For half a minute or so the faces of the onlookers reflected only a mild surprise, mingled with curiosity. But the fencers had done little more than feel one another’s blades, they had certainly not exchanged more than half a dozen serious passes, before this was changed, before one face grew longer and another more intent. A man who was no fencer, and therefore no judge, spoke. A fierce oath silenced him. Another murmured an exclamation under his breath. A third stooped low with his hands on his hips that he might not lose a lunge or a parry. For Payton, his face became slowly a dull red. At length, “Ha!” cried one, drawing in his breath. And he was right. The Maître d’Armes’ button, sliding under the Colonel’s blade, had touched his opponent. At once, Lemoine sprang back out of danger, the two points dropped, the two fencers stood back to take breath.
For a few seconds the Colonel’s chagrin was plain. He looked, and was, disappointed. Then he conquered the feeling, and he smiled. “I fear you are too strong for me,” he said.
“Not at all,” the Frenchman made answer. “Not at all! It was fortune, sare. I know not what you were with your right hand, but you are with the left vare strong, of the first force. It is certain.”
Payton, an expert, had been among the earliest to discern, with as much astonishment as mortification, the Colonel’s skill. With a sudden sinking of the heart, he had foreseen the figure he would cut if Lemoine were worsted; he had endured a moment of great fear. But at this success he choked down his apprehensions, and, a sanguine man, he breathed again. One more hit, one more success on Lemoine’s part, and he had won the wager! But with all he could do he could no longer bear himself carelessly. Pallid and troubled, he watched, biting his lip; and though he longed to say something cutting, he could think of nothing. Nay, if it came to that, he could not trust his voice, and while he still faltered, seeking for a gibe and finding none, the two combatants had crossed their foils again. Their tense features, plain through the masks, as well as their wary movements, made it clear that they played for a victory of which neither was confident.
By this time the rank and file of the spectators had been reinforced by the arrival of Marsh; who, discovering a scene so unexpected, and quickly perceiving that Lemoine was doing his utmost, wondered what Payton’s thoughts were. Apart from the wager, it was clear that if Lemoine had not met his match, the Captain had; and in the future would have to mend his manners in respect to one person present. Doubtless many of those in the room, on whose toes Payton had often trodden, had the same idea, and felt secret joy, pleased that the bully of the regiment was like to meet with a reverse and a master.
Whatever their thoughts, a quick rally diverted them, and riveted all eyes on the fencers. For a moment thrust and parry followed one another so rapidly that the untrained gaze could not distinguish them or trace the play. The spectators held their breath, expecting a hit with each second. But the rally died away again, neither of the players had got through the other’s guard; and now they fell to it more slowly, the Colonel, a little winded, giving ground, and Lemoine pressing him.
Then, no one saw precisely how it happened, whiff-whaff, Lemoine’s weapon flew from his hand and struck the wall with a whirr and a jangle. The fencing-master wrung his wrist. “Sacre!” he cried, between his teeth, unable in the moment of surprise to control his chagrin.
The Colonel touched him with his button for form’s sake, then stepped rapidly to the wall, picked up the foil by the blade, and courteously returned it to him. Two or three cried “Bravo,” but faintly, as barely comprehending what had happened. The greater part stood silent in sheer astonishment. For Payton, he remained dumb with mortification and disgust; and if he had the grace to be thankful for anything, he was thankful that for the moment attention was diverted from him.
Lemoine, indeed, the person more immediately concerned, had only eyes for his opponent, whom he regarded with a queer mixture of approval and vexation. “You have been at Angelo’s school in Paris, sare?” he said, in the tone of one who stated a fact rather than asked a question.
“It is true,” the Colonel answered, smiling. “You have guessed it.”
“And learned that trick from him?”
“I did. It is of little use except to a left-handed man.”
“Yet in play with one not of the first force it succeeds twice out of three times,” Lemoine answered. “Twice out of three times, with the right hand. Ma foi! I remember it well! I offered the master twenty guineas, Monsieur, if he would teach it me. But because” — he held out his palms pathetically— “I was right-handed, he would not.”
“I am fortunate,” Colonel John answered, bowing, and regarding his opponent with kind eyes, “in being able to requite your good nature. I shall be pleased to teach it you for nothing, but not now. Gentlemen,” he continued, giving up his foil to Lemoine, and removing his mask, “gentlemen, you will bear me witness, I trust, that I have won the wager?”
Some nodded, some murmured an affirmative, others turned towards Payton, who, too deeply chagrined to speak, nodded sullenly. How willingly at that moment would he have laid the Colonel dead at his feet, and Lemoine, and the whole crew, friends and enemies! He gulped something down. “Oh, d — n you!” he said, “I give it you! Take the mare, she’s in the stable!”
At that a brother officer touched his arm, and, disregarding his gesture of impatience, drew him aside. The intervener seemed to be reminding him of something; and the Colonel, not inattentive, and indeed suspicious, caught the name “Asgill” twice repeated. But Payton was too angry to care for minor consequences, or to regard anything but how he might most quickly escape from the scene of defeat and the eyes of those who had witnessed his downfall. He shook off his adviser with a rough hand.
“What do I care?” he answered with an oath. “He must shoe his own cattle!” Then, with a poor show of hiding his spite under a cloak of insouciance, he addressed the Colonel. “The mare is yours,” he said. “You’ve won her. Much good may she do you!”
And he turned on his heel and went out of the armoury.
CHAPTER VII
BARGAINING
The melancholy which underlies the Celtic temperament finds something congenial in the shadows that at close of day fall about an old ruin. On fine summer evenings, and sometimes when the south-wester was hurling sheets of rain from hill to hill, and the birch-trees were bending low before its blast, Flavia would seek the round tower that stood on the ledge beside the waterfall. It was as much as half a mile from the house, and the track which scaled the broken ground to its foot was rough. But from the narrow terrace before the wall the eye not only commanded the valley in all its length, but embraced above one shoulder a distant view of Brandon Mountain, and above the other a peep of the Atlantic. Thither, ever since she could remember, she had carried her dreams and her troubles; there, with the lake stretched below her, and the house a mere Noah’s ark to the eye, she had cooled her hot brow or dried her tears, dwelt on past glories, or bashfully thought upon the mysterious possibilities of that love, of that joint life, of that rosy-hued future, to which the most innocent of maidens must sometimes turn their minds.
It was perhaps because she often sought the tower at sunset, and he had noted the fact, that Luke Asgill’s steps bore him thither on an evening three days after the Colonel’s departure for Tralee. Asgill had remained at Morristown, though the girl had not hidden her distaste for his presence. But to all her remonstrances The McMurrough had replied, with his usual churlishness, that the man was there on business — did she want to recover her mare, or did she not? And she had found nothing more to say. But the most slavish observance on the guest’s part, and some improvement in her brother’s conduct — which she might have rightly attributed to Asgill’s presence — had not melted her. She, who had scarcely masked her reluctance to receive a Protestant kinsman, was not going to smile on a Protestant of Asgill’s past and reputation; on a man whose father had stood hat in hand before her grandfather, and whose wealth had been wrung from the sweat of hi
s fellow peasants.
Be that as it might, Asgill did not find her at the tower. But he was patient; he thought that she might still come, and he waited, sitting low, with his back against the ruined wall, that she might not see him until it was too late for her to retreat. By-and-by he heard footsteps mounting the path; his face reddened, and he made as if he would rise. Remembering himself, however, he sat down again, with such a look in his eyes as comes into a dog’s when it expects to be beaten. But the face that rose above the brow was not Flavia’s, but her brother’s. And Asgill swore.
The McMurrough understood, grinned, and threw himself on the ground beside him. “You’ll be wishing me in the devil’s bowl, I’m thinking,” he said. “Yet, faith, I’m not so sure — if you’re not a fool. For it’s certain I am, you’ll never touch so much as the sole of her foot without me.”
“I’m not denying it,” the other answered sulkily.
“So it’s mighty little use your wishing me away!” The McMurrough continued, stretching himself at his ease. “You can’t get her without me; nor at all, at all, but on my terms! It would be a fine thing for you, no doubt, if you could sneak round her behind my back! Don’t I know you’d be all for old Sir Michael’s will then, and I might die in a gutter, for you! But an egg, and an egg’s fair sharing.”
“Have I said it was any other?” Asgill asked gloomily.
“The old place is mine, and I’m minded to keep it.”
“And if any other marries her,” Asgill said quietly, “he will want her rights.”
“Well, and do you think,” the younger man answered in his ugliest manner, “that if it weren’t for that small fact, Mister Asgill — —”
“And the small fact,” Asgill struck in, “that before your grandfather died I lent you a clear five hundred, and I’m to take that, that’s my own already, in quittance of all!”
“Well, and wasn’t it that same I’m saying?” The McMurrough retorted. “If it weren’t for that, and the bargain we’ve struck, d’you think that I’d be letting my sister and a McMurrough look at the likes of you? No, not in as many Midsummer Days as are between this and world without end!”
The look Asgill shot at him would have made a wiser man tremble. But The McMurrough knew the strength of his position.
“And if I were to tell her?” Asgill said slowly.
“What?”
“That we’ve made a bargain about her.”
“It’s the last strand of hope you’d be breaking, my man,” the younger man answered briskly. “For you’d lose my help, and she’d not believe you — though every priest in Douai backed your word!”
Asgill knew that that was true, and though his face grew dark he changed his tone. “Enough said,” he replied pacifically. “Where’ll we be if we quarrel? You want the old place that is yours by right. And I want — your sister.” He swallowed something as he named her; even his tone was different. “’Tis one and one. That’s all.”
“And you’re the one who wants the most,” James replied cunningly. “Asgill, my man, you’d give your soul for her, I’m thinking.”
“I would.”
“You would, I believe. By G — d,” he continued, with a leer, “you’re that fond of her I’ll have to look to her! Hang me, my friend, if I let her be alone with you after this. Safe bind, safe find. Women and fruit are easily bruised.”
Asgill rose slowly to his feet. “You scoundrel!” he said in a low tone. And it was only when The McMurrough, surprised by his movement, turned to him, that the young man saw that his face was black with passion — saw, indeed, a face so menacing, that he also sprang to his feet. “You scoundrel!” Asgill repeated, choking on the words. “If you say a thing like that again — if you say it again, do you hear? — I’ll do you a mischief. Do you hear? Do you hear?”
“What in the saints’ names is the matter with you?” The McMurrough faltered.
“You’re not fit to breathe the air she breathes!” Asgill continued, with the same ferocity. “Nor am I! But I know it, thank God! And you don’t! Why, man,” he continued, still fighting with the passion that possessed him, “I wouldn’t dare to touch the hem of her gown without her leave! I wouldn’t dare to look in her face if she bade me not! She’s as safe with me as if she were an angel in heaven! And you say — you; but you don’t understand!”
“Faith and I don’t,” The McMurrough answered, his tone much lowered. “That’s true for you!” When it came to a collision of wills the other was his master.
“No,” Asgill repeated. “But don’t you talk like that again, or harm will come of it. I may be what you say — I may be! But I wouldn’t lay a finger on your sister against her will — no, not to be in Paradise!”
“I thought you didn’t believe in Paradise,” the younger man muttered sulkily, striving to cover the check he had received.
“There’s a Paradise I do believe in,” Asgill answered. “But never mind that.” He sat down again.
Strange to relate, he meant what he said. Many changes corrupt loyalty, and of evil times evil men are the natural fruit. In nearly all respects Asgill was as unscrupulous a man as the time in which he lived and the class from which he sprang could show. Following in the steps of a griping, miserly sire, he had risen to his present station by oppression and chicanery; by crushing the weak and cajoling the strong. And he was prepared to maintain his ground by means as vile and a hand as hard. But he loved; and — strange anomaly, bizarre exception, call it what you will — somewhere in the depths of his earthly nature a spark of good survived, and fired him with so pure an ardour that at the least hint of disrespect to his mistress, at a thought of injury to her, the whole man rose in arms. It was a strange, yet a common inconsistency; an inconstancy to evil odd enough to set The McMurrough marvelling, while common enough to commend itself to a thinking mind.
“Enough of that!” Asgill repeated after a moment’s pause. While he did not fear, it did not suit him to break with his companion. “And, indeed, it was not of your sister I was thinking when I said where’d we be if we quarrelled. For it’s not I’ll be the cuckoo to push you out, McMurrough, lad. But a man there is will play the old grey bird yet, if you let him be. And him with the power and all.”
“D’you mean John Sullivan?”
“I mean that same, my jewel.”
The young man laughed derisively. He had resumed his seat by the other’s side. “Pho!” he said, “you’ll be jesting. For the power, it’s but a name. If he were to use, were it but the thin end of it, it would run into his hand! The boys would rise upon him, and Flavvy’d be the worst of them. It’s in the deep bog he’d be, before he knew where he was, and never’d he come out, Luke Asgill! Sure, I’m not afraid of him!”
“You’ve need to be!” Asgill said soberly.
“Pho! It takes more than him to frighten me! Why, man, he’s a soft thing, if ever there was one! He’ll not say boh! to a goose with a pistol in its hand!”
“And that might be, if you weren’t such a fool as ye are, McMurrough!” Asgill answered. “No, but hear me out, lad!” he continued earnestly. “I say he might not harm you, if you had not the folly we both know of in your mind. But I tell you freely I’ll be no bonnet to it while he stands by. ’Tis too dangerous. Not that I believe you are much in earnest, my lad, whatever others may think — what’s your rightful king to you, or you to him, that you should risk aught? But whether you go into it out of pure devilment, or just to keep right with your sister — —”
“Which is why you stand bonnet for it,” McMurrough struck in, with a grin.
“That’s possible. But I do that, my lad, because I hope naught may come of it, but just a drinking of healths and the like. So, why should I play the informer and get myself misliked? But you — you may find yourself deeper in it than you think, and quicker than you think, while all the time, if the truth were told” — with a shrewd look at the other— “I believe you’ve little more heart for it than myself.”
The young man swore a great oath that he was in it body and soul, swore it by the bones of his ten toes. But he laughed before the words were out of his mouth. And “I don’t believe you,” Asgill said coolly. “You know, and I know, what you were ready to do when the old man was alive, and if it had paid you properly. And you’d do the same now, if it paid you now. So what are the wrongs of the old faith to you that you should risk all for them? Or the rights of the old Irish, for the matter of that? But this being so, and you but half-hearted, I tell you, it is too dangerous a game to play for groats. And while John Sullivan’s here, that makes it more dangerous, I’ll not play bonnet!”
“What’ll he know of it, at all, at all?” James McMurrough asked contemptuously. And he took up a stone and flung it over the edge.
“With a Spanish ship off the coast,” Asgill answered, “and you know who likely to land, and a preaching, may be, next Sunday, and pike-drill at the Carraghalin to follow — man, in three days you may have smoking roof-trees, and ‘twill be too late to cry ‘Hold!’ Stop, I say, stop while you can, and before you’ve all Kerry in a flame!”
James McMurrough turned with a start. His face — but the light was beginning to fail — seemed a shade paler. “How did you know there was pike-drill?” he cried sharply. “I didn’t tell you.”
“Hundreds know it.”
“But you!” McMurrough retorted. It was plain that he was disagreeably surprised.
“Did you think I meant nothing when I said I played bonnet to it?”
“You know a heap too much, Luke Asgill!”
“And could make a good market of it?” Asgill answered coolly. “That’s what you’re thinking, is it? And it’s Heaven’s truth I could — if you’d not a sister.”
“And a care for your own skin.”
“Faith,” Asgill answered with humorous frankness, “and I’m plain with you, that stands for something in it. For it’s a weary way west of Athlone we are!”
“And the bogs are deep,” McMurrough said, with a sidelong look.
Complete Works of Stanley J Weyman Page 554