A COUNCIL OF WAR
The meal had been eaten, stolidly by some, by others with a poor
appetite, by Colonel John with a thoughtful face. Two men of family,
but broken fortunes, old Sir Donny McCarthy of Dingle, and Timothy
Burke of Maamtrasna, had joined the party--under the rose as it were,
and neither giving nor receiving a welcome. Now old Darby kept the door
and the Bishop the hearth; whence, standing with his back to the
glowing peat, he could address his audience with eye and voice. The
others, risen from the table, had placed themselves here and there,
Flavia near the Bishop and on his right hand, Captain Machin on his
left; The McMurrough, the two O'Beirnes, Sir Donny and Timothy Burke,
with the other strangers, sat in a knot by the window. Uncle Ulick with
Colonel Sullivan formed a third group. The courtyard, visible through
the windows, seethed with an ever-increasing crew of peasantry,
frieze-coated or half bare, who whooped and jabbered, now about one of
their number, now about another. Among them moved some ten or twelve
men of another kidney--seamen with ear-rings and pigtails, bronzed
faces and gaudy kerchiefs, who listened but idly, and with the contempt
of the mercenary, but whose eyes seldom left the window behind which
the conference sat, and whose hands were never far from the hilt of a
cutlass or the butt of a pistol. The sun shone on the crowd and the
court, and now and then those within the house caught through the
gateway the shimmer of the lake beyond. The Irish air was soft, the hum
of voices cheerful; nor could anything less like a secret council, less
like a meeting of men about to commit themselves to a dark and
dangerous enterprise, be well imagined.
But no one was deceived. The courage, the enthusiasm, that danced in
Flavia's eyes were reflected more darkly and more furtively in a score
of faces, within the room and without. To enjoy one hour of triumph, to
wreak upon the cursed English a tithe of the wrongs, a tithe of the
insults, that their country had suffered, to be the spoke on top, were
it but for a day, to die for Ireland if they could not live for her, to
avenge her daughters outraged and her sons beggared--could man own
Irish blood, and an Irish name, and not rise at the call?
If there were such a man, oh! cowardly, mean, and miserable he seemed
to Flavia McMurrough. And much she marvelled at the patience, the
consideration, the arguments which the silver-tongued ecclesiastic
brought to bear upon him. She longed, with a face glowing with
indignation, to disown him--in word and deed. She longed to denounce
him, to defy him, to bid him begone, and do his worst.
But she was a young plotter, and he who spoke from the middle of the
hearth with so much patience and forbearance, was an old one, proved by
years of peril, and tempered by a score of failures; a man long
accustomed to play with the lives and fortunes of men. He knew better
than she what was at stake to win or lose; nor was it without
forethought that he had determined to risk much to gain Colonel
Sullivan. The same far-sight and decision which had led him to take a
bold course on meeting the Colonel in the garden, now lent him patience
to win, if win he might, one whose value in the enterprise on which
they were embarking he set at the highest. To his mind, and to Machin's
mind, the other men in the room, ay, and the woman, so fair and
enthusiastic, were but tools to be used, puppets to be danced. But this
man--for among soldiers of fortune there is a camaraderie, so that they
are known to one another by repute from the Baltic to Cadiz--was a
coadjutor to be gained. He was one whose experience, joined with an
Irish name, might well avail them much.
Colonel John might refuse, he might be obdurate. But in that event the
Bishop's mind was made up. Flavia supposed that if the Colonel held
out, he would be dismissed; that he would go out from among them a
cowardly, mean, miserable creature--and so an end. But the speaker made
no mistake. He had chosen to grip the nettle danger, and he knew that
gentle measures were no longer possible. He must enlist Colonel
Sullivan, or--but it has been said that he was one hardened by long
custom, and no novice in dealing with the lives of men.
"If it be a question only of the chances," he said, after some beating
about the bush, "if I am right in supposing that it is only that which
withholds Colonel Sullivan from joining us----"
"I do not say it is," Colonel John replied very gravely. "Far from it,
sir. But to deal with it on that basis: while I can admire, reverend
sir, the man who is ready to set his life on a desperate hazard to gain
something which he sets above that life, I take the case to be
different where it is a question of the lives of others. Then I say the
chances must be weighed--carefully weighed, and tried in the balance."
"However sacred the cause and high the aim?"
"I think so."
The Bishop sighed, his chin sinking on his breast. "I am sorry," he
said, in a voice that sufficiently declared his depression--"I am
sorry."
"That we cannot see alike in a matter so grave? Yes, sir, so am I."
"No. That I met you this morning."
"I am not sorry," Colonel John replied, stoutly refusing to see the
other's meaning. "For--hear me out, I beg. You and I have seen the
world and can weigh the chances. Your friend, too, Captain Machin"--he
pronounced the name in an odd tone--"he too knows on what he is
embarked and how he will stand if the result be failure. It may be that
he already has his home, his rank, and his fortune in foreign parts,
and will be little the worse if the worst befall."
"I?" Machin cried, stung out of his taciturnity. And he rose with an
air of menace from his seat. "Let me tell you, sir, that I fling back
the insinuation!"
But the Colonel refused to listen. He proceeded as if the other were
not speaking. "You, reverend sir, yourself," he continued, "you too
know, and well, on what you are embarking, its prospects and the issue
for you, if it fail. But, you--I give you credit for it--are by your
profession and choice devoted to a life of danger. You are willing, day
by day and hour by hour, to run the risk of death. But these, my cousin
there"--looking with a kind eye at Flavia--"she----"
"Leave me out!" she cried passionately. And she rose to her feet, her
face on fire. "I separate myself from you! I, for my part, ask no
better than to suffer for my country!"
"She thinks she knows, but she does not know," the Colonel continued
quietly, unmoved by her words. "She cannot guess what it is to be cast
adrift--alone, a woman, penniless, in a strange land. And yet that at
the best--and the worst may be unspeakably worse--must be her fate if
this plot miscarry! For others, The McMurrough and his friends
yonder"--he indicated the group by the window--"they also are
ignorant."
The McMurrough sprang to his feet, spluttering with rage. "D--n you,
sir, speak for yourself!" he cried.
"They know nothing," the Colonel continued, quite unmoved, "of that
force against which they are asked to pit themselves, of that stolid
power over sea, never more powerful than now! And so to pit themselves,
that losing they will lose their all!"
"The saints will be between us and harm!" the eldest of the O'Beirnes
cried, rising in his wrath. "It's speak for yourself I say too!"
"And I!"
"And I!" others of the group roared with gestures of defiance. "We are
not the boys to be whistled aside! To the devil with your ignorance!"
And one, stepping forward, snapped his fingers close to the Colonel's
face. "That for you!--that for you!" he cried. "Now, or whenever you
will, day or night, and sword or pistol! To the devil with your
impudence, sir; I'd have you know you're not the only man has seen the
world! The shame of the world on you, talking like a schoolmaster while
your country cries for you, and 'tis not your tongue but your hand
she's wanting!"
Uncle Ulick put his big form between Colonel John and his assailant.
"Sure and be easy!" he said. "Sir Donny, you're forgetting yourself!
And you, Tim Burke! Be easy, I say. It's only for himself the Colonel's
speaking!"
"Thank God for that!" Flavia cried in a voice which rang high.
They were round him now a ring of men with dark, angry faces, and
hardly restrained hands. Their voices cried tumultuously on him, in
defiance of Ulick's intervention. But the Bishop intervened.
"One moment," he said, still speaking smoothly and with a smile.
"Perhaps it is for those he thinks he speaks!" And the Bishop pointed
to the crowd which filled the forecourt, and of which one member or
another was perpetually pressing his face against the panes to learn
what his sacredness, God bless him! would be wishing. "Perhaps it is
for those he thinks he speaks!" he repeated in irony--for of the
feeling of the crowd there could be no doubt.
"You say well," Colonel John replied, rising to his feet and speaking
with gloomy firmness. "It is on their behalf I appeal to you. For it is
they who foresee the least, and they who will suffer the most. It is
they who will follow like sheep, and they who like sheep will go to the
butcher! Ay, it is they," he continued with deeper feeling, and he
turned to Flavia, "who are yours, and they will pay for you.
Therefore," raising his hand for silence, "before you name the prize,
sum up the cost! Your country, your faith, your race--these are great
things, but they are far off and can do without you. But these--these
are that fragment of your country, that tenet of your faith, that
handful of your race which God has laid in the palm of your hand, to
cherish or to crush, and----"
"The devil!" Machin ejaculated with sudden violence. Perhaps he read in
the girl's face some shadow of hesitation, of thought, of perplexity.
"Have done with your preaching, sir, I say! Have done, man! Try us not
too far! If we fail----"
"You must fail!" Colonel John retorted--with that narrowing of the
nostrils that in the pinch of fight men long dead had seen for a moment
in distant lands, and seen no more. "You will fail! And failing, sir,
his reverence will stand no worse than now, for his life is forfeit
already! While you----"
"What of me? Well, what of me?" the stout man cried truculently. His
brows descended over his eyes, and his lips twitched.
"For you, Admiral Cammock----"
The other stepped forward a pace. "You know me?"
"Yes, I know you."
There was silence for an instant, while those who were in the secret
eyed Colonel Sullivan askance, and those who were not gaped at Cammock.
Soldiers of fortune, of fame and name, were plentiful in those days,
but seamen of equal note were few. And with this man's name the world
had lately rung. An Irishman, he had risen high in Queen Anne's
service; but at her death, incited by his devotion to the Stuarts, he
had made a move for them at a critical moment. He had been broken,
being already a notable man; on which, turning his back on an
ungrateful country, as he counted it, he had entered the Spanish
marine, which the great minister Alberoni was at that moment reforming.
He had been advanced to a position of rank and power--Spain boasted no
stouter seaman; and in the attempt on which Alberoni was bent, to upset
the Protestant succession in England, Admiral Cammock was a factor of
weight. He was a bold, resolute man, restrained by no fine scruples,
prepared to take risks himself, and not too prone to think for others.
In Ireland his life was forfeit, Great Britain counted him renegade and
traitor. So that to find himself recognised, though grateful to his
vanity, was a shock to his discretion.
"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.