EARLY RISERS
Colonel Sullivan had returned from Tralee in high spirits. He had
succeeded beyond his hopes in the task he had set himself to perform,
and he counted with confidence on gaining by that means a sound footing
and a firm influence in the house. But as he sat in his room that
evening, staring at the rushlight, with the night silent about him, he
feared, nay, he almost knew, that his success came too late. Something
had happened behind his back, some crisis, some event; and that which
he had done was as if it were undone, and that which he had gained
availed nothing.
It was plain--whatever was obscure--that the play of the Lady's
Kerchief was a cover for matter more serious. Those who had taken part
in it had scarcely deigned to pretend. Colonel John had been duller
than the dullest if he had not seen in the white shreds for which the
men had scrambled, and which they had affixed with passion to their
coats, the white Cockade of the Pretender; or found in Uncle Ulick's
couplet--uttered while in a careless fashion he affected disguise,
The spoke that is to-day on top,
To-morrow's on the ground,
one of those catchwords which suited the taste of the day, and served
at once for a passport and a sentiment.
But Colonel John knew that many a word was said over the claret which
meant less than nothing next morning; and that many a fair hand passed
the wine across the water-bowl--the very movement did honour to a
shapely arm--without its owner having the least intention of
endangering those she loved for the sake of the King across the Water.
He knew that a fallen cause has ever two sets of devotees--those who
talk and those who act: the many, in other words, who sing the songs
and drink the toasts, and delight in the badges of treason--in the
sucked orange, the sprig of oak, the knot of white ribbon, the
fir-planting; and the few who mean more than they say, who mean, and
sternly, to be presently the Spoke on Top.
Consequently he knew that he might be wrong in dotting the i's and
crossing the t's of the scene which he had witnessed. Such a scene
might mean no more than a burst of high spirits: in nine cases out of
ten it would not be followed by action, nor import more than that
singing of "'Twas a' for our rightful King!" which had startled him on
his arrival. In that house, in the wilds of Kerry, sheer loyalty could
not be expected. The wrongs of the nation were too recent, the high
seas were too near, the wild geese came and went too freely--wild geese
of another feather than his. Such outbursts as he had witnessed were no
more than the safety-valves of outraged pride. The ease with which
England had put down the Scotch rising a few years before--to say
nothing of the fate of those who had taken part in it--must deter all
reasonable men, whatever their race or creed, from entering on an
undertaking beyond doubt more hopeless.
For Ireland was not as Scotland. Scarcely a generation had passed since
she had felt the full weight of the conqueror's hand; and if she
possessed, in place of the Highland mountains, vast stretches of
uncharted bog and lake, to say nothing of a thousand obscure inlets,
she had neither the unbroken clan-feeling nor the unbroken national
spirit of the sister country. Scotland was still homogeneous, she still
counted for a kingdom, her soil was still owned by her own lords and
worked by her own peasants. She had suffered no massacre of Drogheda or
of Wexford; no Boyne, no Aghrim, no vast and repeated confiscations.
Whereas Ireland, a partitioned and subject land, which had suffered
during the last two centuries horrors unspeakable, still cowered like a
whipped dog before its master, and was as little likely to rebel.
Colonel John leant upon such arguments; and, disappointed and alarmed
as he was by Flavia's behaviour, he told himself that nothing was
seriously meant, and that with the morning light things would look more
cheerful.
But when he awoke, after a feverish and disturbed sleep, the faint
grisly dawn that entered the room was not of a character to inspirit.
He turned on his side to sleep again if he could; but in the act, he
discovered that the curtain which he had drawn across the window was
withdrawn. He could discern the dark mass of his clothes piled on a
chair, of his hat clinging like some black bat to the whitewashed wall,
of his valise and saddle-bags in the corner--finally of a stout figure
bent, listening, at the door.
An old campaigner, Colonel John was not easily surprised. Repressing
the exclamation on his lips, he rose to his elbow and waited until the
figure at the door straightened itself, and, turning towards him,
became recognisable as Uncle Ulick. The big man crossed the floor, saw
that he was awake, and, finger on lip, enjoined silence. Then he
pointed to the clothes on the chair, and brought his mouth near the
Colonel's ear.
"The back-door!" he whispered. "Under the yews in the garden! Come!"
And leaving the Colonel staring and mystified, he crept from the room
with a stealth and lightness remarkable in one so big. The door closed,
the latch fell, and made no sound.
Colonel John reflected that Uncle Ulick was no romantic young person to
play at mystery for effect. There was a call for secrecy therefore. The
O'Beirnes slept in a room divided from his only by a thin partition;
and to gain the stairs he must pass the doors of other chambers, all
inhabited. As softly as he could, and as quickly, he dressed himself.
He took his boots in his hand; his sword, perhaps from old habit, under
his other arm; in this guise he crept from the room and down the dusky
staircase. Old Darby and an underling were snoring in the cub, which in
the daytime passed for a pantry, and both by day and night gave forth a
smell of sour corks and mice: but Colonel John slid by the open door as
noiselessly as a shadow, found the back-door--which led to the
fold-yard--on the latch, and stepped out into the cool, dark morning,
into the sobering freshness and the clean, rain-washed air.
The grass was still grey-hued, the world still colourless and
mysterious, the house a long black bulk against a slowly lightening
sky. Only the earliest sparrows were twittering; in the trees only the
most wakeful rooks were uttering tentative caws. The outburst of joy
and life and music which would attend the sun's rising was not yet.
Colonel John paused on the doorstep to draw on his boots, then he
picked his way delicately to the leather-hung wicket that broke the
hedge which served for a fence to the garden. On the right of the
wicket a row of tall Florence yews, set within the hedge, screened the
pleasaunce, such as it was, from the house. Under the lee of these he
found Uncle Ulick striding to and fro and biting his finger-nails in
his impatience.
He wrung the Colonel's hand and looked into his face. "You'll do me the
justice, John Sullivan," he said, with a touch of passion, "that never
in my life have I been overhasty? Eh? Will you do me that?"
"Certainly, Ulick," Colonel John answered, wondering much what was
coming.
"And that I'm no coward, where it's not a question of trouble?"
"I'll do you that justice, too," the Colonel answered. He smiled at the
reservation.
The big man did not smile. "Then you'll take my word for it," he
replied, "that I'm not speaking idly when I say you must go."
Colonel John lifted his eyebrows. "Go?" he answered. "Do you mean now?"
"Ay, now, or before noon!" Uncle Ulick retorted. "More by token," he
continued with bitterness, "it's not that you might go on the instant
that I've brought you out of our own house as if we were a couple of
rapparees or horse-thieves, but that you might hear it from me who wish
you well, and would warn you not to say nay--instead of from those who
may be 'll not put it so kindly, nor be so wishful for you to be taking
the warning they give."
"Is it Flavia you're meaning?"
"No; and don't you be thinking it," Uncle Ulick replied with a touch of
heat. "Nor the least bit of it, John Sullivan! The girl, God bless her,
is as honest as the day, if----"
"If she's not very wise!" Colonel John said, smiling.
"You may put it that way if you please. For the matter of that, you'll
be thinking she's not the only fool at Morristown, nor the oldest, nor
the biggest. And you'll be right, more shame to me that I didn't use
the prudent tongue to them always, and they young! But the blood must
run slow, and the breast be cold, that sees the way the Saxons are
mocking us, and locks the tongue in silence. And sure, there's no more
to be said, but just this--that there's those here you'll be wise not
to see! And you'll get a hint to that end before the sun's high."
"And you'd have me take it?"
"You'd be mad not to take it!" Uncle Ulick replied, frowning. "Isn't it
for that I'm out of my warm bed, and the mist not off the lake?"
"You'd have me give way to them and go?"
"Faith, and I would!"
"Would you do that same yourself, Ulick?"
"For certain."
"And be sorry for it afterwards!"
"Not the least taste in life!" Uncle Ulick asseverated.
"And be sorry for it afterwards," Colonel John repeated quietly.
"Kinsman, come here," he continued with unusual gravity. And taking
Uncle Ulick by the arm he led him to the end of the garden, where the
walk looked on the lake and bore some likeness to a roughly made
terrace. Pausing where the black masses of the Florence yews, most
funereal of trees, still sheltered their forms from the house, he stood
silent. The mist moved slowly on the surface of the water and crawled
about their feet. But the sky to eastward was growing red, the lower
clouds were flushed with rose-colour, the higher hills were warm with
the coming of the sun. Here and there on the slopes which faced them a
cotter's hovel stood solitary in its potato patch or its plot of oats.
In more than one place three or four cottages made up a tiny hamlet,
from which the smoke would presently rise. To English eyes, to our
eyes, the scene, these oases in the limitless brown of the bog, had
been wild and rude; but to Colonel John, long familiar with the
treeless plains of Poland and the frozen flats of Lithuania, it spoke
of home, it spoke of peace and safety and comfort, and even of a narrow
plenty. The soft Irish air lapped it, the distances were mellow,
memories of boyhood rounded off all that was unsightly or cold.
He pointed here and there with his hand; and with seeming irrelevance.
"You'd be sorry afterwards," he said, "for you'd think of this, Ulick.
God forbid that I should say there are no things for which even this
should be sacrificed. God forbid I should deny that even for this too
high a price may be paid. But if you play this away in wantonness--if
that which you are all planning come about, and you fail, as they
failed in Scotland three years back, and as you will, as you must fail
here--it is of this, it is of the women and the children under these
roofs that will go up in smoke, that you'll be thinking, Ulick, at the
last! Believe me or not, this is the last thing you'll see! It's to a
burden as well as an honour you're born where men doff caps to you; and
it's that burden will lie the black weight on your soul at the last.
There's old Darby and O'Sullivan Og's wife--and Pat Mahony and Judy
Mahony's four sons--and Mick Sullivan and Tim and Luke the Lamiter--and
the three Sullivans at the landing, and Phil the crowder, and the seven
tenants at Killabogue--it's of them, it's of them"--as he spoke his
finger moved from hovel to hovel--"and their like I'm thinking. You cry
them and they follow, for they're your folks born. But what do they
know of England or England's strength, or what is against them, or the
certain end? They think, poor souls, because they land their spirits
and pay no dues, and the Justices look the other way, and a bailiffs
life here, if he'd a writ, would be no more worth than a woodcock's,
and the laws, bad and good, go for naught--they think the black
Protestants are afraid of them! While you and I, you and I know,
Ulick," he continued, dropping his voice, "'tis because we lie so poor
and distant and small, they give no heed to us! We know! And that's our
burden."
The big man's face worked. He threw out his arms. "God help us!" he
cried.
"He will, in His day! I tell you again, as I told you the hour I came,
I, who have followed the wars for twenty years, there is no deed that
has not its reward when the time is ripe, nor a cold hearth that is not
paid for a hundredfold!"
Uncle Ulick looked sombrely over the lake. "I shall never see it," he
said. "Never, never! And that's hard. Notwithstanding, I'll do what I
can to quiet them--if it be not too late."
"Too late?"
"Ay, too late, John. But anyway, I'll be minding what you say. On the
other hand, you must go, and this very day that ever is."
"There are some here that I must not be seeing?" Colonel John said
shrewdly.
"That's it."
"And if I do not go, Ulick? What then, man?"
"Whisht! Whisht!" the big man cried in unmistakable distress. "Don't
say the word! Don't say the word, John, dear."
"But I must say it," Colonel John answered, smiling. "To be plain,
Ulick, here I am and here I stay. They wish me gone because I am in the
way of their plans. Well, and can you give me a better reason for
staying?"
What argument Ulick would have used, what he was opening his mouth to
say, remains unknown. Before he could reply the murmur of a voice near
at hand startled them both. Uncle Ulick's face fell, and the two turned
with a single movement to see who came.
They discerned, in the shadow of the wall of yew, two men, who had just
passed through the wicket into the garden.
The strangers saw them at the same moment, and were equally taken by
surprise. The foremost of the two, a sturdy, weather-beaten man, with a
square, stern face and a look of power, laid his hand on his
cutlass--he wore a broad blade in place of the usual rapier. The other,
whom every line of his shaven face, as well as his dress, proclaimed a
priest--and perhaps more than a priest--crossed himself, and muttered
something to his companion. Then he came forward.
"You take the air early, gentlemen," he said, the French accent very
plain in his speech, "as we do. If I mistake not," he continued,
looking with an easy smile at Colonel John, "your Protestant kinsman,
of whom you told me, Mr. Sullivan? I did not look to meet you, Colonel
Sullivan; but I do not doubt you are man of the world enough to excuse,
if you cannot approve, the presence of the shepherd among his sheep.
The law forbids, but----" still smiling, he finished the sentence with
a gesture in the air.
"I approve all men," Colonel John answered quietly, "who are in their
duty, father."
"But wool and wine that pay no duty?" the priest replied, turning with
a humorous look to his companion, who stood beside him unsmiling. "I'm
not sure that Colonel Sullivan extends the same indulgence to
free-traders, Captain Machin."
Colonel John looked closely at the man thus brought to his notice. Then
he raised his hat courteously. "Sir," he said, "the guests of the
Sullivans, whoever they be, are sacred to the Sullivans."
Uncle Ulick's eyes had met the priest's, as eyes meet in a moment of
suspense. At this he drew a deep breath of relief. "Well said," he
muttered. "Bedad, it is something to have seen the world!"
"You have served under the King of Sweden, I believe?" the ecclesiastic
continued, addressing Colonel John with a polite air. He held a book of
offices in his hand, as if his purpose in the garden had been merely to
read the service.
"Yes."
"A great school of war, I am told?"
"It may be called so. But I interrupt you, father, and with your
permission I will bid you good-morning. Doubtless we shall meet again."
"At breakfast, I trust," the ecclesiastic answered, with a certain air
of intention. Then he bowed and they returned it, and the two pairs
gave place to one another with ceremony, Colonel John and Ulick passing
out through the garden wicket, while the strangers moved on towards the
walk which looked over the lake. Here they began to pace up and down.
With his hand on the house door Uncle Ulick made a last attempt. "For
God's sake, be easy and go," he muttered, his voice unsteady, his eyes
fixed on the other's, as if he would read his mind. "Leave us to our
fate! You cannot save us--you see what you see, you know what it means.
And for what I know, you know the man. You'll but make our end the
blacker."
"And the girl?"
Uncle Ulick tossed his hands in the air. "God help her!" he said.
"Shall not we too help her?"
"We cannot."
"It may be. Still, let us do our duty," Colonel John replied. He was
very grave. Things were worse, the plot was thicker, than he had
feared.
Uncle Ulick groaned. "You'll not be bidden?" he said.
"Not by an angel," Colonel John answered steadfastly. "And I've seen
none this morning, but only a good man whose one fault in life is to
answer to all men 'Sure, and I will!'"
Uncle Ulick started as if the words stung him. "You make a jest of it!"
he said. "Heaven send we do not sorrow for your wilfulness. For my
part, I've small hope of that same." He opened the door, and, turning
his back upon his companion, went heavily, and without any attempt at
concealment, past the pantry and up the stairs to his room. Colonel
John heard him slip the bolt, and, bearing a heavy heart himself, he
knew that the big man was gone to his prayers.
To answer "Yes" to all comers and all demands is doubtless, in the
language of Uncle Ulick, a mighty convenience, and a great softener of
the angles of life. But a time comes to the most easy when he must
answer "No," or go open-eyed to ruin. Then he finds that from long
disuse the word will not shape itself; or if uttered, it is taken for
naught. That time had come for Uncle Ulick. Years ago his age and
experience had sufficed to curb the hot blood about him. But he had
been too easy to dictate while he might; he had let the reins fall from
his hands; and to-day he must go the young folks' way--ay, go, seeing
all too plainly the end of it.
It was not his fate only. Many good men in the '15 and the '45, ay, and
in the war of La Vendee, went out against their better judgment, borne
along by the energy of more vehement spirits--went out, aware, as they
rode down the avenue, and looked back at the old house, that they would
see it no more; that never again except in dreams would they mount from
the horse-block which their grandsires' feet had hollowed, walk through
the coverts which their fathers had planted, or see the faces of the
aged serving-men who had taught their childish fingers to hold the
reins and level the fowling-piece!
But Colonel John was of another kind and another mind. Often in the
Swedish wars had he seen a fair country-side changed in one day into a
waste, from the recesses of which naked creatures with wolfish eyes
stole out at night, maddened by their wrongs, to wreak a horrid
vengeance on the passing soldier. He knew that the fairest parts of
Ireland had undergone such a fate within living memory; and how often
before, God and her dark annals alone could tell! Therefore he was
firmly minded, as firmly minded as one man could be, that not again
should the corner of Kerry under his eyes, the corner he loved, the
corner entrusted to him, suffer that fate.
Yet when he descended to breakfast, his face told no tale of his
thoughts, and he greeted with a smile the unusual brightness of the
morning. As he stood at the door, that looked on the courtyard, he had
a laughing word for the beggars--never were beggars lacking at the door
of Morristown. Nor as he sunned himself and inhaled with enjoyment the
freshness of the air did any sign escape him that he marked a change.
But he was not blind. Among the cripples and vagrants who lounged about
the entrance he detected six or eight ragged fellows whose sunburnt
faces were new to him and who certainly were not cripples. In the
doorway of one of the two towers that fronted him across the court
stood O'Sullivan Og, whittling a stick and chatting with a sturdy idler
in seafaring clothes. The Colonel could not give his reason, but he had
not looked twice at these two before he got a notion that there was
more in that tower this morning than the old ploughs and the broken
boat which commonly filled the ground floor, or the grain which was
stored above. Powder? Treasure? He could not say which or what; but he
felt that the open door was a mask that deceived no one.
And there was a stir, there was a bustle in the court; a sparkle in the
eyes of some as they glanced slyly and under their lashes at the house,
a lilt in the tread of others as they stepped to and fro. He divined
that hands would fly to caubeens and knees seek the ground if a certain
face showed at a window: moreover, that that at which he merely guessed
was no secret to the barefooted colleens who fed the pigs, or the
barelegged urchins who carried the potatoes. Some strange change had
fallen upon Morristown, and imbued it with life and hope and movement.
He was weighing this when he caught the sound of voices in the house,
and he turned about and entered. The priest and Captain Machin had
descended and were standing with Uncle Ulick warming themselves before
the wood fire. The McMurrough, the O'Beirnes, and two or three
strangers--grim-looking men who had followed, a glance told him, the
trade he had followed--formed a group a little apart, yet near enough
to be addressed. Asgill was not present, nor Flavia.
"Good-morning, again," Colonel John said. And he bowed.
"With all my heart, Colonel Sullivan," the priest answered cordially.
And Colonel John saw that he had guessed aright: the speaker no longer
took the trouble to hide his episcopal cross and chain, or the ring on
his finger. There was an increase of dignity, too, in his manner. His
very cordiality seemed a condescension.
Captain Machin bowed silently, while The McMurrough and the O'Beirnes
looked darkly at the Colonel. They did not understand: it was plain
that they were not in the secret of the morning encounter.
"I see O'Sullivan Og is here," the Colonel said, addressing Uncle
Ulick. "That will be very convenient."
"Convenient?" Uncle Ulick repeated, looking blank.
"We can give him the orders as to the Frenchman's cargo," the Colonel
said calmly.
Uncle Ulick winced. "Ay, to be sure! To be sure, lad," he answered. But
he rubbed his head, like a man in a difficulty.
The Bishop seemed to be going to ask a question. Before he could speak,
however, Flavia came tripping down the stairs, a gay song on her lips.
Half way down, the song, light and sweet as a bird's, came to a sudden
end.
"I am afraid I am late!" she said. And then--as the Colonel
supposed--she saw that more than the family party were assembled: that
the Bishop and Captain Machin were there also, and the strangers--and,
above all, that he was there. She descended the last three stairs
silently, but with a heightened colour, moved proudly into the middle
of the group, and curtsied before the ecclesiastic till her knee
touched the floor.
He gave her his hand to kiss, with a smile and a murmured blessing. She
rose with sparkling eyes.
"It is a good morning!" she said, as one who having done her duty could
be cheerful.
"It is a very fine morning," the Bishop answered in the same spirit.
"The sun shines on us, as we would have him shine. And after breakfast,
with your leave, my daughter, and your brother's leave, we will hold a
little council. What say you, Colonel Sullivan?" he continued, turning
to the Colonel. "A family council? Will you join us?"
The McMurrough uttered an exclamation, so unexpected and strident, that
the words were not articulate. But the Bishop understood them, for, as
all turned to him, "Nay," he said, "it shall be for the Colonel to say.
But it's ill arguing with a fasting man," he continued genially, "and
by your leave we will return to the matter after breakfast!"
"I am not for argument at all," Captain Machin said. It was the first
time he had spoken.