The Wild Geese

"Well, and knowing me?" he replied at last, with the tail of his eyes on the Bishop, as if he would gladly gain a hint from his subtlety. "What of me?"

"You have your home, your rank, your relations abroad," Colonel Sullivan answered firmly. "And if a descent on the coast be a part of your scheme, then you do not share the peril equally with us. You are here to-day and elsewhere to-morrow. We shall suffer, while you sail away."

"I fling that in your teeth!" Cammock cried. "I know you too, sir, and – "

"Know no worse of me than of yourself!" Colonel Sullivan retorted. "But if you do indeed know me, you know that I am not one to stand by and see my friends led blindfold to certain ruin. It may suit your plans to make a diversion here. But that diversion is a part of larger schemes, and the fate of those who make it is little to you."

Cammock's hand flew to his belt, he took a step forward, his face suffused with passion.

"For half as much I have cut a man down!" he cried.

"May be, but – "

"Peace, peace, my friends," the Bishop interposed. He laid a warning hand on Cammock's arm. "This gentleman," he continued smoothly, "thinks he speaks for our friends outside."

"Let me speak, not for them, but to them," Colonel Sullivan replied impulsively. "Let me tell them what I think of this scheme, of its chances, of its certain end! I will tell them no more than I have told you, and no more than I think justified."

He moved, whether he thought they would let him or not, towards the window. But he had not taken three steps before he found his progress barred. "What is this?" he exclaimed.

"Needs must with so impulsive a gentleman," the Bishop said. He had not moved, but at a signal from him The McMurrough, the O'Beirnes and two of the other young men had thrust themselves forward. "You must give up your sword, Colonel Sullivan," he continued.

The Colonel retreated a pace, and evinced more surprise than he felt. "Give up – do you mean that I am a prisoner?" he cried. He had not drawn, but two or three of the young men had done so, and Flavia, in the background by the fire, was white as paper – so suddenly had the shadow of violence fallen on the room. Uncle Ulick could be heard protesting, but no one heeded him.

"You must surrender!" the Bishop repeated firmly. He too was a trifle pale, but he was used to such scenes and he spoke with decision.

"Resistance is vain. I hope that with this lady in the room – "

"One moment!" the Colonel cried, raising his hand. But as The McMurrough and the others hesitated, he whipped out his sword and stepped two paces to one side with an agility no one had foreseen. He now had the table behind him and Uncle Ulick on his left hand. "One moment!" he repeated, raising his hand in deprecation and keeping his point lowered. "Do you consider – "

"We consider our own safety," Cammock answered grimly. And signing to one of the men to join Darby at the door, he drew his cutlass. "You know too much to go free, sir, that is certain."

"Ay, faith, you do," The McMurrough chimed in with a sort of glee. "He was at Tralee yesterday, no less. And for a little we'll have the garrison here before the time!"

"But by the powers," Uncle Ulick cried, "ye shall not hurt him! Your reverence!" – the big man's voice shook – "your reverence, this shall not be! It's not in this house they shall murder him, and him a Sullivan! Flavia, speak, girl," he continued, the perspiration standing on his brow. "Say ye'll not have it. After all, it's your house! By G – d, it is your house. And, by the Holy Cross, there shall be no Sullivan blood spilt in it while I am standing by to prevent it!"

"Then let him give up his sword!" Cammock answered doggedly.

"Yes, let him give up his sword," Flavia said in a small voice.

"Colonel Sullivan," the Bishop interposed, stepping forward, "I hope you'll hear reason. Resistance is vain. You know as well as I do that at a word from us our friends outside would deal with you, and roughly. Give up your sword and – "

"And presto!" Cammock cried, "or take the consequences!" He had edged his way, while the Bishop spoke, round Ulick and round the head of the table. Now, with his foot on the bench, he was ready at a word to spring on the table, and take the Colonel in the rear. It was clear that he was a man of action. "Down with your sword, sir," he cried flatly.

Colonel John recognised the weakness of his position. Before him the young men were five to one, with old Sir Donny and Timothy Burke in the rear. On his flank the help which Ulick might give was discounted by the move Cammock had made. He saw that he could do no more at present, that he must base his hope on the future; this, though he was not blind to the fact that there might be no future. Suddenly as the storm had blown up, he knew that he was dealing with desperate men, who from this day onward would act with their necks in a noose, and whom his word might send to the scaffold. They had but to denounce him to the rabble who waited outside, and, besides the Bishop, one only there, as he believed, would have the influence to save him.

Colonel John had confronted danger many times; to confront it had been his trade. And it was with coolness and a clear perception of the position that he turned to Flavia. "I will give up my sword," he said, "but to my cousin only. This is her house, and I yield myself" – with a smile and a bow – "her prisoner."

Before they knew what he would be at, he stepped forward and tendered his hilt to the girl, who took it with flaccid fingers. "I am in your hands now," he said, fixing his eyes on hers and endeavouring to convey his meaning to her. For surely, with such a face, she must have, with all her recklessness, some womanliness, some tenderness of feeling in her.

"D – n your impudence!" The McMurrough cried.

"A truce, a truce," the Bishop interposed. "We are all agreed that Colonel Sullivan knows too much to go free. He must be secured," he continued smoothly, "for his own sake. Will two of these gentlemen see him to his room, and see also that his servant is placed under guard in another room?"

"But," the Colonel objected, looking at Flavia, "my cousin will surely allow me to give – "

"She will be guided by us in this," the Bishop rejoined with asperity. "Let what I have said be done."

Flavia, very pale, holding the Colonel's sword as if it might sting her, did not speak. Colonel Sullivan, after a moment's hesitation, followed one of the O'Beirnes from the room, the other bringing up the rear.

When the door had closed upon them, Flavia's was not the only pale face in the room. The scene had brought home to more than one the fact that here was an end of peace and law, and a beginning of violence and rebellion. The Rubicon was passed. For good or for ill, they were committed to an enterprise fraught, it might be, with success and glory, fraught also, it might be, with obloquy and death. Uncle Ulick stared at the floor with a lowering face, and sighed, liking neither the past nor the prospect. The McMurrough, the Squireens, Sir Donny, and Burke, secretly uneasy, put on a reckless air to cover their apprehensions. The Bishop and Cammock, though they saw themselves in a fair way to do what they had come to do, looked thoughtful also. And only Flavia – only Flavia, shaking off the remembrance of Colonel John's face, and Colonel John's existence – closed her grip upon his sword, and in the ardour of her patriotism saw with her mind's eye not victory nor acclaiming thousands – no, nor the leaping line of pikemen charging for his glory that her brother saw – but the scaffold, and a death for her country. Sweet it seemed to her to die for the cause, for the faith, to die for Ireland! To die as young Lord Derwentwater had died a year or two before; as Lady Nithsdale had been ready to die; as innumerable men and women had died, lifted above common things by the love of their country.

True, her country, her Ireland, was but this little corner of Kerry beaten by the Atlantic storms and sad with the wailing cries of seagulls; the rudest province of a land itself provincial. But if she knew no more of Ireland than this, she had read her story; and naught is more true than that the land the most down-trodden is also the best beloved. Wrongs beget a passion of affection; and from oppression springs sacrifice. This daughter of the windswept shore, of the misty hills and fairy glens, whose life from infancy had been bare and rugged and solitary, had become, for that reason, a dreamer of dreams and a worshipper of the ideal Ireland, her country, her faith. The salt breeze that lashed her cheeks and tore at her hair, the peat reek and the soft shadows of the bogland – ay, and many an hour of lonely communing – had filled her breast with love; such love as impels rather to suffering and to sacrifice than to enjoyment. Nor had she yet encountered the inevitable disappointments. Her eyes had not yet been opened to the seamy side of patriotism; to the sordid view of every great adventure that soon or late saddens the experienced and dispels the glamour of the dreamer.

For one moment she had recoiled before the shock of impending violence, the clash of steel, the reality of things. But that had passed; now her one thought, as she stood with dilated eyes, unconsciously clutching the Colonel's sword, was that the time was come, the thing was begun – henceforth she belonged not to herself, but to Ireland and to God.

Deep in such thoughts, the girl was not aware that the others had got together and were discussing the Colonel's fate until mention was made of the French sloop and of Captain Augustin. "Faith, and let him go in that!" she heard Uncle Ulick urging. "D'ye hear me, your reverence? 'Twill be a week before they land him, and the fire we'll be lighting will be no secret at all at all by then."

"May be, Mr. Sullivan," the Bishop replied – "may be. But we cannot spare the sloop."

"No, by the Holy Bones, and we'll not spare her!" The McMurrough chimed in. "She's heels to her, and it's a godsend she'll be to us if things go ill."

"And an addition to our fleet anyway," Cammock said. "We'd be mad to let her go – just to make a man safe, we can make safe a deal cheaper!"

Flavia propped the sword carefully in an angle of the hearth, and moved forward. "But I do not understand," she said timidly. "We agreed that the sloop and the cargo were to go free if Colonel Sullivan – but you know!" she added, breaking off and addressing her brother. "You were there."

"Is it dreaming you are?" he retorted contemptuously. "Is it we'll be taking note of that now?"

"It was a debt of honour," she said.

"The girl's right," Uncle Ulick said, "and we'll be rid of him."

"We'll be rid of him without that," The McMurrough muttered.

"I am fearing, Mr. Sullivan," the Bishop said, "that it is not quite understood by all that we are embarked upon a matter of the utmost gravity, upon a matter of life and death. We cannot let bagatelles stand in the way. The sloop and her cargo can be made good to her owners – at another time. For your relative and his servant – "

"The shortest way with them!" some one cried. "That's the best and the surest!"

"For them," the Bishop continued, silencing the interruption by a look, "we must not forget that some days must pass before we can hope to get our people together, or to be in a position to hold our own. During the interval we lie at the mercy of an informer. Your own people you know, and can trust to the last gossoon, I'm told. But the same cannot be said of this gentleman – who has very fixed ideas – and his servant. Our lives and the lives of others are in their hands, and it is of the last importance that they be kept secure and silent."

"Ay, silent's the word," Cammock growled.

"There could be no better place than one of the towers," The McMurrough suggested, "for keeping them safe, bedad!"

"And why'll they be safer there than in the house?" Uncle Ulick asked suspiciously. He looked from one speaker to another with a baffled face, trying to read their minds. He was sure that they meant more than they said.

"Oh, for the good reason!" the young man returned contemptuously. "Isn't all the world passing the door upstairs? And what more easy than to open it?"

Cammock's eyes met the Bishop's. "The tower'll be best," he said. "Devil a doubt of it! Draw off the people, and let them be taken there, and a guard set. We've matters of more importance to discuss now. This gathering to-morrow, to raise the country – what's the time fixed for it?"

But Flavia, who had listened with a face of perplexity, interposed. "Still, he is my prisoner, is he not?" she said wistfully. "And if I answer for him?"

"By your leave, ma'am," Cammock replied, with decision, "one word. Women to women's work! I'll let no woman weave a halter for me!"

The room echoed low applause. And Flavia was silent.

CHAPTER XI

A MESSAGE FOR THE YOUNG MASTER

James McMurrough was young, but he was a slave to as few of the generous ambitions of youth as any man of his years. At heart he cared little for his country, and nothing for his Faith – which indeed he had been ready to barter for an allowance, and a certain succession. He cared only for himself; and but for the resentment which the provisions of his grandfather's will had bred in him, he would have seen the Irish race in Purgatory, and the Roman faith in a worse place, before he would have risked a finger to right the one or restore the other. Even under the influence of that resentment, that bitterness, he had come into the conspiracy with but half a heart; without enthusiasm, and with an eye not so much to its ultimate success as to the gain he might make out of it in the meantime.

Once embarked, however, on the enterprise, vanity, the failing of light minds, and particularly of the Celtic mind, swept him onward. The night which followed Colonel Sullivan's arrest was a night long remembered at Morristown – a night to uplift the sanguine and to kindle the short-sighted; nor was it a wonder that the young chief – as he strode among his admiring tenants, his presence greeted, when he entered, with Irish acclamations, and his skirts kissed, when he passed, by devoted kernes – sniffed the pleasing incense, and trod the ground to the measure of imagined music. He felt himself a greater man this night than he had ever been before. The triumph that was never to be intoxicated him. He was Montrose, he was Claverhouse – a Montrose whom no Philiphaugh awaited, a Claverhouse whom no silver bullet would slay. He saw himself riding in processions, acclaimed by thousands, dictating to senates, the idol of a rejoicing Dublin.

His people had kindled a huge bonfire in the middle of the forecourt, and beside this he extended a gracious welcome to a crowd of strong tenants, whose picturesque figures, as they feasted, sang, drank, and fought, the fire silhouetted on the house front and the surrounding walls; now projecting them skywards, gigantic and menacing, now reducing them to dwarfs. A second fire, for the comfort of the baser sort, had been kindled outside the gates, and was the centre of merriment less restrained; while a third, which served as a beacon to the valley, and a proclamation of what was being done, glowed on the platform before the ruined tower at the head of the lake. From this last the red flames streamed far across the water; and now revealed a belated boat shooting from the shadow on its way across, now a troop of countrymen, who, led by their priest, came limping along the lake-side road; ostensibly to join in the religious services of the morrow, but in reality, as they knew, to hear something, and, God willing, to do something towards freeing old Ireland and shaking off the grip of the cursed Saxon.

In the more settled parts of the land, such a summons as had brought them from their rude shielings among the hills or beside the bogs, would have passed for a dark jest. But in this remote spot, the notion of overthrowing the hated power by means of a few score pikes, stiffened by half as many sailors from the Spanish ship in the bay, did not seem preposterous, either to these poor folk or to their betters. Cammock, of course, knew the truth, and the Bishop. Asgill, too, the one man cognisant of the movement who was not here, and of whom some thought with distrust – he, too, could appraise the attempt at its true worth. But of these men, the two first aimed merely at a diversion which would further their plans in Europe; and the last cared only for Flavia.

But James McMurrough and Flavia herself, and Sir Donny and old Timothy Burke and the O'Beirnes and the two or three small gentry, Sullivans or McCarthys, who had also come in – and in a degree Uncle Ulick-these saw nothing hopeless in the plan. That plan, as announced, was first to fall upon Tralee in combination with a couple of sloops said to be lying in Galway Bay; and afterwards to surprise Kenmare. Masters of these places, they would have the Kerry peninsula behind them, and no enemy within it; for the Crosbys and the Pettys, and the handful of English settlers who lived there, could offer no resistance. So much done, they proposed to raise the old standard, to call Connaught to their aid, to cry a crusade. Spain would reinforce them through a score of ports – was not Galway City half Spanish already? – Ireland would rise as one man. And faith, as Sir Donny said, before the Castle tyrants could open their eyes, or raise their heads from the pillow, they'd be seeing themselves driven into the salt ocean!

So, while the house-walls gave back the ruddy glare of the torches, and the bare-footed, bare-headed, laughing colleens damped the thatch, and men confessed in one corner and kissed their girls in another, and the smiths in a third wrought hard at the pike-heads – so the struggle depicted itself to more than one! Among others to Flavia, as, half trembling, half triumphant, she looked down from a window on the strange riot, and told herself that the time was come! To James as he strode to and fro, fancying himself Montrose, sweeping eastwards like a flame. To the O'Beirnes and the O'Loughlins and their like. Great when the fight was done would be the glory of Kerry! The cocks of Clare would crow no more, and undying would be the fame of the McMurrough line, descended from the old Wicklow kings!

Meanwhile Cammock and the Bishop walked in the dark in the garden, a little apart from the turmoil, and, wrapped in their cloaks, talked in low voices; debating much of Sicily and Naples and the Cardinal and the Mediterranean fleet, and at times laughing at some court story. But they said, strange to tell, no word of Tralee, or of Kenmare, or of Dublin Castle, or even of Connaught. They were no visionaries. They had to do with greater things than these, and in doing them knew that they must spend to gain. The lives of a few score peasants, living in wretchedness already, the ruin of half a dozen hamlets, the desolation of such a God-forsaken country-side as this, which was but bog and hill at best, and where it rained two days in three – what were these beside the diversion of a single squadron from the great pitched fight, already foreseen, where the excess of one battleship might win an empire, and its absence might ruin nations?

So while the fire at the head of the lake blazed high, and band after band of the "boys" came in, thirsting for fight, and while song and revelry lorded it in the forecourt and on the strand, and not whisky only but cognac, taken from Captain Augustin's sloop, flowed freely, the two men pacing the walk behind the Florence yews gave scarce a thought to the present moment. They had planned this move in conjunction with other and more important moves. It was made or in the making; and forthwith their thoughts and their speech left it, to deal with the next move and the one beyond, and with the end of all their moves – St. Germains or St. James's. And one other man, and one only, because his life had been passed on their wider plane, and he could judge of the relative value of Connaught and Kent, divined the trend of their thoughts, and understood the deliberation, almost the sense of duty with which they prepared to sacrifice their pawns.

Colonel Sullivan sat in the upper room of one of the two towers that flanked the entrance to the forecourt. Bale was with him, and the two, with the door doubly locked upon them and guarded by a sentry whose crooning they could hear, shared such comfort as a pitcher of water and a gloomy outlook afforded. The darkness hid the medley of odds and ends, of fishing-nets, broken spinning-wheels and worn-out sails, which littered their prison; but the inner of the two slit-like windows that lighted the room admitted a thin shaft of firelight that, dancing among the uncovered rafters, told of the orgy below. Bale, staring morosely at the crowd about the fire, crouched in the splay of the window, while the Colonel, in the same posture at the other window, gazed with feelings not more cheerful on the dark lake.

He was concerned for himself and his companion; for he knew that frightened folk are ever the most cruel. But he was more gravely concerned for those whose advocate he had made himself – for the ignorant cotters in their lowly hovels, the women, the children, upon whom the inevitable punishment would fall. He doubted, now that it was too late, the wisdom of the course he had taken; and, blaming himself for precipitation, he fancied that if he had acted with a little more guile, a little more reticence, a little less haste, his remonstrance might have had greater weight.

There are some whom a life spent in camps and amid bloody scenes, hardens; and others, a few, who emerge from the ordeal with souls passionately inclined to mercy and justice. Colonel John was of the latter – a black swan. For at this moment, lying, and aware that he lay, in some peril of his life, he was more troubled by the evil plight of the helpless, whose cabins had given him a foster-mother, and made him welcome in his youth, whose blood, too, he shared, than by his own uncertain prospects.

William Bale, as was natural, was far from sharing this view. "May the fire burn them!" he muttered, his ire excited by some prank of the party below. "The Turks were polite beside these barefoot devils!"

"You'd have said the other thing at Bender," the Colonel answered, turning his head.

"Ay, your honour," Bale returned; "a man never knows when he is well off."

His master laughed. "I'd have you apply that now," he said.

"So I would if it weren't that I've a kind of a scunner of those black bog-holes," Bale said. "To be planted head first 's no proper end of a man, to my thinking; and if there's not something of the kind in these ragamuffins' minds I'm precious mistaken.

"Pooh, man, you're frightening yourself," the Colonel answered. But the room was dank and chill, the lake without lay lonely, and the picture which Bale's words called up was not pleasant to the bravest. "It's a civilised land, and they'd not think of it!"

"There's one, and that's the young lady's brother," Bale answered darkly, "would not pull us out by the feet! I'll swear to that. Your honour's too much in his way, if what they say in the house is true."

"Pooh!" the Colonel answered again. "We're of one blood."

"Cain and Abel," Bale said. "There's example for it." And he chuckled.

The Colonel scolded him anew. But having done so he could not shake off the impression which the man's words had made on him. While he lived he was a constant and an irritating check upon James McMurrough. If the young man saw a chance of getting rid of that check, was he one to put it from him? Colonel John's face grew long as he pondered the question; he had seen enough of James to feel considerable doubt about the answer. The fire on the height above the lake had died down, the one on the strand was a bed of red ashes. The lake lay buried in darkness, from which at intervals the cry of an owl as it moused along the shore rose mournfully.

But Colonel John was not one to give way to fears that might be baseless. "Let us sleep," he said, shrugging his shoulders. And he lay down where he was, pillowing his head on a fishing-net. Bale said nothing, but examined the door before he stretched himself across the threshold.

Half an hour after dawn they were roused. It was a heavy trampling on the stairs that awakened them. The door was quickly unlocked, it was thrown open, and the hairy face of O'Sullivan Og, who held it wide, looked in. Behind him were two of the boys with pikes – frowsy, savage, repellent figures, with drugget coats tied by the sleeves about their necks.