Complete Works of Stanley J Weyman

by Stanley J Weyman

  “That will be seen — to-morrow,” the Englishman answered, in a tone that chilled the girl’s marrow. Then, with his kerchief pressed to his cheek to staunch the blood, he retreated into his room, and slammed the door. They heard him turn the key in it.

  Flavia found her voice. She looked at her brother. “Ah, God!” she cried. “Why did I open my door?”

  James, still pot-valiant, returned her look. “Because you were a fool, you slut!” he said. “But I’ll spit him, never fear! Faith, and I’ll spit him like a fowl!” In his turn he went on unsteadily to his room, disappeared within it, and closed the door. He took the candle with him, but from Asgill’s open door, and from Flavia’s, which stood ajar, enough light issued to illumine the passage faintly.

  Flavia and Asgill remained together. Her eyes met his. “Ah, why did I open my door?” she cried. “Why did I open my door? Why did I?”

  He had no comfort for her. He shook his head, but did not speak.

  “He will kill him!” she said.

  Asgill reflected in a heavy silence. “I will think what can be done,” he muttered at last. “I will think! Do you go to bed!”

  “To bed?” she cried.

  “There is naught to be done to-night,” he answered, in a low tone. “If the troopers were not with him — then indeed; but that is useless. And — his door is locked. Do you go to bed, and I will think what we can do!”

  “To save James?” She laid her hand on Asgill’s arm, and he quivered. “Ah, you will save him!” She had forgotten her brother’s treatment of her earlier in the day.

  “If I can,” he said slowly. His face was damp and very pale. “If I can,” he repeated. “But it will not be easy to save him honourably.”

  “What do you mean?” she whispered.

  “He’ll save himself, I fancy. But his honour — —”

  “Ah!” The word came from her in a cry of pain.

  CHAPTER XXIII

  BEHIND THE YEWS

  Under the sky the pale softness of dawn had yielded place to the sun in his strength — in more poetical words, Aurora had given way to Phœbus — but within, the passages were still grey and chill, and silent as though night’s ghostly sentinels still walked them, when one of the bedchamber doors opened and a face peeped out. The face was Flavia’s. The girl was too young, too full of life and vigour, to be altered by a single sleepless night, but the cold reflection of the whitewashed walls did that which watching had failed to do. It robbed her eyes of their brightness, her face of its colour, her hair of its lustre. She stood an instant, and gazed, frowning, at the doors that, in a row and all alike, hid nevertheless one a hope, and another a fear, and a third perhaps a tragedy. But drab, silent, closed, each within a shadow of its own, they told nothing. Presently the girl stepped forward — paused, scared by a board that creaked under her naked foot — then went on again. She stood now at one of the doors, and scratched on it with her nail.

  No one answered the summons, and she pushed the door open and went in. And, as she had feared, enlightened by Asgill’s hint and by what she had seen of her brother’s conduct earlier in the day, she found. James was awake — wide awake — and sitting up in his bed, his arms clasped about his knees. His eyes met hers as she entered, and in his eyes, and in his form, huddled together as in sheer physical pain, she read beyond all doubt, beyond all mistake — fear. Why she had felt certain, courageous herself, that this was what she would find, she did not know. But there it was, as Asgill had foretold it, and as she had foreseen it, through the long, restless, torturing hours; as she had seen it, and now denied it, now, with a sick heart, owned its reality.

  James tried to utter the oath that, deceiving her, might rid him of her presence. But his nerves, shaken by his overnight drink, could not command his voice even for that. His eyes dropped in shame, the muttered “What the plague will you be wanting at this hour?” was no more than a querulous whisper.

  “I couldn’t sleep,” she said, avoiding his eyes.

  “I, no more,” he muttered. “Curse him! Curse him! Curse you, too! Why were you getting in his way? You’ve as good as murdered me with your tricks and your poses!”

  “God forbid!” she exclaimed.

  “Ah, you have!” he answered, rocking himself to and fro in his excitement. “If it were any one else, I’m as ready to fight as another! And why not? But he’s killed four men, and he’ll kill me! Oh, the differ, if I’d not come up at that minute! If I’d not come up at that minute!”

  The picture of what he would have escaped had he mounted the stairs a minute later, of what he had brought on himself by mounting a moment earlier, was too much for him. Not a thought did he give to what might have happened to her had he come on the scene later; but, with all his cowardly soul laid bare, he rocked himself to and fro in a paroxysm of self-pity.

  Yet he did not suffer more sorely, he did not wince more tenderly under the lash of his own terrors, than Flavia suffered; than she winced, seeing him thus, seeing at last her idol as he was — the braggadocio stripped from him, and the poor, cringing creature displayed. If her pride of race — and the fabled Wicklow kings, of whom she came, were often in her mind — if that pride needed correction, she had it here. If she had thought too much of her descent — and the more in proportion as fortune had straitened the line, and only in this corner of a downtrodden land was its greatness even a memory — she was chastened for it now! She suffered for it now! She could have wept tears of shame. And yet, so plain was the collapse of the man before her, and so futile words, that she did not think of reproach; even had she found heart to chide him, knowing that her words might send him to his death.

  All her thought was, could she hide the blot? Could she mask the shame? Could she, at any rate, so veil it that this insolent Englishman, this bully of the conquering race, might not perceive it? That were worth so much that her own life, on this summer morning, seemed a small price to pay for it.

  But, alas! she could not purchase it with her life. Only in fairy tales can the woman pass for the man, and Doris receive in her tender bosom the thrust intended for the sterner breast. Then how? How could they shun at least open disgrace, open dishonour? For it needed but a glance at her brother’s pallid face and wandering eye to assure her that, brought to the test, he would flinch; that, brought to the field, he would prove unequal even to the task of cloaking his fears.

  She sickened at the thought, and her eyes grew hard. Was this the man in whom she had believed? And when, presently, he turned on his side and hid his face in the pillow and groaned, she had small pity to spare for him. “Are you not well?” she asked.

  “Can’t you be seeing?” he answered fractiously; but for very shame he could not face her eyes. “Cannot you be seeing I am not fit to get up, let alone be meeting that devil? See how my hand shakes!”

  “What is to be done, then?”

  He cursed Payton thrice in a frenzy of rage. He beat the pillow with his fist.

  “That does no good,” she said.

  “I believe you want to kill me!” he retorted, with childish passion. “I believe you want to see me dead! Why can’t you be managing your own affairs, without — without —— Oh, my God!” And then, in a dreadful voice, “My God, I shall be dead to-night! I shall be dead to-night! And you care nothing!”

  He hid unmanly tears on his pillow, while she looked at the wall, pale to the lips and cut to the heart. Her worst misgivings, even those nightmare fears which haunt the dawn, had not pictured a thing so mean as this, a heart so low, a spirit so poor. And this was her brother, her idol, the last of the McMurroughs of Morristown, he to whom she had fondly looked to revive the glories of the race! Truly she had not understood him, or others. She had been blind indeed, blind, blind!

  She had spoken to Luke Asgill the night before. He guessed, if he did not know the worst, and he would help her, she believed. But for that she would have turned, as her thoughts did turn, to Colonel John. But he lay prostrate, and, if she could h
ave brought herself to go to him, he was in no state to give aid. The O’Beirnes were out of the question; she could not tell them. Youth has no pity, makes no allowance, expects the utmost, and a hundred times they had heard James brag and brawl. They would not understand, they would not believe. And Uncle Ulick was away.

  There remained only Luke Asgill, who had offered his help.

  “If you are not well,” she said, in the same hard voice, “shall I be telling Mr. Asgill? He may contrive something.”

  The man cringing in the bed leapt at the hope, as he would have leapt at any hope. Nor was he so bemused by fear as not to reflect that, whatever Flavia asked, Asgill would do. “Ah, tell him,” he cried, raising himself on his elbow. “Do you be telling him! He can make him — wait, may be.”

  At that moment she came near to hating her brother. “I will send him to you,” she said.

  “No!” he cried anxiously. “No! Do you be telling him! You tell him! Do you hear? I’m not so well to see him.”

  She shivered, seeing plainly the cowardice, the unmixed selfishness of the course he urged. But she had not the heart to answer him. She went from the room without another word, and, going back to her own chamber, she dressed. By this time it wanted not much of seven. The house was astir, the June sunshine was pouring with the songs of birds through the windows, she heard one of the O’Beirnes stumble downstairs. Next Asgill opened his door and passed down. In a twinkling she slipped out and followed him. At the bottom of the staircase he turned, hearing her footstep behind him, but she made a sign to him to go on, and led him into the open air. Nor when they were outside did she speak until she had put the courtyard between herself and the house.

  For she would have hidden their shame from all if she could! Even to say what she had to say to one, and though he already guessed the truth, cost her in pain and humiliation more than her brother had paid for aught in his selfish life. But it had to be said, and, after a pause, and with eyes averted, “My brother is ill,” she faltered. “He cannot meet — that man, this morning. It is — as you feared. And — what can we do?”

  In another case Luke Asgill would have blessed the chance that linked him with her, that wrought a tie between them, and cast her on his help. But he had guessed, before she opened her mouth, what she had to say — nay, for hours he had lain sleepless on his bed, with eyes staring into the darkness, anticipating it. He had been certain of the issue — he knew James McMurrough; and, being a man who loved Flavia indeed, but loved life also, he had foreseen, with the cold sweat on his brow, what he would be driven to do.

  He made no haste to answer, therefore, and his tone, when he did answer, was dull and lifeless. “Is it ill he is?” he said. “It’s a bad morning to be ill, and a meeting on hand.”

  She did not answer.

  “Is he too bad to stand?” he continued. He made no attempt to hide his comprehension or his scorn.

  “I don’t say that,” she faltered.

  “Perhaps he told you,” Asgill said — and there was nothing of the lover in his tone— “to speak to me?”

  She nodded.

  “It is I am to — put it off, I suppose?”

  “If it be possible,” she cried. “Oh, if it be possible! Is it?”

  He stood, thinking, with a gloomy face. From the first he had seen that there were two ways only of extricating The McMurrough. The one by a mild explanation, which would leave his honour in the mud. The other by an explanation after a different fashion, vi et armis, vehementer, with the word “liar” ready to answer to the word “coward.” But he who gave this last explanation must be willing and able to back the word with the deed, and stop cavilling with the sword-point.

  Now, Asgill knew the Major’s skill with the sword; none better. And under other circumstances the Justice — cold, selfish, scheming — would have gone many a mile about before he entered upon a quarrel with him. None the less, love and much night-thinking had drawn him to contemplate this very thing. For surely, if he did this and lived, Flavia would smile on him. Surely, if he saved her brother’s honour, or came as near to saving it as driving the foul word down his opponent’s throat could bring him, she would be won. It was a forlorn, it was a desperate expedient. For no worldly fortune, for no other advantage, would Luke Asgill have faced the Major’s sword-point. But, whatever he was, he loved. He loved! And for the face and the form beside him, and for the quality of soul within them that shone from the girl’s eyes, and made her what she was, and to him different from all other women, he had made up his mind to run the risk.

  It went for something in his decision that he believed that Flavia, if he failed her, would go to the one person in the house who had no cause to fear Payton — to Colonel Sullivan. If she did that, Asgill was sure that his own chance was at an end. This was his chance. It lay with him now, to-day, at this moment — to dare or to retire, to win her favour at the risk of his life, or to yield her to another. In the chill morning hour he had discovered that the choice lay before him, that he must risk all or lose all: and he had decided. That decision he now announced.

  “I will make it possible,” he said slowly, questioning in his mind whether he could make terms with her — whether he dared make terms with her. “I will make it possible,” he repeated, still more slowly, and with his eyes fixed on her face.

  “If you could!” she cried, clasping her hands.

  “I will!” he said, a sullen undertone in his voice. His eyes still dwelt darkly on her. “If he raises an objection, I will fight him — myself!”

  She shrank from him. “Ah, but I can’t ask that!” she cried, trembling.

  “It is that or nothing.”

  “That or — —”

  “There is no other way,” he said. He spoke with the same ungraciousness; for, try as he would, and though the habit and the education of a life cried to him to treat with her and make conditions, he could not; and he was enraged that he could not.

  The more as her quivering lips, her wet eyes, her quick mounting colour, told of her gratitude. In another moment she might, almost certainly she would, have said a word fit to unlock his lips. And he would have spoken; and she would have pledged herself. But fate, in the person of old Darby, intervened. Timely or untimely, the butler appeared in the distant doorway, cried “Hist!” and, by a backward gesture, warned them of some approaching peril.

  “I fear — —” she began.

  “Yes, go!” Asgill replied, almost roughly. “He is coming, and he must not find us together.”

  She fled swiftly, but the garden gate had barely closed on her skirts before Payton issued from the courtyard. The Englishman paused an instant in the gateway, his sword under his arm and a handkerchief in his hand. Thence he looked up and down the road with an air of scornful confidence that provoked Asgill beyond measure. The sun did not seem bright enough for him, nor the air scented to his liking. Finally he approached the Irishman, who, affecting to be engaged with his own thoughts, had kept his distance.

  “Is he ready?” he asked, with a sneer.

  With an effort Asgill controlled himself. “He is not,” he said.

  “At his prayers, is he? Well, he’ll need them.”

  “He is not, to my knowledge,” Asgill replied. “But he is ill.”

  Payton’s face lightened with a joy not pleasant to see. “A coward!” he said coolly. “I am not surprised! Ill is he? Ay, I know that illness. It’s not the first time I’ve met it.”

  Asgill had no wish to precipitate a quarrel. On the contrary, he had made up his mind to gain time if he could; at any rate, to put off the ultima ratio until evening, or until the next morning. Only in the last resort had he determined to fling off the mask. But at that word “coward,” though he knew it to be well deserved, his temper, sapped by the knowledge that love was forcing him into a position which reason repudiated, gave way, and he spoke his true thoughts.

  “What a d — d bully you are, Payton!” he said, in his slowest tone. “Sure, and you ins
ult the man’s sister in your drink — —”

  “What’s that to you?”

  “You insult the man’s sister,” Asgill persisted coolly, “and because he treats you like the tipsy creature you are, you’d kill him like a dog.”

  Payton turned white. “And you, too,” he said, “if you say another word! What in Heaven’s name is amiss with you, man, this morning? Are you mad?”

  “I’ll not hear the word ‘coward’ used of the family — I’ll soon be one of!” Asgill returned, speaking on the spur of the moment, and wondering at himself the moment he had made the statement. “That’s what I’m meaning! Do you see? And if you are for repeating the word, more by token, it’ll be all the breakfast you’ll have, for I’ll cram it down your ugly throat!”

  Payton stared dumbfounded, divided between rage and astonishment. But the former was not slow to get the upper hand, and “Enough said,” he replied, in a voice that trembled, but not with fear. “If you are willing to make it good, you’ll be coming this way.”

  “Willingly!” Asgill answered.

  “I’ll have one of my men for witness. Ay, that I will! I don’t trust you, Mr. Asgill, and that’s flat. Get you whom you please! In five minutes, in the garden, then?”

  Asgill nodded. The Englishman looked once more at him to make sure that he was sober; then he turned on his heel and went back through the courtyard. Asgill remained alone.

  He had taken the step there was no retracing. He had cast the dice, and the next few minutes would decide whether it was for life or death. He had done it deliberately; yet at the last he had been so carried away by impulse that, as he stood there, looking after the man he had insulted, looking on the placid water glittering in the early sunshine, looking along the lake-side road, by which he had come, he could hardly credit what had happened, or that in a moment he had thrown for a stake so stupendous, that in a moment he had changed all. The sunshine lost its warmth and grew pale, the hills lost their colour and their beauty, as he reflected that he might never see the one or the other again, might never return by that lake-side road by which he had come; as he remembered that all his plans for his aggrandisement, and they were many and clever, might end this day, this morning, this hour! Life! It was that, it was all, it was the future, with its pleasures, hopes, ambitions, that he had staked. And the stake was down. He could not now take it up. It might well be, for the odds were great against him, that it was to this day that all his life had led up; that life by which men would by-and-by judge him, recalling this and that, this chicane and that extortion, thanking God that he was dead, or perhaps one here and there shrugging his shoulders in good-natured regret.