog, Colonel John's courage, and his thought for his servant. And at last, "I am not thinking," he said coolly, "that he will betray me. I am sure--I think I am sure," he continued, correcting himself, "that he will not. He is a heretic, but he is a good man."

Flavia's cheek flamed. She started back. "A good man!" she cried in a voice audible half a hundred yards away.

Father O'Hara looked a little ashamed of himself; but he stood by his guns. "A heretic, of course," he said. "But, I'm thinking, a good man. At any rate, I'm not believing that he will inform against me."

As quickly as it had come, the colour fled from Flavia's face, and left it cold and hard. She looked at the priest as she had never looked at a priest of her Church before. "You must take your own course then," she said. And with a gesture which he did not understand she turned from him, and leaving him, puzzled and disconcerted, she went away into the house.

A good man! Heaven and earth and the sea besides! A good man! Father O'Hara was a fool! A fool!


CHAPTER XVII

THE LIMIT

If there was one man more sorry than another that the Morristown rising had been nipped in the bud it was Luke Asgill. It stood to his credit that, though he had never dared to cross Flavia's will, he had tried, and honestly tried, to turn James McMurrough from the attempt. But even while doing this, he had known--as he had once told James with bitter frankness--that his interest lay in the other scale; he had seen that had he attended to it only, he would not have dissuaded The McMurrough, but, on the contrary, would have egged him on, in the assurance that the failure of the plot would provide his one best chance of winning Flavia. A score of times, indeed, he had pictured, and with rapture, the inevitable collapse. In the visions of his head upon his bed he had seen the girl turn to him in the wreck of things--it might be to save her brother's life, it might be to save her tender feet from the stones of foreign streets. And in the same dream he had seen himself standing by her, alone against the world; as, to do him justice, he would have stood, no matter how sharp the stress or great the cost.

He had no doubt that he would be able to save her--in spite of herself and whatever her indiscretion. For he belonged to a class that has ever owned inordinate power in Ireland: the class of the middlemen with roots in either camp--a grandam, who, perchance, still softens her clay on the old cabin hearth, while a son preens it with his betters in Trinity College. Such men carry into the ruling ranks their knowledge of the modes of thought, the tricks and subterfuges of those from whom they spring; and at once astute and overbearing, hard and supple, turn the needs of rich and poor to their own advantage, and rise on the common loss. Asgill, with money to lend in the town, and protections to grant upon the bog, with the secrets of two worlds in his head or in his deed-box, could afford to await with confidence the day when the storm would break upon Morristown, and Flavia, in the ruin of all about her, would turn to him for rescue.

Keen therefore was his chagrin when, through the underground channels which were in his power, he heard two days after the event, and in distant Tralee, what had happened. Some word of a large Spanish ship seen off the point had reached the mess-room; but only he knew how nearly work had been found for the garrison: only he, walking about with a smooth face, listened for the alarm that did not come. For a wonder he had been virtuous, he had given James his warning; yet he had seen cakes and ale in prospect. Now, not only was the treat vanished below the horizon, but stranger news, news still less welcome, was whispered in his ear. The man whom he had distrusted from the first, the man against whom he had warned The McMurrough, had done this. More, in spite of the line he had taken, the man was still at Morristown, if not honoured, protected, and if not openly triumphant, master in fact.

Luke Asgill swore horribly. But Colonel Sullivan had got the better of him once, and he was not to be duped again by this Don Quixote's mildness and love of peace. He knew him to be formidable, and he took time to consider before he acted. He waited a week and examined the matter on many sides before he took horse to see things with his own eyes. Nor did he alight at the gate of Morristown until he had made many a resolution to be wary and on his guard.

He had reason to call these to mind before his foot was well out of the stirrup, for the first person he saw, after he had bidden his groom take the horses to the stable, was Colonel Sullivan. Asgill had time to scan his face before they met in the middle of the courtyard, the one entering, the other leaving; and he judged that Colonel John's triumph did not go very deep. He was looking graver, sadder, older; finally--this he saw as they saluted one another--sterner.

Asgill stepped aside courteously, meaning to go by him. But the Colonel stepped aside also, and so barred his way. "Mr. Asgill," he said--and there was something of the martinet in his tone--"I will trouble you to give me a word apart."

"A word apart?" Asgill answered. He was taken aback, and do what he could the Colonel's grave eyes discomposed him. "With all the pleasure in life, Colonel. But a little later, by your leave."

"I think now were more convenient, sir," the Colonel answered, "by your leave."

"I will lay my cloak in the house, and then----"

"It will be more convenient to keep your cloak, I'm thinking," the Colonel rejoined with dryness. And either because of the meaning in his voice or the command in his eyes, Asgill gave way and turned with him, and the two walked gravely and step for step through the gateway.

Outside the Colonel beckoned to a ragged urchin who was playing ducks and drakes with his naked toes. "Go after Mr. Asgill's horses," he said, and bid the man bring them back."

"Colonel Sullivan!"

The Colonel did not heed his remonstrance. "And follow us!" he continued. "Are you hearing, boy? Go then."

"Colonel Sullivan," Asgill repeated, his face both darker and paler--for there could be no doubt about the other's meaning--"I'm thinking this is a strange liberty you're taking. And I beg to say I don't understand the meaning of it."

"You wish to know the meaning of it?"

"I do."

"It means, sir," Colonel John replied, "that the sooner you start on your return journey the better!"

Asgill stared. "The better you will be pleased, you mean!" he said. And he laughed harshly.

"The better it will be for you, I mean," Colonel John answered.

Asgill flushed darkly, but he commanded himself--having those injunctions to prudence fresh in his mind. "This is an odd tone," he said. "And I must ask you to explain yourself further, or I can tell you that what you have said will go for little. I am here upon the invitation of my friend, The McMurrough----"

"This is not his house."

Asgill stared. "Do you mean----"

"I mean what I say," the Colonel answered. "This is not his house, as you well know."

"But----"

"It is mine, and I do not propose to entertain you, Mr. Asgill," Colonel John continued. "Is that sufficiently plain?"

The glove was down. The two men looked at one another, while the knot of beggars, gathered round the gate and just out of earshot, watched them--in the dark as to all else, but aware with Irish shrewdness that they were at grips. Asgill was not only taken by surprise, but he lay under the disadvantage of ignorance. He did not know precisely how things stood, much less could he explain this sudden attack. Yet if the tall, lean man, serious and growing grey, represented one form of strength, the shorter, stouter man, with the mobile face and the quick brain, stood for another. Offhand he could think of no weak spot on his side; and if he must fight, he would fight.

He forced a laugh. And, truly to think of this man, who had not seen Morristown for a score of years, using the experience of a fortnight to give him notice to quit, was laughable. The laugh he had forced became real.

"More plain than hospitable, Colonel," he said. "Perhaps, after all, it will be best