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

against her door. She tried to speak, tried to say something. But her voice failed her.

And Payton's livid, scowling, bleeding face was hate itself. "Behind the yews in the garden?" he said, disregarding her presence.

"Ah, I'll meet you there!" The McMurrough answered, pot-valiant. "And, more by token, order your coffin, for you'll need it!" Drink and rage left no place in his brain for fear.

"That will be seen--to-morrow," the Englishman answered, in a tone that chilled the girl's marrow. Then, with his kerchief pressed to his cheek to staunch the blood, he retreated into his room, and slammed the door. They heard him turn the key in it.

Flavia found her voice. She looked at her brother. "Ah, God!" she cried. "Why did I open my door?"

James, still pot-valiant, returned her look. "Because you were a fool, you slut!" he said. "But I'll spit him, never fear! Faith, and I'll spit him like a fowl!" In his turn he went on unsteadily to his room, disappeared within it, and closed the door. He took the candle with him, but from Asgill's open door, and from Flavia's, which stood ajar, enough light issued to illumine the passage faintly.

Flavia and Asgill remained together. Her eyes met his. "Ah, why did I open my door?" she cried. "Why did I open my door? Why did I?"

He had no comfort for her. He shook his head, but did not speak.

"He will kill him!" she said.

Asgill reflected in a heavy silence. "I will think what can be done," he muttered at last. "I will think! Do you go to bed!"

"To bed?" she cried.

"There is naught to be done to-night," he answered, in a low tone. "If the troopers were not with him--then indeed; but that is useless. And--his door is locked. Do you go to bed, and I will think what we can do!"

"To save James?" She laid her hand on Asgill's arm, and he quivered. "Ah, you will save him!" She had forgotten her brother's treatment of her earlier in the day.

"If I can," he said slowly. His face was damp and very pale. "If I can," he repeated. "But it will not be easy to save him honourably."

"What do you mean?" she whispered.

"He'll save himself, I fancy. But his honour----"

"Ah!" The word came from her in a cry of pain.


CHAPTER XXIII

BEHIND THE YEWS

Under the sky the pale softness of dawn had yielded place to the sun in his strength--in more poetical words, Aurora had given way to Phoebus--but within, the passages were still grey and chill, and silent as though night's ghostly sentinels still walked them, when one of the bedchamber doors opened and a face peeped out. The face was Flavia's. The girl was too young, too full of life and vigour, to be altered by a single sleepless night, but the cold reflection of the whitewashed walls did that which watching had failed to do. It robbed her eyes of their brightness, her face of its colour, her hair of its lustre. She stood an instant, and gazed, frowning, at the doors that, in a row and all alike, hid nevertheless one a hope, and another a fear, and a third perhaps a tragedy. But drab, silent, closed, each within a shadow of its own, they told nothing. Presently the girl stepped forward--paused, scared by a board that creaked under her naked foot--then went on again. She stood now at one of the doors, and scratched on it with her nail.

No one answered the summons, and she pushed the door open and went in. And, as she had feared, enlightened by Asgill's hint and by what she had seen of her brother's conduct earlier in the day, she found. James was awake--wide awake--and sitting up in his bed, his arms clasped about his knees. His eyes met hers as she entered, and in his eyes, and in his form, huddled together as in sheer physical pain, she read beyond all doubt, beyond all mistake--fear. Why she had felt certain, courageous herself, that this was what she would find, she did not know. But there it was, as Asgill had foretold it, and as she had foreseen it, through the long, restless, torturing hours; as she had seen it, and now denied it, now, with a sick heart, owned its reality.

James tried to utter the oath that, deceiving her, might rid him of her presence. But his nerves, shaken by his overnight drink, could not command his voice even for that. His eyes dropped in shame, the muttered "What the plague will you be wanting at this hour?" was no more than a querulous whisper.

"I couldn't sleep," she said, avoiding his eyes.

"I, no more," he muttered. "Curse him! Curse him! Curse you, too! Why were you getting in his way? You've as good as murdered me with your tricks and your poses!"

"God forbid!" she exclaimed.

"Ah, you have!" he answered, rocking himself to and fro in his excitement. "If it were any one else, I'm as ready to fight as another! And why not? But he's killed four men, and he'll kill me! Oh, the differ, if I'd not come up at that minute! If I'd not come up at that minute!"

The picture of what he would have escaped had he mounted the stairs a minute later, of what he had brought on himself by mounting a moment earlier, was too much for him. Not a thought did he give to what might have happened to her had he come on the scene later; but, with all his cowardly soul laid bare, he rocked himself to and fro in a paroxysm of self-pity.

Yet he did not suffer more sorely, he did not wince more tenderly under the lash of his own terrors, than Flavia suffered; than she winced, seeing him thus, seeing at last her idol as he was--the braggadocio stripped from him, and the poor, cringing creature displayed. If her pride of race--and the fabled Wicklow kings, of whom she came, were often in her mind--if that pride needed correction, she had it here. If she had thought too much of her descent--and the more in proportion as fortune had straitened the line, and only in this corner of a downtrodden land was its greatness even a memory--she was chastened for it now! She suffered for it now! She could have wept tears of shame. And yet, so plain was the collapse of the man before her, and so futile words, that she did not think of reproach; even had she found heart to chide him, knowing that her words might send him to his death.

All her thought was, could she hide the blot? Could she mask the shame? Could she, at any rate, so veil it that this insolent Englishman, this bully of the conquering race, might not perceive it? That were worth so much that her own life, on this summer morning, seemed a small price to pay for it.

But, alas! she could not purchase it with her life. Only in fairy tales can the woman pass for the man, and Doris receive in her tender bosom the thrust intended for the sterner breast. Then how? How could they shun at least open disgrace, open dishonour? For it needed but a glance at her brother's pallid face and wandering eye to assure her that, brought to the test, he would flinch; that, brought to the field, he would prove unequal even to the task of cloaking his fears.

She sickened at the thought, and her eyes grew hard. Was this the man in whom she had believed? And when, presently, he turned on his side and hid his face in the pillow and groaned, she had small pity to spare for him. "Are you not well?" she asked.

"Can't you be seeing?" he answered fractiously; but for very shame he could not face her eyes. "Cannot you be seeing I am not fit to get up, let alone be meeting that devil? See how my hand shakes!"

"What is to be done, then?"

He cursed Payton thrice in a frenzy of rage. He beat the pillow with his fist.

"That does no good," she said.

"I believe you want to kill me!" he retorted, with childish passion. "I believe you want to see me dead! Why can't you be managing your own affairs, without--without----Oh, my God!" And then, in a dreadful voice, "My God, I shall be dead to-night! I shall be dead to-night! And you care nothing!"

He hid unmanly tears on his pillow, while she looked at the wall, pale to the lips and cut to the heart. Her worst misgivings, even those nightmare fears which haunt the dawn, had not pictured a thing so mean as this, a heart so low, a spirit so poor. And this was her brother, her idol, the last of the McMurroughs of Morristown, he to whom she had fondly looked to revive the glories of the race! Truly she had not understood him, or others. She had been blind indeed, blind, blind!

She had spoken to Luke Asgill the night before. He guessed, if he did not know the worst, and he would help her, she believed. But for that she would have turned, as her thoughts did turn, to Colonel John. But he lay prostrate, and, if she could have brought herself to go to him, he was in no state to give aid. The O'Beirnes were out of the question; she could not tell them. Youth has no pity, makes no allowance, expects the utmost, and a hundred times they had heard James brag and brawl. They would not understand, they would not believe. And Uncle Ulick was away.

There remained only Luke Asgill, who had offered his help.

"If you are not well," she said, in the same hard voice, "shall I be telling Mr. Asgill? He may contrive something."

The man cringing in the bed leapt at the hope, as he would have leapt at any hope. Nor was he so bemused by fear as not to reflect that, whatever Flavia asked, Asgill would do. "Ah, tell him," he cried, raising himself on his elbow. "Do you be telling him! He can make him--wait, may be."

At that moment she came near to hating her brother. "I will send him to you," she said.

"No!" he cried anxiously. "No! Do you be telling him! You tell him! Do you hear? I'm not so well to see him."

She shivered, seeing plainly the cowardice, the unmixed selfishness of the course he urged. But she had not the heart to answer him. She went from the room without another word, and, going back to her own chamber, she dressed. By this time it wanted not much of seven. The house was astir, the June sunshine was pouring with the songs of birds through the windows, she heard one of the O'Beirnes stumble downstairs. Next Asgill opened his door and passed down. In a twinkling she slipped out and followed him. At the bottom of the staircase he turned, hearing her footstep behind him, but she made a sign to him to go on, and led him into the open air. Nor when they were outside did she speak until she had put the courtyard between herself and the house.

For she would have hidden their shame from all if she could! Even to say what she had to say to one, and though he already guessed the truth, cost her in pain and humiliation