THE LIMIT
If there was one man more sorry than another that the Morristown rising
had been nipped in the bud it was Luke Asgill. It stood to his credit
that, though he had never dared to cross Flavia's will, he had tried,
and honestly tried, to turn James McMurrough from the attempt. But even
while doing this, he had known--as he had once told James with bitter
frankness--that his interest lay in the other scale; he had seen that
had he attended to it only, he would not have dissuaded The McMurrough,
but, on the contrary, would have egged him on, in the assurance that
the failure of the plot would provide his one best chance of winning
Flavia. A score of times, indeed, he had pictured, and with rapture,
the inevitable collapse. In the visions of his head upon his bed he had
seen the girl turn to him in the wreck of things--it might be to save
her brother's life, it might be to save her tender feet from the stones
of foreign streets. And in the same dream he had seen himself standing
by her, alone against the world; as, to do him justice, he would have
stood, no matter how sharp the stress or great the cost.
He had no doubt that he would be able to save her--in spite of herself
and whatever her indiscretion. For he belonged to a class that has ever
owned inordinate power in Ireland: the class of the middlemen with
roots in either camp--a grandam, who, perchance, still softens her clay
on the old cabin hearth, while a son preens it with his betters in
Trinity College. Such men carry into the ruling ranks their knowledge
of the modes of thought, the tricks and subterfuges of those from whom
they spring; and at once astute and overbearing, hard and supple, turn
the needs of rich and poor to their own advantage, and rise on the
common loss. Asgill, with money to lend in the town, and protections to
grant upon the bog, with the secrets of two worlds in his head or in
his deed-box, could afford to await with confidence the day when the
storm would break upon Morristown, and Flavia, in the ruin of all about
her, would turn to him for rescue.
Keen therefore was his chagrin when, through the underground channels
which were in his power, he heard two days after the event, and in
distant Tralee, what had happened. Some word of a large Spanish ship
seen off the point had reached the mess-room; but only he knew how
nearly work had been found for the garrison: only he, walking about
with a smooth face, listened for the alarm that did not come. For a
wonder he had been virtuous, he had given James his warning; yet he had
seen cakes and ale in prospect. Now, not only was the treat vanished
below the horizon, but stranger news, news still less welcome, was
whispered in his ear. The man whom he had distrusted from the first,
the man against whom he had warned The McMurrough, had done this. More,
in spite of the line he had taken, the man was still at Morristown, if
not honoured, protected, and if not openly triumphant, master in fact.
Luke Asgill swore horribly. But Colonel Sullivan had got the better of
him once, and he was not to be duped again by this Don Quixote's
mildness and love of peace. He knew him to be formidable, and he took
time to consider before he acted. He waited a week and examined the
matter on many sides before he took horse to see things with his own
eyes. Nor did he alight at the gate of Morristown until he had made
many a resolution to be wary and on his guard.
He had reason to call these to mind before his foot was well out of the
stirrup, for the first person he saw, after he had bidden his groom
take the horses to the stable, was Colonel Sullivan. Asgill had time to
scan his face before they met in the middle of the courtyard, the one
entering, the other leaving; and he judged that Colonel John's triumph
did not go very deep. He was looking graver, sadder, older;
finally--this he saw as they saluted one another--sterner.
Asgill stepped aside courteously, meaning to go by him. But the Colonel
stepped aside also, and so barred his way. "Mr. Asgill," he said--and
there was something of the martinet in his tone--"I will trouble you to
give me a word apart."
"A word apart?" Asgill answered. He was taken aback, and do what he
could the Colonel's grave eyes discomposed him. "With all the pleasure
in life, Colonel. But a little later, by your leave."
"I think now were more convenient, sir," the Colonel answered, "by your
leave."
"I will lay my cloak in the house, and then----"
"It will be more convenient to keep your cloak, I'm thinking," the
Colonel rejoined with dryness. And either because of the meaning in his
voice or the command in his eyes, Asgill gave way and turned with him,
and the two walked gravely and step for step through the gateway.
Outside the Colonel beckoned to a ragged urchin who was playing ducks
and drakes with his naked toes. "Go after Mr. Asgill's horses," he
said, and bid the man bring them back."
"Colonel Sullivan!"
The Colonel did not heed his remonstrance. "And follow us!" he
continued. "Are you hearing, boy? Go then."
"Colonel Sullivan," Asgill repeated, his face both darker and
paler--for there could be no doubt about the other's meaning--"I'm
thinking this is a strange liberty you're taking. And I beg to say I
don't understand the meaning of it."
"You wish to know the meaning of it?"
"I do."
"It means, sir," Colonel John replied, "that the sooner you start on
your return journey the better!"
Asgill stared. "The better you will be pleased, you mean!" he said. And
he laughed harshly.
"The better it will be for you, I mean," Colonel John answered.
Asgill flushed darkly, but he commanded himself--having those
injunctions to prudence fresh in his mind. "This is an odd tone," he
said. "And I must ask you to explain yourself further, or I can tell
you that what you have said will go for little. I am here upon the
invitation of my friend, The McMurrough----"
"This is not his house."
Asgill stared. "Do you mean----"
"I mean what I say," the Colonel answered. "This is not his house, as
you well know."
"But----"
"It is mine, and I do not propose to entertain you, Mr. Asgill,"
Colonel John continued. "Is that sufficiently plain?"
The glove was down. The two men looked at one another, while the knot
of beggars, gathered round the gate and just out of earshot, watched
them--in the dark as to all else, but aware with Irish shrewdness that
they were at grips. Asgill was not only taken by surprise, but he lay
under the disadvantage of ignorance. He did not know precisely how
things stood, much less could he explain this sudden attack. Yet if the
tall, lean man, serious and growing grey, represented one form of
strength, the shorter, stouter man, with the mobile face and the quick
brain, stood for another. Offhand he could think of no weak spot on his
side; and if he must fight, he would fight.
He forced a laugh. And, truly to think of this man, who had not seen
Morristown for a score of years, using the experience of a fortnight to
give him notice to quit, was laughable. The laugh he had forced became
real.
"More plain than hospitable, Colonel," he said. "Perhaps, after all, it
will be best so, and we shall understand one another."
"I am thinking so," Colonel Sullivan answered. It was plain that he did
not mean to be drawn from the position he had taken up.
"Only I think that you have overlooked this," Asgill continued
smoothly. "It is one thing to own a house and another to kick the logs
on the hearth; one thing to have the deeds and another--in the west--to
pass the punch-bowl! More, by token, 'tis a hospitable country this,
Colonel, none more so; and if there is one thing would annoy The
McMurrough and the young lady, his sister, more than another, it would
be to turn a guest from the door--that is thought to be theirs!"
"You mean that you will not take my bidding?" the Colonel said.
"Not the least taste in life," Asgill answered gaily, "unless it is
backed by the gentleman or the lady."
"Yet I believe, sir, that I have a means to persuade you," Colonel John
replied. "It is no more than a week ago, Mr. Asgill, since a number of
persons in my presence assumed a badge so notoriously treasonable that
a child could not doubt its meaning."
"In the west of Ireland," Asgill said, with a twinkle in his eye, "that
is a trifle, my dear sir, not worth naming."
"But if reported in the east?"
Asgill averted his face that its smile might not be seen. "Well," he
said, "it might be a serious matter there."
"I think you take me now," Colonel John rejoined. "I wish to use no
threats. The least said the soonest mended."
Asgill looked at him with half-shut eyes and a lurking smile--in truth,
with the amusement of a man watching the transparent scheming of a
child. "As you say, the least said the soonest mended," he rejoined.
"So--who is to report it in the east?"
"I will, if necessary."
"If----"
"If you push me to it."
Asgill raised his eyebrows impertinently. "An informer?" he said.
Colonel John did not flinch. "If necessary," he repeated.
"That would be serious," Asgill rejoined, "for many people. In the
first place for the young lady, your ward, Colonel. Then for your
kinsman--and Mr. Ulick Sullivan. After that for quite a number of
honest gentlemen, tolerably harmless and tolerably well-reputed here,
whose only fault is a tendency to heroics after dinner. It would be so
serious, and for so many, Colonel, that for my part I should be glad to
suffer in such good company. Particularly," he continued, with a droll
look, the droller for his appreciation of the Colonel's face of
discomfiture, "as being a Protestant and a Justice, I should, ten to
one, be the only person against whom the story would not pass. Eh,
Colonel, what do you think? So that, ten to one, I should go free, and
the others go to Geordie's prison!"
Colonel John had not, to be honest, a word to say. He was fairly
defeated, his flank turned, his guns captured. He had counted so surely
on a panic, on the man whom he knew to be a knave proving also a
coward, that even his anger--and he was very angry--could not hide his
discomfiture. He looked, indeed, so rueful, and at the same time so
wrathful, that Asgill laughed aloud.
"Come, Colonel," he said, "it is no use to scowl at me. We know you
never call any one out. Let me just hint that wits in Ireland are not
quite so slow as in colder countries, and that, had I been here a week
back, you had not found it so easy to----"
"To what, sir?"
"To send two old women to sea in a cockboat," Asgill replied. And he
laughed anew and loudly. But this time there was no gaiety in his
laugh. If the Colonel had not performed the feat in question, in how
different a state things might have been at this moment! Asgill felt
murderous towards him as he thought of that; and the weapon of the
flesh being out of the question--for he had no mind to face the
Colonel's small-sword--he sought about for an arm of another kind, and
had no difficulty in finding one. "More, by token," he continued, "if
you are going to turn informer, it was a pity you did not send the
young woman to sea with the old ones. But I'm thinking you'd not be
liking to be without her, Colonel?"
Colonel John turned surprisingly red: perhaps he did not quite know
why. "We will leave her out of the question, sir," he said haughtily.
"Or--that reminds me! That reminds me," he continued, with increasing
sternness. "You question my right to bid you begone----"
"By G--d, I do!" Asgill cried, with zest. He was beginning to enjoy
himself.
"But you forget, I think, another little matter in the past that is
known to me--and that you would not like disclosed, I believe, sir."
"You seem to have been raking things up, Colonel."
"One must deal with a rogue according to his roguery," Colonel John
retorted.
Asgill's face grew dark. This was taking the buttons off with a
vengeance. He made a movement, but restrained himself. "You don't mince
matters," he said.
"I do not."
"You may be finding it an unfortunate policy before long," Asgill said
between his teeth. He was moved at last, angered, perhaps apprehensive
of what was coming.
"Maybe, sir," Colonel John returned, "maybe. But in the meantime let me
remind you that your tricks as a horsedealer would not go far to
recommend you as a guest to my kinswoman."
"Oh?"
"Who shall assuredly hear who seized her mare if you persist in forcing
your company upon her."
"Upon her?" Asgill repeated, in a peculiar tone. "I see."
Colonel John reddened. "You know now," he said. "And if you
persist----"
"You will tell her," Asgill took him up, "that I--shall I say--abducted
her mare?"
"I shall tell her without hesitation."
"Or scruple?"
Colonel Sullivan glowered at him, but did not answer.
Asgill laughed a laugh of honest contempt. "And she," he said, "will
not believe you if you swear it a score of times! Try, sir! Try! You
will injure yourself, you will not injure me. Why, man," he continued,
in a tone of unmeasured scorn, "you are duller than I thought you were!
The ice is still in your wits and the fog in your brain. I thought,
when I heard what you had done, that you were the man for Kerry!
But----"
"What is it? What's this?"
The speaker was James McMurrough, who had come from the house in search
of the kinsman he dared not suffer out of his sight. He had approached
unnoticed, and his churlish tone showed that what he had overheard was
not to his liking. But Asgill supposed that James's ill-humour was
directed against his enemy, and he appealed to him.
"What is it?" he repeated with energy; "I'll tell you!"
"Then you'll be telling me indoors!" James answered curtly.
"No!" said Colonel Sullivan.
But at that the young man exploded. "No?" he cried. "No? And, why no?
Confusion, sir, it's too far you are driving us," he continued
passionately. "Is it at your bidding I must stand in a mob of beggars
at my own gate--I, The McMurrough? And be telling and taking for all
the gossoons in the country to hear? No? But it's yes, I say! There's
bounds to it all, and if you must be falling to words with my friends,
quarrel like gentlemen within doors, and not in a parcel of loons at
the gate."
He turned without waiting for a reply and strode into the courtyard.
Colonel John hesitated a moment, then he stood aside, and, with a stern
face, he invited Asgill to precede him. The Justice did so, smiling. He
had won the first bout; and now, if he was not much mistaken, his
opponent had made a false move.
That opponent, following with a sombre face, began to be of the same
opinion. In his simplicity he had supposed that it would be easy to
bell the cat. He had seen, he fancied, a way to do it in a corner,
quietly, with little outcry and no disturbance. But the cat had teeth
and claws and the cunning of a cat, and was not, it now appeared, an
animal easy to bell.
They passed into the house, The McMurrough leading. There were two or
three buckeens in the hall, and Darby and one of the down-at-heel
serving-boys were laying the evening meal. "You'll be getting out,"
James said curtly.
"We will," replied one of the men. And they trooped out at the back.
"Now, what is it?" the McMurrough asked, turning on his followers and
speaking in a tone hardly more civil.
"It's what you're saying--Get out!" Asgill answered smiling. "Only it's
the Colonel here's for saying it, and it seems I'm the one to get out."
"What the saints do you mean?" James growled. "Sorra bit of your fun am
I wishing at this present!" He wanted no trouble, and he saw that here
was trouble.
"I can tell you in a few words," Colonel Sullivan answered. "You know
on what terms we are here. I wish to do nothing uncivil, and I was
looking for this gentleman to take a hint and go quietly. He will not,
it seems, and so I must say plainly what I mean. I object to his
presence here."
James stared. He did not understand. "Why, man, he's no Jacobite," he
cried, "whoever the other is!" His surprise was genuine.
"I will say nothing as to that," Colonel John answered precisely.
"Then, faith, what are you saying?" James asked. Asgill stood by
smiling, aware that silence would best fight his battle.
"This," Colonel John returned. "That I know those things of him that
make him unfit company here."
"The devil you do!"
"And----"
But James's patience was at an end. "Unfit company for whom?" he cried.
"Eh! Unfit company for whom? Is it Darby he'll be spoiling? Or Thaddy
the lad? Or"--resentment gradually overcoming irony--"is it Phelim or
Morty he'll be tainting the souls of, and he a Protestant like
yourself? Curse me, Colonel Sullivan, it's clean out of patience you
put me! Are we boys at school, to be scolded and flouted and put right
by you? Unfit company? For whom? For whom, sir? I'd like to know. More,
by token, I'd like to know also where this is to end--and I will, by
your leave! For whom, sir?"
"For your sister," Colonel John replied. "Without saying more, Mr.
Asgill is not of the class with whom your grandfather----"
"My grandfather--be hanged!" cried the angry young man--angry with some
cause, for it must be confessed that Colonel John, with the best
intentions, was a little heavy-handed. "You said you'd be master here,
and faith," he continued with bitterness, "it's master you mean to be.
But there's a limit! By Heaven, there's a limit----"
"Yes, James, there is a limit!" a voice struck in--a voice as angry as
The McMurrough's, but vibrating to a purer note of passion; so that the
indignation which it expressed seemed to raise the opposition to
Colonel John's action to a higher plane. "There is a limit, Colonel
Sullivan!" Flavia repeated, stepping from the foot of the stairs, on
the upper flight of which--drawn from her room by the first
outburst--she had heard the whole. "And it has been reached! It has
been reached when the head of The McMurroughs of Morristown is told on
his own hearth whom he shall receive and whom he shall put to the door!
Limit is it? Let me tell you, sir, I would rather be the poorest exile
than live thus. I would rather beg my bread barefoot among strangers,
never to see the sod again, never to hear the friendly Irish tongue,
never to smell, the peat reek, than live on this tenure, at the mercy
of a hand I loathe, on the sufferance of a man I despise, of an
informer, a traitor, ay, an apostate----"
"Flavia! Flavia!" Colonel John's remonstrance was full of pain.
"Ah, don't call me that!" she rejoined passionately. "Don't make me
hate my own name! Better a hundred times an open foe----"
"Have I ever been anything but an open foe?" he returned. "On this
point at any rate?"
She swept the remonstrance by. "Better," she cried vehemently, "far
better a fate we know, a lot we understand; far better freedom and
poverty, than to live thus--yesterday a laughing-stock, to-day slaves;
yesterday false to our vows, to-day false to our friends! Oh, there
must be an end! There----"
She choked on the word, and her distress moved Asgill to do a strange
thing. He had listened to her with an admiration that for the time
purified the man, lifted him above selfishness, put the desire to
triumph far from him. Now he stepped forward. "I would rather never
cross this threshold again," he cried; "never, ay, believe me, I would
rather never see you again, than give you this pain! I go, dear lady, I
go! And do not let one thought of me trouble or distress you! Let this
gentleman have his way. I do not understand. I do not ask to
understand, how he holds you, or constrains you. But I shall be
silent."
He seemed to the onlookers as much raised above himself as Colonel John
seemed depressed below himself. There could be no doubt with whom the
victory lay: with whom the magnanimity. Asgill stood erect, almost
beatified, a Saint George, a knight of chivalry. Colonel Sullivan
showed smaller to the eye, stood bowed and grey-faced, a man beaten and
visibly beaten.
But as Asgill turned on his heel Flavia found her voice. "Do not go!"
she cried impulsively. "There must be an end! There must be an end of
this!"
But Asgill insisted. He saw that to go, to submit himself to the sway
against which she revolted was to impress himself upon her mind, was to
commend himself to her a hundred times more seriously than if he
stayed. And he persisted. "No," he said; "permit me to go." He stepped
forward and, with a grace borrowed for the occasion, and with lips that
trembled at his daring, he raised and kissed her hand. "Permit me to
go, dear lady. I would rather banish myself a hundred times than bring
ill into this house or differences into this family."
"Flavia!" Colonel Sullivan said, finding his voice at last, "hear
first, I am begging you, what I have to say! Hear it, since against my
will the matter has been brought to your knowledge."
"That last I can believe!" she cried spitefully. "But for hearing, I
choose the part this gentleman has chosen--to go from your presence.
What?" looking at the Colonel with white cheeks and flaming
eyes--Asgill had turned to go from the room--"has it come to this? That
we must seek your leave to live, to breathe, to have a guest, to eat
and sleep, and perhaps to die? Then I say--then I say, if this be so,
we have no choice but to go. This is no place for us!"
"Flavia!"
"Ah, do not call me that!" she retorted. "My hope, joy, honour, are in
this house, and you have disgraced it! My brother is a McMurrough, and
what have you made of him? He cowers before your eye! He has no will
but yours! He is as good as dumb--before his master! You flog us like
children, but you forget that we are grown, and that it is more than
the body that smarts. It is shame we feel--shame so bitter that if a
look could lay you dead at my feet, though it cost us all, though it
left us beggared, I would look it joyfully--were I alone! But you,
cowardly interloper, a schemer living on our impotence, walk on and
trample upon us----"
"Enough," Colonel Sullivan cried, intolerable pain in his voice. "You
win! You have a heart harder than the millstone, more set than ice! I
call you to witness I have struggled hard, I have struggled hard,
girl----"
"For the mastery," she cried venomously. "And for your master, the
devil!"
"No," he replied, more quietly. "I think for God. If I was wrong, may
He forgive me!"
"I never will!" she protested.
"I shall not ask for your forgiveness," he retorted. He looked at her
silently, and then, in an altered tone, "The more," he said, "as my
mind is changed again. Ay, thank God, changed again. A minute ago I was
weak; now I am strong, and I will do my duty as I have set myself to do
it. When I came here I came to be a peacemaker, I came to save the
great from his folly and the poor from his ignorance, to shield the
house of my fathers from ruin and my kin from the gaol and the gibbet.
And I stand here still, and I shall persist--I shall persist."
"You will?" she exclaimed.
"I shall! I shall remain and persist."
Passion choked her. She could not find words. After all she had said he
would persist. He was not to be moved--he would persist. He would still
trample upon them, still be master. The house was no longer theirs, nor
was anything theirs. They were to have no life, no will, no
freedom--while he lived. Ah, while he lived. She made an odd gesture
with her hands, and turned and went up the stairs, leaving him master
of the field. The worse for him! The worse, the worse, the worse for
him!