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

/> CHAPTER XIII

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