THE MESS-ROOM AT TRALEE
If England had made of Ireland a desert and called it peace, she had
not marred its beauty. That was the thought in Colonel Sullivan's mind
as he rode eastward under Slieve Mish, with the sun rising above the
lower spurs of the mountain, and the lark saluting the new-born
radiance with a song attuned to the freshness of the morning. Where his
road ascended he viewed the sparkling inlet spread far to the
southward; and where the track dipped, the smooth slopes on either side
ran up to grey crags that, high above, took strange shapes, now of
monstrous heads, now of fantastic towers. As his sure-footed nag forded
the brown bog-stream, long-shanked birds rose silently from the pools,
and he marked with emotion the spots his boyhood had known: the shallow
where the dog-wolf--so big that it had become a fable--died biting, and
the cliff whence the sea-eagle's nest had long bidden him defiance.
Bale rode behind him, taciturn, comparing, perhaps, the folds of his
native Suffolk hills with these greener vales. They reached the hedge
tavern, where the mare had been seized, and they stayed to bait their
horses, but got no news. About eight they rode on; and five long Irish
miles nearer Tralee, though still in a wild and lonely country, they
viewed from the crest of a hill a piece of road stretched ribbon-like
before them, and on it a man walking from them at a great pace. He had
for companion a boy, who trotted beside him.
Neither man nor boy looked back, and it did not seem to be from fear of
the two riders that they moved so quickly. The man wore a loose drugget
coat and an old jockey-cap, and walked with a stout six-foot staff.
Thus armed and dressed he should have stood in small fear of robbers.
Yet when Colonel John's horse, the tread of its hoofs deadened by the
sod road, showed its head at his shoulder, and he sprang aside, he
turned a face of more vivid alarm than seemed necessary. And he crossed
himself.
Colonel John touched his hat. "I give you good morning, good man," he
said.
The walker raised his hand to his cap as if to return the salute, but
lowered it without doing so. He muttered something.
"You will be in haste?" Colonel John continued. He saw that the sweat
stood in beads on the man's brow, and the lad's face was tear-stained.
"I've far to go," the man muttered. He spoke with a slight foreign
accent, but in the west of Ireland this was common. "The top of the
morning to you."
Plainly he wished the two riders to pass on, but he did not slacken his
speed for a moment. So for a space they went abreast, the man, with
every twenty paces, glancing up suspiciously. And now and again, the
boy, as he ran or walked, vented a sob.
The Colonel looked about him. The solitude of the valley was unbroken.
No cabin smoked, no man worked within sight, so that the haste of these
two, their sweating faces, their straining steps, seemed portentous.
"Shall I take up the lad?" Colonel John asked.
Plainly the man hesitated. Then, "You will be doing a kindness," he
panted. And, seizing the lad in two powerful arms, he swung him to the
Colonel's stirrup, who, in taking him, knocked off the other's
jockey-cap.
The man snatched it up and put it on with a single movement. But
Colonel John had seen what he expected.
"You walk on a matter of life and death?" he said.
"It is all that," the man answered; and this time his look was defiant.
"You are taking the offices, father?"
The man did not reply.
"To one who is near his end, I suspect?"
The priest--for such he was--glanced at the weapon Colonel John wore.
"You can do what you will," he said sullenly. "I am on my duty."
"And a fine thing, that!" Colonel John answered heartily. He drew rein,
and, before the other knew what he would be at, he was off his horse.
"Mount, father," he said, "and ride, and God be with you!"
For a moment the priest stared dumbfounded. "Sir," he said, "you wear a
sword! And no son of the Church goes armed in these parts."
"If I am not one of your Church I am a Christian," Colonel John
answered. "Mount, father, and ride in God's name, and when you are
there send the lad back with the beast."
"The Mother of God reward you!" the priest cried fervently, "and turn
your heart in the right way!" He scrambled to the saddle. "The blessing
of all----"
The rest was lost in the thud of hoofs as the horse started briskly,
leaving Colonel John standing alone upon the road beside Bale's
stirrup. The servant looked after the retreating pair, but said
nothing.
"It's something if a man serves where he's listed," Colonel John
remarked.
Bale smiled. "And don't betray his own side," he said. He slipped from
his saddle.
"You think it's the devil's work we've done?" Colonel John asked.
But Bale declined to say more, and the two walked on, one on either
side of the horse, master or man punching it when it showed a desire to
sample the herbage. A stranger, seeing them, might have thought that
they were wont to walk thus, so unmoved were their faces.
They had trudged the better part of two miles when they came upon the
horse tethered by the reins to one of two gate-pillars, which stood
gateless beside the road. Colonel John got to his saddle, and they
trotted on. Notwithstanding which it was late in the afternoon when
they approached the town of Tralee.
In those days it was a town much ruined. The grim castle of the
Desmonds, scene of the midnight murder which had brought so many woes
on Ireland, still elbowed the grey Templars Cloister, and looked down,
as it frowned across the bay, on the crumbling aisles and squalid
graves of the Abbey. To Bale, as he scanned the dark pile, it was but a
keep--a mere nothing beside Marienburg or Stettin--rising above the
hovels of an Irish town. But to the Irishman it stood for many a bitter
memory and many a crime, besides that murder of a guest which will
never be forgotten. The Colonel sighed as he gazed.
Presently his eyes dropped to the mean houses which flanked the
entrance to the town; and he recognised that if all the saints had not
vouchsafed their company, the delay caused by the meeting with the
priest had done somewhat. For at that precise moment a man was riding
into the town before them, and the horse under the man was Flavia
McMurrough's lost mare.
Colonel John's eye lightened as he recognised its points. With a sign
to Bale he fell in behind the man and followed him through two or three
ill-paved and squalid streets. Presently the rider passed through a
loop-holed gateway, before which a soldier was doing sentry-go. The two
followed. Thence the quarry crossed an open space surrounded by dreary
buildings which no military eye could take for aught but a barrack
yard. The two still followed--the sentry staring after them. On the far
side of the yard the mare and its rider vanished through a second
archway, which appeared to lead to an inner court. The Colonel, nothing
intimidated, went after them. Fortune, he thought, had favoured him.
But as he emerged from the tunnel-like passage he raised his head in
astonishment. A din of voices, an outbreak of laughter and revelry,
burst in a flood of sound upon his ears. He turned his face in the
direction whence the sounds came, and saw three open windows, and at
each window three or four flushed countenances. His sudden emergence
from the tunnel, perhaps his look of surprise, wrought an instant's
silence, which was followed by a ruder outburst.
"Cock! cock! cock!" shrieked a tipsy voice, and an orange, hurled at
random, missed the Colonel's astonished face by a yard. The mare which
had led him so far had disappeared, and instinctively he drew bridle.
He stared at the window.
"Mark one!" cried a second roisterer, and a cork, better aimed than the
orange, struck the Colonel sharply on the chin. A shout of laughter
greeted the hit.
He raised his hat. "Gentlemen," he remonstrated, "gentlemen----"
He could proceed no further. A flight of corks, a renewed cry of "Cock!
cock! cock!" a chorus of "Fetch him, Ponto! Dead, good dog! Find him,
Ponto!" drowned his remonstrances. Perhaps in the scowling face at his
elbow--for William Bale had followed him and was looking very fierce
indeed--the wits of the --th found more amusement than in the master's
mild astonishment.
"Who the devil is he?" cried one of the seniors, raising his voice
above the uproar. "English or Irish?"
"Irish for a dozen!" a voice answered. "Here, Paddy, where's your
papers?"
"Ay, be jabers!" in an exaggerated brogue; "it's the broth of a boy he
is, and never a face as long as his in ould Ireland!"
"Gentlemen," the Colonel said, getting in a word at last. "Gentlemen, I
have been in many companies before this, and----"
"And by G--d, you shall be in ours!" one of the revellers retorted. And
"Have him in! Fetch him in!" roared a dozen voices, amid much laughter.
In a twinkling half as many young fellows had leapt from the windows,
and surrounded him. "Who-whoop!" cried one, "Who-whoop!"
"Steady, gentlemen, steady!" the Colonel said, a note of sternness in
his voice. "I've no objection to joining you, or to a little timely
frolic, but----"
"Join us you will, whether or no!" replied one, more drunken or more
turbulent than the rest. He made as if he would lay hands on the
Colonel, and, to avoid violence, the latter suffered himself to be
helped from his saddle. In a twinkling he was urged through the
doorway, leaving his reins in Bale's hand, whose face, for sheer wrath
and vindictiveness, was a picture.
Boisterous cries of "Hallo, sobersides!" and "Cock, cock, cock!"
greeted the Colonel, as, partly of his own accord and partly urged by
unceremonious hands, he crossed the threshold, and shot forward into
the room.
The scene presented by the apartment matched the flushed faces and the
wandering eyes which the windows had framed. The long table was strewn
with flasks and glasses and half-peeled fruit, the floor with empty
bottles. A corner of the table had been cleared for a main at hazard;
but to make up for this the sideboard was a wilderness of broken meats
and piled-up dishes, and an overturned card-table beside one of the
windows had strewn the floor with cards. Here, there, everywhere on
chairs, on hooks, were cast sword-belts, neckcloths, neglected wigs.
A peaceful citizen of that day had as soon found himself in a bear-pit;
and even the Colonel's face grew a trifle longer as hands, not too
gentle, conducted him towards the end of the table. "Gentlemen,
gentlemen," he began, "I have been in many companies, as I said before,
and----"
"A speech! Old Gravity's speech!" roared a middle-aged, bold-eyed man,
who had suggested the sally from the windows, and from the first had
set the younger spirits an example of recklessness. "Hear to him!" He
filled a glass of wine and waved it perilously near the Colonel's nose.
"Old Gravity's speech! Give it tongue!" he cried. "The flure's your
own, and we're listening."
Colonel John eyed him with a slight contraction of the features. But
the announcement, if ill-meant, availed to procure silence. The more
sober had resumed their seats. He raised his head and spoke.
"Gentlemen," he said--and it was strange to note the effect of his look
as his eyes fell first on one and then on another, fraught with a
dignity which insensibly wrought on them. "Gentlemen, I have been in
many companies, and I have found it true, all the world over, that what
a man brings he finds. I have the honour to speak to you as a soldier
to soldiers----"
"English or Irish?" asked a tall sallow man--sharply, but in a new
tone.
"Irish!"
"Oh, be jabers!" from the man with the wineglass.
But the Colonel's eye and manner had had their effect, and "Let him
speak!" the sallow man said. "And you, Payton, have done with your
fooling, will you?"
"Well, hear to him!"
"I have been in many camps and many companies, gentlemen," the Colonel
resumed, "and those of many nations. But wherever I have been I have
found that if a man brought courtesy with him, he met with courtesy at
the hands of others. And if he brought no offence, he received none. I
am a stranger here, for I have been out of my own country for a score
of years. On my return you welcome me," he smiled, "a little
boisterously perhaps, but I am sure, gentlemen, with a good intent. And
as I have fared elsewhere I am sure I shall fare at your hands."
"Well, sure," from the background, "and haven't we made you welcome?"
"Almost too freely," the Colonel replied, smiling good-humouredly. "A
peaceable man who had not lived as long as I have might have found
himself at a loss in face of so strenuous a welcome. Corks, perhaps,
are more in place in bottles----"
"And a dale more in place out of them!" from the background.
"But if you will permit me to explain my errand, I will say no more of
that. My name, gentlemen, is Sullivan, Colonel John Sullivan of Skull,
formerly of the Swedish service, and much at your service. I shall be
still more obliged if any of you will be kind enough to inform me who
is the purchaser----"
Payton interrupted him rudely. "Oh, d--n! We have had enough of this!"
he cried. "Sink all purchasers, I say!" And with a drunken crow he
thrust his neighbour against the speaker, causing both to reel. How it
happened no one saw--whether Payton himself staggered in the act, or
flung the wine wantonly; but somehow the contents of his glass flew
over the Colonel's face and neckcloth.
Half a dozen men rose from their seats. "Shame!" an indignant voice
cried.
Among those who had risen was the sallow man. "Payton," he said
sharply, "what did you do that for?"
"Because I chose, if you like!" the stout man answered. "What is it to
you? I am ready to give him satisfaction when he likes, and where he
likes, and no heel-taps! And what more can he want? Do you hear, sir?"
he continued in a bullying tone. "Sword or pistols, before breakfast or
after dinner, drunk or sober, Jack Payton's your man. D--n me, it shall
never be said in my time that the --th suffered a crop-eared Irishman
to preach to them in their own mess-room! You can send your friend to
me when you please. He'll find me!"
The Colonel was wiping the wine from his chin and neckcloth. He had
turned strangely pale at the moment of the insult. More than one of
those who watched him curiously--and of such were all in the room,
Payton excepted--and who noted the slow preciseness of his movements
and the care with which he cleansed himself, albeit his hand shook,
expected some extraordinary action.
But no one looked for anything so abnormal or so astonishing as the
course he took when he spoke. Nothing in his bearing had prepared them
for it; nor anything in his conduct which, so far, had been that of a
man of the world not too much at a loss even in the unfavourable
circumstances in which he was placed--circumstances which would have
unnerved many a one.
"I do not fight," he said. "Your challenge is cheap, sir, as your
insult."
Payton stared. He had never been more astonished in his life. "Good
L--d!" he cried. "You do not fight? Heaven and earth! and you a
soldier!"
"I do not fight."
"After that, man! Not--after----" He did not finish the sentence, but
laughed with uplifted chin, as at some great joke.
"No," Colonel John said between his teeth.
And then no one spoke. A something in Colonel John's tone and manner, a
something in the repression of his voice, sobered the spectators, and
turned that which might have seemed an ignominy, a surrender, into a
tragedy. And a tragedy in which they all had their share. For the
insult had been so wanton, so gross, so brutal, that there was not one
of the witnesses who had not felt shame, not one whose sympathy had not
been for a moment with the victim, and who did not experience a pang on
his account as he stood, mild and passive, before them.
Payton alone was moved only by contempt. "Lord above us, man!" he
cried, finding his voice again. Are you a Quaker? If so, why the devil
do you call yourself a soldier?"
"I am no Quaker," Colonel John answered, "but I do not fight duels."
"Why?"
"If I killed you," the Colonel replied, eyeing him steadily, "would it
dry my neckcloth or clean my face?"
"No!" Payton retorted with a sneer, "but it would clean your honour!"
He had felt the reprehension in the air, he had been conscious for a
few seconds that he had not the room with him; but the perception made
him only the more arrogant now that he felt his feet again. "It would
prove, man, that, unlike the beasts that perish, you valued something
more than your life!"
"I do."
"What?" Payton asked with careless disdain.
"Among other things, my duty." Payton laughed brutally. "Why, by the
powers, you _are_ a preacher!" he retorted. "Hang your duty, sir, and
you for a craven! Give me acts, not words! It's a man's duty to defend
his honour, and you talk of your neckcloth! There's for a new
neckcloth!" He pulled out a half-crown and flung it, with an insulting
gesture, upon the table. "Show us your back, and for the future give
gentlemen of honour--a wide berth! You are no mate for them!"
The act and the words were too strong for the stomachs of the more
generous among his hearers. A murmur, an undoubted murmur rose--for if
Payton was feared he was not loved; and the sallow-faced man, whose
name was Marsh, spoke out. "Easy, Payton," he said. "The gentleman----"
"The gentleman, eh?"
"Did not come here of his own accord, and you've said enough, and done
enough! For my part----"
"I didn't ask for your interference!" the other cried insolently.
"Well, anyway----"
"And I don't want it! And I won't have it; do you hear, Marsh?" Payton
repeated menacingly. "You know me, and I know you."
"I know that you are a better fencer and a better shot than I am,"
Marsh replied, shrugging his shoulders, "and I daresay than any of us.
We are apt to believe it, anyway. But----"
"I would advise you to let that be enough," Payton sneered.
It was then that the Colonel, who had stood silent during the
altercation of which he was the subject, spoke--and in a tone somewhat
altered. "I am much obliged to you, sir," he said, addressing the
sallow-faced man, "but I will cause no further trouble. I crave leave
to say one word only, which may come home to some among you. We are
all, at times, at the mercy of mean persons. Yes, sir, of mean
persons," the Colonel repeated, raising his voice and speaking in a
tone so determined--he seemed another man--that Payton, in the act of
seizing a decanter to hurl at him, hesitated. "For any but a mean
person," Colonel John continued, drawing himself up to his full height,
"finding that he had insulted one who could not meet him on even
terms--one who could not resent the insult in the manner
intended--would have deemed it all one as if he had insulted a
one-armed man, or a blind man, and would have set himself right by an
apology."
At that word Payton found his voice. "Hang your apology!" he cried
furiously.
"By an apology," the Colonel repeated, fixing him with eyes of
unmeasured contempt, "which would have lowered him no more than an
apology to a woman or a child. Not doing so, his act dishonours himself
only, and those who sit with him. And one day, unless I mistake not,
his own blood, and the blood of others, will rest upon his head."
With that word the speaker turned slowly, walked with an even pace to
the door, and opened it, none gainsaying him. On the threshold he
paused and looked back. Something, possibly some chord of superstition
in his breast which his adversary's last words had touched, held Payton
silent: and silent the Colonel's raised finger found him.
"I believe," Colonel John said, gazing solemnly at him, "that we shall
meet again." And he went out.
Payton turned to the table, and, with an unsteady hand, filled a glass.
He read disapprobation in the eyes about him, but he had shaken the
momentary chill from his own spirits, and he stared them down. "Sink
the old Square-Toes!" he cried. "He got what he deserved! Who'll throw
a main with me?"
"Thirty guineas against your new mare, if you like?"
"No, confound you," Payton retorted angrily. "Didn't I say she wasn't
for sale?"