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

the master of all. But doubtless," with an irrepressible resentment in her voice, "you will be able presently to put matters on a better footing."

With a formal curtsey she left them then, and retreated up the stairs, which at the rear of the hall ascended to a gallery that ran right and left to the rooms on the first floor.

Colonel Sullivan turned with Uncle Ulick to the nearest window and looked out on the untidy forecourt. "You know, I suppose," he said, in a tone which the men beside the fire, who were regarding him curiously, could not hear, "the gist of Sir Michael's letters to me?"

Uncle Ulick drummed with his fingers on the window-sill. "Faith, the most of it," he said.

"Was he right in believing that her brother intended to turn Protestant for the reasons he told me?"

"It's like enough, I'm thinking."

"Does she know? The girl?"

"Not a breath! And I would not be the one to tell her," Uncle Ulick added, with some grimness.

"Yet it may be necessary?"

Uncle Ulick shook his fist at a particularly importunate beggar who had ventured across the forecourt. "It's a gift the little people never gave me to tell unpleasant things," he said. "And if you'll be told by me, Colonel, you'll travel easy. The girl has a spirit, and you'll not persuade her to stand in her brother's light, at all, at all! She has it fast that her grandfather wronged him--and old Sir Michael was queer-tempered at times, God forbid I should say the other! The gift to her will go for nothing, you'll see!"

"She must be a very noble girl."

"Devil a better has He made!"

"But if her grandfather was right in thinking so ill of his grandson?"

"I'm not saying he wasn't," Uncle Ulick muttered.

"Then we must not let her set the will aside."

Ulick Sullivan shrugged his shoulders. "Let?" he said. "Faith! it's but little it'll be a question of that! James is for taking, and she's for giving! He's her white swan, and to her mind, sleeping or waking, as Darby says, he'd tread on eggs and sorra a chick the less! Let? Who's to hinder?"

"You."

"It's easiness has been my ruin, and faith! it's too late to change."

"Then I?"

Uncle Ulick smiled. "To be sure," he said slily, "there's you, Colonel."

"The whole estate is mine, you see, in law."

"Ay, but there's no law west of Tralee," Uncle Ulick retorted. "That's where old Sir Michael made his mistake. Anywhere through the length and breadth of old Ireland, if 'twas in the Four Courts themselves, and all the garrison round you, you'd be on honour, Colonel, to take no advantage. But here it would not be the cold shoulder and a little unpleasantness, and a meeting or two on the ground, that's neither here nor there--that you'd be like to taste. I'd not be knowing what would happen if it went about that you were ousting them that had the right, and you a Protestant. He's not the great favourite, James McMurrough, and whether he or the girl took most 'd be a mighty small matter. But if you think to twist it, so as to play cuckoo--though with the height of fair meaning and not spying a silver penny of profit for yourself, Colonel--I take leave to tell you, he's a most unpopular bird."

"But, Sir Michael," the Colonel, who had listened with a thoughtful face, answered, "left all to me to that very end--that it might be secured to the girl."

"Sorrow one of me says no!" Ulick rejoined. "But----"

"But what?" the Colonel replied politely. "The more plainly you speak the more you will oblige me."

But all that Ulick Sullivan could be brought to say at that moment--perhaps he knew that curious eyes were on their conference--was that Kerry was "a mighty queer country," and the thief of the world wouldn't know what would pass there by times. And besides, there were things afoot--faith, and there were, that he'd talk about at another time.

Then he changed the subject abruptly, asking the Colonel if he had seen a big ship in the bay.

"What colours?" the Colonel asked--the question men ask who have been at sea.

"Spanish, maybe," Uncle Ulick answered. "Did you sight such a one?"

But the Colonel had seen no big ship.


CHAPTER III

A SCION OF KINGS

The family at Morristown had been half an hour at table, and in the interval a man of more hasty judgment than Colonel Sullivan might have made up his mind on many points. Whether the young McMurrough was offensive of set purpose, and because an unwelcome guest was present, or whether he merely showed himself as he was--an unlicked cub--such a man might have determined. But the Colonel held his judgment in suspense, though he leaned to the latter view of the case. He knew that even in England a lad brought up among women was apt to develop a quarrelsome uncouthness, a bearishness, intolerable among men of the world. How much more likely, he reflected, was this to be the case when the youth belonged to a proscribed race, and lived, a little chieftain among his peasants, in a district wild and remote, where for a league each way his will was law. The Colonel made allowances, and, where need was, he checked his indignation. If he blamed any one, he let his censure rest on the easy temper of Uncle Ulick. The giant could have shaken the young man, who was not over robust, with a single finger; and at any time in the last ten years might have taught him a lifelong lesson.

At their first sitting down the young man had shown his churlishness. Beginning by viewing the Colonel in sulky silence, he had answered his kinsman's overtures only by a rude stare or a boorish word. His companions, two squireens of his own age, and much of his own kidney, nudged him from time to time, and then the three would laugh in such a way as to make it plain that the stranger was the butt of the jest. Presently, overcoming the reluctant impression which Colonel John's manners made upon him, the young man found his tongue, and, glancing at his companions to bring them into the joke, "Much to have where you come from, Colonel?" he asked.

"As in most places," the Colonel replied mildly, "by working for it, or earning it after one fashion or another. Indeed, my friend, country and country are more alike, except on the outside, than is thought by those who stay at home."

"You've seen a wealth of countries, I'm thinking?" the youth asked with a sneer.

"I have crossed Europe more than once."

"And stayed in none?"

"If you mean----"

"Faith, I mean you've come back!" the young man exclaimed with a loud laugh, in which his companions joined. "You'll mind the song"--and with a wink he trolled out,

"In such contempt in short I fell, Which was a very hard thing, They devilish badly used me there, For nothing but a farthing.

"You're better than that, Colonel, for the worst we can say of you is, you's come back a penny!"

"If you mean a bad one, come home," the Colonel rejoined, taking the lad good-humouredly--he was not blind to the flush of indignation which dyed Flavia's cheeks--"I'll take the wit for welcome. To be sure, to die in Ireland is an Irishman's hope, all the world over."

"True for you, Colonel!" Uncle Ulick said. And "For shame, James," he continued, speaking with more sternness than was natural to him. "Faith, and if you talked abroad as you talk at home, you'd be for having a pistol-ball in your gizzard in the time it takes you to say your prayers--if you ever say them, my lad!"

"What are my prayers to you, I'd like to know?" James retorted offensively.

"Easy, lad, easy!"

The young man glared at him. "What is it to you," he cried still more rudely, "whether I pray or no?"

"James! James!" Flavia pleaded under her breath.

"Do you be keeping your feet to yourself!" he cried, betraying her kindly manoeuvre. "And let my shins be! I want none of your guiding! More by token, miss, don't you be making a sight of yourself as you did this morning, or you'll smart for it. What is it to you if O'Sullivan Og takes our dues for us--and a trifle over? And, sorra one of you doubt it, if Mounseer comes jawing here, it's in the peat-hole he'll find himself! Or the devil the value of a cork he gets out of me; that's flat! Eh, Phelim?"

"True for you, McMurrough!" the youth who sat beside him answered, winking. "We'll soak him for you."

"So do you be taking a lesson, Miss Flavvy," the young Hector continued, "and don't you go threatening honest folk with your whip, or it'll be about your own shoulders it'll fall! I know what's going on, and when I want your help, I'll ask it."

The girl's lip trembled. "But it's robbery, James," she murmured.

"To the devil with your robbery!" he retorted, casting a defiant eye round the table. "They'll pay our dues, and what they get back will be their own!"

"And it's rich they'll be with it!" Phelim chuckled.

"Ay, faith, it's the proud men they'll be that day!" laughed Morty, his brother. "Sure, when it comes!" with a wink.

"Fine words, my lad," Uncle Ulick replied quietly; "but it's my opinion you'll fall on trouble, and more than'll please you, with Crosby of Castlemaine. And why, I'd like to know? 'Tis a grand trade, and has served us well since I can remember! Why can't you take what's fair out of it, and let the poor devil of a sea-captain that's supplied many an honest man's table have his own, and go his way? Take my word for it, it's ruing it you'll be, when all's done."

"It's not from Crosby of Castlemaine I'll rue it!" James McMurrough answered arrogantly. "I'll shoot him like a bog-snipe if he's sorra a word to say to it! That for him, the black sneak of a Protestant!" And he snapped his fingers. "But his day will soon be past, and we'll be dealing with him. The toast is warming for him now!"

Phelim slapped his thigh. "True for you, McMurrough! That's the talk!"

"That's the talk!" chorussed Morty.

The Colonel opened his mouth to speak, but he caught Flavia's look of distress, and he refrained. And "For my part," Morty continued jovially, "I'd not wait--for you know what! The gentleman's way's the better; early or late, Clare or Kerry, 'tis all one! A drink of the tea, a peppered devil, and a pair of the beauties, is an Irishman's morning!"

"And many's the poor soul has to mourn it--long and bitterly," the Colonel said. His tender corn being trod upon, he could be silent no longer. "For shame, sir, for shame!" he added warmly.

Morty stared. "Begorra, and why?" he cried, in a tone which proved that he asked the question in perfect innocence.

"Why?" Colonel John repeated. And for a moment, in face of prejudices so strong, and of prepossessions so deeply rooted, he paused. Then, "Why?" he repeated. "Can you ask me when you know how many a