A SLIP
Flavia McMurrough enjoyed one advantage over her partners in
conspiracy. She could rise on the morning after the night of the
bonfires with a clear head and an appetite undiminished by punch; and
probably she was the only one at Morristown of whom this could be said.
The morning light did not break for her on aching eyelids and a brain
at once too retentive of the boasts of the small hours and too
sensitive to the perils of the day to come. Colonel John had scarcely
passed away under guard, old Darby had scarcely made his first
round--with many an ominous shake of the head--the slatternly
serving-boys had scarcely risen from their beds in the passages, before
she was afoot, gay as a lark, and trilling like one; with spirits
prepared for the best or the worst which the day might bring
forth--though she foresaw only the best--and undepressed even by the
blanket of mist that shrouded lake and hills and all the world from
view.
If the past night, with its wassail and its mirth, its toasts and its
loud-voiced bragging, might be called "the great night of Morristown,"
this, the girl promised herself, should more truly and more fitly be
styled "the great day of Ireland." On this day would they begin a work
the end of which no man could see, but which, to the close of time,
should shed a lustre on the name of McMurrough. No more should their
native land be swept along, a chained slave, a handmaid, in the train
of a more brutal, a more violent, and a more stupid people! From this
day Ireland's valour, that had never known fit leading, should be
recognised for what it was, her wit be turned to good uses, her old
traditions be revived in the light of new glories. The tears rose to
the girl's eyes, her bosom heaved, her heart seemed too large for her,
as she pictured the fruition of the work to be begun this day, and with
clasped hands and prayerful eyes sang her morning hymn.
No more should an Irish gentleman walk swordless and shamed among his
equals. No more should the gallant beast he had bred be seized with
contumely in the market-place. No more should all the nobler services
of his native land be closed to him, his faith be banned, his priests
proscribed! No more should he be driven to sell his valour to the
highest bidder, and pour forth his blood in foreign causes, under the
walls of old Vienna, and on every stricken field from Almanza to the
Don. For on this day Ireland should rouse herself from the long
nightmare, the oppression of centuries. She should remember her
greatness of old time and the blessing of Patrick; and those who had
enslaved her, those who had scorned her and flouted her, should learn
the strength of hands nerved by the love of God and the love of
country! This day at Morristown the day should break.
The tears gushed from her eyes as she thought of this, and with an
overflowing heart thanked Heaven for the grace and favour that assigned
her a part in the work. And the halo formed of those tears ennobled all
she saw about her. The men, still sprawling up and down the courtyard
in the abandonment of drink, her brother calling with a pale face and
querulous oaths for a cooling draught, Sir Donny and old Tim Burke,
yawning off, like the old topers they were, the effects of the
carouse--the cause and her hopes ennobled all. It was much--may she be
forgiven!--if, in the first enthusiasm of the morning, she gave a
single thought to the misguided kinsman whose opposition had hurried
him into trouble, and exposed him to dangers at which she vaguely
guessed.
Fool that he was, she reflected, to pit himself against such men as the
Bishop and the Spanish Admiral! From her window she saw the two walking
in the garden with bent heads, aloof from the yawning crowd, and now
appearing beyond the line of Florence yews, now vanishing behind them.
On which she came near to worshipping them. Had they not brought to
Ireland, to Kerry, to Morristown, the craft and skill in counsel, the
sagacity and courage, which had won for them the favour of foreign
kings, and raised them high in exile? Lacking their guidance, the
movement might have come to nothing, the most enthusiastic must have
wasted their strength. But they were here to inspire, to lead, to
control. Against such men the parlour-captains of Tralee, the
encroaching Pettys, and their like, must fail indeed. And before more
worthy opponents arrived to encounter the patriots, who could say what
battles might not be won, what allies gained?
It was a dream, but a golden dream, and when she descended to the
living-room she still lived in it. The girl's lips quivered as she
kissed the Bishop's hand and received with bent knees his episcopal
blessing. "And on this house, my daughter," he added, "and on this
day!"
"Amen!" she murmured in her heart.
True, breakfast, and the hour after breakfast, gave some pause to her
happiness. The men's nerves were on edge with potheen and excitement,
and they had not been at table five minutes before quarrelling broke
out at the lower end of the board. The Spanish officer who was in
attendance on Cammock came to words, and almost to blows, with one of
the O'Beirnes, who resented the notion that the Admiral's safety was
not sufficiently secured by the Irish about him. The peace was kept
with difficulty, and so much ill-feeling survived the outbreak that
Cammock thought it prudent to remit two-thirds of the sailors to the
ship, and keep the remainder as far as possible in the background.
This was not a promising beginning, where the numbers were already so
scanty that the Bishop wondered in his heart whether his dupes would
dare to pass from words to action. But it was not all. Some one spoke
of Asgill, and of another Justice in the neighbourhood, asserting that
their hearts were with the rising, and that at a later point their aid
might be expected. At once,
"The Evil One's spawn!" cried Sir Donny, rising in his place, and
speaking under the influence of great excitement. "If you're for
dealing with them, I'm riding! No Protestants! No black brood of
Cromwell for me! I'd as soon never wear sword again as wear it in their
company!"
"You're not meaning it, Sir Donny!" Uncle Ulick said.
"Faith, but if he's not, I am!" cried old Tim Burke, rising and banging
the table with his fist. "'Tis what I'm meaning, and devil a bit of a
mistake! Just that!"
Another backed him, with so much violence that the most moderate and
sensible looked serious, and it needed the Bishop's interference to
calm the storm. "We need not decide one way or the other," he said,
"until they come in." Probably he thought that an unlikely contingency.
"There are arguments on both sides," he continued blandly. "It is true
that half-measures are seldom wise. On the other hand, it was by a
Protestant king that France was led back to the true faith. But of this
at another time. I think we must be moving, gentlemen. It grows late."
While the gentry talked thus at table, the courtyard and the space
between the house and the lake began to present, where the mist allowed
them to be seen, the lively and animated appearance which the Irish,
ever lovers of a crowd, admire. Food and drink were there served to the
barefoot, shock-headed boys drawn up in bodies under their priests, or
under the great men's agents; and when these matters had been consumed
one band after another moved off in the direction of the rendezvous.
This was at the Carraghalin, a name long given to the ruins of an abbey
situate in an upland valley above the waterfall, and a long Irish mile
from the house. But as each troop moved off towards the head of the
lake its place was filled in a measure by late-comers, as well as by
companies of women and girls, close-hooded and shawled, who halted
before the house to raise shrill cries of welcome, or, as they passed,
stirred the air with their wild Erse melodies. The orders for all were
to take their seats in an orderly fashion and in a mighty semicircle
about a well-known rock situate a hundred yards from the abbey.
Tradition reported that in old days this rock had been a pulpit, and
that thence the Irish Apostle had preached to the heathen. More
certainly it had formed a rostrum and the valley a gathering-place in
troubled and more recent times. The turf about it was dry, sweet, and
sheep-bitten; on either side it sloped gently to the rock, while a
sentry posted on each of the two low hills which flanked the vale was a
sufficient surety against surprise.
It was not until the last of the peasants had filed off, and the space
before the house had resumed its normal aspect--but for once without
its beggars--that the gentry began to make their way in the same
direction. The buckeens were the first to go. Uncle Ulick, with the
Spanish officer and his men, formed the next party. The O'Beirnes, with
Sir Donny and Timothy Burke and a priest or two of a superior order,
were not long behind them. The last to leave--and they left the house
with no other guardians than a cook-maid or two--were the Admiral and
the Bishop, honourably escorted, as became their rank, by their host
and hostess.
Freed from the wrangling and confusion which the presence of the others
bred, Flavia regained her serenity as she walked. There was nothing,
indeed, in the face of nature, in the mist and the dark day, and the
moisture that hung in beads on thorn and furze, to cheer her. But she
drew her spirits from a higher source, and, sanguine and self-reliant,
foreseeing naught but success, stepped proudly along beside the Bishop,
who found, perhaps, in her presence and her courage a make-weight for
the gloom of the day.
"You are sure," he said, smiling, "that we shall not lose our way?"
"Ah! and I am sure," she answered, "I could take you blindfold."
"The mist----"
"It stands, my lord, for the mist overhanging this poor land, which our
sun shall disperse."
"God grant it!" he said--"God grant it, indeed, my daughter!" But, do
what he would, he spoke without fervour.
They passed along the lake-edge, catching now and then the shimmer of
water on their right. Thence they ascended the steep path that led up
the glen of the waterfall to the level of the platform on which the old
tower stood. Leaving this on the right--and only to an informed eye was
it visible--they climbed yet a little higher, and entered a deep
driftway that, at the summit of the gorge, clove its way between the
mound behind the tower and the hill on their left, and so penetrated
presently to the valley of the Carraghalin. The mist was thinner here,
the nature of the ground was more perceptible, and they had not
proceeded fifty yards along the sunken way before Cammock, who was
leading, in the company of The McMurrough, halted.
"A fine place for a stand," he said, looking about him with a soldierly
eye. "And better for an ambush. Especially on such a morning as this,
when you cannot see a man five paces away."
"I trust," the Bishop answered, smiling, "that we shall have no need to
make the one, or to fear the other."
"You could hold this," Flavia asked eagerly, "with such men as we
have?"
"Against an army," Cammock answered.
"Against an army!" she murmured, as, her heart beating high with pride,
they resumed their way, Flavia and the Bishop in the van. "Against an
army!" she repeated fondly.
The words had not fully left her lips when she recoiled. At the same
moment the Bishop uttered an exclamation, Cammock swore and seized his
hilt, The McMurrough turned as if to flee. For on the path close to
them, facing them with a pistol in his hand, stood Colonel Sullivan.
He levelled the pistol at the head of the nearest man, and though
Flavia, with instant presence of mind, struck it up, the act helped
little. Before Cammock could clear his blade, or his companions back up
his resistance, four or five men, of Colonel John's following, flung
themselves on them from behind. They were seized, strong arms pinioned
them, knives were at their throats. In a twinkling, and while they
still expected death, sacks were dragged over their heads and down to
their waists, and they were helpless.
It was well, it was neatly done; and completely done, with a single
drawback. The men had not seized Flavia, and, white as paper, but with
rage not fear, she screamed shrilly for help--screamed twice.
She would have screamed a third time, but Colonel Sullivan, who knew
that they were scarcely two furlongs from the meeting-place, and from
some hundreds of merciless foes, did the only thing possible. He flung
his arms round her, pressed her face roughly against his shoulder,
smothered her cries remorselessly. Then raising her, aided by the man
with the musket, he bore her, vainly struggling--and, it must be owned,
scratching--after the others out of the driftway.
The thing done, the Colonel's little band of Frenchmen knew that they
had cast the die, and must now succeed or perish. The girl's screams,
quickly suppressed, might not have given the alarm; but they had set
nerves on edge. The prick of a knife was used--and often--to apprise
the blinded prisoners that if they did not move they would be piked.
They were dragged, a seaman on either side of each captive, over some
hundred paces of rough ground, through the stream, and so into a path
little better than a sheep-track which ran round the farther side of
the hill of the tower, and descended that way to the more remote bank
of the lake. It was a rugged path, steep and slippery, dropping
precipitously a couple of feet in places, and more than once following
the bed of the stream. But it was traceable even in the mist, and the
party from the sloop, once put on it, could follow it.
If no late-comer to the meeting encountered them, Colonel John, to whom
every foot of the ground was familiar, saw no reason, apart from the
chances of pursuit, why they should not get the prisoners, whom they
had so audaciously surprised, as far as the lower end of the lake.
There he and his party must fall again into the Skull road and risk the
more serious uncertainties of the open way. All, however, depended on
time. If Flavia's screams had not given the alarm, it would soon be
given by the absence of those whom the people had come to meet. The
missing leaders would be sought, pursuit would be organised. Yet, if
before that pursuit reached the foot of the lake, the fugitives had
passed into the road, the raiders would stand a fair chance. They
would at least have a start, the sloop in front of them, and their
enemies behind them.
But, with peril on every side of them, Flavia was still the main, the
real difficulty. Colonel Sullivan could not hope to carry her far, even
with the help of the man who fettered her feet, and bore part of her
weight. Twice she freed her mouth and uttered a stifled cry. The
Colonel only pressed her face more ruthlessly to him--his men's lives
depended on her silence. But the sweat stood on his brow; and, after
carrying her no more than three hundred yards, he staggered under the
unwilling burden. He was on the path now and descending, and he held
out a little farther. But presently, when he hoped that she had
swooned, she fell to struggling more desperately. He thought, on this,
that he might be smothering her; and he relaxed his hold to allow her
to breathe. For reward she struck him madly, furiously in the face, and
he had to stifle her again.
But his heart was sick. It was a horrible, a brutal business, a thing
he had not foreseen on board the _Cormorant_. He had supposed that she
would faint at the first alarm; and his courage, which would have faced
almost any event with coolness, quailed. He could not murder the girl,
and she would not be silent. No, she would not be silent! Short of
setting her down and binding her hand and foot, which would take time,
and was horrible to imagine, he could not see what to do. And the man
with him, who saw the rest of the party outstripping them, and as good
as disappearing in the fog, who fancied, with every step, that he heard
the feet of merciless pursuers overtaking them, was frantic with
impatience.
Then Colonel John, with the sweat standing on his brow, did a thing to
which he afterwards looked back with great astonishment.
"Give me your knife," he said, with a groan, "and hold her hands! We
must silence her, and there is only one way!"
The man, terrified as he was, and selfish as terrified men are,
recoiled from the deed. "My God!" he said. "No!"
"Yes!" Colonel John retorted fiercely. "The knife!--the knife, man! And
do you hold her hands!"
With a jerk he lifted her face from his breast--and this time she
neither struck him nor screamed. The man had half-heartedly drawn his
knife. The Colonel snatched it from him. "Now her hands!" he said.
"Hold her, fool! I know where to strike!"
She opened her mouth to shriek, but no sound came. She had heard, she
understood; and for a moment she could neither struggle nor cry. That
terror which rage and an almost indomitable spirit had kept at bay
seized her; the sight of the gleaming death poised above her paralysed
her throat. Her mouth gaped, her eyes glared at the steel; then, with a
queer sobbing sound, she fainted.
"Thank God!" the Colonel cried. And there was indeed thankfulness in
his voice. He thrust the knife back into the man's hands, and, raising
the girl again in his arms, "There is a house a little below," he said.
"We can leave her there! Hurry, man!--hurry!"
He had not traversed that road for twenty years, but his memory had not
tricked him. Less than fifty paces below they came on a cabin, close to
the foot of the waterfall. The door was not fastened--for what, in such
a place, was there to steal?--and Colonel John thrust it open with his
foot. The interior was dark, the place was almost windowless; but he
made out the form of an old crone who, nursing her knees, crouched with
a pipe in her mouth beside a handful of peat. Seeing him, the woman
tottered to her feet with a cry of alarm, and shaded her bleared eyes
from the inrush of daylight. She gabbled shrilly, but she knew only
Erse, and Colonel John attempted no explanation.
"The lady of the house," he said, in that tongue. And he laid Flavia,
not ungently, but very quickly, on the floor. He turned about without
another word, shut the door on the two, and hurried along the path at
the full stretch of his legs. In half a minute he had overtaken his
companion, and the two pressed on together on the heels of the main
party.
The old beldame, left alone with the girl, viewed her with an
astonishment which would have been greater if she had not reached that
age at which all sensations become dulled. How the Lady of the House,
who was to her both Power and Providence, came to be there, and there
in that state, passed her conception. But she had the sense to loosen
the girl's frock at the neck, to throw water on her face, and to beat
her hands. In a very few minutes Flavia, who had never swooned
before--fashionable as the exercise was at this period in feminine
society--sighed once or twice, and came to herself.
"Where am I?" she muttered. Still for some moments she continued to
look about her in a dazed way; at length she recognised the old woman,
and the cottage. Then she remembered, with a moan, what had
happened--the ambuscade, the flight, the knife.
She could not turn whiter, but she shuddered and closed her eyes. At
last, with shrinking, she looked at her dress. "Am I--hurt?" she
whispered.
The old woman did not understand, but she patted Flavia's hand.
Meanwhile the girl saw that there was no blood on her dress, and she
found courage to raise her hand to her throat. She found no wound. At
that she smiled faintly. Then she began to cry--for she was a woman.
But, broken as she was by that moment of terror, Flavia's indulgence in
the feminine weakness was short, for it was measured by the time she
devoted to thoughts of her own fortunes. Quickly, very quickly, she
overcame her weakness; she stood up, she understood, and she extended
her arms in rage and grief and unavailing passion. That rage which
treachery arouses in the generous breast, that passion which an outrage
upon hospitality kindles in the meanest, that grief which ruined plans
and friends betrayed have bred a thousand times in Irish bosoms--she
felt them all, and intensely. She would that the villains had killed
her! She would that they had finished her life! Why should she survive,
except for vengeance? For not only were her hopes for Ireland fallen;
not only were those who had trusted themselves to The McMurrough
perishing even now in the hands of ruthless foes; but her brother, her
dear, her only brother, whom her prayers, her influence had brought
into this path, he too was snared, of his fate also there could be no
doubt!
She felt all that was most keen, most poignant, of grief, of anger, of
indignation. But the sharpest pang of all--had she analysed her
feelings--was inflicted by the consciousness of failure, and of failure
verging on the ignominious. The mature take good and evil fortune as
they come; but to fail at first setting out in life, to be outwitted in
the opening venture, to have to acknowledge that experience is, after
all, a formidable foe--these are mishaps which sour the magnanimous and
poison young blood.
She had not known before what it was to hate. Now she only lived to
hate: to hate the man who had shown himself so much cleverer than her
friends, who, in a twinkling, and by a single blow, had wrecked her
plans, duped her allies, betrayed her brother, made her name a
laughing-stock, robbed Ireland of a last chance of freedom! who had
held her in his arms, terrified her, mastered her! Oh, why had she
swooned? Why had she not rather, disregarding her womanish weakness,
her womanish fears, snatched the knife from him and plunged it into his
treacherous breast? Why? Why?