The Wild Geese - Stanley John Weyman (best english books to read txt) 📗

for it afterwards," Colonel John repeated quietly. "Kinsman, come here," he continued with unusual gravity. And taking Uncle Ulick by the arm he led him to the end of the garden, where the walk looked on the lake and bore some likeness to a roughly made terrace. Pausing where the black masses of the Florence yews, most funereal of trees, still sheltered their forms from the house, he stood silent. The mist moved slowly on the surface of the water and crawled about their feet. But the sky to eastward was growing red, the lower clouds were flushed with rose-colour, the higher hills were warm with the coming of the sun. Here and there on the slopes which faced them a cotter's hovel stood solitary in its potato patch or its plot of oats. In more than one place three or four cottages made up a tiny hamlet, from which the smoke would presently rise. To English eyes, to our eyes, the scene, these oases in the limitless brown of the bog, had been wild and rude; but to Colonel John, long familiar with the treeless plains of Poland and the frozen flats of Lithuania, it spoke of home, it spoke of peace and safety and comfort, and even of a narrow plenty. The soft Irish air lapped it, the distances were mellow, memories of boyhood rounded off all that was unsightly or cold.

He pointed here and there with his hand; and with seeming irrelevance. "You'd be sorry afterwards," he said, "for you'd think of this, Ulick. God forbid that I should say there are no things for which even this should be sacrificed. God forbid I should deny that even for this too high a price may be paid. But if you play this away in wantonness--if that which you are all planning come about, and you fail, as they failed in Scotland three years back, and as you will, as you must fail here--it is of this, it is of the women and the children under these roofs that will go up in smoke, that you'll be thinking, Ulick, at the last! Believe me or not, this is the last thing you'll see! It's to a burden as well as an honour you're born where men doff caps to you; and it's that burden will lie the black weight on your soul at the last. There's old Darby and O'Sullivan Og's wife--and Pat Mahony and Judy Mahony's four sons--and Mick Sullivan and Tim and Luke the Lamiter--and the three Sullivans at the landing, and Phil the crowder, and the seven tenants at Killabogue--it's of them, it's of them"--as he spoke his finger moved from hovel to hovel--"and their like I'm thinking. You cry them and they follow, for they're your folks born. But what do they know of England or England's strength, or what is against them, or the certain end? They think, poor souls, because they land their spirits and pay no dues, and the Justices look the other way, and a bailiffs life here, if he'd a writ, would be no more worth than a woodcock's, and the laws, bad and good, go for naught--they think the black Protestants are afraid of them! While you and I, you and I know, Ulick," he continued, dropping his voice, "'tis because we lie so poor and distant and small, they give no heed to us! We know! And that's our burden."

The big man's face worked. He threw out his arms. "God help us!" he cried.

"He will, in His day! I tell you again, as I told you the hour I came, I, who have followed the wars for twenty years, there is no deed that has not its reward when the time is ripe, nor a cold hearth that is not paid for a hundredfold!"

Uncle Ulick looked sombrely over the lake. "I shall never see it," he said. "Never, never! And that's hard. Notwithstanding, I'll do what I can to quiet them--if it be not too late."

"Too late?"

"Ay, too late, John. But anyway, I'll be minding what you say. On the other hand, you must go, and this very day that ever is."

"There are some here that I must not be seeing?" Colonel John said shrewdly.

"That's it."

"And if I do not go, Ulick? What then, man?"

"Whisht! Whisht!" the big man cried in unmistakable distress. "Don't say the word! Don't say the word, John, dear."

"But I must say it," Colonel John answered, smiling. "To be plain, Ulick, here I am and here I stay. They wish me gone because I am in the way of their plans. Well, and can you give me a better reason for staying?"

What argument Ulick would have used, what he was opening his mouth to say, remains unknown. Before he could reply the murmur of a voice near at hand startled them both. Uncle Ulick's face fell, and the two turned with a single movement to see who came.

They discerned, in the shadow of the wall of yew, two men, who had just passed through the wicket into the garden.

The strangers saw them at the same moment, and were equally taken by surprise. The foremost of the two, a sturdy, weather-beaten man, with a square, stern face and a look of power, laid his hand on his cutlass--he wore a broad blade in place of the usual rapier. The other, whom every line of his shaven face, as well as his dress, proclaimed a priest--and perhaps more than a priest--crossed himself, and muttered something to his companion. Then he came forward.

"You take the air early, gentlemen," he said, the French accent very plain in his speech, "as we do. If I mistake not," he continued, looking with an easy smile at Colonel John, "your Protestant kinsman, of whom you told me, Mr. Sullivan? I did not look to meet you, Colonel Sullivan; but I do not doubt you are man of the world enough to excuse, if you cannot approve, the presence of the shepherd among his sheep. The law forbids, but----" still smiling, he finished the sentence with a gesture in the air.

"I approve all men," Colonel John answered quietly, "who are in their duty, father."

"But wool and wine that pay no duty?" the priest replied, turning with a humorous look to his companion, who stood beside him unsmiling. "I'm not sure that Colonel Sullivan extends the same indulgence to free-traders, Captain Machin."

Colonel John looked closely at the man thus brought to his notice. Then he raised his hat courteously. "Sir," he said, "the guests of the Sullivans, whoever they be, are sacred to the Sullivans."

Uncle Ulick's eyes had met the priest's, as eyes meet in a moment of suspense. At this he drew a deep breath of relief. "Well said," he muttered. "Bedad, it is something to have seen the world!"

"You have served under the King of Sweden, I believe?" the ecclesiastic continued, addressing Colonel John with a polite air. He held a book of offices in his hand, as if his purpose in the garden had been merely to read the service.

"Yes."

"A great school of war, I am told?"

"It may be called so. But I interrupt you, father, and with your permission I will bid you good-morning. Doubtless we shall meet again."

"At breakfast, I trust," the ecclesiastic answered, with a certain air of intention. Then he bowed and they returned it, and the two pairs gave place to one another with ceremony, Colonel John and Ulick passing out through the garden wicket, while the strangers moved on towards the walk which looked over the lake. Here they began to pace up and down.

With his hand on the house door Uncle Ulick made a last attempt. "For God's sake, be easy and go," he muttered, his voice unsteady, his eyes fixed on the other's, as if he would read his mind. "Leave us to our fate! You cannot save us--you see what you see, you know what it means. And for what I know, you know the man. You'll but make our end the blacker."

"And the girl?"

Uncle Ulick tossed his hands in the air. "God help her!" he said.

"Shall not we too help her?"

"We cannot."

"It may be. Still, let us do our duty," Colonel John replied. He was very grave. Things were worse, the plot was thicker, than he had feared.

Uncle Ulick groaned. "You'll not be bidden?" he said.

"Not by an angel," Colonel John answered steadfastly. "And I've seen none this morning, but only a good man whose one fault in life is to answer to all men 'Sure, and I will!'"

Uncle Ulick started as if the words stung him. "You make a jest of it!" he said. "Heaven send we do not sorrow for your wilfulness. For my part, I've small hope of that same." He opened the door, and, turning his back upon his companion, went heavily, and without any attempt at concealment, past the pantry and up the stairs to his room. Colonel John heard him slip the bolt, and, bearing a heavy heart himself, he knew that the big man was gone to his prayers.

To answer "Yes" to all comers and all demands is doubtless, in the language of Uncle Ulick, a mighty convenience, and a great softener of the angles of life. But a time comes to the most easy when he must answer "No," or go open-eyed to ruin. Then he finds that from long disuse the word will not shape itself; or if uttered, it is taken for naught. That time had come for Uncle Ulick. Years ago his age and experience had sufficed to curb the hot blood about him. But he had been too easy to dictate while he might; he had let the reins fall from his hands; and to-day he must go the young folks' way--ay, go, seeing all too plainly the end of it.

It was not his fate only. Many good men in the '15 and the '45, ay, and in the war of La Vendee, went out against their better judgment, borne along by the energy of more vehement spirits--went out, aware, as they rode down the avenue, and looked back at the old house, that they would see it no more; that never again except in dreams would they mount from the horse-block which their grandsires' feet had hollowed, walk through the coverts which their fathers had planted, or see the faces of the aged serving-men who had taught their childish fingers to hold the reins and level the fowling-piece!

But Colonel John was of another kind and another mind. Often in the Swedish wars had he seen a fair country-side changed in one day into a waste, from the recesses of which naked creatures with wolfish eyes stole out at night, maddened by their wrongs, to wreak a horrid vengeance on the passing soldier. He knew that the fairest parts of Ireland had undergone such a fate within living memory; and how often before, God and her dark annals alone could tell! Therefore he was firmly minded, as firmly minded as one man could be, that not again should the corner of Kerry under his eyes, the corner he loved, the corner entrusted to him, suffer that fate.

Yet when he descended to breakfast, his face told no tale of his thoughts, and he greeted with a smile the unusual brightness of the morning. As he stood at the door, that looked on the courtyard, he had a laughing word for the beggars--never were beggars lacking at the door of Morristown. Nor as he sunned