The Wild Geese
Page 25
CHAPTER XXV
PEACE
Uncle Ulick, with the mud of the road still undried on his boots, andthe curls still stiff in the wig which the town barber at Mallow haddressed for him, rubbed his chin with his hand and, covertly lookinground the room, owned himself puzzled. He had returned a week later tothe day than he had arranged to return. But had his absence run intomonths instead of weeks the lapse of time had not sufficed to explainthe change which he felt, but could not define, in his surroundings.
Certainly old Darby looked a thought more trim, and the room a triflebetter ordered than he had left them. But he was sensible, thoughvaguely, that the change did not stop there--perhaps did not beginthere. Full of news of the outer world as he was, he caught himselfpausing in mid-career to question himself. And more than once hisfurtive eyes scanned his companions' faces for the answer his mindrefused to give.
An insolent Englishman had come, and given reins to the _'ubris_ thatwas in him, and, after running Luke Asgill through the body, had paidthe penalty--in fight so fair that the very troopers who had witnessedit could make no complaint nor raise trouble. So much Uncle Ulick hadlearned. But he had not known Payton, and, exciting as the episodesounded, it did not explain the difference in the atmosphere of thehouse. Where he had left enmity and suspicion, lowering brows and asilent table, he found smiles, and easiness, and a cheerful sense ofwell-being.
Again he looked about him. "And where will James be?" he asked, for thefirst time missing his nephew.
"He has left us," Flavia said slowly, with her eyes on ColonelSullivan.
"It's away to Galway City he is," Morty O'Beirne explained with achuckle.
"The saints be between us and harm!" Uncle Ulick exclaimed inastonishment. "And why's he there?"
"The story is long," said Colonel Sullivan.
"But I can tell it in a few words," Flavia continued with dignity. "Andthe sooner it is told the better. He has not behaved well, Uncle Ulick.And at his request and with--the legal owner's consent--it's I haveagreed to pay him one-half of the value of the property."
"The devil you have!" Uncle Ulick exclaimed, in greater astonishment.And, pushing back his seat and rubbing his huge thigh with his hand, helooked from one to another. "By the powers! if I may take the libertyof saying so, young lady, you've done a vast deal in a very littletime-faith, in no time at all, at all!" he added.
"It was done at his request," Flavia answered gravely.
Uncle Ulick continued to rub his thigh and to stare. These things werevery surprising. "And they're telling me," he said, "that Luke Asgill'sin bed upstairs?"
"He is."
"And recovering?"
"He is, glory be to God!"
"Nor that same's not the best news of him," Morty said with a grin."Nor the last."
"True for you!" Phelim cried. "If it was the last word you spoke!"
"What are you meaning?" Uncle Ulick asked.
"He's turned," said Morty. "No less! Turned! He's what his father wasbefore him, Mr. Sullivan--come back to Holy Church, and not a morningbut Father O'Hara's with him making his soul and what not!"
"Turned!" Uncle Ulick cried. "Luke Asgill, the Justice? Boys, you'remaking fun of me!" And, unable to believe what the O'Beirnes told him,he looked to Flavia for confirmation.
"It is true," she said.
"Bedad, it is?" Uncle Ulick replied. "Then I'll not be surprised in allmy life again! More by token, there's only one thing left to hope for,my jewel, and that's certain. Cannot you do the same to the man that'sbeside you?"
Flavia glanced quickly at Colonel John, then, with a heightened colour,she looked again at Uncle Ulick. "That's what I cannot do," she said.
But the blush, and the smile that accompanied it, and something perhapsin the way she hung towards her neighbour as she turned to him, toldUncle Ulick all. The big man smacked the table with his hand till theplatters leapt from the board. "Holy poker!" he cried, "is it thatyou're meaning? And I felt it, and I didn't feel it, and you sittingthere forenent me, and prating as if butter wouldn't melt in yourmouth! It is so, is it? But there, the red of your cheek is answerenough!"
For Flavia was blushing more brightly than before, and Colonel John wassmiling, and the two young men were laughing openly.
"You must get Flavia alone," Colonel John said, "and perhaps she'lltell you."
"Bedad, it's true, and I felt it in the air," Ulick Sullivan answered,smiling all over his face. "Ho, ho! Ho, ho! Indeed you've not been idlewhile I've been away. But what does Father O'Hara say, eh?"
"The Father----" Flavia began in a small voice.
"Ay, what does the Father say?"
"He says," Flavia continued, looking down demurely, "that it's a rarestick that's no bend in it, and--and 'tis very little use looking forit on a dark night. Besides, he----" she glanced at her neighbour, "hesaid he'd be master, you know, and what could I do?"
"Then it's the very wrong way he's gone about it!" Uncle Ulick cried,with a chuckle. "For there's no married man that I know that's master!It's you, my jewel, have put the comether on him, and I'll trust you tokeep it there!"
But into that we need not go. Our task is done. Whether Flavia's highspirit and her husband's gravity, her youth and his experiencetravelled the road together in unbroken amity, or with no more than thejars which the accidents of life occasion, however close the link, itdoes not fall within this story to tell. Nor need we say whether FatherO'Hara proved as discreet in the long run as he had been liberal in thebeginning. Probably the two had their bickerings which did not severlove. But one thing may be taken for granted; in that part of Kerry theKing over the Water, if his health was sometimes drunk of an evening,stirred up no second trouble. Nor, when the '45 convulsed Scotland, andshook England to its centre, did one man at Morristown raise his handor lose his life. For so much at least that windswept corner of Kerry,beaten year in and year out by the Atlantic rollers, had to thankColonel Sullivan.
Nor for that only. In many unnamed ways his knowledge of the worldblessed those about him. The small improvements, the little advances incivilisation which the English intruders were introducing into thoseparts, he adopted: a more orderly house, an increased neatness, a fewmore acres brought under the plough or the spade, whole roofs and fewbeggars--these things were to be seen at Morristown, and in few otherplaces thereabouts. And, above all, his neighbours owned the influenceof one who, with a reputation gained at the sword's point, stoodresolutely, unflinchingly, abroad as at home, at fairs and cockfightsas on his own hearth, for peace. More than a century was to elapsebefore private war ceased to be the amusement of the Irish gentry. Butin that part of Kerry, and during a score of years, the name and weightof Colonel Sullivan of Morristown availed to quiet many a brawl andavert many a meeting.
To follow the mean and the poor of spirit beyond the point where theirfortunes cease to be entwined with those of better men is a profitlesstask. James McMurrough, tried and found wanting, where all favouredhim, was not likely to rise above his nature where the odds were equal,and all men his rivals. What he did in Galway City, that bizarre,half-foreign town of the west, how long he tarried there, and whitherhe went afterwards, in the vain search for a place where a man couldswagger without courage and ruffle it without consequences, it mattersnot to inquire. A time came when his kin knew not whether he lived orwas dead.
Luke Asgill, who could rise as much above The McMurrough as he had itin him to fall below him, who was as wicked as James was weak, wasredeemed, one may believe, by the good that lurked in him. He lay manyweeks on a sick-bed, and returned to everyday life another man. For,whereas he had succumbed, a passionate lover of Flavia, he rose whollycured of that passion. It had ebbed from him with his blood, or wanedwith his fever. And whereas he had before sought both gain and power,restrained by as few scruples as the worst men of a bad age, he rose apursuer of both, but within bounds; so that, though he was still hardand grasping and oppressive, it was possible to say of him that he wasno worse than his class.
Close-fisted, at Father O'Hara's instance hecould open his hand. Hard, at the Father's prayer he would at timesremit a rent or extend a bond. Ambitious, he gave up, for his soul'ssake and the sake of the Faith that had been his fathers', the officewhich endowed him with power to oppress.
There were some who scoffed behind his back, and said that Luke Asgillhad had enough of carrying a sword and now wished no better than to berid of it. But, in truth, as far as the man's reformation went, it wasreal. The devil was well, but he was not the devil he had been. Thehours he had passed in the presence of death, the thoughts he had hadwhile life was low in him, were not forgotten in his health. The strongnature, slow to take an impression, was stiff to retain it. A moody,silent man, going about his business with a face to match the sullenbogs of his native land, he lived to a great age, and paid one tributeonly to the woman he had loved and forgotten--he died a bachelor.
THE END
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