FEMINA FURENS
The Irish of that day, with all their wit and all their courage, had
the bad habit of looking abroad for leaders. Colonel John had run
little risk of being wrong in taking for granted that the meeting at
the Carraghalin, mysteriously robbed of the chiefs from over-seas,
whose presence had brought the movement to a head, would disperse;
either amid the peals of Homeric laughter that in Ireland greet a
monster jest, or, in sadder mood, cursing the detested Saxon for one
more added to the many wrongs of a downtrodden land.
Had Flavia indeed escaped, had the raid which Colonel Sullivan had so
audaciously conceived failed to embrace her, the issue might have been
different. Had she appeared upon the scene at the critical moment, her
courage and enthusiasm might have supported the spirits of the
assemblage and kept it together. But Uncle Ulick had not the force to
do this: much less had old Timothy Burke or Sir Donny. Uncle Ulick, we
know, expected little good from the rising; he was prepared for any,
the worst mishap; while the faith of the older men in any change for
the better was not robust enough to stand alone or to resist the first
blast of doubt.
Their views indeed were more singular than cheerful.
"Very like," Sir Donny said, with a fallen under-lip, "the ould earth's
opened her mouth and swallowed them. She's tired, small blame to her,
with all the heretics burdening her and tormenting her--the cream of
hell's fire to them!"
"Whisht, man!" the other answered. "Be easy; you're forgetting one's a
bishop. Small chance of the devil's tackling him, and, like enough the
holy water and all ready to his hand!"
"Then I'm not knowing what it is," the first pronounced hopelessly.
"There you speak truth, Sir Donny," Tim Burke answered. "Is it they can
be losing their way in the least taste of fog there is, do you think?"
"And the young lady knowing the path, so that she'd be walking it
blindfold in the dark!"
"I'm fearing, then, it will be the garr'son from Tralee," was Uncle
Ulick's contribution. And he shook his head. "The saints be between us
and them, and grant we'll not be seeing more of them than we like, and
sooner!"
"Amen to that same!" replied old Timothy Burke, with an uneasy look
behind him.
There was nothing comforting in this. And the messengers sent to learn
what was amiss and why the expected party did not arrive had as little
cheer to give. They could learn nothing. On which Uncle Ulick and his
fellows rubbed their heads: the small men wondered. A few
panic-stricken, began to slip away, but the mass were faithful. An hour
went by in this trying uncertainty, and a second and part of a third;
and messengers departed and came, and there were rumours and alarms,
and presently something like the truth got abroad; and there was talk
of pursuit, and a band of young stalwarts was detailed and sent off.
Still the greater part of the assemblage, with Irish patience, remained
seated in ranks on the slopes of the hills, the women with their
drugget shawls drawn over their heads, the men with their frieze coats
hanging loose about them. The chill mist which clung to the hillsides,
and the atmosphere of doubt which overhung all, were a poor exchange
for the roaring bonfires, the good cheer, the enthusiasm, the merriment
of the previous evening. But the Irish peasant, if he be less staunch
at the waiting--even as he is more forward in the hand-to-hand than his
Scottish cousins--has the peasant's gift of endurance; and in the most
trying hours--in ignorance, in doubt, in danger--has often held his
ground in dependence on his betters, with a result pitiful in the
reading. For too often the great have abandoned the little, the horse
has borne off the rider, and the naked footman, surprised, surrounded,
out-matched, and put to the sword, has paid for all.
But on this day a time came, about high noon, when the assemblage--and
the fog--began at last to melt. Sir Donny was gone, and old Tim Burke
of Maamtrasna. They had slipped homewards, by little-known tracks
across the peat hags; and, shamefaced and fearful of the consequences,
the spirit all gone out of them, had turned their minds to oaths and
alibis. They had been in trouble before, and were taken to know; and
their departure sapped the O'Beirnes' resolution, whose uneasy faces as
they talked together spread the contagion. Uncle Ulick and several of
the buckeens were away on the search; the handful of Spanish seamen had
returned to the house or to the ship: there was no one to check the
defection when it set in. An hour after Sir Donny had slipped away, the
movement which might have meant so much to so many was spent. The
slopes about the ruined gables which they called Carraghalin, and which
were all that remained of the once proud abbey, had returned to their
wonted solitude; where hundreds had sat a short hour before the eagle
hovered, the fox turned his head and scented the wind. Even the house
at Morristown had so far become itself again that a scarcity, rather
than a plenitude of life, betrayed the past night of orgy; and a
quietness beyond the ordinary, the things that had been dreamed. The
garrison of Tralee, the Protestant Settlement at Kenmare, facts which
had been held distant and negligible in the first flush of hope and
action, now seemed to the fearful fancy many an Irish mile nearer and
many a shade more real.
Doubtless, in the minds of some, a secret thankfulness that, after all,
they were not required to take the leap, relieved the disappointment
and lessened the shame. They were well out of an ugly scrape, they
reflected; well clear of the ugly shadow of the gallows--always
supposing that no informer appeared. It might even be the hand of
Providence, they thought, that had removed their leaders, and so held
them back. They might think themselves happy to be quit of it for the
fright.
But there was one--one who found no such consolation; one to whom the
issue was pure loss, a shameful defeat, the end of hopes, the defeat of
prayers that had never risen to heaven more purely than that morning.
Flavia sat with her eyes on the dead peat that cumbered the hearth--for
in the general excitement the fire had been suffered to go out--and in
a stupor of misery refused to be comforted. Of her plans, of her
devotion, of her lofty resolves, this was the result. She had aspired,
God knew how honestly and earnestly, for her race downtrodden and her
faith despised, and this was the bitter fruit. Nor was it only the
girl's devotion to her country and to her faith that lay sore wounded:
her vanity suffered, and perhaps more keenly. The enterprise that was
to have glorified the name of McMurrough, that was to have raised that
fallen race, that was to have made that distant province blessed among
the provinces of Ireland, had come to an end, derisive and contemptible,
before it was born. Her spirit, unbroken by experience and untrained to
defeat, fearing before all things ridicule, dashed itself against the
dreadful conviction, the dreadful fact. She could hardly believe that
all was over. She could hardly realise that the cup was no longer at
her lip, that the bird had escaped from the hand. But she looked from
the window; and, lo, the courtyard which had hummed and seethed was
dead and silent. In one corner a knot of men were carrying out the arms
and the powder, and were preparing to bury them. In another, a
woman--it was Sullivan Og's widow--sat weeping. It was the _Hic jacet_
of the great Rising that was to have been, and that was to have
regenerated Ireland!
And "You must kill him!" she cried, with livid cheeks and blazing eyes.
"If you do not, I will!"
Uncle Ulick, who had heard the story of the ambush, and beyond doubt
was one of those who felt more relief than disappointment, stretched
his legs uneasily. He longed to comfort her, but he did not know what
to say. Moreover, he was afraid of her in this mood.
"You must kill him!" she repeated.
"We'll talk of that," he said, "when we see him."
"You must kill him!" the girl repeated passionately. "Or I will! If you
are a man, if you are an Irishman, if you are a Sullivan, kill him, the
shame of your race! Or I will!"
"If he had been on our side," Uncle Ulick answered soberly, "instead of
against us, I'm thinking we should have done better."
The girl drew in her breath sharply, pierced to the quick by the
thought. Simultaneously the big man started, but for another reason.
His eyes were on the window, and they saw a sight which his mind
declined to believe. Two men had entered the courtyard--had entered
with astonishing, with petrifying nonchalance, as it seemed to him. For
the first was Colonel Sullivan. The second--but the second slunk at the
heels of the first with a hang-dog air--was James McMurrough.
Fortunately Flavia, whose eyes were glooming on the cold hearth and the
extinct ashes, fit image of her dead hopes, had her back to the
casement. Uncle Ulick rose. His thoughts came with a shock against the
possibility that Colonel John had the garrison of Tralee at his back!
But, although The McMurrough had all the appearance of a prisoner,
Ulick thrust away the notion as soon as it occurred. To clear his mind,
he looked to see how the men engaged in getting out the powder were
taking it. They had ceased to work, and were staring with all their
eyes. Something in their bearing and their attitudes told Uncle Ulick
that the notion which had occurred to him had occurred to them, and
that they were prepared to run at the least alarm.
"His blood be on his own head!" he muttered. But he did not say it in
the tone of a man who meant it.
"Amen!" she cried, her back still turned to the window, her eyes
brooding on the cold hearth. The words fell in with her thoughts.
By this time Colonel Sullivan was within four paces of the door. In a
handturn he would be in the room, he would be actually in the girl's
presence--and Uncle Ulick shrank from the scene which must follow.
Colonel John was, indeed, and plainly, running on his fate. Already the
O'Beirnes, awakening from their trance of astonishment, were closing in
behind him with grim faces; and short of the garrison of Tralee the big
man saw no help for him; well-nigh--so strongly did even he feel on the
matter--he desired none. But Flavia must have no part in it. In God's
name, let the girl be clear of it!
The big man took two steps to the door, opened it, slipped through, and
closed it behind him. His breast as good as touched that of Colonel
Sullivan, who was on the threshold. Behind the Colonel was James
McMurrough; behind James were the two O'Beirnes and two others, of
whose object, as they cut off the Colonel's retreat, no man who saw
their faces could doubt.
For once, in view of the worse things that might happen in the house,
Ulick was firm. "You can't come in!" he said, his face pale and
frowning. He had no word of greeting for the Colonel. "You can't come
in!" he repeated, staring straight at him.
The Colonel turned and saw the four men with arms in their hands
spreading out behind him. He understood. "You had better let me in," he
said gently. "James will talk to them."
"James----"
"You had better speak to them," Colonel John continued, addressing his
companion. "And you, Ulick----"
"You can't come in," Ulick repeated grimly.
James McMurrough interposed in his harshest tone. "An end to this!" he
cried. "Who the devil are you to bar the door, Ulick! And you, Phelim
and Morty, be easy a minute till you hear me speak."
Ulick still barred the way. "James," he said, in a voice little above a
whisper, "you don't know----"
"I know enough!" The McMurrough answered violently. It went sadly
against the grain with him to shield his enemy, but so it must be.
"Curse you, let him in!" he continued fiercely; they were making his
task more hard for him. "And have a care of him," he added anxiously.
"Do you hear? Have a care of him!"
Uncle Ulick made a last feeble attempt. "But Flavia," he said. "Flavia
is there and----"
"Curse the girl!" James answered. "Get out of the road and let the man
in! Is this my house or yours?"
Ulick yielded, as he had yielded so often before. He stood aside.
Colonel John opened the door and entered.
The rest happened so quickly that no movement on his part could have
saved him. Flavia had heard their voices in altercation--it might be a
half minute, it might be a few seconds before. She had risen to her
feet, she had recognised the voice of one of the speakers--he had
spoken once only, but that was enough--she had snatched up the naked
sword that since the previous morning had leant in the chimney corner.
As Colonel John crossed the threshold--oh, dastardly audacity, oh,
insolence incredible, that in the hour of his triumph he should soil
that threshold!--she lunged with all the force of her strong young arm
at his heart.
With such violence that the hilt struck his breast and hurled him
bodily against the doorpost; while the blade broke off, shivered by
contact with the hard wood.
Uncle Ulick uttered a cry of horror. "My G----d!" he exclaimed, "you
have killed him!"
"His blood----"
She stopped on the word. For instead of falling Colonel John was
regaining his balance. "Flavia!" he cried--the blade had passed through
his coat, missing his breast by a bare half-inch. "Flavia, hold!
Listen! Listen a moment!"
But in a frenzy of rage, as soon as she saw that her blow had failed,
she struck at him with the hilt and the ragged blade that
remained--struck at his face, struck at his breast, with cries of fury
almost animal. "Wretch! wretch!" she cried--"die! If they are cowards,
I am not! Die!"
The scene was atrocious, and Uncle Ulick, staring open-mouthed, gave no
help. But Colonel Sullivan mastered her wrists, though not until he had
sustained a long bleeding cut on the jaw. Even then, though fettered,
and though he had forced her to drop the weapon, she struggled
desperately with him--as she had struggled when he carried her through
the mist. "Kill him! kill him!" she shrieked. "Help! help!"
The men would have killed him twice and thrice if The McMurrough, with
voice and blade and frantic imprecations and the interposition of his
own body, had not kept the O'Beirnes and the others at bay--explaining,
deprecating, praying, cursing, all in a breath. Twice a blow was struck
at the Colonel through the doorway, but one fell short and the other
James McMurrough parried. For a moment the peril was of the greatest:
the girl's cries, the sight of her struggling in Colonel John's grip,
wrought the men almost beyond James's holding. Then the strength went
out of her suddenly, she ceased to fight, and but for Colonel
Sullivan's grasp she would have fallen her length on the floor. He knew
that she was harmless then, and he thrust her into the nearest chair.
He kicked the broken sword under the table, staunched the blood that
trickled fast from his cheek; last of all, he looked at the men who
were contending with James in the doorway.
"Gentlemen," he said, breathing a little quickly, but in no other way
betraying the strait through which he had passed, "I shall not run
away. I shall be here to answer you to-morrow, as fully as to-day. In
the meantime I beg to suggest"--again he raised the handkerchief to his
cheek and staunched the blood--"that you retire now, and hear what The
McMurrough has to say to you: the more as the cases and the arms I see
in the courtyard lie obnoxious to discovery and expose all to risk
while they remain so."
His surprising coolness did more to check them than The McMurrough's
efforts. They gaped at him in wonder. Then one uttered an imprecation.
"The McMurrough will explain if you will go with him," Colonel John
answered patiently, "I say again, gentlemen, I shall not run away."
"If you mean her any harm----"
"I mean her no harm."
"Are you alone?"
"I am alone."
So far Morty. But Phelim O'Beirne was not quite satisfied. "If a hair
of her head be hurt----" he growled, pushing himself forward, "I tell
you, sir----"
"And I tell you!" James McMurrough retorted, repelling him. "What are
the hairs of her head to you, Phelim O'Beirne? Am I not him that's her
brother? A truce to your prating, curse you, and be coming with me. I
understand him, and that is enough!"
"But His Reverence----"
"His Reverence is as safe as you or me!" James retorted. "If it were
not so, are you thinking I'd be here? Fie on you!" he went on, pushing
Phelim through the door; "you are good at the talking now, when it's
little good it will be doing! But where were you this morning when a
good blow might have saved all?"
"Could I be helping it, when----?"
The voices passed away, still wrangling, across the courtyard. Uncle
Ulick stepped to the door and closed it. Then he turned and spoke his
mind.
"You were wrong to come back, John Sullivan," he said, the hardness of
his tone bearing witness to his horror of what had happened. "Shame on
you! It is no thanks to you that your blood is not on the girl's hands,
and the floor of your grandfather's house! You're a bold man, I allow.
But the fox made too free with the window at last, and, take my word
for it, there are a score of men, whose hands are surer than this
child's, who will not rest till they have had your life! And after what
has happened, can you wonder? Be bid and go then; be bid, and go while
the breath is firm in you!"
Colonel John did not speak for a moment, and when he did answer, it was
with a severity that overbore Ulick's anger, and in a tone of contempt
that was something new to the big man. "If the breath be firm in those
whom you, Ulick Sullivan," he said--"ay, you, Ulick Sullivan--and your
fellows would have duped, it is enough for me! For myself, whom should
I fear? The plotters whose childish plans were not proof against the
simplest stratagem? The conspirators"--his tone grew more cutting in
its scorn--"who took it in hand to pull down a throne and were routed
by a Sergeant's Guard? The poor puppets who played at a game too high
for them, and, dreaming they were Sarsfields or Montroses, danced in
truth to others' piping? Shall I fear them," he continued, the tail of
his eye on the girl, who, sitting low in her chair, writhed
involuntarily under his words--"poor tools, poor creatures, only a
little less ignorant, only a little more guilty than the clods they
would have led to the crows or the hangman? Is it these I am to fear;
these I am to flee from? God forbid, Ulick Sullivan! I am not the man
to flee from shadows!"
His tone, his manner, the truth of his words--which were intended to
open the girl's eyes, but did in fact increase her burning
resentment--hurt even Uncle Ulick's pride. "Whisht, man," he said
bitterly. "It's plain you're thinking you're master here!"
"I am," Colonel John replied sternly. "I am, and I intend to be. Nor a
day too soon! Where all are children, there is need of a master! Don't
look at me like that, man! And for my cousin, let her hear the truth
for once! Let her know what men who have seen the world think of the
visions, from which she would have awakened in a dungeon, and the poor
fools, her fellow-dupes, under the gibbet! A great rising for a great
cause, if it be real, man, if it be earnest, if it be based on
forethought and some calculation of the chances, God knows I hold it a
fine thing, and a high thing! But the rising of a child with a bladder
against an armed man, a rising that can ruin but cannot help, I know
not whether to call it more silly or more wicked! Man, the devil does
his choicest work through fools, not rogues! And, for certain, he never
found a choicer morsel or fitter instruments than at Morristown
yesterday."
Uncle Ulick swore impatiently. "We may be fools," he growled. "Yet
spare the girl! Spare the girl!"
"What? Spare her the truth?"
"All! Everything!" Uncle Ulick cried, with unusual heat. "Cannot you
see that she at least meant well!"
"Such do the most ill," Colonel John retorted, with sententious
severity. "God forgive them--and her!" He paused for a moment and then,
in a lighter tone, he continued, "As I do. As I do gladly. Only there
must be an end of this foolishness. The two men who knew in what they
worked and had reason in their wrong-doing are beyond seas. We shall
see their faces no more. The McMurrough is not so mad as to wish to act
without them. He"--with a faint smile--"is not implacable. You, Ulick,
are not of the stuff of whom martyrs are made, nor are Mr. Burke and
Sir Donny. But the two young men outside"--he paused as if he
reflected--"they and three or four others are--what my cousin now
listening to me makes them. They are tow, if the flame be brought near
them. And therefore--and therefore," he repeated still more slowly, "I
have spoken the truth and plainly. To this purpose, that there may be
an end."
Flavia had sat at first with closed eyes, in a state next door to
collapse, her head inclined, her arms drooping, as if at any moment she
might sink to the floor. But in the course of his speaking a change had
come over her. The last heavings of the storm, physical and mental,
through which she had passed, still shook her; now a quiver distorted
her features, now a violent shudder agitated her from head to foot. But
the indomitable youth in her, and the spirit which she had inherited
from some dead forefather, were not to be long gainsaid. Slowly, as she
listened--and mainly under the influence of indignation--her colour had
returned, her face grown more firm, her form more stiff. In truth
Colonel John had adopted the wrong course with her. He had been
hard--knowing men better than women--when he should have been mild; he
had browbeaten where he should have forgiven. And so at his last
declaration, "There must be an end," she rose to her feet, and spoke.
And speaking, she showed that neither the failure of her attempt on
him, nor the bodily struggle with him, horribly as it humiliated her in
the remembrance, had quelled her courage.
"An end!" she said, in a voice vibrating with emotion. "Yes, but it
will be an end for you! Children, are we? Well, better that, a thousand
times better that, than be so old before our time, so cold of heart and
cunning of head that there is naught real for us but that we touch and
see, nothing high for us but that our words will be measuring, nothing
worth risk but that we are safe to gain! Children, are we?" she
continued, with deep passion. "But at least we believe! At least we own
something higher than ourselves--a God, a Cause, a Country! At least we
have not bartered all--all three and honour for a pittance of pay,
fighting alike for right or wrong, betraying alike the right and wrong!
Children? May be! But, God be thanked, we are warm, the blood runs in
us----"
"Flavia!"
"I say the blood runs in us!" she repeated. "And if we are foolish, as
you say, we are wiser yet than one"--she looked at him with a strange
and almost awful steadfastness--"who in his wisdom thinks that a
traitor can walk our Irish soil unharmed, or one go back and forth in
safety who has ruined and shamed us! You have escaped my hand! But I
know that all your boasted wisdom will not lengthen your life till the
moon wanes!"
He had tried to interrupt her once--eagerly, vividly, as one who would
defend himself. He answered her now after another fashion: perhaps he
had learnt his lesson. "If God wills," he said simply, "it will be so;
it will be as you say. And the road will lie open to you. Only while I
live, Flavia, whether I love this Irish soil or not, or my country, or
my honour, the storm shall not break here, nor the house fall from
which we spring!"
"While you live!" she repeated, with a dreadful smile. "I tell you, I
tell you," and she extended her hand towards him, "the winding-sheet is
high upon your breast, and the salt dried that shall lie upon your
heart."