MORRISTOWN
It was not until the Colonel had passed over the shoulder above the
stone-walled house that he escaped from the jabber of the crowd and the
jeers of the younger members of this savage tribe, who, noting
something abnormal in the fashion of the stranger's clothes, followed
him a space. On descending the farther slope, however, he found himself
alone in the silence of the waste. Choosing without hesitation one of
two tracks, ill-trodden, but such as in that district and at that
period passed for roads, he took his way along it at a good pace.
A wide brown basin, bog for the most part, but rising here and there
into low mounds of sward or clumps of thorn-trees, stretched away to
the foot of the hills. He gazed upon it with eyes which had been
strained for years across the vast unbroken plains of Central Europe,
the sandy steppes of Poland, the frozen marshes of Lithuania; and
beside the majesty of their boundless distances this view shrank to
littleness. But it spoke to more than his eyes; it spoke to the heart,
to feelings and memories which time had not blunted, nor could blunt.
The tower on the shoulder behind him had been raised by his wild
forefathers in the days when the Spaniard lay at Smerwick; and, mean
and crumbling, still gave rise to emotions which the stern battlements
of Stralsund or of Rostock had failed to evoke. Soil and sky, the lark
which sang overhead, the dark peat-water which rose under foot, the
scent of the moist air, the cry of the curlew, all spoke of home--the
home which he had left in the gaiety of youth, to return to it a grave
man, older than his years, and with grey hairs flecking the black. No
wonder that he stood more than once, and, absorbed in thought, gazed on
this or that, on crag and moss, on the things which time and experience
had so strangely diminished.
The track, after zig-zagging across a segment of the basin that has
been described, entered a narrow valley, drained by a tolerable stream.
After ascending this for a couple of miles, it disclosed a view of a
wider vale, enclosed by gentle hills of no great height. In the lap of
this nestled a lake, on the upper end of which some beauty was
conferred by a few masses of rock partly clothed by birch-trees,
through which a stream fell sharply from the upland. Not far from these
rocks a long, low house stood on the shore.
The stranger paused to take in the prospect; nor was it until after the
lapse of some minutes, spent in the deepest reverie, that he pursued
his way along the left-hand bank of the lake. By-and-by he was able to
discern, amid the masses of rock at the head of the lake, a grey tower,
the twin of that Tower of Skull which he had left behind him; and a
hundred paces farther he came upon a near view of the house.
"Two-and-twenty years!" he murmured. "There is not even a dog to bid me
welcome!"
The house was of two stories, with a thatched roof. Its back was to the
slopes that rose by marshy terraces to the hills. Its face was turned
to the lake, and between it and the water lay a walled forecourt, the
angle on each side of the entrance protected by a tower of an older
date than the house. The entrance was somewhat pretentious, and
might--for each of the pillars supported a heraldic beast--have seemed
to an English eye out of character with the thatched roof. But, as if
to correct this, one of the beasts was headless, and one of the gates
had fallen from its hinges. In like manner the dignity of a tolerably
spacious garden, laid out beside the house, was marred by the proximity
of the fold-yard, which had also trespassed, in the shape of sundry
offices and hovels, on the forecourt.
On the lower side of the road opposite the gates half a dozen stone
steps, that like the heraldic pillars might have graced a more stately
mansion, led down to the water. They formed a resting-place for as many
beggars, engaged in drawing at empty pipes; while twice as many old
women sat against the wall of the forecourt and, with their drugget
cloaks about them, kept up a continual whine. Among these, turning
herself now to one, now to another, moved the girl whom the Colonel had
seen at the landing-place. She held her riding-skirt uplifted in one
hand, her whip in the other, and she was bare-headed. At her elbow,
whistling idly, and tapping his boots with a switch, lounged the big
man of the morning.
As the Colonel approached, taking these things in with his eyes, and
making, Heaven knows what comparisons in his mind, the man and the maid
turned and looked at him. The two exchanged some sentences, and the man
came forward to meet him.
"Sir," he said, not without a touch of rough courtesy, "if it is for
hospitality you have come, you will be welcome at Morristown. But if it
is to start a cry about this morning's business, you've travelled on
your ten toes to no purpose, and so I warn you."
The Colonel looked at him. "Cousin Ulick," he said, "I take your
welcome as it is meant, and I thank you for it."
The big man's mouth opened wide. "By the Holy Cross!" he said, "if I'm
not thinking it is John Sullivan!"
"It is," the Colonel answered, smiling. And he held out his hand.
Uncle Ulick grasped it impulsively. "And it's I'm the one that's glad
to see you," he said. "By Heaven, I am! Though I didn't expect you, no
more than I expected myself! And, faith," he continued, grinning as if
he began to see something humorous as well as surprising in the
arrival, "I'm not sure that you will be as welcome to all, John
Sullivan, as you are to me."
"You were always easy, Ulick," the other answered with a smile, "when
you were big and I was little."
"Ay? Well, in size we're much as we were. But--Flavia!"
The girl, scenting something strange, was already at his elbow. "What
is it?" she asked, her breath coming a little quickly. "Who is it?"
fixing her eyes on the new-comer's face.
Uncle Ulick chuckled. "It's your guardian, my jewel," he said. "No
less! And what he'll say to what's going on I'll not be foretelling!"
"My guardian?" she repeated, the blood rising abruptly to her cheek.
"Just that," Ulick Sullivan answered humorously. "Just that, my
darling. It's John Sullivan come back from Sweden. And, as I've told
him, I'm not sure that all at Morristown will be as glad to see him as
I am." At which Uncle Ulick went off into a peal of Titanic laughter.
But that which amused him did not appear to amuse his niece, She stood
staring at Colonel Sullivan as if she were far more surprised than
pleased. At length, and with a childish dignity, she held out her hand.
"If you are Colonel John Sullivan," she said, in a thin voice, "you are
welcome at Morristown."
He might have laughed at the distance of her tone. But he merely bowed,
and with the utmost gravity. "I thank you," he answered. And then,
addressing Ulick Sullivan, "I need not say that I had your
communication," he continued, "with the news of Sir Michael's death and
of the dispositions made by his will. I could not come at once, but
when I could I did, and I am here. Having said so much," he went on,
turning to the girl and looking at her with serious kindness, "may I
add that I think it will be well if we leave matters of business on one
side until we know one another?"
"Well, faith, I think we'd better," Ulick Sullivan replied. And he
chuckled. "I do think so, bedad!"
The girl said nothing, and when he had chuckled his fill restraint fell
upon the three. They turned from one another and looked across the
lake, which the wind, brisk at sea, barely ruffled. Colonel Sullivan
remarked that they had a little more land under tillage than he
remembered, and Ulick Sullivan assented. And then again there was
silence, until the girl struck her habit with her whip and cried
flippantly, "Well, to dinner, if we are to have dinner! To dinner!" She
turned, and led the way to the gate of the forecourt.
The man who followed was clever enough to read defiance in the pose of
her head and resentment in her shoulders. When a beggar-woman, more
importunate than the rest, caught hold of her skirt, and Flavia flicked
her with the whip as she would have flicked a dog, he understood. And
when the dogs in the court fell upon her in a troop and were kicked to
right and left, and when a babe, that, clothed in a single shift, was
crawling on hands and knees upon the threshold, was removed in the same
manner--but more gently--still he understood.
There were other dogs in the stone-paved hall; a hen too, finding its
food on the floor and strutting here and there as if it had never known
another home. On the left of the door, an oak table stood laid for the
mid-day meal; on the right, before a carved stone chimney-piece, under
which a huge log smouldered on the andirons, two or three men were
seated. These rose on the entrance of the young mistress-they were
dependants of the better class, for whom open house was kept at
Morristown when business brought them thither. And, so far, all was
well. Yet it may be that on the instant eyes which had been blind to
defects were opened by the presence of this stranger from the outer
world. For Flavia's voice was hard as she asked old Darby, the butler,
if The McMurrough was in the house.
"Faith, I believe not," said he. "His honour, nor the other quality,
have not returned from the fishing."
"Well, let him know when he comes in," she rejoined, "that Colonel John
Sullivan has arrived from Sweden, and," she added with a faint sneer,
"it were well if you put on your uniform coat, Darby."
The old butler did not hear the last words. He was looking at the
new-comer. "Glory be to God, Colonel," he said; "it's in a field of
peas I'd have known you! True for you, you're as like the father that
bred you as the two covers of a book! It's he was the grand gentleman!
I was beyond the Mahoney's great gravestone when he shot Squire Crosby
in the old church-yard of Tralee for an appetite to his breakfast! More
by token, he went out with the garrison officer after his second bottle
that same day that ever was--and the creature shot him in the knee--bad
luck to him for a foreigner and a Protestant--and he limped to his
dying day!"
The girl laughed unkindly. "You're opening your mouth and putting your
foot in it, Darby," she said. "If the Colonel is not a foreigner----"
"And sure he couldn't be that, and his own father's son!" cried the
quick-witted Irishman. "And if, bad luck, he's a Protestant, I'll never
believe he's one of them through-and-through d----d black Protestants
that you and I mean! Glory be to God, it's not in the Sullivans to be
one of them!"
The Colonel laughed as he shook the old servant's hand; and Uncle Ulick
joined in the laugh. "You're a clever rogue, Darby," he said. "Your
neck'll never be in a rope, but your fingers will untie the knot! And
now, where'll you put him?"
Flavia tapped her foot on the floor; foreseeing, perhaps, what was
coming.
"Put his honour?" Darby repeated, rubbing his bald head. "Ay, sure,
where'll we put him? May it be long before the heavens is his bed!
There's the old master's room, a grand chamber fit for a lord, but
there's a small matter of the floor that is sunk and lets in the
rats--bad cess to the dogs for an idle, useless pack. And there's the
Count's room would do finely, but the vagabonds have never mended the
thatch that was burned the last drinking, and though 'twas no more than
the width of a flea's leap, the devil of a big bowl of water has it let
in! The young master's friends are in the South, but the small room
beyond that has the camp truckle that Sir Michael brought from the ould
wars: that's dry and snug! And for the one window that's airy, sure,
'tis no drawback at this sayson."
"It will do very well for me, Darby," the Colonel said, smiling.
"Well," Darby answered, rubbing his head, "the Cross be between us and
harm, I'm not so sure where's another. The young masther----"
"That will do, Darby!" the girl cried impatiently. And then, "I am
sorry, Colonel Sullivan," she continued stiffly, "that you should be so
poorly lodged--who are the master of all. But doubtless," with an
irrepressible resentment in her voice, "you will be able presently to
put matters on a better footing."
With a formal curtsey she left them then, and retreated up the stairs,
which at the rear of the hall ascended to a gallery that ran right and
left to the rooms on the first floor.
Colonel Sullivan turned with Uncle Ulick to the nearest window and
looked out on the untidy forecourt. "You know, I suppose," he said, in
a tone which the men beside the fire, who were regarding him curiously,
could not hear, "the gist of Sir Michael's letters to me?"
Uncle Ulick drummed with his fingers on the window-sill. "Faith, the
most of it," he said.
"Was he right in believing that her brother intended to turn Protestant
for the reasons he told me?"
"It's like enough, I'm thinking."
"Does she know? The girl?"
"Not a breath! And I would not be the one to tell her," Uncle Ulick
added, with some grimness.
"Yet it may be necessary?"
Uncle Ulick shook his fist at a particularly importunate beggar who had
ventured across the forecourt. "It's a gift the little people never
gave me to tell unpleasant things," he said. "And if you'll be told by
me, Colonel, you'll travel easy. The girl has a spirit, and you'll not
persuade her to stand in her brother's light, at all, at all! She has
it fast that her grandfather wronged him--and old Sir Michael was
queer-tempered at times, God forbid I should say the other! The gift to
her will go for nothing, you'll see!"
"She must be a very noble girl."
"Devil a better has He made!"
"But if her grandfather was right in thinking so ill of his grandson?"
"I'm not saying he wasn't," Uncle Ulick muttered.
"Then we must not let her set the will aside."
Ulick Sullivan shrugged his shoulders. "Let?" he said. "Faith! it's but
little it'll be a question of that! James is for taking, and she's for
giving! He's her white swan, and to her mind, sleeping or waking, as
Darby says, he'd tread on eggs and sorra a chick the less! Let? Who's
to hinder?"
"You."
"It's easiness has been my ruin, and faith! it's too late to change."
"Then I?"
Uncle Ulick smiled. "To be sure," he said slily, "there's you,
Colonel."
"The whole estate is mine, you see, in law."
"Ay, but there's no law west of Tralee," Uncle Ulick retorted. "That's
where old Sir Michael made his mistake. Anywhere through the length and
breadth of old Ireland, if 'twas in the Four Courts themselves, and all
the garrison round you, you'd be on honour, Colonel, to take no
advantage. But here it would not be the cold shoulder and a little
unpleasantness, and a meeting or two on the ground, that's neither here
nor there--that you'd be like to taste. I'd not be knowing what would
happen if it went about that you were ousting them that had the right,
and you a Protestant. He's not the great favourite, James McMurrough,
and whether he or the girl took most 'd be a mighty small matter. But
if you think to twist it, so as to play cuckoo--though with the height
of fair meaning and not spying a silver penny of profit for yourself,
Colonel--I take leave to tell you, he's a most unpopular bird."
"But, Sir Michael," the Colonel, who had listened with a thoughtful
face, answered, "left all to me to that very end--that it might be
secured to the girl."
"Sorrow one of me says no!" Ulick rejoined. "But----"
"But what?" the Colonel replied politely. "The more plainly you speak
the more you will oblige me."
But all that Ulick Sullivan could be brought to say at that
moment--perhaps he knew that curious eyes were on their conference--was
that Kerry was "a mighty queer country," and the thief of the world
wouldn't know what would pass there by times. And besides, there were
things afoot--faith, and there were, that he'd talk about at another
time.
Then he changed the subject abruptly, asking the Colonel if he had seen
a big ship in the bay.
"What colours?" the Colonel asked--the question men ask who have been
at sea.
"Spanish, maybe," Uncle Ulick answered. "Did you sight such a one?"
But the Colonel had seen no big ship.