“Ay, now, or before noon!” Uncle Ulick retorted. “More by token,” he continued with bitterness, “it’s not that you might go on the instant that I’ve brought you out of our own house as if we were a couple of rapparees or horse-thieves, but that you might hear it from me who wish you well, and would warn you not to say nay — instead of from those who may be ‘ll not put it so kindly, nor be so wishful for you to be taking the warning they give.”
“Is it Flavia you’re meaning?”
“No; and don’t you be thinking it,” Uncle Ulick replied with a touch of heat. “Nor the least bit of it, John Sullivan! The girl, God bless her, is as honest as the day, if — —”
“If she’s not very wise!” Colonel John said, smiling.
“You may put it that way if you please. For the matter of that, you’ll be thinking she’s not the only fool at Morristown, nor the oldest, nor the biggest. And you’ll be right, more shame to me that I didn’t use the prudent tongue to them always, and they young! But the blood must run slow, and the breast be cold, that sees the way the Saxons are mocking us, and locks the tongue in silence. And sure, there’s no more to be said, but just this — that there’s those here you’ll be wise not to see! And you’ll get a hint to that end before the sun’s high.”
“And you’d have me take it?”
“You’d be mad not to take it!” Uncle Ulick replied, frowning. “Isn’t it for that I’m out of my warm bed, and the mist not off the lake?”
“You’d have me give way to them and go?”
“Faith, and I would!”
“Would you do that same yourself, Ulick?”
“For certain.”
“And be sorry for it afterwards!”
“Not the least taste in life!” Uncle Ulick asseverated.
“And be sorry for it afterwards,” Colonel John repeated quietly. “Kinsman, come here,” he continued with unusual gravity. And taking Uncle Ulick by the arm he led him to the end of the garden, where the walk looked on the lake and bore some likeness to a roughly made terrace. Pausing where the black masses of the Florence yews, most funereal of trees, still sheltered their forms from the house, he stood silent. The mist moved slowly on the surface of the water and crawled about their feet. But the sky to eastward was growing red, the lower clouds were flushed with rose-colour, the higher hills were warm with the coming of the sun. Here and there on the slopes which faced them a cotter’s hovel stood solitary in its potato patch or its plot of oats. In more than one place three or four cottages made up a tiny hamlet, from which the smoke would presently rise. To English eyes, to our eyes, the scene, these oases in the limitless brown of the bog, had been wild and rude; but to Colonel John, long familiar with the treeless plains of Poland and the frozen flats of Lithuania, it spoke of home, it spoke of peace and safety and comfort, and even of a narrow plenty. The soft Irish air lapped it, the distances were mellow, memories of boyhood rounded off all that was unsightly or cold.
He pointed here and there with his hand; and with seeming irrelevance. “You’d be sorry afterwards,” he said, “for you’d think of this, Ulick. God forbid that I should say there are no things for which even this should be sacrificed. God forbid I should deny that even for this too high a price may be paid. But if you play this away in wantonness — if that which you are all planning come about, and you fail, as they failed in Scotland three years back, and as you will, as you must fail here — it is of this, it is of the women and the children under these roofs that will go up in smoke, that you’ll be thinking, Ulick, at the last! Believe me or not, this is the last thing you’ll see! It’s to a burden as well as an honour you’re born where men doff caps to you; and it’s that burden will lie the black weight on your soul at the last. There’s old Darby and O’Sullivan Og’s wife — and Pat Mahony and Judy Mahony’s four sons — and Mick Sullivan and Tim and Luke the Lamiter — and the three Sullivans at the landing, and Phil the crowder, and the seven tenants at Killabogue — it’s of them, it’s of them” — as he spoke his finger moved from hovel to hovel— “and their like I’m thinking. You cry them and they follow, for they’re your folks born. But what do they know of England or England’s strength, or what is against them, or the certain end? They think, poor souls, because they land their spirits and pay no dues, and the Justices look the other way, and a bailiffs life here, if he’d a writ, would be no more worth than a woodcock’s, and the laws, bad and good, go for naught — they think the black Protestants are afraid of them! While you and I, you and I know, Ulick,” he continued, dropping his voice, “’tis because we lie so poor and distant and small, they give no heed to us! We know! And that’s our burden.”
The big man’s face worked. He threw out his arms. “God help us!” he cried.
“He will, in His day! I tell you again, as I told you the hour I came, I, who have followed the wars for twenty years, there is no deed that has not its reward when the time is ripe, nor a cold hearth that is not paid for a hundredfold!”
Uncle Ulick looked sombrely over the lake. “I shall never see it,” he said. “Never, never! And that’s hard. Notwithstanding, I’ll do what I can to quiet them — if it be not too late.”
“Too late?”
“Ay, too late, John. But anyway, I’ll be minding what you say. On the other hand, you must go, and this very day that ever is.”
“There are some here that I must not be seeing?” Colonel John said shrewdly.
“That’s it.”
“And if I do not go, Ulick? What then, man?”
“Whisht! Whisht!” the big man cried in unmistakable distress. “Don’t say the word! Don’t say the word, John, dear.”
“But I must say it,” Colonel John answered, smiling. “To be plain, Ulick, here I am and here I stay. They wish me gone because I am in the way of their plans. Well, and can you give me a better reason for staying?”
What argument Ulick would have used, what he was opening his mouth to say, remains unknown. Before he could reply the murmur of a voice near at hand startled them both. Uncle Ulick’s face fell, and the two turned with a single movement to see who came.
They discerned, in the shadow of the wall of yew, two men, who had just passed through the wicket into the garden.
The strangers saw them at the same moment, and were equally taken by surprise. The foremost of the two, a sturdy, weather-beaten man, with a square, stern face and a look of power, laid his hand on his cutlass — he wore a broad blade in place of the usual rapier. The other, whom every line of his shaven face, as well as his dress, proclaimed a priest — and perhaps more than a priest — crossed himself, and muttered something to his companion. Then he came forward.
“You take the air early, gentlemen,” he said, the French accent very plain in his speech, “as we do. If I mistake not,” he continued, looking with an easy smile at Colonel John, “your Protestant kinsman, of whom you told me, Mr. Sullivan? I did not look to meet you, Colonel Sullivan; but I do not doubt you are man of the world enough to excuse, if you cannot approve, the presence of the shepherd among his sheep. The law forbids, but — —” still smiling, he finished the sentence with a gesture in the air.
“I approve all men,” Colonel John answered quietly, “who are in their duty, father.”
“But wool and wine that pay no duty?” the priest replied, turning with a humorous look to his companion, who stood beside him unsmiling. “I’m not sure that Colonel Sullivan extends the same indulgence to free-traders, Captain Machin.”
Colonel John looked closely at the man thus brought to his notice. Then he raised his hat courteously. “Sir,” he said, “the guests of the Sullivans, whoever they be, are sacred to the Sullivans.”
Uncle Ulick’s eyes had met the priest’s, as eyes meet in a moment of suspense. At this he drew a deep breath of relief. “Well said,” he muttered. “Bedad, it is something to have seen the world!”
“You have served under the King of Sweden, I believe?” the ecclesiastic continued, addressing C
olonel John with a polite air. He held a book of offices in his hand, as if his purpose in the garden had been merely to read the service.
“Yes.”
“A great school of war, I am told?”
“It may be called so. But I interrupt you, father, and with your permission I will bid you good-morning. Doubtless we shall meet again.”
“At breakfast, I trust,” the ecclesiastic answered, with a certain air of intention. Then he bowed and they returned it, and the two pairs gave place to one another with ceremony, Colonel John and Ulick passing out through the garden wicket, while the strangers moved on towards the walk which looked over the lake. Here they began to pace up and down.
With his hand on the house door Uncle Ulick made a last attempt. “For God’s sake, be easy and go,” he muttered, his voice unsteady, his eyes fixed on the other’s, as if he would read his mind. “Leave us to our fate! You cannot save us — you see what you see, you know what it means. And for what I know, you know the man. You’ll but make our end the blacker.”
“And the girl?”
Uncle Ulick tossed his hands in the air. “God help her!” he said.
“Shall not we too help her?”
“We cannot.”
“It may be. Still, let us do our duty,” Colonel John replied. He was very grave. Things were worse, the plot was thicker, than he had feared.
Uncle Ulick groaned. “You’ll not be bidden?” he said.
“Not by an angel,” Colonel John answered steadfastly. “And I’ve seen none this morning, but only a good man whose one fault in life is to answer to all men ‘Sure, and I will!’”
Uncle Ulick started as if the words stung him. “You make a jest of it!” he said. “Heaven send we do not sorrow for your wilfulness. For my part, I’ve small hope of that same.” He opened the door, and, turning his back upon his companion, went heavily, and without any attempt at concealment, past the pantry and up the stairs to his room. Colonel John heard him slip the bolt, and, bearing a heavy heart himself, he knew that the big man was gone to his prayers.
To answer “Yes” to all comers and all demands is doubtless, in the language of Uncle Ulick, a mighty convenience, and a great softener of the angles of life. But a time comes to the most easy when he must answer “No,” or go open-eyed to ruin. Then he finds that from long disuse the word will not shape itself; or if uttered, it is taken for naught. That time had come for Uncle Ulick. Years ago his age and experience had sufficed to curb the hot blood about him. But he had been too easy to dictate while he might; he had let the reins fall from his hands; and to-day he must go the young folks’ way — ay, go, seeing all too plainly the end of it.
It was not his fate only. Many good men in the ‘15 and the ‘45, ay, and in the war of La Vendée, went out against their better judgment, borne along by the energy of more vehement spirits — went out, aware, as they rode down the avenue, and looked back at the old house, that they would see it no more; that never again except in dreams would they mount from the horse-block which their grandsires’ feet had hollowed, walk through the coverts which their fathers had planted, or see the faces of the aged serving-men who had taught their childish fingers to hold the reins and level the fowling-piece!
But Colonel John was of another kind and another mind. Often in the Swedish wars had he seen a fair country-side changed in one day into a waste, from the recesses of which naked creatures with wolfish eyes stole out at night, maddened by their wrongs, to wreak a horrid vengeance on the passing soldier. He knew that the fairest parts of Ireland had undergone such a fate within living memory; and how often before, God and her dark annals alone could tell! Therefore he was firmly minded, as firmly minded as one man could be, that not again should the corner of Kerry under his eyes, the corner he loved, the corner entrusted to him, suffer that fate.
Yet when he descended to breakfast, his face told no tale of his thoughts, and he greeted with a smile the unusual brightness of the morning. As he stood at the door, that looked on the courtyard, he had a laughing word for the beggars — never were beggars lacking at the door of Morristown. Nor as he sunned himself and inhaled with enjoyment the freshness of the air did any sign escape him that he marked a change.
But he was not blind. Among the cripples and vagrants who lounged about the entrance he detected six or eight ragged fellows whose sunburnt faces were new to him and who certainly were not cripples. In the doorway of one of the two towers that fronted him across the court stood O’Sullivan Og, whittling a stick and chatting with a sturdy idler in seafaring clothes. The Colonel could not give his reason, but he had not looked twice at these two before he got a notion that there was more in that tower this morning than the old ploughs and the broken boat which commonly filled the ground floor, or the grain which was stored above. Powder? Treasure? He could not say which or what; but he felt that the open door was a mask that deceived no one.
And there was a stir, there was a bustle in the court; a sparkle in the eyes of some as they glanced slyly and under their lashes at the house, a lilt in the tread of others as they stepped to and fro. He divined that hands would fly to caubeens and knees seek the ground if a certain face showed at a window: moreover, that that at which he merely guessed was no secret to the barefooted colleens who fed the pigs, or the barelegged urchins who carried the potatoes. Some strange change had fallen upon Morristown, and imbued it with life and hope and movement.
He was weighing this when he caught the sound of voices in the house, and he turned about and entered. The priest and Captain Machin had descended and were standing with Uncle Ulick warming themselves before the wood fire. The McMurrough, the O’Beirnes, and two or three strangers — grim-looking men who had followed, a glance told him, the trade he had followed — formed a group a little apart, yet near enough to be addressed. Asgill was not present, nor Flavia.
“Good-morning, again,” Colonel John said. And he bowed.
“With all my heart, Colonel Sullivan,” the priest answered cordially. And Colonel John saw that he had guessed aright: the speaker no longer took the trouble to hide his episcopal cross and chain, or the ring on his finger. There was an increase of dignity, too, in his manner. His very cordiality seemed a condescension.
Captain Machin bowed silently, while The McMurrough and the O’Beirnes looked darkly at the Colonel. They did not understand: it was plain that they were not in the secret of the morning encounter.
“I see O’Sullivan Og is here,” the Colonel said, addressing Uncle Ulick. “That will be very convenient.”
“Convenient?” Uncle Ulick repeated, looking blank.
“We can give him the orders as to the Frenchman’s cargo,” the Colonel said calmly.
Uncle Ulick winced. “Ay, to be sure! To be sure, lad,” he answered. But he rubbed his head, like a man in a difficulty.
The Bishop seemed to be going to ask a question. Before he could speak, however, Flavia came tripping down the stairs, a gay song on her lips. Half way down, the song, light and sweet as a bird’s, came to a sudden end.
“I am afraid I am late!” she said. And then — as the Colonel supposed — she saw that more than the family party were assembled: that the Bishop and Captain Machin were there also, and the strangers — and, above all, that he was there. She descended the last three stairs silently, but with a heightened colour, moved proudly into the middle of the group, and curtsied before the ecclesiastic till her knee touched the floor.
He gave her his hand to kiss, with a smile and a murmured blessing. She rose with sparkling eyes.
“It is a good morning!” she said, as one who having done her duty could be cheerful.
“It is a very fine morning,” the Bishop answered in the same spirit. “The sun shines on us, as we would have him shine. And after breakfast, with your leave, my daughter, and your brother’s leave, we will hold a little council. What say you, Colonel Sullivan?” he continued, turning to the Colonel. “A family council? Will you join us?”
The
McMurrough uttered an exclamation, so unexpected and strident, that the words were not articulate. But the Bishop understood them, for, as all turned to him, “Nay,” he said, “it shall be for the Colonel to say. But it’s ill arguing with a fasting man,” he continued genially, “and by your leave we will return to the matter after breakfast!”
“I am not for argument at all,” Captain Machin said. It was the first time he had spoken.
CHAPTER X
A COUNCIL OF WAR
The meal had been eaten, stolidly by some, by others with a poor appetite, by Colonel John with a thoughtful face. Two men of family, but broken fortunes, old Sir Donny McCarthy of Dingle, and Timothy Burke of Maamtrasna, had joined the party — under the rose as it were, and neither giving nor receiving a welcome. Now old Darby kept the door and the Bishop the hearth; whence, standing with his back to the glowing peat, he could address his audience with eye and voice. The others, risen from the table, had placed themselves here and there, Flavia near the Bishop and on his right hand, Captain Machin on his left; The McMurrough, the two O’Beirnes, Sir Donny and Timothy Burke, with the other strangers, sat in a knot by the window. Uncle Ulick with Colonel Sullivan formed a third group. The courtyard, visible through the windows, seethed with an ever-increasing crew of peasantry, frieze-coated or half bare, who whooped and jabbered, now about one of their number, now about another. Among them moved some ten or twelve men of another kidney — seamen with ear-rings and pigtails, bronzed faces and gaudy kerchiefs, who listened but idly, and with the contempt of the mercenary, but whose eyes seldom left the window behind which the conference sat, and whose hands were never far from the hilt of a cutlass or the butt of a pistol. The sun shone on the crowd and the court, and now and then those within the house caught through the gateway the shimmer of the lake beyond. The Irish air was soft, the hum of voices cheerful; nor could anything less like a secret council, less like a meeting of men about to commit themselves to a dark and dangerous enterprise, be well imagined.
Complete Works of Stanley J Weyman Page 557