A SCION OF KINGS
The family at Morristown had been half an hour at table, and in the
interval a man of more hasty judgment than Colonel Sullivan might have
made up his mind on many points. Whether the young McMurrough was
offensive of set purpose, and because an unwelcome guest was present,
or whether he merely showed himself as he was--an unlicked cub--such a
man might have determined. But the Colonel held his judgment in
suspense, though he leaned to the latter view of the case. He knew that
even in England a lad brought up among women was apt to develop a
quarrelsome uncouthness, a bearishness, intolerable among men of the
world. How much more likely, he reflected, was this to be the case when
the youth belonged to a proscribed race, and lived, a little chieftain
among his peasants, in a district wild and remote, where for a league
each way his will was law. The Colonel made allowances, and, where need
was, he checked his indignation. If he blamed any one, he let his
censure rest on the easy temper of Uncle Ulick. The giant could have
shaken the young man, who was not over robust, with a single finger;
and at any time in the last ten years might have taught him a lifelong
lesson.
At their first sitting down the young man had shown his churlishness.
Beginning by viewing the Colonel in sulky silence, he had answered his
kinsman's overtures only by a rude stare or a boorish word. His
companions, two squireens of his own age, and much of his own kidney,
nudged him from time to time, and then the three would laugh in such a
way as to make it plain that the stranger was the butt of the jest.
Presently, overcoming the reluctant impression which Colonel John's
manners made upon him, the young man found his tongue, and, glancing at
his companions to bring them into the joke, "Much to have where you
come from, Colonel?" he asked.
"As in most places," the Colonel replied mildly, "by working for it, or
earning it after one fashion or another. Indeed, my friend, country and
country are more alike, except on the outside, than is thought by those
who stay at home."
"You've seen a wealth of countries, I'm thinking?" the youth asked with
a sneer.
"I have crossed Europe more than once."
"And stayed in none?"
"If you mean----"
"Faith, I mean you've come back!" the young man exclaimed with a loud
laugh, in which his companions joined. "You'll mind the song"--and with
a wink he trolled out,
"In such contempt in short I fell,
Which was a very hard thing,
They devilish badly used me there,
For nothing but a farthing.
"You're better than that, Colonel, for the worst we can say of you is,
you's come back a penny!"
"If you mean a bad one, come home," the Colonel rejoined, taking the
lad good-humouredly--he was not blind to the flush of indignation which
dyed Flavia's cheeks--"I'll take the wit for welcome. To be sure, to
die in Ireland is an Irishman's hope, all the world over."
"True for you, Colonel!" Uncle Ulick said. And "For shame, James," he
continued, speaking with more sternness than was natural to him.
"Faith, and if you talked abroad as you talk at home, you'd be for
having a pistol-ball in your gizzard in the time it takes you to say
your prayers--if you ever say them, my lad!"
"What are my prayers to you, I'd like to know?" James retorted
offensively.
"Easy, lad, easy!"
The young man glared at him. "What is it to you," he cried still more
rudely, "whether I pray or no?"
"James! James!" Flavia pleaded under her breath.
"Do you be keeping your feet to yourself!" he cried, betraying her
kindly manoeuvre. "And let my shins be! I want none of your guiding!
More by token, miss, don't you be making a sight of yourself as you did
this morning, or you'll smart for it. What is it to you if O'Sullivan
Og takes our dues for us--and a trifle over? And, sorra one of you
doubt it, if Mounseer comes jawing here, it's in the peat-hole he'll
find himself! Or the devil the value of a cork he gets out of me;
that's flat! Eh, Phelim?"
"True for you, McMurrough!" the youth who sat beside him answered,
winking. "We'll soak him for you."
"So do you be taking a lesson, Miss Flavvy," the young Hector
continued, "and don't you go threatening honest folk with your whip, or
it'll be about your own shoulders it'll fall! I know what's going on,
and when I want your help, I'll ask it."
The girl's lip trembled. "But it's robbery, James," she murmured.
"To the devil with your robbery!" he retorted, casting a defiant eye
round the table. "They'll pay our dues, and what they get back will be
their own!"
"And it's rich they'll be with it!" Phelim chuckled.
"Ay, faith, it's the proud men they'll be that day!" laughed Morty, his
brother. "Sure, when it comes!" with a wink.
"Fine words, my lad," Uncle Ulick replied quietly; "but it's my opinion
you'll fall on trouble, and more than'll please you, with Crosby of
Castlemaine. And why, I'd like to know? 'Tis a grand trade, and has
served us well since I can remember! Why can't you take what's fair out
of it, and let the poor devil of a sea-captain that's supplied many an
honest man's table have his own, and go his way? Take my word for it,
it's ruing it you'll be, when all's done."
"It's not from Crosby of Castlemaine I'll rue it!" James McMurrough
answered arrogantly. "I'll shoot him like a bog-snipe if he's sorra a
word to say to it! That for him, the black sneak of a Protestant!" And
he snapped his fingers. "But his day will soon be past, and we'll be
dealing with him. The toast is warming for him now!"
Phelim slapped his thigh. "True for you, McMurrough! That's the talk!"
"That's the talk!" chorussed Morty.
The Colonel opened his mouth to speak, but he caught Flavia's look of
distress, and he refrained. And "For my part," Morty continued
jovially, "I'd not wait--for you know what! The gentleman's way's the
better; early or late, Clare or Kerry, 'tis all one! A drink of the
tea, a peppered devil, and a pair of the beauties, is an Irishman's
morning!"
"And many's the poor soul has to mourn it--long and bitterly," the
Colonel said. His tender corn being trod upon, he could be silent no
longer. "For shame, sir, for shame!" he added warmly.
Morty stared. "Begorra, and why?" he cried, in a tone which proved that
he asked the question in perfect innocence.
"Why?" Colonel John repeated. And for a moment, in face of prejudices
so strong, and of prepossessions so deeply rooted, he paused. Then,
"Why?" he repeated. "Can you ask me when you know how many a life as
young as yours--and I take you to be scarcely, sir, in your
twenties--has been forfeit for a thoughtless word, an unwitting touch,
a look; when you know how many a bride has been widowed as soon as
wedded, how many a babe orphaned as soon as born? And for what? For
what, sir?"
"For the point of honour!" The McMurrough cried. Morty, for his part,
was dumb with astonishment. What talk was this!
"The point of honour?" the Colonel repeated, more slowly, "what is it?
In nine cases out of ten the fear of seeming to be afraid. In the
tenth--the desire to wipe out a stain that blood leaves as deep as
before!"
"Faith, and you surprise me!" Phelim cried with a genuine _naivete_
that at another time would have provoked a smile. "You do indeed!"
"And Kerry'll more than surprise you," quoth The McMurrough rudely, "if
it's that way you'll be acting! Would you let Crosby of Castlemaine
call you thief?"
"I would not thieve!" the Colonel replied.
There was a stricken silence for a moment. Then The McMurrough sprang
to his feet, his querulous face flushed with rage, his arm raised. But
Ulick's huge hand dragged him down. "Easy, lad, easy," he cried,
restraining the young man. "He's your guest! He's your guest; remember
that!"
"And he spoke in haste," the Colonel said. "I withdraw my words," he
continued, rising and frankly holding out his hand. "I recognise that I
was wrong! I see that the act bears in your eyes a different aspect,
and I beg your pardon, sir."
The McMurrough took the hand, though he took it sullenly; and the
Colonel sat down again. His action, to say nothing of his words, left
Phelim and Morty in a state of amazement so profound that the two sat
staring as if carved out of the same block of wood.
If Colonel John noticed their surprise he seemed in no way put out by
it. "Perhaps," he said gently, "it is wrong to thrust opinions on
others unasked. I think that is so! It should be enough to act upon
them one's self, and refrain from judging others."
No one answered. But one thing was certain: whether he judged them or
not, they were all judging him, with such of their faculties as
remained to them. True, Flavia, save by a single frightened glance when
a quarrel seemed imminent, had not betrayed what she thought--nor now
betrayed what she was thinking. Her eyes were glued to her plate. But
the impression made on the others, not excepting the dependent buckeens
who sat at the board a little apart and took no part in the talk, was
so apparent that an onlooker must have laughed at their bewilderment.
Even Uncle Ulick, whom a steady good humour had steered clear of many a
brawl--so that a single meeting on Aghrim racecourse made up the tale
of his exploits--stared vacantly at his kinsman. Never before had he
heard any one question the right of an Irish gentleman to fight at
pleasure; and for the others whose blood was hotter and younger, for
the three Kerry Cocks, the Conclave had not been more surprised if a
Cardinal had risen and denounced the Papacy, nor an assembly of
half-pay captains been more astonished if one of their number had
denounced the pension system. The Colonel was a Sullivan and an
Irishman, and it was supposed that he had followed the wars. Whence,
then, these strange words, these unheard-of opinions? Morty felt his
cheek flush with the shame which Colonel John should have felt; and
Phelim grieved for the family. The gentleman might be mad; it was
charitable to think he was. But, mad or sane, he was like, they feared,
to be the cause of sad misunderstanding in the country round.
The McMurrough, of a harder and less generous nature than his
companions, felt more contempt than wonder. The man had insulted him
grossly, and had apologised as abjectly; that was his view of the
incident. And he was the first to break the silence. "Sure, it's very
well for the gentleman it's in the family," he said dryly. "Tail up,
tail down, 's all one among friends. But if he'll be so quick with his
tongue in Tralee Market, he'll chance on one here and there that he'll
not blarney so easily! Eh, Morty?"
"I'm fearing so, too," said Phelim pensively. Morty did not answer.
"'Tis a queer world," Phelim added.
"And all sorts in it," The McMurrough cried, his tone more arrogant
than before.
Flavia glanced at him, frowning. "Let us have peace now," she said.
"Peace? Sorrow a bit of war there's like to be in the present company!"
the victor cried. And he began to whistle, amid an awkward silence. The
air he chose was one well known at that day, and when he had whistled a
few bars, one of the buckeens at the lower end of the table began to
sing the words softly.
It was a' for our rightful king
We left fair Ireland's strand!
It was a' for our rightful king
We e'er saw foreign land, my dear,
We e'er saw foreign land!
"My dear, or no, you'll be doing well to be careful!" The McMurrough
said, in a jeering tone, with his eye on the Colonel.
"Pho!" the man replied. "And I that have heard the young mistress sing
it a score of times!"
"Ay, but not in this company!" The McMurrough rejoined.
Colonel John looked round the table. "If you mean," he said quietly,
"that I am a loyal subject of King George, I am that. But what is said
at my host's table, no matter who he is, is safe for me. Moreover, I've
lived long enough to know, gentlemen, that most said is least meant,
and that the theme of a lady's song is more often--sunset than
sunrise!" And he bowed in the direction of the girl.
The McMurrough's lip curled. "Fair words," he sneered. "And easy to
speak them, when you and your d--d Protestant Whigs are on top!"
"We won't talk of Protestants, d--d or otherwise!" Colonel John
replied. And for the first time his glance, keen as the flicker of
steel, crossed The McMurrough's. The younger man's eyes fell. A flush
of something that might have been shame tinged his brow: and though no
one at table save Uncle Ulick understood the allusion, his conscience
silenced him. "I hope," the Colonel continued more soberly, "that a
good Protestant may still be a good Irishman."
"It's not I that have seen one, then!" The McMurrough muttered
churlishly.
"Just as a bad Protestant makes a bad Irishman," the Colonel returned,
with another of those glances which seemed to prove that the old man
was not quite put off.
The McMurrough was silenced. But the cudgels were taken up in an
unexpected quarter. "I know nothing of bad or good," Flavia said, in a
voice vibrating with eagerness, "but only, to our sorrow, of those who
through centuries have robbed us! Who, not content, shame on them! with
shutting us up in a corner of the land that was ours from sea to sea,
deny us even here the protection of their law! Law? Can you call it
law----"
"Heaven be between us and it!" old Darby groaned.
"Can you call it law," she continued with passion, "which denies us all
natural rights, all honourable employments; which drives us abroad,
divides son from father, and brother from brother; which bans our
priests, and forbids our worship, and, if it had its will, would leave
no Catholic from Cape Clear to Killaloe?"
The Colonel looked sorrowfully at her, but made no answer; for to much
of what she said no answer could be made. On the other hand, a murmur
passed round the board; and more than one looked at the stranger with
compressed lips. "If you had your will," the girl continued, with
growing emotion; "if your law were carried out--as, thank God! it is
not, no man's heart being hard enough--to possess a pistol were to be
pilloried; to possess a fowling-piece were to be whipped; to own a
horse, above the value of a miserable garron, were to be robbed by the
first rascal who passed! We must not be soldiers, nor sailors," she
continued; "nay"--with bitter irony--"we may not be constables nor
gamekeepers! The courts, the bar, the bench of our fatherland, are shut
to us! We may have neither school nor college; the lands that were our
fathers' must be held for us by Protestants, and it's I must have a
Protestant guardian! We are outlaws in the dear land that is ours; we
dwell on sufferance where our fathers ruled! And men like you,
abandoning their country, abandoning their creed----"
"God forbid!" the Colonel exclaimed, much moved himself.
"Men like you uphold these things!"
"God forbid!" he repeated.
"But let Him forbid, or not forbid," she retorted, rising from her seat
with eyes that flashed anger through tears, "we exist, and shall exist!
And the time is coming, and comes soon--ay, comes perhaps to-day!--when
we who now suffer for the true faith and the rightful King will raise
our heads, and the Faithful Land shall cease to mourn and honest men to
pine! And, ah"--with upraised face and clasped hands--"I pray for that
day! I pray for that day! I----"
She broke off amid cries of applause, fierce as the barking of wolves.
She struggled for a moment with her overmastering emotion, then, unable
to continue or to calm herself, she turned from the table and fled
weeping up the stairs.
Colonel John had risen. He watched her go with deep feeling; he turned
to his seat again with a sigh. He was a shade paler than before, and
the eyes which he bent on the board were dark with thought. He was
unconscious of all that passed round him, and, if aware, he was
heedless of the strength of the passions which she had unbridled--until
a hand fell on his arm.
He glanced up then and saw that all the men had risen, and were looking
at him--even Ulick Sullivan--with dark faces. A passion of anger
clouded their gaze. Without a word spoken, they were of one mind. The
hand that touched him trembled, the voice that broke the silence shook
under the weight of the speaker's feelings.
"You'll be leaving here this day," the man muttered.
"I?" the Colonel said, taken by surprise. "Not at all."
"We wish you no harm, but to see your back. But you'll be leaving
here."
The Colonel, his first wonder subdued, looked from one to another. "I
am sure you wish me no harm," he said.
"None, but to see your back," the man repeated, while his companions
looked down at the Colonel with a strange fixedness. The Celtic nature,
prone to sudden rage, stirred in them. The stranger who an hour before
had been indifferent to them now wore the face of an enemy. The lake
and the bog--ay, the secret grave yearned for him: the winding-sheet
was high upon his breast. "Stay, and it's but once in your life you'll
be sorry," the man growled, "and faith, that'll be always!"
"But I cannot go," the Colonel answered, as gently as before.
"And why?" the man returned. The McMurrough was not of the speakers,
but stood behind them, glowering at him with a dark face.
"Because," the Colonel answered, "I am in my duty here, my friends. And
the man who is in his duty can suffer nothing."
"He can die," the man replied, breathing hard. The men who were on the
Colonel's side of the table leant more closely about him.
But he seemed unmoved. "That," he replied cheerfully, "is nothing. To
die is but an accident. Who dies in his duty suffers no harm. And were
that not enough--and it is all," he continued slowly, "what harm should
happen to me, a Sullivan among Sullivans? Because I have fared far and
seen much, am I so changed that, coming back, I shall find no welcome
on the hearth of my race, and no shelter where my fathers lie?"
"And are not our hearths cold over many a league? And the graves----"
"Whisht!" a voice broke in sternly, as Uncle Ulick thrust his way
through the group. "The man says well!" he continued. "He's a
Sullivan----"
"He's a Protestant!"
"He is a Sullivan, I say!" Uncle Ulick retorted, "were he the blackest
heretic on the sod! And you, would you do the foul deed for a woman's
wet eye? Are the hearts of Kerry turned as hard as its rocks? Make an
end of this prating and foolishness! And you, James McMurrough, these
are your men and this is your house? Will you be telling them at once
that you will be standing between him and harm, be he a heretic ten
times over? For shame, man! Is it for raising the corp of old Sir
Michael from his grave ye are?"
The McMurrough looked sombrely at the big man. "On you be the risk," he
said sullenly. "You know what you know."
"I know that the seal in the cave and the seal on the wave are one!"
Ulick answered vehemently. "Whisht, man, whisht, and make an end! And
do you, John Sullivan, give no thought to these omadhauns, but come
with me and I'll show you to your chamber. A woman's tear is ever near
her smile. With her the good thought treads ever on the heel of the bad
word!"
"I have little knowledge of them," Colonel John answered quietly.
But when he was above with Uncle Ulick, he spoke. "I hope that this is
but wild talk," he said. "You cannot remember, nor can I, the bad days.
But the little that is left, it were madness and worse than madness to
risk! If you've thought of a rising, in God's name put it from you.
Think of your maids and your children! I have seen the fires rise from
too many roofs, I have heard the wail of the homeless too often, I have
seen too many frozen corpses stand for milestones by the road, I have
wakened to the creak of too many gibbets--to face these things in my
own land!"
Uncle Ulick was looking from the little casement. He turned and showed
a face working with agitation. "And you, if you wore no sword, nor
dared wear one? If you walked in Tralee a clown among gentlefolk, if
you lived a pariah in a corner of pariahs, if your land were the
handmaid of nations, and the vampire crouched upon her breast,
what--what would you do, then?"
"Wait," Colonel John answered gravely, "until the time came."
Uncle Ulick gripped his arm. "And if it came not in your time?"
"Still wait," Colonel John answered with solemnity. "For believe me,
Ulick Sullivan, there is no deed that has not its reward! Not does one
thatch go up in smoke that is not paid for a hundredfold."
"Ay, but when? When?"
"When the time is ripe."