“It is hard to say,” Colonel John answered gravely. His face was very gloomy, and to hide it or his thoughts he turned from them and went to one of the windows — that very window through which Uncle Ulick and he had looked at his first coming. He gazed out, not that he might see, but that he might think unwatched.
They waited, the men expecting little, but glad to be rid of some part of the burden, Flavia with a growing sense of disappointment. She did not know for what she had hoped, or what she had thought that he would do. But she had been confident that he could help; and it seemed that he could do no more than others. Neither to her, nor to the men, did it seem as strange as it was that they should turn to him, against whose guidance they had lately revolted so fiercely.
He came back to them presently, his face sad and depressed. “I will deal with it,” he said — and he sighed. “You can leave it to me. Do you,” he continued, addressing Morty, “come with me, Mr. O’Beirne.”
He was for leaving them with that, but Flavia put herself between him and the door. She fixed her eyes on his face. “What are you going to do?” she asked in a low voice.
“I will tell you all — later,” he replied gently.
“No, now!” she retorted, controlling herself with difficulty. “Now! You are not going — to fight him?”
“I am not going to fight,” he answered slowly.
But her heart was not so easily deceived as her ear. “There is something under your words,” she said jealously. “What is it?”
“I am not going to fight,” he replied gravely, “but to punish. There is a limit.” Even while he spoke she remembered in what circumstances those words had been used. “There is a limit,” he repeated solemnly. “He has the blood of four on his head, and another lies at death’s door. And he is not satisfied. He is not satisfied! Once I warned him. To-day the time for warning is past, the hour for judgment is come. God forgive me if I err, for vengeance is His and it is terrible to be His hand.” He turned to Phelim, and, in the same stern tone, “my sword is broken,” he said. “Fetch me the man’s sword who lies upstairs.”
Phelim went, awe-stricken, and marvelling. Morty remained, marvelling also. And Flavia — but, as she tried to speak, Payton’s shadow once more came into sight at the entrance-gates and went slowly by, and she clapped her hand to her mouth that she might not scream. Colonel Sullivan saw the action, understood, and touched her softly on the shoulder. “Pray,” he said, “pray!”
“For you!” she cried in a voice that, to those who had ears, betrayed her heart. “Ah, I will pray!”
“No, for him,” he replied. “For him now. For me when I return.”
She dropped on her knees before a chair, and, shuddering, hid her face in her hands. And almost at once she knew that they were gone, and that she was alone in the room.
Then, whether she prayed most or listened most, or the very intensity of her listening was itself prayer — prayer in its highest form — she never knew; but only that, whenever in the agony of her suspense she raised her head from the chair to hear if there was news, the common sounds of afternoon life in the house and without lashed her with a dreadful irony. The low whirr of a spinning-wheel, a girl’s distant chatter, the cluck of a hen in the courtyard, the satisfied grunt of a roving pig, all bore home to her heart the bitter message that, whatever happened, and though nightfall found her lonely in a dishonoured home, life would proceed as usual, the men and the women about her would eat and drink, and the smallest things would stand where they stood now — unchanged, unmoved.
What was that? Only the fall of a spit in the kitchen, or the clatter of a pot-lid. Would they never come? Would she never know? At this moment — what was that? That surely was something. They were returning! In a moment she would know. She rose to her feet and stared with stony eyes at the door. But when she had listened long — it was nothing. Nothing! And then — ah, that surely was something — was news — was the end! They were coming now. In a moment she would know. Yes, they were coming. In a moment she would know. She pressed her hands to her breast.
She might have known already, for, had she gone to the door, she would have seen who came. But she could not go. She could not move.
And he, when he came in, did not look at her. He walked from the threshold to the hearth, and — strange coincidence — he set the unsheathed blade he carried in the self-same angle, beside the fire-back, from which she had once taken a sword to attempt his life. And still he did not look at her, but stood with bowed head.
At last he turned. “God forgive us all,” he said.
She broke into wild weeping. And what her lips, babbling incoherent thanksgiving, did not tell him, the clinging of her arms, as she hung on him, conveyed.
CHAPTER XXV
PEACE
Uncle Ulick, with the mud of the road still undried on his boots, and the curls still stiff in the wig which the town barber at Mallow had dressed for him, rubbed his chin with his hand and, covertly looking round the room, owned himself puzzled. He had returned a week later to the day than he had arranged to return. But had his absence run into months instead of weeks the lapse of time had not sufficed to explain the change which he felt, but could not define, in his surroundings.
Certainly old Darby looked a thought more trim, and the room a trifle better ordered than he had left them. But he was sensible, though vaguely, that the change did not stop there — perhaps did not begin there. Full of news of the outer world as he was, he caught himself pausing in mid-career to question himself. And more than once his furtive eyes scanned his companions’ faces for the answer his mind refused to give.
An insolent Englishman had come, and given reins to the ‘ubris that was in him, and, after running Luke Asgill through the body, had paid the penalty — in fight so fair that the very troopers who had witnessed it could make no complaint nor raise trouble. So much Uncle Ulick had learned. But he had not known Payton, and, exciting as the episode sounded, it did not explain the difference in the atmosphere of the house. Where he had left enmity and suspicion, lowering brows and a silent table, he found smiles, and easiness, and a cheerful sense of well-being.
Again he looked about him. “And where will James be?” he asked, for the first time missing his nephew.
“He has left us,” Flavia said slowly, with her eyes on Colonel Sullivan.
“It’s away to Galway City he is,” Morty O’Beirne explained with a chuckle.
“The saints be between us and harm!” Uncle Ulick exclaimed in astonishment. “And why’s he there?”
“The story is long,” said Colonel Sullivan.
“But I can tell it in a few words,” Flavia continued with dignity. “And the sooner it is told the better. He has not behaved well, Uncle Ulick. And at his request and with — the legal owner’s consent — it’s I have agreed to pay him one-half of the value of the property.”
“The devil you have!” Uncle Ulick exclaimed, in greater astonishment. And, pushing back his seat and rubbing his huge thigh with his hand, he looked from one to another. “By the powers! if I may take the liberty of saying so, young lady, you’ve done a vast deal in a very little time-faith, in no time at all, at all!” he added.
“It was done at his request,” Flavia answered gravely.
Uncle Ulick continued to rub his thigh and to stare. These things were very surprising. “And they’re telling me,” he said, “that Luke Asgill’s in bed upstairs?”
“He is.”
“And recovering?”
“He is, glory be to God!”
“Nor that same’s not the best news of him,” Morty said with a grin. “Nor the last.”
“True for you!” Phelim cried. “If it was the last word you spoke!”
“What are you meaning?” Uncle Ulick asked.
“He’s turned,” said Morty. “No less! Turned! He’s what his father was before him, Mr. Sullivan — come back to Holy Church, and not a morning but Father O’Hara’s with him making his soul and wh
at not!”
“Turned!” Uncle Ulick cried. “Luke Asgill, the Justice? Boys, you’re making fun of me!” And, unable to believe what the O’Beirnes told him, he looked to Flavia for confirmation.
“It is true,” she said.
“Bedad, it is?” Uncle Ulick replied. “Then I’ll not be surprised in all my life again! More by token, there’s only one thing left to hope for, my jewel, and that’s certain. Cannot you do the same to the man that’s beside you?”
Flavia glanced quickly at Colonel John, then, with a heightened colour, she looked again at Uncle Ulick. “That’s what I cannot do,” she said.
But the blush, and the smile that accompanied it, and something perhaps in the way she hung towards her neighbour as she turned to him, told Uncle Ulick all. The big man smacked the table with his hand till the platters leapt from the board. “Holy poker!” he cried, “is it that you’re meaning? And I felt it, and I didn’t feel it, and you sitting there forenent me, and prating as if butter wouldn’t melt in your mouth! It is so, is it? But there, the red of your cheek is answer enough!”
For Flavia was blushing more brightly than before, and Colonel John was smiling, and the two young men were laughing openly.
“You must get Flavia alone,” Colonel John said, “and perhaps she’ll tell you.”
“Bedad, it’s true, and I felt it in the air,” Ulick Sullivan answered, smiling all over his face. “Ho, ho! Ho, ho! Indeed you’ve not been idle while I’ve been away. But what does Father O’Hara say, eh?”
“The Father — —” Flavia began in a small voice.
“Ay, what does the Father say?”
“He says,” Flavia continued, looking down demurely, “that it’s a rare stick that’s no bend in it, and — and ’tis very little use looking for it on a dark night. Besides, he — —” she glanced at her neighbour, “he said he’d be master, you know, and what could I do?”
“Then it’s the very wrong way he’s gone about it!” Uncle Ulick cried, with a chuckle. “For there’s no married man that I know that’s master! It’s you, my jewel, have put the comether on him, and I’ll trust you to keep it there!”
But into that we need not go. Our task is done. Whether Flavia’s high spirit and her husband’s gravity, her youth and his experience travelled the road together in unbroken amity, or with no more than the jars which the accidents of life occasion, however close the link, it does not fall within this story to tell. Nor need we say whether Father O’Hara proved as discreet in the long run as he had been liberal in the beginning. Probably the two had their bickerings which did not sever love. But one thing may be taken for granted; in that part of Kerry the King over the Water, if his health was sometimes drunk of an evening, stirred up no second trouble. Nor, when the ‘45 convulsed Scotland, and shook England to its centre, did one man at Morristown raise his hand or lose his life. For so much at least that windswept corner of Kerry, beaten year in and year out by the Atlantic rollers, had to thank Colonel Sullivan.
Nor for that only. In many unnamed ways his knowledge of the world blessed those about him. The small improvements, the little advances in civilisation which the English intruders were introducing into those parts, he adopted: a more orderly house, an increased neatness, a few more acres brought under the plough or the spade, whole roofs and few beggars — these things were to be seen at Morristown, and in few other places thereabouts. And, above all, his neighbours owned the influence of one who, with a reputation gained at the sword’s point, stood resolutely, unflinchingly, abroad as at home, at fairs and cockfights as on his own hearth, for peace. More than a century was to elapse before private war ceased to be the amusement of the Irish gentry. But in that part of Kerry, and during a score of years, the name and weight of Colonel Sullivan of Morristown availed to quiet many a brawl and avert many a meeting.
To follow the mean and the poor of spirit beyond the point where their fortunes cease to be entwined with those of better men is a profitless task. James McMurrough, tried and found wanting, where all favoured him, was not likely to rise above his nature where the odds were equal, and all men his rivals. What he did in Galway City, that bizarre, half-foreign town of the west, how long he tarried there, and whither he went afterwards, in the vain search for a place where a man could swagger without courage and ruffle it without consequences, it matters not to inquire. A time came when his kin knew not whether he lived or was dead.
Luke Asgill, who could rise as much above The McMurrough as he had it in him to fall below him, who was as wicked as James was weak, was redeemed, one may believe, by the good that lurked in him. He lay many weeks on a sick-bed, and returned to everyday life another man. For, whereas he had succumbed, a passionate lover of Flavia, he rose wholly cured of that passion. It had ebbed from him with his blood, or waned with his fever. And whereas he had before sought both gain and power, restrained by as few scruples as the worst men of a bad age, he rose a pursuer of both, but within bounds; so that, though he was still hard and grasping and oppressive, it was possible to say of him that he was no worse than his class. Close-fisted, at Father O’Hara’s instance he could open his hand. Hard, at the Father’s prayer he would at times remit a rent or extend a bond. Ambitious, he gave up, for his soul’s sake and the sake of the Faith that had been his fathers’, the office which endowed him with power to oppress.
There were some who scoffed behind his back, and said that Luke Asgill had had enough of carrying a sword and now wished no better than to be rid of it. But, in truth, as far as the man’s reformation went, it was real. The devil was well, but he was not the devil he had been. The hours he had passed in the presence of death, the thoughts he had had while life was low in him, were not forgotten in his health. The strong nature, slow to take an impression, was stiff to retain it. A moody, silent man, going about his business with a face to match the sullen bogs of his native land, he lived to a great age, and paid one tribute only to the woman he had loved and forgotten — he died a bachelor.
THE END
THE GREAT HOUSE
CONTENTS
CHAPTER I
CHAPTER II
CHAPTER III
CHAPTER IV
CHAPTER V
CHAPTER VI
CHAPTER VII
CHAPTER VIII
CHAPTER IX
CHAPTER X
CHAPTER XI
CHAPTER XII
CHAPTER XIII
CHAPTER XIV
CHAPTER XV
CHAPTER XVI
CHAPTER XVII
CHAPTER XVIII
CHAPTER XIX
CHAPTER XX
CHAPTER XXI
CHAPTER XXII
CHAPTER XXIII
CHAPTER XXIV
CHAPTER XXV
CHAPTER XXVI
CHAPTER XXVII
CHAPTER XXVIII
CHAPTER XXIX
CHAPTER XXX
CHAPTER XXXI
CHAPTER XXXII
CHAPTER XXXIII
CHAPTER XXXIV
CHAPTER XXXV
CHAPTER XXXVI
CHAPTER XXXVII
CHAPTER XXXVIII
CHAPTER XXXIX
CHAPTER XL
CHAPTER I
THE HÔTEL LAMBERT — UPSTAIRS
On an evening in March in the ‘forties of last century a girl looked down on the Seine from an attic window on the Ile St. Louis. The room behind her — or beside her, for she sat on the window-ledge, with her back against one side of the opening and her feet against the other — was long, whitewashed from floor to ceiling, lighted by five gaunt windows, and as cold to the eye as charity to the recipient. Along each side of the chamber ran ten pallet beds. A black door broke the wall at one end, and above the door hung a crucifix. A painting of a Station of the Cross adorned the wall at the other end. Beyond this picture the room had no ornament; it is almost true to say that beyond what has been named it had no furniture. One bed — the bed beside the window at which the girl sat — was
screened by a thin curtain which did not reach the floor. This was her bed.
But in early spring no window in Paris looked on a scene more cheerful than this window; which as from an eyrie commanded a shining reach of the Seine bordered by the lawns and foliage of the King’s Garden, and closed by the graceful arches of the Bridge of Austerlitz. On the water boats shot to and fro. The quays were gay with the red trousers of soldiers and the coquettish caps of soubrettes, with students in strange cloaks, and the twin kling wheels of yellow cabriolets. The first swallows were hawking hither and thither above the water, and a pleasant hum rose from the Boulevard Bourdon.
Yet the girl sighed. For it was her birthday, she was twenty this twenty-fifth of March, and there was not a soul in the world to know this and to wish her joy. A life of dependence, toned to the key of the whitewashed room and the thin pallets, lay before her; and though she had good reason to be thankful for the safety which dependence bought, still she was only twenty, and springtime, viewed from prison windows, beckons to its cousin, youth. She saw family groups walking the quays, and father, mother, children, all, seen from a distance, were happy. She saw lovers loitering in the garden or pacing to and fro, and romance walked with every one of them; none came late, or fell to words. She sighed more deeply; and on the sound the door opened.
“Hola!” cried a shrill voice, speaking in French, fluent, but oddly accented. “Who is here? The Princess desires that the English Mademoiselle will descend this evening.”
“Very good,” the girl in the window replied pleasantly. “At the same hour, Joséphine?”
“Why not, Mademoiselle?” A trim maid, with a plain face and the faultless figure of a Pole, came a few steps into the room. “But you are alone?”
“The children are walking. I stayed at home.”
“To be alone? As if I did not understand that! To be alone — it is the luxury of the rich.”
The girl nodded. “None but a Pole would have thought of that,” she said.
“Ah, the crafty English Miss!” the maid retorted. “How she flatters! Perhaps she needs a touch of the tongs to-night? Or the loan of a pair of red-heeled shoes, worn no more than thrice by the Princess — and with the black which is convenable for Mademoiselle, oh, so neat! Of the ancien régime, absolutely!”
Complete Works of Stanley J Weyman Page 576