CHAPTER XI
A MESSAGE FOR THE YOUNG MASTER
James McMurrough was young, but he was a slave to as few of thegenerous ambitions of youth as any man of his years. At heart he caredlittle for his country, and nothing for his Faith--which indeed he hadbeen ready to barter for an allowance, and a certain succession. Hecared only for himself; and but for the resentment which the provisionsof his grandfather's will had bred in him, he would have seen the Irishrace in Purgatory, and the Roman faith in a worse place, before hewould have risked a finger to right the one or restore the other. Evenunder the influence of that resentment, that bitterness, he had comeinto the conspiracy with but half a heart; without enthusiasm, and withan eye not so much to its ultimate success as to the gain he might makeout of it in the meantime.
Once embarked, however, on the enterprise, vanity, the failing of lightminds, and particularly of the Celtic mind, swept him onward. The nightwhich followed Colonel Sullivan's arrest was a night long remembered atMorristown--a night to uplift the sanguine and to kindle theshort-sighted; nor was it a wonder that the young chief--as he strodeamong his admiring tenants, his presence greeted, when he entered, withIrish acclamations, and his skirts kissed, when he passed, by devotedkernes--sniffed the pleasing incense, and trod the ground to themeasure of imagined music. He felt himself a greater man this nightthan he had ever been before. The triumph that was never to beintoxicated him. He was Montrose, he was Claverhouse--a Montrose whomno Philiphaugh awaited, a Claverhouse whom no silver bullet would slay.He saw himself riding in processions, acclaimed by thousands, dictatingto senates, the idol of a rejoicing Dublin.
His people had kindled a huge bonfire in the middle of the forecourt,and beside this he extended a gracious welcome to a crowd of strongtenants, whose picturesque figures, as they feasted, sang, drank, andfought, the fire silhouetted on the house front and the surroundingwalls; now projecting them skywards, gigantic and menacing, nowreducing them to dwarfs. A second fire, for the comfort of the basersort, had been kindled outside the gates, and was the centre ofmerriment less restrained; while a third, which served as a beacon tothe valley, and a proclamation of what was being done, glowed on theplatform before the ruined tower at the head of the lake. From thislast the red flames streamed far across the water; and now revealed abelated boat shooting from the shadow on its way across, now a troop ofcountrymen, who, led by their priest, came limping along the lake-sideroad; ostensibly to join in the religious services of the morrow, butin reality, as they knew, to hear something, and, God willing, to dosomething towards freeing old Ireland and shaking off the grip of thecursed Saxon.
In the more settled parts of the land, such a summons as had broughtthem from their rude shielings among the hills or beside the bogs,would have passed for a dark jest. But in this remote spot, the notionof overthrowing the hated power by means of a few score pikes,stiffened by half as many sailors from the Spanish ship in the bay, didnot seem preposterous, either to these poor folk or to their betters.Cammock, of course, knew the truth, and the Bishop. Asgill, too, theone man cognisant of the movement who was not here, and of whom somethought with distrust--he, too, could appraise the attempt at its trueworth. But of these men, the two first aimed merely at a diversionwhich would further their plans in Europe; and the last cared only forFlavia.
But James McMurrough and Flavia herself, and Sir Donny and old TimothyBurke and the O'Beirnes and the two or three small gentry, Sullivans orMcCarthys, who had also come in--and in a degree Uncle Ulick-these sawnothing hopeless in the plan. That plan, as announced, was first tofall upon Tralee in combination with a couple of sloops said to belying in Galway Bay; and afterwards to surprise Kenmare. Masters ofthese places, they would have the Kerry peninsula behind them, and noenemy within it; for the Crosbys and the Pettys, and the handful ofEnglish settlers who lived there, could offer no resistance. So muchdone, they proposed to raise the old standard, to call Connaught totheir aid, to cry a crusade. Spain would reinforce them through a scoreof ports--was not Galway City half Spanish already?--Ireland would riseas one man. And faith, as Sir Donny said, before the Castle tyrantscould open their eyes, or raise their heads from the pillow, they'd beseeing themselves driven into the salt ocean!
So, while the house-walls gave back the ruddy glare of the torches, andthe bare-footed, bare-headed, laughing colleens damped the thatch, andmen confessed in one corner and kissed their girls in another, and thesmiths in a third wrought hard at the pike-heads--so the struggledepicted itself to more than one! Among others to Flavia, as, halftrembling, half triumphant, she looked down from a window on thestrange riot, and told herself that the time was come! To James as hestrode to and fro, fancying himself Montrose, sweeping eastwards like aflame. To the O'Beirnes and the O'Loughlins and their like. Great whenthe fight was done would be the glory of Kerry! The cocks of Clarewould crow no more, and undying would be the fame of the McMurroughline, descended from the old Wicklow kings!
Meanwhile Cammock and the Bishop walked in the dark in the garden, alittle apart from the turmoil, and, wrapped in their cloaks, talked inlow voices; debating much of Sicily and Naples and the Cardinal and theMediterranean fleet, and at times laughing at some court story. Butthey said, strange to tell, no word of Tralee, or of Kenmare, or ofDublin Castle, or even of Connaught. They were no visionaries. They hadto do with greater things than these, and in doing them knew that theymust spend to gain. The lives of a few score peasants, living inwretchedness already, the ruin of half a dozen hamlets, the desolationof such a God-forsaken country-side as this, which was but bog and hillat best, and where it rained two days in three--what were these besidethe diversion of a single squadron from the great pitched fight,already foreseen, where the excess of one battleship might win anempire, and its absence might ruin nations?
So while the fire at the head of the lake blazed high, and band afterband of the "boys" came in, thirsting for fight, and while song andrevelry lorded it in the forecourt and on the strand, and not whiskyonly but cognac, taken from Captain Augustin's sloop, flowed freely,the two men pacing the walk behind the Florence yews gave scarce athought to the present moment. They had planned this move inconjunction with other and more important moves. It was made or in themaking; and forthwith their thoughts and their speech left it, to dealwith the next move and the one beyond, and with the end of all theirmoves--St. Germains or St. James's. And one other man, and one only,because his life had been passed on their wider plane, and he couldjudge of the relative value of Connaught and Kent, divined the trend oftheir thoughts, and understood the deliberation, almost the sense ofduty with which they prepared to sacrifice their pawns.
Colonel Sullivan sat in the upper room of one of the two towers thatflanked the entrance to the forecourt. Bale was with him, and the two,with the door doubly locked upon them and guarded by a sentry whosecrooning they could hear, shared such comfort as a pitcher of water anda gloomy outlook afforded. The darkness hid the medley of odds andends, of fishing-nets, broken spinning-wheels and worn-out sails, whichlittered their prison; but the inner of the two slit-like windows thatlighted the room admitted a thin shaft of firelight that, dancing amongthe uncovered rafters, told of the orgy below. Bale, staring moroselyat the crowd about the fire, crouched in the splay of the window, whilethe Colonel, in the same posture at the other window, gazed withfeelings not more cheerful on the dark lake.
He was concerned for himself and his companion; for he knew thatfrightened folk are ever the most cruel. But he was more gravelyconcerned for those whose advocate he had made himself--for theignorant cotters in their lowly hovels, the women, the children, uponwhom the inevitable punishment would fall. He doubted, now that it wastoo late, the wisdom of the course he had taken; and, blaming himselffor precipitation, he fancied that if he had acted with a little moreguile, a little more reticence, a little less haste, his remonstrancemight have had greater weight.
There are some whom a life spent in camps and amid bloody scenes,hardens; and others, a few, who eme
rge from the ordeal with soulspassionately inclined to mercy and justice. Colonel John was of thelatter--a black swan. For at this moment, lying, and aware that he lay,in some peril of his life, he was more troubled by the evil plight ofthe helpless, whose cabins had given him a foster-mother, and made himwelcome in his youth, whose blood, too, he shared, than by his ownuncertain prospects.
William Bale, as was natural, was far from sharing this view. "May thefire burn them!" he muttered, his ire excited by some prank of theparty below. "The Turks were polite beside these barefoot devils!"
"You'd have said the other thing at Bender," the Colonel answered,turning his head.
"Ay, your honour," Bale returned; "a man never knows when he is welloff."
His master laughed. "I'd have you apply that now," he said.
"So I would if it weren't that I've a kind of a scunner of those blackbog-holes," Bale said. "To be planted head first 's no proper end of aman, to my thinking; and if there's not something of the kind in theseragamuffins' minds I'm precious mistaken.
"Pooh, man, you're frightening yourself," the Colonel answered. But theroom was dank and chill, the lake without lay lonely, and the picturewhich Bale's words called up was not pleasant to the bravest. "It's acivilised land, and they'd not think of it!"
"There's one, and that's the young lady's brother," Bale answereddarkly, "would not pull us out by the feet! I'll swear to that. Yourhonour's too much in his way, if what they say in the house is true."
"Pooh!" the Colonel answered again. "We're of one blood."
"Cain and Abel," Bale said. "There's example for it." And he chuckled.
The Colonel scolded him anew. But having done so he could not shake offthe impression which the man's words had made on him. While he lived hewas a constant and an irritating check upon James McMurrough. If theyoung man saw a chance of getting rid of that check, was he one to putit from him? Colonel John's face grew long as he pondered the question;he had seen enough of James to feel considerable doubt about theanswer. The fire on the height above the lake had died down, the one onthe strand was a bed of red ashes. The lake lay buried in darkness,from which at intervals the cry of an owl as it moused along the shorerose mournfully.
But Colonel John was not one to give way to fears that might bebaseless. "Let us sleep," he said, shrugging his shoulders. And he laydown where he was, pillowing his head on a fishing-net. Bale saidnothing, but examined the door before he stretched himself across thethreshold.
Half an hour after dawn they were roused. It was a heavy trampling onthe stairs that awakened them. The door was quickly unlocked, it wasthrown open, and the hairy face of O'Sullivan Og, who held it wide,looked in. Behind him were two of the boys with pikes--frowsy, savage,repellent figures, with drugget coats tied by the sleeves about theirnecks.
"You'll be coming with us, Colonel, no less," Og said.
Colonel John looked at him. "Whither, my man?" he asked coolly. He andBale had got to their feet at the first alarm.
"Och, sure, where it will be best for you," Og replied, with a leer.
"Both of us?" the Colonel asked, in the same hard tone.
"Faith, and why'd we be separating you, I'd be asking."
Colonel John liked neither the man's tone nor his looks. But he was farabove starting at shadows, and he guessed that resistance would beuseless. "Very good," he said. "Lead on."
"Bedad, and if you'll be doing that same, we will," O'Sullivan Oganswered with a grin.
The Colonel and Bale found their hats--they'd been allowed to bringnothing else with them--and they went down the stairs. In the gloombefore the door of the tower waited two sturdy fellows, barefoot andshock-headed, with musquetoons on their shoulders, who seemed to beexpecting them. Round the smouldering embers of the fire a score offigures lay sleeping in the open, wrapped in their frieze coats. Asmany others sat with their backs against the wall, and their chins sunkon their breasts. The sun was not yet up, and all things were wrapt ina mist that chilled to the bone. Even within the narrow bounds of theforecourt, objects at a distance put on queer shapes and showed newfaces. Nothing in all that was visible took from the ominous aspect ofthe two men with the firearms. One for each, Bale thought. And hisface, always pallid, showed livid in the morning light.
Without a word the four men formed up round their prisoners, and atonce O'Sullivan Og led the way at a brisk pace towards the gate.Colonel John was following, but he had not taken three steps before athought struck him, and he halted. "Are we leaving the house at once?"he asked.
"We are. And why not, I'm asking."
"Only that I've a message for the McMurrough it will be well for him tohave."
"Sure," O'Sullivan Og answered, his manner half wheedling, halftruculent, "'tis no time for messages and trifles and the like now,Colonel. No time at all, I tell you. Ye can see that for yourself, I'mthinking, such a morning as this."
"I'm thinking nothing of the kind," the Colonel answered, and he hungback, looking towards the house. Fortunately Darby chose that minute toappear at the door. The butler's face was pale, and showed fatigue; hishair hung in wisps; his clothes were ill-fastened. He threw a glance ofcontempt, the contempt of the indoor servant, at the sleeping figures,lying here and there in the wet. Thence his eyes travelled on and tookin the group by the gate. He started, and wrung his hands in sudden,irrepressible distress. It was as if a spasm seized the man.
The Colonel called him. "Darby," he cried. "Come here, my man."
O'Sullivan Og opened his mouth; he was on the point of interposing, buthe thought better of it, and shrugged his shoulders, mutteringsomething in the Erse.
"Darby," the Colonel said gravely, "I've a message for the youngmaster, and it must be given him in his bed. Will you give it?"
"I will, your honour."
"You will not fail?"
"I will not, your honour," the old servant answered earnestly.
"Tell him, then, that Colonel Sullivan made his will as he passedthrough Paris, and 'tis now in Dublin. You mind me, Darby?"
The old man began to shake--he had an Irish man's superstition. "I do,your honour. But the saints be between us and harm," he continued, withthe same gesture of distress. "Who's speaking of wills?"
"Only tell him that in his bed," Colonel John repeated, with an urgentlook. "That is all."
"And by your leave, it is now we'll be going," Og interposed sharply."We are late already for what we've to do."
"There are some things," the Colonel replied with a steady look, "whichit is well to be late about."
Having fired that shot, he turned his eyes once more on the house.Then, without further remonstrance, he and Bale, with their guard,marched out through the gate, and took the road along the lake--thatsame road by which the Colonel had come some days before from theFrench sloop. The men with the firelocks walked beside them, one oneither flank, while the pikemen guarded them behind, and O'Sullivan Ogbrought up the rear.
They had not taken twenty paces before the fog swallowed up the party;and henceforth they walked in a sea of mist, like men moving in anightmare from which they cannot awake. The clammy vapour chilled themto the bone: while the unceasing wailing of seagulls, borne off thelough, the whistle of an unseen curlew on the hillside, the hurtle ofwings as some ghostly bird swept over them--these were sounds to deepenthe effect, and depress men who had reason to suspect that they werebeing led to a treacherous end.
The Colonel, though he masked his apprehensions under an impenetrablefirmness, began to fear no less than that--and with cause. He observedthat O'Sullivan Og's followers were of the lowest type of kerne,islanders in all probability, and half starved; men whose hands werenever far from their skenes, and whose one orderly instinct consistedin a blind obedience to their chief. O'Sullivan Og himself he believedto be The McMurrough's agent in his more lawless business; a fierce,unscrupulous man, prospering on his lack of scruple. The Colonel couldaugur nothing but ill from the hands to which he had been entrusted;and worse from the manner in which
these savage, half-naked creatures,shambling beside him, stole from time to time a glance at him, as ifthey fancied they saw the winding-sheet high on his breast.
Some, so placed, and feeling themselves helpless, isolated by the fog,and entirely at these men's mercy, might have lost their firmness. Buthe did not; nor did Bale, though the servant's face betrayed thekeenness of his anxiety. They weighed indeed, certainly the former, thechances of escape: such chances as a headlong rush into the fog mightafford to unarmed men, uncertain where they were. But the Colonelreflected that it was possible that that was the very course upon whichO'Sullivan Og counted for a pretext and an excuse. And, for a secondobjection, the two could not, so closely were they guarded, communicatewith each other in such a way as to secure joint action.
After all, The McMurrough's plan might amount to no more than theirdetention in some secret place among the hills. Colonel John hoped so.
Yet he could not persuade himself that this was the worst that wasintended. He could not but think ill of things; of O'Sullivan Og'ssilence, of the men's stealthy glances, of the uncanny hour. And whenthey came presently to a point where a faintly marked track left theroad, and the party, at a word from their leader, turned into it, hethought worse of the matter. Was it his fancy--he was far fromnervous--or were the men beginning to look impatiently at one another?Was it his fancy, or were they beginning to press more closely on theirprisoners, as if they sought a quarrel? He imagined that he read in oneman's eyes the question "When?" and in another's the question "Now?"And a third, he thought, handled his weapon in an ominous fashion.
Colonel John was a brave man, inured to danger and trained toemergencies, one who had faced death in many forms. But the lack, ofarms shakes the bravest, and it needed even his nerve to confrontwithout a quiver the fate that, if his fears were justified, lay beforethem: the sudden, violent death, and the black bog-water which wouldswallow all traces of the crime. But he did not lose his firmness orlower his crest for a moment.
By-and-by the track, which for a time had ascended, began to rundownward. The path grew less sound. The mist, which was thicker thanbefore, and shut them in on the spot where they walked, as in a worlddesolate and apart, allowed nothing to be seen in front; but now andagain a ragged thorn-tree or a furze bush, dripping with moisture,showed ghostlike to right or left. There was nothing to indicate thepoint they were approaching, or how far they were likely to travel;until the Colonel, peering keenly before them, caught the gleam ofwater. It was gone as soon as seen, the mist falling again like acurtain; but he had seen it, and he looked back to see what Og wasdoing. He caught him also in the act of looking over his shoulder. Washe making sure that they were beyond the chance of interruption?
It might be so; and Colonel John wheeled about quickly, thinking thatwhile O'Sullivan Og's attention was directed elsewhere, he might takeone of the other men by surprise, seize his weapon and make a fight forhis life and his servant's life. But he met only sinister looks, eyesthat watched his smallest movement with suspicion, a point readylevelled to strike him if he budged. And then, out of the mist beforethem, loomed the gaunt figure of a man, walking apace towards them.
The meeting appeared to be as little expected by the stranger as byOg's party. For not only did he spring aside and leave the track togive them a wider berth, but he went by warily, with his feet in thebog. Some word was cried to him in the Erse, he answered, for a momenthe appeared to be going to stop. Then he passed on and was lost in themist.
But he left a change behind him. One of the firelock-men broke intohasty speech, glancing, the Colonel noticed, at him and Bale, as ifthey were the subjects of his words. O'Sullivan Og answered the mancurtly and harshly; but before the reply was off his lips a second manbroke in vehemently in support of the other. They all halted; for a fewseconds all spoke at once. Then, just as Colonel John was beginning tohope that they would quarrel, O'Sullivan Og gave way with sullenreluctance, and a man ran back the way they had come, shouting a name.Before the prisoners could decide whether his absence afforded a chanceof escape, he was back again, and with him the man who had passed inthe bog.
Colonel John looked at the stranger, and recognised him; and, a man ofquick wit, he knew on the instant that he had to face the worst. Hisface set more hard, more firm--if it turned also a shade paler. Headdressed his companion. "They've called him back to confess us," hemuttered in Bale's ear.
"The devils!" Bale exclaimed. He choked on the word and worked his jaw,glaring at them; but he said no more. Only his eyes glanced from one toanother, wild and full of rage.
Colonel John did not reply, for already O'Sullivan Og was addressinghim. "There's no more to it," The McMurrough's agent said bluntly; "butyou've come your last journey, Colonel, and we'll go back wanting you.There's no room in Ireland from this day for them that's not Irish atheart! nor safety for honest men while you're walking the sod. But----"
"Will you murder us?" Colonel John said. "Do you know, man," hecontinued sternly, "what you do? What have we done to you, or yourmaster?"
"Done?" O'Sullivan Og answered with sudden ferocity. "And murder, sayyou? Ay, faith, I would, and ten thousand like you, for the sake of oldIreland! You may make your peace, and have five minutes to that--and nomore, for time presses, and we've work to do. These fools would have apriest for you"--he turned and spat on the ground--"but it is I, andnone better, know you are black Protestants, and 'twould take the HolyFather, God bless him, and no less, to make your souls!"
Colonel John looked at him with a strange light in his eyes. "It islittle to you," he said, "and much to me. Yet think, think, man, whatyou do. Or if you will not, here is my servant. Let him go at least.Spare his life at least. Put him, if you please, on board the Frenchsloop that's in the bay----"
"Faith, and you're wasting the little breath that is left you," theruffian answered, irritated rather than moved by the other's calmness."It's to take or leave. I told the men a heretic had no soul to make,but----"
"God forgive you!" Colonel John said--and was silent; for he saw thatremonstrance would not help him, nor prayer avail. The man's mind wasmade up, his heart steeled. For a brief instant, something, perhapsthat human fear which he had so often defied, clutched Colonel John'sheart. For a brief instant human weakness had its way with him, and heshuddered--in the face of the bog, in the face of such an end as this.Then the mist passed from his eyes, if not from the landscape; thegracious faith that was his returned to him: he was his grave,unyielding self again. He took Bale's hand and begged his forgiveness."Would I had never brought you!" he said. "Why did I, why did I? Yet,God's will be done!"
Bale did not seem able to speak. His jaw continued to work, while hiseyes looked sideways at Og. Had the Irishman known his man, he wouldhave put himself out of reach, armed as he was.
"But I will appeal for you to the priest!" Colonel John continued; "hemay yet prevail with them to spare you."
"He will not!" O'Sullivan Og said naively.
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