He forced a laugh. And, truly to think of this man, who had not seen Morristown for a score of years, using the experience of a fortnight to give him notice to quit, was laughable. The laugh he had forced became real.
“More plain than hospitable, Colonel,” he said. “Perhaps, after all, it will be best so, and we shall understand one another.”
“I am thinking so,” Colonel Sullivan answered. It was plain that he did not mean to be drawn from the position he had taken up.
“Only I think that you have overlooked this,” Asgill continued smoothly. “It is one thing to own a house and another to kick the logs on the hearth; one thing to have the deeds and another — in the west — to pass the punch-bowl! More, by token, ’tis a hospitable country this, Colonel, none more so; and if there is one thing would annoy The McMurrough and the young lady, his sister, more than another, it would be to turn a guest from the door — that is thought to be theirs!”
“You mean that you will not take my bidding?” the Colonel said.
“Not the least taste in life,” Asgill answered gaily, “unless it is backed by the gentleman or the lady.”
“Yet I believe, sir, that I have a means to persuade you,” Colonel John replied. “It is no more than a week ago, Mr. Asgill, since a number of persons in my presence assumed a badge so notoriously treasonable that a child could not doubt its meaning.”
“In the west of Ireland,” Asgill said, with a twinkle in his eye, “that is a trifle, my dear sir, not worth naming.”
“But if reported in the east?”
Asgill averted his face that its smile might not be seen. “Well,” he said, “it might be a serious matter there.”
“I think you take me now,” Colonel John rejoined. “I wish to use no threats. The least said the soonest mended.”
Asgill looked at him with half-shut eyes and a lurking smile — in truth, with the amusement of a man watching the transparent scheming of a child. “As you say, the least said the soonest mended,” he rejoined. “So — who is to report it in the east?”
“I will, if necessary.”
“If — —”
“If you push me to it.”
Asgill raised his eyebrows impertinently. “An informer?” he said.
Colonel John did not flinch. “If necessary,” he repeated.
“That would be serious,” Asgill rejoined, “for many people. In the first place for the young lady, your ward, Colonel. Then for your kinsman — and Mr. Ulick Sullivan. After that for quite a number of honest gentlemen, tolerably harmless and tolerably well-reputed here, whose only fault is a tendency to heroics after dinner. It would be so serious, and for so many, Colonel, that for my part I should be glad to suffer in such good company. Particularly,” he continued, with a droll look, the droller for his appreciation of the Colonel’s face of discomfiture, “as being a Protestant and a Justice, I should, ten to one, be the only person against whom the story would not pass. Eh, Colonel, what do you think? So that, ten to one, I should go free, and the others go to Geordie’s prison!”
Colonel John had not, to be honest, a word to say. He was fairly defeated, his flank turned, his guns captured. He had counted so surely on a panic, on the man whom he knew to be a knave proving also a coward, that even his anger — and he was very angry — could not hide his discomfiture. He looked, indeed, so rueful, and at the same time so wrathful, that Asgill laughed aloud.
“Come, Colonel,” he said, “it is no use to scowl at me. We know you never call any one out. Let me just hint that wits in Ireland are not quite so slow as in colder countries, and that, had I been here a week back, you had not found it so easy to — —”
“To what, sir?”
“To send two old women to sea in a cockboat,” Asgill replied. And he laughed anew and loudly. But this time there was no gaiety in his laugh. If the Colonel had not performed the feat in question, in how different a state things might have been at this moment! Asgill felt murderous towards him as he thought of that; and the weapon of the flesh being out of the question — for he had no mind to face the Colonel’s small-sword — he sought about for an arm of another kind, and had no difficulty in finding one. “More, by token,” he continued, “if you are going to turn informer, it was a pity you did not send the young woman to sea with the old ones. But I’m thinking you’d not be liking to be without her, Colonel?”
Colonel John turned surprisingly red: perhaps he did not quite know why. “We will leave her out of the question, sir,” he said haughtily. “Or — that reminds me! That reminds me,” he continued, with increasing sternness. “You question my right to bid you begone — —”
“By G — d, I do!” Asgill cried, with zest. He was beginning to enjoy himself.
“But you forget, I think, another little matter in the past that is known to me — and that you would not like disclosed, I believe, sir.”
“You seem to have been raking things up, Colonel.”
“One must deal with a rogue according to his roguery,” Colonel John retorted.
Asgill’s face grew dark. This was taking the buttons off with a vengeance. He made a movement, but restrained himself. “You don’t mince matters,” he said.
“I do not.”
“You may be finding it an unfortunate policy before long,” Asgill said between his teeth. He was moved at last, angered, perhaps apprehensive of what was coming.
“Maybe, sir,” Colonel John returned, “maybe. But in the meantime let me remind you that your tricks as a horsedealer would not go far to recommend you as a guest to my kinswoman.”
“Oh?”
“Who shall assuredly hear who seized her mare if you persist in forcing your company upon her.”
“Upon her?” Asgill repeated, in a peculiar tone. “I see.”
Colonel John reddened. “You know now,” he said. “And if you persist — —”
“You will tell her,” Asgill took him up, “that I — shall I say — abducted her mare?”
“I shall tell her without hesitation.”
“Or scruple?”
Colonel Sullivan glowered at him, but did not answer.
Asgill laughed a laugh of honest contempt. “And she,” he said, “will not believe you if you swear it a score of times! Try, sir! Try! You will injure yourself, you will not injure me. Why, man,” he continued, in a tone of unmeasured scorn, “you are duller than I thought you were! The ice is still in your wits and the fog in your brain. I thought, when I heard what you had done, that you were the man for Kerry! But — —”
“What is it? What’s this?”
The speaker was James McMurrough, who had come from the house in search of the kinsman he dared not suffer out of his sight. He had approached unnoticed, and his churlish tone showed that what he had overheard was not to his liking. But Asgill supposed that James’s ill-humour was directed against his enemy, and he appealed to him.
“What is it?” he repeated with energy; “I’ll tell you!”
“Then you’ll be telling me indoors!” James answered curtly.
“No!” said Colonel Sullivan.
But at that the young man exploded. “No?” he cried. “No? And, why no? Confusion, sir, it’s too far you are driving us,” he continued passionately. “Is it at your bidding I must stand in a mob of beggars at my own gate — I, The McMurrough? And be telling and taking for all the gossoons in the country to hear? No? But it’s yes, I say! There’s bounds to it all, and if you must be falling to words with my friends, quarrel like gentlemen within doors, and not in a parcel of loons at the gate.”
He turned without waiting for a reply and strode into the courtyard. Colonel John hesitated a moment, then he stood aside, and, with a stern face, he invited Asgill to precede him. The Justice did so, smiling. He had won the first bout; and now, if he was not much mistaken, his opponent had made a false move.
That opponent, following with a sombre face, began to be of the same opinion. In his simplicity he had supposed that it would be
easy to bell the cat. He had seen, he fancied, a way to do it in a corner, quietly, with little outcry and no disturbance. But the cat had teeth and claws and the cunning of a cat, and was not, it now appeared, an animal easy to bell.
They passed into the house, The McMurrough leading. There were two or three buckeens in the hall, and Darby and one of the down-at-heel serving-boys were laying the evening meal. “You’ll be getting out,” James said curtly.
“We will,” replied one of the men. And they trooped out at the back.
“Now, what is it?” the McMurrough asked, turning on his followers and speaking in a tone hardly more civil.
“It’s what you’re saying — Get out!” Asgill answered smiling. “Only it’s the Colonel here’s for saying it, and it seems I’m the one to get out.”
“What the saints do you mean?” James growled. “Sorra bit of your fun am I wishing at this present!” He wanted no trouble, and he saw that here was trouble.
“I can tell you in a few words,” Colonel Sullivan answered. “You know on what terms we are here. I wish to do nothing uncivil, and I was looking for this gentleman to take a hint and go quietly. He will not, it seems, and so I must say plainly what I mean. I object to his presence here.”
James stared. He did not understand. “Why, man, he’s no Jacobite,” he cried, “whoever the other is!” His surprise was genuine.
“I will say nothing as to that,” Colonel John answered precisely.
“Then, faith, what are you saying?” James asked. Asgill stood by smiling, aware that silence would best fight his battle.
“This,” Colonel John returned. “That I know those things of him that make him unfit company here.”
“The devil you do!”
“And — —”
But James’s patience was at an end. “Unfit company for whom?” he cried. “Eh! Unfit company for whom? Is it Darby he’ll be spoiling? Or Thaddy the lad? Or” — resentment gradually overcoming irony— “is it Phelim or Morty he’ll be tainting the souls of, and he a Protestant like yourself? Curse me, Colonel Sullivan, it’s clean out of patience you put me! Are we boys at school, to be scolded and flouted and put right by you? Unfit company? For whom? For whom, sir? I’d like to know. More, by token, I’d like to know also where this is to end — and I will, by your leave! For whom, sir?”
“For your sister,” Colonel John replied. “Without saying more, Mr. Asgill is not of the class with whom your grandfather — —”
“My grandfather — be hanged!” cried the angry young man — angry with some cause, for it must be confessed that Colonel John, with the best intentions, was a little heavy-handed. “You said you’d be master here, and faith,” he continued with bitterness, “it’s master you mean to be. But there’s a limit! By Heaven, there’s a limit — —”
“Yes, James, there is a limit!” a voice struck in — a voice as angry as The McMurrough’s, but vibrating to a purer note of passion; so that the indignation which it expressed seemed to raise the opposition to Colonel John’s action to a higher plane. “There is a limit, Colonel Sullivan!” Flavia repeated, stepping from the foot of the stairs, on the upper flight of which — drawn from her room by the first outburst — she had heard the whole. “And it has been reached! It has been reached when the head of The McMurroughs of Morristown is told on his own hearth whom he shall receive and whom he shall put to the door! Limit is it? Let me tell you, sir, I would rather be the poorest exile than live thus. I would rather beg my bread barefoot among strangers, never to see the sod again, never to hear the friendly Irish tongue, never to smell, the peat reek, than live on this tenure, at the mercy of a hand I loathe, on the sufferance of a man I despise, of an informer, a traitor, ay, an apostate — —”
“Flavia! Flavia!” Colonel John’s remonstrance was full of pain.
“Ah, don’t call me that!” she rejoined passionately. “Don’t make me hate my own name! Better a hundred times an open foe — —”
“Have I ever been anything but an open foe?” he returned. “On this point at any rate?”
She swept the remonstrance by. “Better,” she cried vehemently, “far better a fate we know, a lot we understand; far better freedom and poverty, than to live thus — yesterday a laughing-stock, to-day slaves; yesterday false to our vows, to-day false to our friends! Oh, there must be an end! There — —”
She choked on the word, and her distress moved Asgill to do a strange thing. He had listened to her with an admiration that for the time purified the man, lifted him above selfishness, put the desire to triumph far from him. Now he stepped forward. “I would rather never cross this threshold again,” he cried; “never, ay, believe me, I would rather never see you again, than give you this pain! I go, dear lady, I go! And do not let one thought of me trouble or distress you! Let this gentleman have his way. I do not understand. I do not ask to understand, how he holds you, or constrains you. But I shall be silent.”
He seemed to the onlookers as much raised above himself as Colonel John seemed depressed below himself. There could be no doubt with whom the victory lay: with whom the magnanimity. Asgill stood erect, almost beatified, a Saint George, a knight of chivalry. Colonel Sullivan showed smaller to the eye, stood bowed and grey-faced, a man beaten and visibly beaten.
But as Asgill turned on his heel Flavia found her voice. “Do not go!” she cried impulsively. “There must be an end! There must be an end of this!”
But Asgill insisted. He saw that to go, to submit himself to the sway against which she revolted was to impress himself upon her mind, was to commend himself to her a hundred times more seriously than if he stayed. And he persisted. “No,” he said; “permit me to go.” He stepped forward and, with a grace borrowed for the occasion, and with lips that trembled at his daring, he raised and kissed her hand. “Permit me to go, dear lady. I would rather banish myself a hundred times than bring ill into this house or differences into this family.”
“Flavia!” Colonel Sullivan said, finding his voice at last, “hear first, I am begging you, what I have to say! Hear it, since against my will the matter has been brought to your knowledge.”
“That last I can believe!” she cried spitefully. “But for hearing, I choose the part this gentleman has chosen — to go from your presence. What?” looking at the Colonel with white cheeks and flaming eyes — Asgill had turned to go from the room— “has it come to this? That we must seek your leave to live, to breathe, to have a guest, to eat and sleep, and perhaps to die? Then I say — then I say, if this be so, we have no choice but to go. This is no place for us!”
“Flavia!”
“Ah, do not call me that!” she retorted. “My hope, joy, honour, are in this house, and you have disgraced it! My brother is a McMurrough, and what have you made of him? He cowers before your eye! He has no will but yours! He is as good as dumb — before his master! You flog us like children, but you forget that we are grown, and that it is more than the body that smarts. It is shame we feel — shame so bitter that if a look could lay you dead at my feet, though it cost us all, though it left us beggared, I would look it joyfully — were I alone! But you, cowardly interloper, a schemer living on our impotence, walk on and trample upon us — —”
“Enough,” Colonel Sullivan cried, intolerable pain in his voice. “You win! You have a heart harder than the millstone, more set than ice! I call you to witness I have struggled hard, I have struggled hard, girl — —”
“For the mastery,” she cried venomously. “And for your master, the devil!”
“No,” he replied, more quietly. “I think for God. If I was wrong, may He forgive me!”
“I never will!” she protested.
“I shall not ask for your forgiveness,” he retorted. He looked at her silently, and then, in an altered tone, “The more,” he said, “as my mind is changed again. Ay, thank God, changed again. A minute ago I was weak; now I am strong, and I will do my duty as I have set myself to do it. When I came here I came to be a peacemaker,
I came to save the great from his folly and the poor from his ignorance, to shield the house of my fathers from ruin and my kin from the gaol and the gibbet. And I stand here still, and I shall persist — I shall persist.”
“You will?” she exclaimed.
“I shall! I shall remain and persist.”
Passion choked her. She could not find words. After all she had said he would persist. He was not to be moved — he would persist. He would still trample upon them, still be master. The house was no longer theirs, nor was anything theirs. They were to have no life, no will, no freedom — while he lived. Ah, while he lived. She made an odd gesture with her hands, and turned and went up the stairs, leaving him master of the field. The worse for him! The worse, the worse, the worse for him!
CHAPTER XVIII
A COUNTERPLOT
Luke Asgill rode slowly from the gates, not without a backward glance that raked the house. The McMurrough walked by his stirrup, talking rapidly — he, too, with furtive backward glances. In five minutes he had explained the situation and the Colonel’s vantage ground. At the end of those minutes, and when they were at some distance from the house, “I see,” Asgill said thoughtfully. “Easy to put him under the sod! But you’re thinking him worse dead than alive.”
“Sorra a doubt of it!”
“Yet the bogs are deep,” Asgill returned, his tone smacking faintly of raillery. “You might deal with him first, and his heir when the time came. Why not?”
“God knows!” James answered. “And I’ve no taste to make the trial.” He did not name the oath he had taken to attempt nothing against Colonel John, nor to be a party to any attempt. He had slurred over that episode. He had dwelt in preference on the fact of the will and the dilemma in which it placed him.
Complete Works of Stanley J Weyman Page 567