“God forbid!” he cried. “Ah! God forbid!”
And he prayed that, rather than that, rather than have that last proof of the hardness of the heart that dwelt in that fair shape, he might not see her at all. He prayed that, rather than that, she might not come; though — so weak are men — that she might come, and he might see how she bore herself, and how she carried off his knowledge of her treason — was now the one interest he had, the one thought, prospect, hope that had power to lighten the time, and keep at bay — though noon was long past, and he had fasted twenty-four hours — the attacks of hunger!
The thought possessed him to an extraordinary extent. Would she come? And would he see her? Or, having lured him by that Judas letter into his enemies’ power, would she leave him to be treated as they chose, while she lay warm and safe in the house which his interference had saved for her?
Oh! cruel!
Then — for no man was more just than this man, though many surpassed him in tact — the very barbarity of an action so false and so unwomanly suggested that, viewed from her side, it must wear another shape. For even Delilah was a Philistine, and by her perfidy served her country. What was this girl gaining? Revenge, yes; yet, if they kept faith with him, and, the deed signed, let him go free, she had not even revenge. For the rest, she lost by the deed. All that her grandfather had meant for her passed by it to her brother. To lend herself to stripping herself was not the part of a selfish woman. Even in her falseness there was something magnanimous.
He sat drumming on the table with his fingers, and thinking of it. She had been false to him, treacherous, cruel! But not for her own sake, not for her private advantage; rather to her hurt. Viewed on that side, there was something to be said for her.
He was still staring dreamily at the table when a shadow falling on the table roused him. He lifted his eyes to the nearest loophole, through which the setting sun had been darting its rays a moment before. Morty O’Beirne bending almost double — for outside, the arrow-slit was not more than two feet from the ground — was peering in.
“Ye’ll not have changed your quarters, Colonel,” he said, in a tone of raillery which was assumed perhaps to hide a real feeling of shame. “Sure, you’re there, Colonel, safe enough?”
“Yes, I am here,” Colonel John answered austerely. He did not leave his seat at the table.
“And as much at home as a mole in a hill,” Morty continued. “And, like that same blessed little fellow in black velvet that I take my hat off to, with lashings of time for thinking.”
“So much,” Colonel John answered, with the same severe look, “that I am loth to think ill of any. Are you alone, Mr. O’Beirne?”
“Faith, and who’d there be with me?” Morty answered in true Irish fashion.
“I cannot say. I ask only, Are you alone?”
“Then I am, and that’s God’s truth,” Morty replied, peering inquisitively into the corners of the gloomy chamber. “More by token I wish you no worse than just to be doing as you’re bid — and faith, it’s but what’s right! — and go your way. ’Tis a cold, damp, unchancy place you’ve chosen, Colonel,” he continued, with a grin; “like nothing in all the wide world so much as that same molehill. Well, glory be to God, it can’t be said I’m one for talking; but, if you’re asking my advice, you’ll be wiser acting first than last, and full than empty!”
“I’m not of that opinion, sir,” Colonel John replied, looking at him with the same stern eyes.
“Then I’m thinking you’re not as hungry as I’d be! And not the least taste in life to stay my stomach for twenty-four hours!”
“It has happened to me before,” Colonel John answered.
“You’re not for signing, then?”
“I am not.”
“Don’t be saying that, Colonel!” Morty rejoined. “It’s not yet awhile, you’re meaning?”
“Neither now nor ever, God willing,” Colonel John answered. “I quote from yourself, sir. As well say it first as last, and full as empty!”
“Sure, and ye’ll be thinking better of it by-and-by, Colonel.”
“No.”
“Ah, you will,” Morty retorted, in that tone which to a mind made up is worse than a blister. “Sure, ye’ll not be so hard-hearted, Colonel, as to refuse a lady! It’s not Kerry-born you are, and say the word ‘No’ that easy!”
“Do not deceive yourself, sir,” Colonel John answered severely, and with a darker look. “I shall not give way either to-day or to-morrow.”
“Nor the next day?”
“Nor the next day, God willing.”
“Not if the lady asks you herself? Come, Colonel.”
Colonel John rose sharply from his seat; such patience, as a famished man has, come to an end.
“Sir,” he said, “if this is all you have to say to me, I have your message, and I prefer to be alone.”
Morty grinned at him a moment, then, with an Irish shrug, he gave way. “As you will,” he said.
He withdrew himself suddenly, and the sunset light darted into the room through the narrow window, dimming the candle’s rays. The Colonel heard him laugh as he strode away across the platform, and down the hill. A moment and the sounds ceased. He was gone. The Colonel was alone.
Until this time to-morrow! Twenty-four hours. Yes, he must tighten his belt.
Morty, poking his head this way and that, peering into the chamber as he had peered yesterday, wished he could see Colonel John’s face. But Colonel John, bending resolutely over the handful of embers that glowed in an inner angle of the room, showed only his back. Even that Morty could not see plainly; for the last of the candles had burned out, and in the chamber, dark in comparison with the open air, the crouching figure was no more than a shapeless mass obscuring the glow of the fuel.
Morty shaded his eyes and peered more closely. He was not a sensitive person, and he was obeying orders. But he was not quite comfortable.
“And that’s your last word?” he said slowly. “Come, Colonel dear, ye’ll say something more to that.”
“That’s my last word to-day,” Colonel John answered as slowly, and without turning his head.
“Honour bright? Won’t ye think better of it before I go?”
“I will not.”
Morty paused, to tell the truth, in extreme exasperation. He had no great liking for the part he was playing; but why couldn’t the man be reasonable? “You’re sure of it, Colonel,” he said.
Colonel John did not answer.
“And I’m to tell her so?” Morty concluded.
Colonel John rose sharply, as if at last the other tried him too far. “Yes,” he said, “tell her that! Or,” lowering his voice and his hand, “do not tell her, as you please. That is my last word, sir! Let me be.”
But it was not his last word. For as Morty turned to go, and suffered the light to fall again through the aperture, the Colonel heard him speak — in a lower and a different tone. At the same moment, or his eyes deceived him, a shadow that was not Morty O’Beirne’s fell for one second on the splayed wall inside the window. It was gone as soon as seen; but Colonel John had seen it, and he sprang to the window.
“Flavia!” he cried. “Flavia!”
He paused to listen, his hand on the wall on either side of the opening. His face, which had been pinched and haggard a moment before, was now flushed by the sunset. Then “Flavia!” he repeated, keen appeal in his voice. “Flavia!”
She did not answer. She was gone. And perhaps it was as well. He listened for a long time, but in vain; and he told himself again that it was as well. Why, after all, appeal to her? How, could it avail him? What good could it do? Slowly he went back to his chair and sat down in the old attitude over the embers. But his lip quivered.
CHAPTER XX
AN UNWELCOME VISITOR
A little before sunset on that same day — almost precisely indeed at the moment at which Flavia’s shadow darkened the splayed flank of the window in the Tower — two men stood beside the entrance
at Morristown, whence the one’s whip had just chased the beggars. They were staring at a third, who, seated nonchalantly upon the horse-block, slapped his boot with his riding switch, and made as poor a show of hiding his amusement as they of masking their disgust. The man who slapped his leg and shaped his lips to a silent whistle, was Major Payton of the — th. The men who looked at him, and cursed the unlucky star which had brought him thither, were Luke Asgill and The McMurrough.
“Faith, and I should have thought,” Asgill said, with a clouded face, “that my presence here, Major, and I, a Justice — —”
“True for you!” Payton said, with a grin.
“Should have been enough by itself, and the least taste more than enough, to prove the absurdity of the Castle’s story.”
“True for you again,” Payton replied. “And ain’t I saying that but for your presence here, and a friend at court that I’ll not name, it’s not your humble servant this gentleman would be entertaining” — he turned to The McMurrough— “but half a company and a sergeant’s guard!”
“I’m allowing it.”
“You’ve no cause to do other.”
“Devil a bit I’m denying it,” Asgill replied more amicably; and, as far as he could, he cleared his face. “It’s not that you’re not welcome. Not at all, Major! Sure, and I’ll answer for it, my friend, The McMurrough is glad to welcome any English gentleman, much more one of your reputation.”
“Truth, and I am,” The McMurrough assented. But he had not Asgill’s self-control, and his sulky tone belied his words.
“Still — I come at an awkward time, perhaps?” Payton answered, looking with a grin from one to the other.
For the first time it struck him that the suspicions at headquarters might be well-founded; in that case he had been rash to put his head in the lion’s mouth. For it had been wholly his own notion. Partly to tease Asgill, whom he did not love the more because he owed him money, and partly to see the rustic beauty whom, rumour had it, Asgill was courting in the wilds — a little, too, because life at Tralee was dull, he had volunteered to do with three or four troopers what otherwise a half-company would have been sent to do. That he could at the same time put his creditor under an obligation, and annoy him, had not been the least part of the temptation; while no one at Tralee believed the story sent down from Dublin.
He did not credit it even now for more than two seconds. Then common sense, and his knowledge of Luke Asgill reassured him. “Eh! An awkward time, perhaps?” he repeated, looking at The McMurrough. “Sorry, I’m sure, but — —”
“I’d have entertained you better, I’m thinking,” James McMurrough said, “if I’d known you were coming before you came.”
“Devil a doubt of it!” said Asgill, whose subtle brain had been at work. “Not that it matters, bedad, for an Irish gentleman will do his best. And to-morrow Colonel Sullivan, that’s more knowledge of the mode and foreign ways, will be back, and he’ll be helping his cousin. More by token,” he added, in a different tone, “you know him of old?”
Payton, who had frowned at the name, reddened at the question. “Is that,” he asked, “the Colonel Sullivan who — —”
“Who tried the foils with Lemoine at Tralee?” Asgill cried heartily. “The same and no other! He is away to-day, but he’ll be returning tomorrow, and he’ll be delighted to see you! And by good luck, there are foils in the house, and he’ll pass the time pleasantly with you! It’s he’s the hospitable creature!”
Payton was far from pleased. He was anything but anxious to see the man whose skill had turned the joke against him; and his face betokened his feelings. Had he foreseen the meeting he would certainly have remained in Tralee, and left the job to a subaltern. “Hang it!” he exclaimed, vexed by the recollection, “a fine mess you led me into there, Asgill!”
“I did not know him then,” Asgill replied lightly. “And, pho! Take my word for it, he’s no man to bear malice!”
“Malice, begad!” Payton answered, ill-humouredly; “I think it’s I — —”
“Ah, you are right again, to be sure!” Asgill agreed, laughing silently. For already he had formed a hope that the guest might be manœuvred out of the house on the morrow. Not that he thought Payton was likely either to discover the Colonel’s plight, or to interfere if he did. But Asgill had another, and a stronger motive for wishing the intruder away. He knew Payton. He knew the man’s arrogance and insolence, the contempt in which he held the Irish, his view of them as an inferior race. And he was sure that, if he saw Flavia and fancied her — and who that saw her would not fancy her? — he was capable of any rudeness, any outrage; or, if he learned her position in regard to the estate, he might prove a formidable, if an honourable, competitor. In either case, to hasten the man’s departure, and to induce Flavia to remain in the background in the meantime, became Asgill’s chief aim.
James McMurrough, on the other hand, saw in the unwelcome intruder an English officer; and, troubled by his guilty conscience, he dreaded above all things what he might discover. True, the past was past, the plot spent, the Spanish ship gone. But the Colonel remained, and in durance. And if by any chance the Englishman stumbled on him, released him and heard his story, and lived to carry it back to Tralee — the consequences might be such that a cold sweat broke out on the young man’s brow at the thought of them. To add to his alarm, Payton, whose mind was secretly occupied with the Colonel, sought to evince his indifference by changing the subject, and in doing so, hit on one singularly unfortunate.
“A pretty fair piece of water,” he said, rising with an affected yawn, and pointing over the lake with his riding-switch. “The tower at the head of it — it’s grown too dark to see it — is it inhabited?”
The McMurrough started guiltily. “The tower?” he stammered. Could it be that the man knew all, and was here to expose him? His heart stood still, then raced.
“The Major’ll be meaning the tower on the rock,” Asgill said smoothly, but with a warning look. “Ah, sure, it’ll be used at times, Major, for a prison, you understand.”
“Oh!”
“But we’ll be better to be moving inside, I’m thinking,” he continued.
Payton assented. He was still brooding on his enemy, the Colonel, and his probable arrival on the morrow. Curse the man, he was thinking. Why couldn’t he keep out of his way?
“Take the Major in, McMurrough,” Asgill said, who on his side was on tenter-hooks lest Flavia and Morty O’Beirne should arrive from the Tower. “You’ll like to get rid of your boots before supper, Major?” he went on. “Bid Darby send the Major’s man to him, McMurrough; or, better, I’ll be going to the stables myself and I’ll be telling him!”
As the others went in, Asgill strolled on this pretext towards the stables. But when they had passed out of sight he turned and walked along the lake to meet the girl and her companion. As he walked he had time to think, and to decide how he might best deal with Flavia, and how much and what he should tell her. When he met them, therefore — by this time the night was falling — his first question related to their errand, and to that which an hour before had been the one pre-occupation of all their minds.
“Well,” he said, “he’ll not have yielded yet, I am thinking?”
Dark as it was, the girl averted her face to hide the trouble in her eyes. She shook her head. “No,” she said, “he has not.”
“I did not count on it,” Asgill replied cheerfully. “But time — time and hunger and patience — devil a doubt he’ll give in presently.”
She did not answer, but he fancied — she kept her face averted — that she shivered.
“While you have been away, something has happened,” he continued. After all, it was perhaps as well, he reflected, that Payton had come. His coming, even if Flavia did not encounter him, would divert her thoughts, would suggest an external peril, would prevent her dwelling too long or too fancifully on that room in the Tower, and on the man who famished there. She hated the Colonel, Asgill believed. Sh
e had hated him, he was sure. But how long would she continue to hate him in these circumstances? How long if she learned what were the Colonel’s feelings towards her? “An unwelcome guest has come,” he continued glibly, “and one that’ll be giving trouble, I’m fearing.”
“A guest?” Flavia repeated in astonishment. She halted. What time for guests was this? “And unwelcome?” she added. “Who is it?”
“An English officer,” Asgill explained, “from Tralee. He is saying that the Castle has heard something, and has sent him here to look about him.”
Naturally the danger seemed greater to the two than to Asgill, who knew his man. Words of dismay broke from Flavia and O’Beirne. “From Tralee?” she cried. “And an English officer? Good heavens! Do you know him?”
“I do,” Asgill answered confidently. “And, believe me or no, I can manage him.” He began to appreciate this opportunity of showing himself the master of the position. “I hold him, like that, not the least doubt of it; but the less we’ll be doing for him the sooner he’ll be going, and the safer we’ll be! I would not be so bold as to advise,” he continued diffidently, “but I’m thinking it would be no worse if you left him to be entertained by the men.”
“I will!” she cried, embracing the idea. “Why should I be wanting to see him?”
“Then I think he’ll be ordering his horse to-morrow!”
“I wish he were gone now!” she cried.
“Ah, so do I!” he replied, from his heart.
“I will go in through the garden,” she said.
He assented; it was to that point he had been moving. She turned aside, and for a moment he bent to the temptation to go with her. Since the day on which he had voluntarily left the house at the Colonel’s dictation he had made progress in her favour. He was sure that he had come closer to her — that she had begun not only to suffer his company, but to suffer it willingly. And here, as she passed through the darkling garden under the solid blackness of the yews, was an opportunity of making a further advance. She would have to grope her way, a reason for taking her hand might offer, and — his head grew hot at the thought.
Complete Works of Stanley J Weyman Page 570