A MESSAGE FOR THE YOUNG MASTER
James McMurrough was young, but he was a slave to as few of the
generous ambitions of youth as any man of his years. At heart he cared
little for his country, and nothing for his Faith--which indeed he had
been ready to barter for an allowance, and a certain succession. He
cared only for himself; and but for the resentment which the provisions
of his grandfather's will had bred in him, he would have seen the Irish
race in Purgatory, and the Roman faith in a worse place, before he
would have risked a finger to right the one or restore the other. Even
under the influence of that resentment, that bitterness, he had come
into the conspiracy with but half a heart; without enthusiasm, and with
an eye not so much to its ultimate success as to the gain he might make
out of it in the meantime.
Once embarked, however, on the enterprise, vanity, the failing of light
minds, and particularly of the Celtic mind, swept him onward. The night
which followed Colonel Sullivan's arrest was a night long remembered at
Morristown--a night to uplift the sanguine and to kindle the
short-sighted; nor was it a wonder that the young chief--as he strode
among his admiring tenants, his presence greeted, when he entered, with
Irish acclamations, and his skirts kissed, when he passed, by devoted
kernes--sniffed the pleasing incense, and trod the ground to the
measure of imagined music. He felt himself a greater man this night
than he had ever been before. The triumph that was never to be
intoxicated him. He was Montrose, he was Claverhouse--a Montrose whom
no Philiphaugh awaited, a Claverhouse whom no silver bullet would slay.
He saw himself riding in processions, acclaimed by thousands, dictating
to senates, the idol of a rejoicing Dublin.
His people had kindled a huge bonfire in the middle of the forecourt,
and beside this he extended a gracious welcome to a crowd of strong
tenants, whose picturesque figures, as they feasted, sang, drank, and
fought, the fire silhouetted on the house front and the surrounding
walls; now projecting them skywards, gigantic and menacing, now
reducing them to dwarfs. A second fire, for the comfort of the baser
sort, had been kindled outside the gates, and was the centre of
merriment less restrained; while a third, which served as a beacon to
the valley, and a proclamation of what was being done, glowed on the
platform before the ruined tower at the head of the lake. From this
last the red flames streamed far across the water; and now revealed a
belated boat shooting from the shadow on its way across, now a troop of
countrymen, who, led by their priest, came limping along the lake-side
road; ostensibly to join in the religious services of the morrow, but
in reality, as they knew, to hear something, and, God willing, to do
something towards freeing old Ireland and shaking off the grip of the
cursed Saxon.
In the more settled parts of the land, such a summons as had brought
them from their rude shielings among the hills or beside the bogs,
would have passed for a dark jest. But in this remote spot, the notion
of overthrowing the hated power by means of a few score pikes,
stiffened by half as many sailors from the Spanish ship in the bay, did
not seem preposterous, either to these poor folk or to their betters.
Cammock, of course, knew the truth, and the Bishop. Asgill, too, the
one man cognisant of the movement who was not here, and of whom some
thought with distrust--he, too, could appraise the attempt at its true
worth. But of these men, the two first aimed merely at a diversion
which would further their plans in Europe; and the last cared only for
Flavia.
But James McMurrough and Flavia herself, and Sir Donny and old Timothy
Burke and the O'Beirnes and the two or three small gentry, Sullivans or
McCarthys, who had also come in--and in a degree Uncle Ulick-these saw
nothing hopeless in the plan. That plan, as announced, was first to
fall upon Tralee in combination with a couple of sloops said to be
lying in Galway Bay; and afterwards to surprise Kenmare. Masters of
these places, they would have the Kerry peninsula behind them, and no
enemy within it; for the Crosbys and the Pettys, and the handful of
English settlers who lived there, could offer no resistance. So much
done, they proposed to raise the old standard, to call Connaught to
their aid, to cry a crusade. Spain would reinforce them through a score
of ports--was not Galway City half Spanish already?--Ireland would rise
as one man. And faith, as Sir Donny said, before the Castle tyrants
could open their eyes, or raise their heads from the pillow, they'd be
seeing themselves driven into the salt ocean!
So, while the house-walls gave back the ruddy glare of the torches, and
the bare-footed, bare-headed, laughing colleens damped the thatch, and
men confessed in one corner and kissed their girls in another, and the
smiths in a third wrought hard at the pike-heads--so the struggle
depicted itself to more than one! Among others to Flavia, as, half
trembling, half triumphant, she looked down from a window on the
strange riot, and told herself that the time was come! To James as he
strode to and fro, fancying himself Montrose, sweeping eastwards like a
flame. To the O'Beirnes and the O'Loughlins and their like. Great when
the fight was done would be the glory of Kerry! The cocks of Clare
would crow no more, and undying would be the fame of the McMurrough
line, descended from the old Wicklow kings!
Meanwhile Cammock and the Bishop walked in the dark in the garden, a
little apart from the turmoil, and, wrapped in their cloaks, talked in
low voices; debating much of Sicily and Naples and the Cardinal and the
Mediterranean fleet, and at times laughing at some court story. But
they said, strange to tell, no word of Tralee, or of Kenmare, or of
Dublin Castle, or even of Connaught. They were no visionaries. They had
to do with greater things than these, and in doing them knew that they
must spend to gain. The lives of a few score peasants, living in
wretchedness already, the ruin of half a dozen hamlets, the desolation
of such a God-forsaken country-side as this, which was but bog and hill
at best, and where it rained two days in three--what were these beside
the diversion of a single squadron from the great pitched fight,
already foreseen, where the excess of one battleship might win an
empire, and its absence might ruin nations?
So while the fire at the head of the lake blazed high, and band after
band of the "boys" came in, thirsting for fight, and while song and
revelry lorded it in the forecourt and on the strand, and not whisky
only but cognac, taken from Captain Augustin's sloop, flowed freely,
the two men pacing the walk behind the Florence yews gave scarce a
thought to the present moment. They had planned this move in
conjunction with other and more important moves. It was made or in the
making; and forthwith their thoughts and their speech left it, to deal
with the next move and the one beyond, and with the end of all their
moves--St. Germains or St. James's. And one other man, and one only,
because his life had been passed on their wider plane, and he could
judge of the relative value of Connaught and Kent, divined the trend of
their thoughts, and understood the deliberation, almost the sense of
duty with which they prepared to sacrifice their pawns.
Colonel Sullivan sat in the upper room of one of the two towers that
flanked the entrance to the forecourt. Bale was with him, and the two,
with the door doubly locked upon them and guarded by a sentry whose
crooning they could hear, shared such comfort as a pitcher of water and
a gloomy outlook afforded. The darkness hid the medley of odds and
ends, of fishing-nets, broken spinning-wheels and worn-out sails, which
littered their prison; but the inner of the two slit-like windows that
lighted the room admitted a thin shaft of firelight that, dancing among
the uncovered rafters, told of the orgy below. Bale, staring morosely
at the crowd about the fire, crouched in the splay of the window, while
the Colonel, in the same posture at the other window, gazed with
feelings not more cheerful on the dark lake.
He was concerned for himself and his companion; for he knew that
frightened folk are ever the most cruel. But he was more gravely
concerned for those whose advocate he had made himself--for the
ignorant cotters in their lowly hovels, the women, the children, upon
whom the inevitable punishment would fall. He doubted, now that it was
too late, the wisdom of the course he had taken; and, blaming himself
for precipitation, he fancied that if he had acted with a little more
guile, a little more reticence, a little less haste, his remonstrance
might have had greater weight.
There are some whom a life spent in camps and amid bloody scenes,
hardens; and others, a few, who emerge from the ordeal with souls
passionately inclined to mercy and justice. Colonel John was of the
latter--a black swan. For at this moment, lying, and aware that he lay,
in some peril of his life, he was more troubled by the evil plight of
the helpless, whose cabins had given him a foster-mother, and made him
welcome in his youth, whose blood, too, he shared, than by his own
uncertain prospects.
William Bale, as was natural, was far from sharing this view. "May the
fire burn them!" he muttered, his ire excited by some prank of the
party below. "The Turks were polite beside these barefoot devils!"
"You'd have said the other thing at Bender," the Colonel answered,
turning his head.
"Ay, your honour," Bale returned; "a man never knows when he is well
off."
His master laughed. "I'd have you apply that now," he said.
"So I would if it weren't that I've a kind of a scunner of those black
bog-holes," Bale said. "To be planted head first 's no proper end of a
man, to my thinking; and if there's not something of the kind in these
ragamuffins' minds I'm precious mistaken.
"Pooh, man, you're frightening yourself," the Colonel answered. But the
room was dank and chill, the lake without lay lonely, and the picture
which Bale's words called up was not pleasant to the bravest. "It's a
civilised land, and they'd not think of it!"
"There's one, and that's the young lady's brother," Bale answered
darkly, "would not pull us out by the feet! I'll swear to that. Your
honour's too much in his way, if what they say in the house is true."
"Pooh!" the Colonel answered again. "We're of one blood."
"Cain and Abel," Bale said. "There's example for it." And he chuckled.
The Colonel scolded him anew. But having done so he could not shake off
the impression which the man's words had made on him. While he lived he
was a constant and an irritating check upon James McMurrough. If the
young man saw a chance of getting rid of that check, was he one to put
it from him? Colonel John's face grew long as he pondered the question;
he had seen enough of James to feel considerable doubt about the
answer. The fire on the height above the lake had died down, the one on
the strand was a bed of red ashes. The lake lay buried in darkness,
from which at intervals the cry of an owl as it moused along the shore
rose mournfully.
But Colonel John was not one to give way to fears that might be
baseless. "Let us sleep," he said, shrugging his shoulders. And he lay
down where he was, pillowing his head on a fishing-net. Bale said
nothing, but examined the door before he stretched himself across the
threshold.
Half an hour after dawn they were roused. It was a heavy trampling on
the stairs that awakened them. The door was quickly unlocked, it was
thrown open, and the hairy face of O'Sullivan Og, who held it wide,
looked in. Behind him were two of the boys with pikes--frowsy, savage,
repellent figures, with drugget coats tied by the sleeves about their
necks.
"You'll be coming with us, Colonel, no less," Og said.
Colonel John looked at him. "Whither, my man?" he asked coolly. He and
Bale had got to their feet at the first alarm.
"Och, sure, where it will be best for you," Og replied, with a leer.
"Both of us?" the Colonel asked, in the same hard tone.
"Faith, and why'd we be separating you, I'd be asking."
Colonel John liked neither the man's tone nor his looks. But he was far
above starting at shadows, and he guessed that resistance would be
useless. "Very good," he said. "Lead on."
"Bedad, and if you'll be doing that same, we will," O'Sullivan Og
answered with a grin.
The Colonel and Bale found their hats--they'd been allowed to bring
nothing else with them--and they went down the stairs. In the gloom
before the door of the tower waited two sturdy fellows, barefoot and
shock-headed, with musquetoons on their shoulders, who seemed to be
expecting them. Round the smouldering embers of the fire a score of
figures lay sleeping in the open, wrapped in their frieze coats. As
many others sat with their backs against the wall, and their chins sunk
on their breasts. The sun was not yet up, and all things were wrapt in
a mist that chilled to the bone. Even within the narrow bounds of the
forecourt, objects at a distance put on queer shapes and showed new
faces. Nothing in all that was visible took from the ominous aspect of
the two men with the firearms. One for each, Bale thought. And his
face, always pallid, showed livid in the morning light.
Without a word the four men formed up round their prisoners, and at
once O'Sullivan Og led the way at a brisk pace towards the gate.
Colonel John was following, but he had not taken three steps before a
thought struck him, and he halted. "Are we leaving the house at once?"
he asked.
"We are. And why not, I'm asking."
"Only that I've a message for the McMurrough it will be well for him to
have."
"Sure," O'Sullivan Og answered, his manner half wheedling, half
truculent, "'tis no time for messages and trifles and the like now,
Colonel. No time at all, I tell you. Ye can see that for yourself, I'm
thinking, such a morning as this."
"I'm thinking nothing of the kind," the Colonel answered, and he hung
back, looking towards the house. Fortunately Darby chose that minute to
appear at the door. The butler's face was pale, and showed fatigue; his
hair hung in wisps; his clothes were ill-fastened. He threw a glance of
contempt, the contempt of the indoor servant, at the sleeping figures,
lying here and there in the wet. Thence his eyes travelled on and took
in the group by the gate. He started, and wrung his hands in sudden,
irrepressible distress. It was as if a spasm seized the man.
The Colonel called him. "Darby," he cried. "Come here, my man."
O'Sullivan Og opened his mouth; he was on the point of interposing, but
he thought better of it, and shrugged his shoulders, muttering
something in the Erse.
"Darby," the Colonel said gravely, "I've a message for the young
master, and it must be given him in his bed. Will you give it?"
"I will, your honour."
"You will not fail?"
"I will not, your honour," the old servant answered earnestly.
"Tell him, then, that Colonel Sullivan made his will as he passed
through Paris, and 'tis now in Dublin. You mind me, Darby?"
The old man began to shake--he had an Irish man's superstition. "I do,
your honour. But the saints be between us and harm," he continued, with
the same gesture of distress. "Who's speaking of wills?"
"Only tell him that in his bed," Colonel John repeated, with an urgent
look. "That is all."
"And by your leave, it is now we'll be going," Og interposed sharply.
"We are late already for what we've to do."
"There are some things," the Colonel replied with a steady look, "which
it is well to be late about."
Having fired that shot, he turned his eyes once more on the house.
Then, without further remonstrance, he and Bale, with their guard,
marched out through the gate, and took the road along the lake--that
same road by which the Colonel had come some days before from the
French sloop. The men with the firelocks walked beside them, one on
either flank, while the pikemen guarded them behind, and O'Sullivan Og
brought up the rear.
They had not taken twenty paces before the fog swallowed up the party;
and henceforth they walked in a sea of mist, like men moving in a
nightmare from which they cannot awake. The clammy vapour chilled them
to the bone: while the unceasing wailing of seagulls, borne off the
lough, the whistle of an unseen curlew on the hillside, the hurtle of
wings as some ghostly bird swept over them--these were sounds to deepen
the effect, and depress men who had reason to suspect that they were
being led to a treacherous end.
The Colonel, though he masked his apprehensions under an impenetrable
firmness, began to fear no less than that--and with cause. He observed
that O'Sullivan Og's followers were of the lowest type of kerne,
islanders in all probability, and half starved; men whose hands were
never far from their skenes, and whose one orderly instinct consisted
in a blind obedience to their chief. O'Sullivan Og himself he believed
to be The McMurrough's agent in his more lawless business; a fierce,
unscrupulous man, prospering on his lack of scruple. The Colonel could
augur nothing but ill from the hands to which he had been entrusted;
and worse from the manner in which these savage, half-naked creatures,
shambling beside him, stole from time to time a glance at him, as if
they fancied they saw the winding-sheet high on his breast.
Some, so placed, and feeling themselves helpless, isolated by the fog,
and entirely at these men's mercy, might have lost their firmness. But
he did not; nor did Bale, though the servant's face betrayed the
keenness of his anxiety. They weighed indeed, certainly the former, the
chances of escape: such chances as a headlong rush into the fog might
afford to unarmed men, uncertain where they were. But the Colonel
reflected that it was possible that that was the very course upon which
O'Sullivan Og counted for a pretext and an excuse. And, for a second
objection, the two could not, so closely were they guarded, communicate
with each other in such a way as to secure joint action.
After all, The McMurrough's plan might amount to no more than their
detention in some secret place among the hills. Colonel John hoped so.
Yet he could not persuade himself that this was the worst that was
intended. He could not but think ill of things; of O'Sullivan Og's
silence, of the men's stealthy glances, of the uncanny hour. And when
they came presently to a point where a faintly marked track left the
road, and the party, at a word from their leader, turned into it, he
thought worse of the matter. Was it his fancy--he was far from
nervous--or were the men beginning to look impatiently at one another?
Was it his fancy, or were they beginning to press more closely on their
prisoners, as if they sought a quarrel? He imagined that he read in one
man's eyes the question "When?" and in another's the question "Now?"
And a third, he thought, handled his weapon in an ominous fashion.
Colonel John was a brave man, inured to danger and trained to
emergencies, one who had faced death in many forms. But the lack, of
arms shakes the bravest, and it needed even his nerve to confront
without a quiver the fate that, if his fears were justified, lay before
them: the sudden, violent death, and the black bog-water which would
swallow all traces of the crime. But he did not lose his firmness or
lower his crest for a moment.
By-and-by the track, which for a time had ascended, began to run
downward. The path grew less sound. The mist, which was thicker than
before, and shut them in on the spot where they walked, as in a world
desolate and apart, allowed nothing to be seen in front; but now and
again a ragged thorn-tree or a furze bush, dripping with moisture,
showed ghostlike to right or left. There was nothing to indicate the
point they were approaching, or how far they were likely to travel;
until the Colonel, peering keenly before them, caught the gleam of
water. It was gone as soon as seen, the mist falling again like a
curtain; but he had seen it, and he looked back to see what Og was
doing. He caught him also in the act of looking over his shoulder. Was
he making sure that they were beyond the chance of interruption?
It might be so; and Colonel John wheeled about quickly, thinking that
while O'Sullivan Og's attention was directed elsewhere, he might take
one of the other men by surprise, seize his weapon and make a fight for
his life and his servant's life. But he met only sinister looks, eyes
that watched his smallest movement with suspicion, a point ready
levelled to strike him if he budged. And then, out of the mist before
them, loomed the gaunt figure of a man, walking apace towards them.
The meeting appeared to be as little expected by the stranger as by
Og's party. For not only did he spring aside and leave the track to
give them a wider berth, but he went by warily, with his feet in the
bog. Some word was cried to him in the Erse, he answered, for a moment
he appeared to be going to stop. Then he passed on and was lost in the
mist.
But he left a change behind him. One of the firelock-men broke into
hasty speech, glancing, the Colonel noticed, at him and Bale, as if
they were the subjects of his words. O'Sullivan Og answered the man
curtly and harshly; but before the reply was off his lips a second man
broke in vehemently in support of the other. They all halted; for a few
seconds all spoke at once. Then, just as Colonel John was beginning to
hope that they would quarrel, O'Sullivan Og gave way with sullen
reluctance, and a man ran back the way they had come, shouting a name.
Before the prisoners could decide whether his absence afforded a chance
of escape, he was back again, and with him the man who had passed in
the bog.
Colonel John looked at the stranger, and recognised him; and, a man of
quick wit, he knew on the instant that he had to face the worst. His
face set more hard, more firm--if it turned also a shade paler. He
addressed his companion. "They've called him back to confess us," he
muttered in Bale's ear.
"The devils!" Bale exclaimed. He choked on the word and worked his jaw,
glaring at them; but he said no more. Only his eyes glanced from one to
another, wild and full of rage.
Colonel John did not reply, for already O'Sullivan Og was addressing
him. "There's no more to it," The McMurrough's agent said bluntly; "but
you've come your last journey, Colonel, and we'll go back wanting you.
There's no room in Ireland from this day for them that's not Irish at
heart! nor safety for honest men while you're walking the sod. But----"
"Will you murder us?" Colonel John said. "Do you know, man," he
continued sternly, "what you do? What have we done to you, or your
master?"
"Done?" O'Sullivan Og answered with sudden ferocity. "And murder, say
you? Ay, faith, I would, and ten thousand like you, for the sake of old
Ireland! You may make your peace, and have five minutes to that--and no
more, for time presses, and we've work to do. These fools would have a
priest for you"--he turned and spat on the ground--"but it is I, and
none better, know you are black Protestants, and 'twould take the Holy
Father, God bless him, and no less, to make your souls!"
Colonel John looked at him with a strange light in his eyes. "It is
little to you," he said, "and much to me. Yet think, think, man, what
you do. Or if you will not, here is my servant. Let him go at least.
Spare his life at least. Put him, if you please, on board the French
sloop that's in the bay----"
"Faith, and you're wasting the little breath that is left you," the
ruffian answered, irritated rather than moved by the other's calmness.
"It's to take or leave. I told the men a heretic had no soul to make,
but----"
"God forgive you!" Colonel John said--and was silent; for he saw that
remonstrance would not help him, nor prayer avail. The man's mind was
made up, his heart steeled. For a brief instant, something, perhaps
that human fear which he had so often defied, clutched Colonel John's
heart. For a brief instant human weakness had its way with him, and he
shuddered--in the face of the bog, in the face of such an end as this.
Then the mist passed from his eyes, if not from the landscape; the
gracious faith that was his returned to him: he was his grave,
unyielding self again. He took Bale's hand and begged his forgiveness.
"Would I had never brought you!" he said. "Why did I, why did I? Yet,
God's will be done!"
Bale did not seem able to speak. His jaw continued to work, while his
eyes looked sideways at Og. Had the Irishman known his man, he would
have put himself out of reach, armed as he was.
"But I will appeal for you to the priest!" Colonel John continued; "he
may yet prevail with them to spare you."
"He will not!" O'Sullivan Og said naively.