THE MARPLOT
If, after that, Colonel Sullivan's life had depended on his courage or
the vigilance of his servant, it is certain that, tried as was the one
and unwinking as was the other, Flavia's prophecy would have been
quickly fulfilled. He would not have seen another moon, perhaps he
would not have seen another dawn. The part which he had played in the
events at the Carraghalin was known to few; but the hundred tongues of
rumour were already abroad, carrying as many versions, and in all he
was the marplot. His traffic with the Old Fox had spirited away the
Holy Father in God--whom the saints preserve!--and swept off also,
probably on a broom-stick, the doughty champion whose sole desire it
was to lead the hosts of Ireland to victory. In the eyes of some ten
score persons, scattered over half a dozen leagues of country, wild,
and beyond the pale of law--persons who valued an informer's life no
higher than a wolf's--he wore the ugly shape of one. And the logical
consequence was certain. That the man who had done these things should
continue to walk the sod, that the man who had these things on his
black heretic conscience should continue to haunt the scene of his
crimes and lord it over those whom his misdeeds had sullied, was to the
common mind unthinkable--nay, incredible: a blot on God's good day. To
every potato-setter who, out of the corner of his eye, watched his
passage, to every beggar by the road whose whine masked heart-felt
curses, to the very children who fell back from the cabin door to
escape his evil eye, this was plain and known, and the man already as
the dead. For if the cotters by the lakeside were not men enough, the
nights being at present moonlit, was there not Roaring Andy's band in
the hills, not seven miles away, who would cut any man's throat for a
silver doubloon, and a Protestant's for the "trate it would be, and
sorra a bit of pay at all, the good men!"
Beyond doubt the Colonel's boldness, and the nerve which enabled him to
take his place as if nothing threatened him, went for something; and
for something the sinister prestige which the disappearance of
O'Sullivan Og and his whole party cast about him. For there was wailing
in the house by the jetty: the rising had cost some lives though nipped
in the bud. The evening tide had cast the body of one of the men upon
the shore, where it had been found among the sea-wrack; and, though the
fate of the others remained a mystery, the messenger who had sped after
Og with the counter-order told the story as he knew it. The means by
which the two prisoners, in face of odds so great, had destroyed their
captors, were still a secret; but the worst was feared. The Irish are
ever open to superstitious beliefs, and the man who singlehanded could
wreak such a vengeance, who poured death as it were from a horn, went
his way by road and bog, shrouded in a gloomy fame that might provoke
the bold, but kept the timid at bay. Before night it was known in a
dozen lonely cabins that the Colonel might be shot from behind with
a silver bullet: or stabbed, if a man were bold enough, with a
cross-handled knife, blest and sprinkled. But woe to him whose aim
proved faulty or his hand uncertain! His chance in the grasp of the
Father of ill, or of the mis-shapen Trolls, _revenants_ of a heathen
race, who yearly profaned the Carraghalin with their orgies, had not
been worse!
But this reputation alone, seeing that reckless spirits were not
wanting, nor in the recesses of the hills those whose lives were
forfeit, would have availed him little if the protection of The
McMurrough had not been cast over him. Why it was cast over him, so
that he went to and fro in safety--men scarcely dared to guess; it was
a dark thing into which it were ill to peer too closely. But the fact
was certain; so certain that the anxiety of the young man that the
Colonel might meet with no hurt was plain and notorious, a thing
observed stealthily and with wonder. Did Colonel John saunter across
the court to the gateway, to look on the lake, The McMurrough was at
his shoulder in a twinkling, and thence, with a haggard eye, searched
the furze-bush for the glint of a gun-barrel, and the angle of the wall
for a lurking foe. It was the same if the Colonel, who seemed himself
unconscious of danger, fared as far as the ruined tower, or stretched
his legs on the road by the shore. The McMurrough could not be too near
him, walked with his hand on his arm, cast from time to time vigilant
looks to the rear. A score of times between rising and sleeping Colonel
John smiled at the care that forewent his steps and covered his
retreat; nor perhaps had the contempt in which he held James McMurrough
ever reached a higher pitch than while he thus stood from hour to hour
indebted to that young man for his life.
What Uncle Ulick, if he held the key to the matter, thought of it, or
how he explained it, if he had not, did not appear; nor, certain that
the big man would favour a course of action that made for peace, was
Colonel John overcurious to know. But what Flavia thought of the
position was a point which aroused his most lively curiosity. He gave
her credit for feelings so deep and for a nature so downright, that
time-serving or paltering were the last faults he looked to find in
her. He could hardly believe that she would consent to sit at meat with
him after what had happened; and possibly--for men are strange, and the
motives of the best are mixed--a desire to see how she would behave and
how she would bear herself in the circumstances had something to do
with the course he was taking.
That she consented to the plan was soon made clear. She even took part
in it. James could not be always at his elbow. The young man must
sometimes retire, it might be to vent his spleen in curses he dared not
utter openly, it might be to take other measures for his safety. When
this happened, the girl took her brother's place, stooped to dog the
Colonel's footsteps, and for a day or two, while the danger hung most
imminent, and every ditch to James's fancy held a lurking foe, cast the
mantle of her presence over the man she hated.
But stoop as she might, she never for a moment stooped to mask her
hate. In her incomings and her outgoings, in her risings-up and at
table with him, every movement of her body, the carriage of her head,
the glance of her eye, showed that she despised him; that she who now
suffered him was the same woman who had struck at his life, and,
failing, repented only the failure. In all she did, in parleying with
him, in bearing with his presence, in suffering his gaze, she made it
plain that she did it against her will; as the captive endures perforce
the company of the brigand in whose power he lies, but whom, when
opportunity offers, he will deliver with avidity to the cord or the
garotte. Because she must, and for her brother's sake, for the sake of
his name and pride and home, she was willing to do this, though she
abhorred it; and though every time that she broke bread with the
intruder, met his eyes, or breathed the air that he breathed, she told
herself that it was intolerable, that it must end.
Once or twice, feeling the humiliation more than she could bear, she
declared to her brother that the man must go. "Let him go!" she cried,
in uncontrollable excitement. "Let him go!"
"But he will not be going, Flavvy."
"He must go!" she replied.
"And Morristown his?" James would answer. "Ye are forgetting! Over and
above that, he's not one to do my bidding, nor yours!"
That was true. He would not go; he persisted in remaining and being
master. But it was not there the difficulty lay. If he had not made a
will before he came, a will that doubtless set the property of the
family for ever beyond James's reach, the thing had been simple and
Colonel John's shrift had been short. But now, to rid the earth of him
was to place the power in the hands of an unknown person, a stranger,
an alien, for whom the ties of family and honour would have no
stringency. True, the law was weak in Kerry. A writ was one thing, and
possession another. Whatever right a stranger might gain, it could only
be with difficulty and after the lapse of years that he would make it
good against the old family, or plant those about him who would ensure
his safety. But it did not do to depend on this. Within the last
generation, the McCarthys, a clan more powerful than the McMurroughs,
had been driven from the greater part of their lands; and on every side
English settlers were impinging on the old Irish families. A bold man
might indeed keep the forces of law at bay for a time; but James
McMurrough, notwithstanding the folly into which he had been led, was
no desperado. He had no desire to live with a rope round his neck, to
flee to the bog on the least alarm, and, in the issue, to give his name
to an Irish Glencoe.
A stranger position it had been hard to conceive; or one more
humiliating to a proud and untamed spirit such as Flavia's. What
arguments, what prayers, what threats The McMurrough used to bring her
to it, Colonel Sullivan could not guess. But though she consented, her
shame, her resentment, her hostility, were so patent that the effect
was to pair off Colonel John and herself, to pit them one against the
other, to match them one to one. The McMurrough, supple and insincere,
found little difficulty in subduing his temper to his interests, though
now and again his churlishness broke out. For Uncle Ulick, his habit
was to be easy and to bid others be easy; the dawn and dark of a day
reconciled him to most things. The O'Beirnes, sullen and distrustful,
were still glad to escape present peril. Looking for a better time to
come, they took their orders, helped to shield the common enemy,
supposed it policy, and felt no shame. Flavia alone, in presence of the
man who had announced that he meant to be master, writhed in helpless
revolt, swore that he should never be her master, swore that whoever
bowed the head she never would.
And Colonel Sullivan, seated, apparently at his ease, on the steep lap
of danger, found that this hostility and the hostile person held his
thoughts. A man may be an enthusiast in the cause of duty, he may have
plucked from the hideous slough of war the rare blue flower of
loving-kindness, he may in the strength of his convictions seem
sufficient to himself; he will still feel a craving for sympathy.
Colonel Sullivan was no exception. He found his thoughts dwelling on
the one untamable person, on the one enemy who would not stoop, and
whose submission seemed valuable. The others took up, in a greater or
less degree, the positions he assigned to them, gave him lip-service,
pretended that they were as they had been, and he as he had been. She
did not; she would not.
Presently he discovered with surprise that her attitude rendered him
unhappy. Secure in his sense of right, certain that he was acting for
the best, looking from a height of experience on that lowland in which
she toiled forward, following will-of-the-wisps, he should have been
indifferent. But he was not indifferent.
Meantime, she believed that there was no length to which she would not
go against him; she fancied that there was no weapon which she would
not stoop to pick up if it would hurt him. And presently she was tried.
A week had passed since the great fiasco. Again it was the eve of
Sunday, and in the usual course of things a priest would appear to
celebrate mass on the following day. This risk James was now unwilling
to run. His fears painted that as dangerous which had been done safely
Sunday by Sunday for years; and in a hang-dog, hesitating way, he let
Flavia know his doubts.
"Devil take me if I think he'll suffer it!" he said, kicking up the
turf with his toe. They were standing together by the waterside, Flavia
rebelling against the consciousness that it was only outside their own
walls that they could talk freely. "May be," he continued, "it will be
best to let Father O'Hara know--to let be for a week or two."
The girl turned upon him, in passionate reprehension. "Why?" she cried,
"Why?"
"Why, is it you're asking?" James answered sullenly. "Well, isn't he
master for the time, bad luck to him! And if he thinks we're beginning
to draw the boys together, he'll maybe put his foot down! And I'd
rather be stopping it myself, I'm telling you, and it's the truth, too,
just for a week or two, Flavvy, than be bidden by him."
"Never!" she cried.
"But----"
"Never! Never! Never!" she repeated firmly. "Let us turn our back on
our king by all means! But on our God, no! Let him do his worst!"
He was ashamed to persist, and he took another line. "I'm thinking of
O'Hara," he said. "It'll be four walls for him, or worse, if he's
taken."
"There's no one will be taking him," she answered steadfastly.
"But if he is?"
"I'm saying there's no one will be taking him."
James felt himself repulsed. He shrugged his shoulders and was silent.
Presently, "Flavvy," he said in a low tone, "I've a notion, my girl.
And it'll serve, I'm thinking. This can't be lasting."
She looked at him without much hope.
"Well?" she said coldly. She had begun to find him out.
He looked at her cunningly. "We might put the boot on the other leg,"
he said. "He's for informing. But what if we inform, my girl? It's the
first in the field that's believed. He's his tale of the Spanish ship,
and you know who. But what if we tell it first, and say that he came
with them and stayed behind to get us to move? Who's to say he didn't
land from the Spaniard, if we're all in a tale? And faith, he's no
friend here nor one that will open his mouth for him. A word at Tralee
will do it, and Luke Asgill has friends there, that will be glad to set
the ball rolling at his bidding. Once clapped up John Sullivan may
_squeal_, he'll not be the one to be believed, but those that put him
there. It'll be no more than to swear an information, and Luke Asgill
will do the rest."
Flavia shuddered. "They won't take his life?" she asked.
James frowned. "That would not suit us at all," he said. "Not at all!
We could do that for ourselves. Faith," with a sudden laugh, "you
didn't lack much of doing it, Flavvy! No; but a stone box and a ring
round his leg, and four walls to talk to--until such time as we have a
use for him, would be mighty convenient for everybody. He'd have
leisure to think of his dear relations, and of the neat way he
outwitted them, the clever devil! But for taking his life--I'm seeing
my way there too," with a grin--"it was naming his dear relations made
me think of it. They'd not bear to be informing without surety for his
life, to be sure! No!" with a chuckle. "And very creditable to them!"
Flavia stared across the water. She was very pale.
"We'll be wanting one or two to swear to it," he continued, "and the
rest to be silent. Sorra a bit of difficulty will there be about it!"
"But if," she said slowly, "he gets the first word? And tells the
truth?"
"The truth?" James McMurrough replied scornfully. "The truth is what
we'll make it! I'll see to that, my jewel."
She shivered. "Still," she said, "it will not be truth."
"What matter?" James answered. "It will cook his goose. Curse him," he
continued with violence, "what right had he to come here and thrust
himself into other folks' affairs?"
"I could have killed him," she said. "But----"
"But you can't," he rejoined. "And you know why."
"But this"--she continued with a shudder, "this is different."
"What will you be after?" he cried impatiently. "You are not turning
sheep-hearted at this time of day?"
"I am not sheep-hearted."
"What is it then, my girl?"
"I can't do this," she said. She was still very pale. Something had
come close to her, had touched her, that had never approached her so
nearly before.
He stared at her. "But he'll have his life," he said.
"It's not that," she answered slowly. "It's the way. I can't!" she
repeated. "I've tried, and I can't! It sickens me."
"And he's to do what he likes with us?" James cried.
"No, no!"
"And we're not to touch him without our gloves?"
She did not answer, and twice her brother repeated the taunt--twice
asked her, with a confidence he did not feel, what was the matter with
the plan. At last, "It's too vile!" she cried passionately. "It's too
horrible! It's to sink to what he is, and worse!" Her voice trembled
with the intensity of her feelings--as a man, who has scaled a giddy
height without faltering, sometimes trembles when he reaches the solid
ground. "Worse!" she repeated.
To relieve his feelings, perhaps to hide his shame, he cursed his enemy
anew. And "I wish I had never told you!" he added bitterly.
"It's too late now," she replied.
"Asgill could have managed it, and no one the wiser!"
"I believe you!" she replied quickly. "But not you! Don't do it,
James," she repeated, laying her hand on his arm and speaking with
sudden heat. "Don't you do it! Don't!"
"And we're to let the worst happen," he retorted, "and O'Hara perhaps
be seized----"
"God forbid!"
"That's rubbish! And this man be seized, and that man, as he pleases!
We're to let him rule over us, and we're to be good boys whatever
happens, and serve King George and turn Protestants, every man of us!"
"God forbid!" she repeated strenuously.
"As well turn," he retorted, "if we are to live slaves all our days! By
Heaven, Cammock was right when he said that he would let no woman knit
a halter for his throat!"
She did not ask him who had been the life and soul of the movement,
whose enthusiasm had set it going, and whose steadfastness maintained
it. She did not say that whatever the folly of the enterprise, and
however ludicrous its failure, she had gone into it whole-hearted, and
with one end in view. She did not tell him that the issue was a hundred
times more grievous and more galling to her than to him. Her eyes were
beginning to be opened to his failings, she was beginning to see that
all men did not override their womenfolk, or treat them roughly. But
the habit of giving way to him was still strong; and when, with another
volley of harsh, contemptuous words, he flung away from her, though her
last interjection was a prayer to him to refrain, she blamed herself
rather than him.
Now that she was alone, too, the priest's safety weighed on her mind.
If Colonel John betrayed him, she would never forgive herself.
Certainly it was unlikely he would; for in that part priests moved
freely, the authorities winked at their presence, and it was only
within sight of the walls of Tralee or of Galway that the law which
proscribed them was enforced. But her experience of Colonel
Sullivan--of his activity, his determination, his devilish
adroitness--made all things seem possible. He had been firm as fate in
the removal of the Bishop and Cammock; he had been turned no jot from
his purpose by her prayers, her rage, her ineffectual struggles--she
sickened at the remembrance of that moment. He was capable of
everything, this man who had come suddenly into their lives out of the
darkness of far Scandinavia, himself dark and inscrutable. He was
capable of everything, and if he thought fit--but at that point her
eyes alighted on a man who was approaching along the lake-road. It was
Father O'Hara himself. The priest was advancing as calmly and openly as
if no law made his presence a felony, or as if no Protestant breathed
the soft Irish air for a dozen leagues about.
Her brother's words had shaken Flavia's nerves. She was courageous, but
she was a woman. She flew to meet the priest, and with every step his
peril loomed larger before her fluttered spirits. The wretch had said
that he would be master, and a master who was a Protestant, a
fanatic----
She did not follow the thought to its conclusion. She waved a warning
even before she reached the Father. When she did, "Father!" she cried
eagerly, "you must get away, and come back after dark!"
The good man's jaw fell. He had been looking forward to good cheer and
a good bed, to a rare oasis of comfort in his squalid life. He cast a
wary look round him. "What has happened, my daughter?" he stammered.
"Colonel Sullivan!" Flavia gasped. "He is here, and he will certainly
give you up."
"Colonel Sullivan?"
"Yes. You were at the Carraghalin? You have heard what happened! He
will surely give you up!"
"Are the soldiers here?" the priest asked, with a blanched face.
"No, but he is here! He is in the house, and may come out at any
moment," Flavia explained. "Don't you understand?"
"Did he tell you----"
"What?"
"That he would inform?"
"No!" Flavia replied, thinking the man very dull. "But you wouldn't
trust him?"
The priest looked round to assure himself that the landscape held no
overt signs of danger. Then he brought back his eyes to the girl's
face, and he stroked his thin, brown cheek reflectively. He recalled
the scene in the bog, Colonel John's courage, and his thought for his
servant. And at last, "I am not thinking," he said coolly, "that he
will betray me. I am sure--I think I am sure," he continued, correcting
himself, "that he will not. He is a heretic, but he is a good man."
Flavia's cheek flamed. She started back. "A good man!" she cried in a
voice audible half a hundred yards away.
Father O'Hara looked a little ashamed of himself; but he stood by his
guns. "A heretic, of course," he said. "But, I'm thinking, a good man.
At any rate, I'm not believing that he will inform against me."
As quickly as it had come, the colour fled from Flavia's face, and left
it cold and hard. She looked at the priest as she had never looked at a
priest of her Church before. "You must take your own course then," she
said. And with a gesture which he did not understand she turned from
him, and leaving him, puzzled and disconcerted, she went away into the
house.
A good man! Heaven and earth and the sea besides! A good man! Father
O'Hara was a fool! A fool!