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

close on ninety, whose early years had been steeped in trouble, and who loved her so much that he was ready to do wrong for her sake.

Often she differed from her brother. But he was a man, she told herself; and he must be right--a man's life could not be ruled by the laws which a woman observed. For the rest, for herself, if her life seemed solitary she had the free air and the mountains; she had her dear land; above all, she had her dreams. Perhaps when these were realised--and the time seemed very near now--and a new Ireland was created, to her too a brighter world would open.

She had forgotten Bale's presence, and was only recalled to every-day life by the sound of voices. Four men were approaching the house. Uncle Ulick, Colonel John, and the French skipper were three of these; at the sight of the fourth Flavia's face fell. Luke Asgill of Batterstown was the nearest Justice, and of necessity he was a Protestant. But it was not this fact, nor the certainty that Augustin was pouring his wrongs into his ears, that affected Flavia. Asgill was distasteful to her, because her brother affected him. For why should her brother have relations with a Protestant? Why should he, a man of the oldest blood, stoop to intimacy with the son of a "middleman," the son of one of those who, taking a long lease of a great estate and under-letting at rack rents, made at this period huge fortunes? Finally, if he must have relations with him, why did he not keep him at a distance from his home--and his sister?

It was too late, or she would have slipped away. Not that Asgill--he was a stout, dark, civil-spoken man of thirty-three or four--wore a threatening face. On the contrary, he listened to the Frenchman's complaint with a droll air; and if he had not known of the matter before, his smile betrayed him. He greeted Flavia with an excess of politeness which she could have spared; and while Uncle Ulick and Colonel John looked perturbed and ill at ease, he jested on the matter.

"The whole cargo?" he said, with one eye on the Frenchman and one on his companions. "You're not for stating that, sir?"

"All the tubs," Augustin answered in a passion of earnestness. "What you call, every tub! Every tub!"

"The saints be between us and harm!" Asgill responded. "Are you hearing this, Miss Flavia? It's no less than felony that you're accused of, and I'm thinking, by rights, I must arrest you and carry you to Batterstown."

"I do not understand," she answered stiffly. "And The McMurrough is not at home."

"Gone out of the way, eh?" Asgill replied with a deprecatory grin. "And the whole cargo was it, Captain?"

"All the tubs, perfectly!"

"You'd paid your dues, of course?"

"Dues, _mon Dieu_! But they take the goods!"

"Had you paid your dues?"

"Not already, because----"

"That's unfortunate," Asgill answered in a tone of mock condolence. "Mighty unfortunate!" He winked at Uncle Ulick. "Port dues, you know, Captain, must be paid before the ship slips her moorings."

"But----"

"Mighty unfortunate!"

"But what are the dues?" poor Augustin cried, dimly aware that he was being baited.

"Ah, you're talking now," the magistrate answered glibly. "Unluckily, that's not in my province. I'm made aware that the goods are held under lien for dues, and I can do nothing. However, upon payment, of course----"

"But how much? Eh, sir? How much? How much?"

Luke Asgill, who had two faces, and for once was minded to let both be seen, enjoyed the Frenchman's perplexity. He wished to stand well with Flavia, and here was a rare opportunity of exhibiting at once his friendliness and his powers of drollery. He was surprised, therefore, and taken aback, when a grave voice cut short his enjoyment.

"Still, if Captain Augustin," the voice interposed, "is willing to pay a reasonable sum on account of dues?"

The magistrate turned about abruptly. "Eh?" he said. "Oh, Colonel Sullivan, is it?"

"Then, doubtless, the goods will be released, so that he may perform his duty to his customer."

Asgill had only known the Colonel a few minutes, and, aware that he was one of the family, he did not see how to take it. It was as if treason lifted its head in the camp. He coughed.

"I'd not be denying it," he said. "But until The McMurrough returns----"

"Such a matter is doubtless within Mr. Sullivan's authority," the Colonel said, turning from him to Uncle Ulick.

Uncle Ulick showed his embarrassment. "Faith, I don't know that it is," he said.

"If Captain Augustin paid, say, twenty per cent. on his bills of lading----"

"_Ma foi_, twenty per cent.!" the Captain exclaimed in astonishment. "Twenty--but yes, I will pay it. I will pay even that. Of what use to throw the handle after the hatchet?"

Luke Asgill thought the Colonel either a fool or very simple. "Well, I've nothing to say to this, at all!" he said, shrugging his shoulders. "It's not within my province."

Colonel John looked at the girl in a way in which he had not looked at her before; and she found herself speaking before she knew it. "Yes," she cried impulsively; "let that be done, and the goods be given up!"

"But The McMurrough?" Asgill began.

"I will answer for him," she said impulsively. "Uncle Ulick, go, I beg, and see it done."

"I will go with you," Colonel Sullivan said. "And doubtless Mr. Asgill will accompany us, and lend the weight of his authority in the event of any difficulty arising."

Asgill's countenance fell, and he looked the uncertainty he felt. He was between two stools, for he had no mind to displease Flavia or thwart her brother. At length, "No," he said, "I'll not be doing anything in The McMurrough's absence--no, I don't see that I can do that!"

Colonel John looked in the same strange fashion at Flavia. "I have legal power to act, sir," he said, "as I can prove to you in private. And that being so, I must certainly ask you to lend me the weight of your authority."

"And I will be d----d if I do!" Asgill cried. There was a change in his tone, and the reason was not far to seek. "Here's The McMurrough," he continued, "and he'll say!"

They all turned and looked along the road which ran by the edge of the lake. With James McMurrough, who was still a furlong away, were the two O'Beirnes. They came slowly, and something in their bearing, even at that distance, awoke anxiety.

"They're early from the cocking," Uncle Ulick muttered doubtfully, "and sober as pigs! What's the meaning of that? There's something amiss, I'm fearing."

A cry from Flavia proved the keenness of her eyes. "Where is Giralda?" she exclaimed. "Where is the mare?"

"Ay, what have they done with the mare?" Uncle Ulick said in a tone of consternation. "Have they lamed her, I'm wondering? The garron Morty's riding is none of ours."

"I begged him not to take her!" Flavia cried, anger contending with her grief. Giralda, her grey mare, ascribed in sanguine moments to the strain of the Darley Arabian, and as gentle as she was spirited, was the girl's dearest possession. "I begged him not to take her!" she repeated, almost in tears. "I knew there was danger."

"James was wrong to take her up country," Uncle Ulick said sternly.

"They've claimed her!" Flavia wailed. "I know they have! And I shall never recover her! I shall never see her again! Oh, I'd rather--I'd far rather she were dead!"

Uncle Ulick lifted up his powerful voice. "Where's the mare?" he shouted.

James McMurrough shrugged his shoulders, and a moment later the riders came up and the tale was told. The three young men had halted at the hedge tavern at Brocktown, where their road ran out of the road to Tralee. There were four men drinking in the house, who seemed to take no notice of them. But when The McMurrough and his companions went to the shed beside the house to draw out their horses, the men followed, challenged them for Papists, threw down five pounds in gold, and seized the mare. The four were armed, and resistance was useless.

The story was received with a volley of oaths and curses. "But by the Holy," Uncle Ulick flamed up, "I'd have hung on their heels and raised the country! By G--d, I would!"

"Ay, ay! The thieves of the world!"

"They took the big road by Tralee," James McMurrough explained sulkily. "What was the use?"

"Were there no men working in the bogs?"

"There were none near by, to be sure," Morty said. "But I'd a notion if we followed them we might light on one friend or another--'twas in Kerry, after all!"

"'Twas not more than nine miles English from here!" Uncle Ulick cried.

"That was just what I thought," Morty continued with some hesitation. "Just that, but----" And his eye transferred the burden to The McMurrough.

James answered with an oath. "A nice time this to be bringing the soldiers upon us," he cried, "when, bedad, if the time ever was, we want no trouble with the Englishry! What's the use of crying over spilt milk? I'll give you another mare."

"But it'll not be Giralda!" Flavia wailed.

"Sure it's the black shame, it is!" Uncle Ulick cried, his face dark. "It's enough to raise the country! Ay, I say it, though you're listening, Asgill. It's more than blood can stand!"

"No one is more sorry than myself," Asgill replied, with a look of concern. "I don't make the laws, or they'd be other than they are!"

"True for you," Uncle Ulick answered. "I'm allowing that. And it is true, too, that to make a stir too early would ruin all. I'm afraid you must be making the best of it, Flavvy! I'd go after them myself, but the time's not convenient, as you know, and by this they're in Tralee, bad cess to it, where there's naught to be done. They'll be for selling her to one of the garrison officers, I'm thinking; and may the little gentleman in black velvet break his neck for him! Or they'll take her farther up country, maybe to Dublin."

Flavia's last hopes died with this verdict. She could not control her tears, and she turned and went away in grief to the house.

Meantime the hangers-on and the beggars pressed upon the gentry, anxious to hear. The McMurrough, not sorry to find some one on whom to vent his temper, turned upon them and drove them away with blows of his whip. The movement brought him face to face with Captain Augustin. The fiery little Frenchman disdained to give way, in a trice angry words passed, and--partly out of mischief, for the moment was certainly not propitious--Asgill repeated the proposal which Colonel John had just made. The Colonel had stood in the background during the debate about the mare, but thus challenged he stood forward.

"It's a fair compromise," he argued. "And if Captain Augustin is prepared to pay twenty per cent----."

"He'll not have his cargo, nor yet a cask!" The McMurrough replied with a curt, angry laugh. "Loss and enough we've had to-day."

"But----"

"Get me back the mare," the young man cried, cutting the Colonel short with savage ridicule. "Get me back the mare, and I'll talk. That's all I have to say."