"Not with this salmon," James McMurrough struck in contemptuously. "Eat your supper and leave those tales to the women!"

Uncle Ulick made no reply, and a moment later Darby entered, slid round the table to Uncle Ulick's side, and touched his shoulder. Whether he whispered a word or not Colonel John did not observe, but forthwith the big man rose and went out.

This time it was James McMurrough who laid down his knife. "What in the name of the Evil One is it?" he cried, in a temper. "Can't a man eat his meat in peace, but all the world must be tramping the floor?"

"Oh, whisht! whisht!" Darby muttered, in a peculiar tone.

James leapt up. He was too angry to take a hint. "You old fool!" he cried, heedless of Asgill's hand, which was plucking at his skirts.

"What is it? What do you mean with your 'whishts' and your nods?

What----"

But the old butler had turned his back on his master, and gone out in a panic. Fortunately at this moment Flavia showed at the door. "The fault's mine, James," she said, in a clear, loud tone. And the Colonel saw that her colour was high and her eyes were dancing. "I couldn't bear to leave her at once, the darling! That was it; and besides, I took a fear----"

"The pastern's right enough," Uncle Ulick struck in, entering behind her and closing the door with the air of a big man who does not mean to be trifled with. "Sound as your own light foot, my jewel, and sounder than James's head! Be easy, be easy, lad," he continued, with a trifle of sternness. "Sure, you're spoiling other men's meat, and forgetting the Colonel's present, not to speak of Mr. Asgill, that, being a Justice, is not used to our Kerry tantrums!"

Possibly this last was a hint, cunningly veiled. At any rate, The McMurrough took his seat again with a better grace than usual, and Asgill made haste to take up the talk. The Colonel reflected; nor did he find it the least odd thing that Flavia, who had been so full of distress at the loss of her mare, said little of the rescuer's adventures, nor much of the mare herself. Yet the girl's eyes sparkled, and her whole aspect was changed in the last hour. She seemed, as far as he could judge, to be in a state of the utmost excitement; she had shaken off the timidity which her brother's temper too often imposed on her, and with it her reticence and her shyness before strangers. All the Irish humour in her fluttered to the surface, and her tongue ran with an incredible gaiety. Uncle Ulick, the O'Beirnes, the buckeens, laughed frank admiration--sometimes at remarks which the Colonel could not understand, sometimes at more obvious witticisms. Asgill was her slave. Darby, with the familiarity of the old servant, chuckled openly and rubbed his hands at her sallies; the footboys guffawed in corners, and more than one dish rolled on the floor without drawing down a rebuke. Even her brother regarded her with unwilling amus.e.m.e.nt, and did not always refrain from applause.

Could all this, could the change in her spring from the recovery of the mare, of which she said scarce a word? Colonel John could hardly believe it; and, indeed, if such were the case, she was ungrateful.

For, for the recoverer of her favourite she had no words, and scarce a look. Rather, it seemed to him that there must be two Flavias: the one shy, modest, and, where her country was not a.s.sailed, of a reserve beyond reproach; the other Flavia, a shoot of the old tree, a hoyden, a castback to Sir Michael's wild youth and the gay days of the Restoration Court.

He listened to her drollery, her ringing laugh, her arch sayings with some blame, but more admiration. After all, what had he a right to expect in this remote corner of the land, cut off by twenty leagues of bog and mountain from modern refinement, culture, thought, in this old tribal house, the last refuge of a proscribed faith and a hated race?

Surely, no more than he found--nay, not a t.i.the of that he found. For, listening with a kindlier heart--even he, hurt by her neglect, had judged her for a while too harshly--he discerned that at her wildest and loudest, in the act of bandying cryptic jests with the buckeens, and uttering much that was thoughtless--Flavia did not suffer one light or unmaidenly word to pa.s.s her lips.

He gave her credit for that; and in the act he learned, with a reflection on his stupidity, that there was method in her madness; ay, and meaning--but he had not hitherto held the key to it--in her jests.

On a sudden--he saw now that this was the climax to which she had been leading up--she sprang to her feet, carried away by her excitement.

Erect, defiant--nay, triumphant--she flung her handkerchief into the middle of the table, strewn as it was with a medley of gla.s.ses and flasks and disordered dishes.

"Who loves me, follows me!" she cried, a queer exultation in her tone--"across the water!"

They pounced on the kerchief, like dogs let loose from the leash--every man but the astonished Colonel. For an instant the place was a pandemonium, a Babel. In a twinkling the kerchief was torn, amid cries of the wildest enthusiasm, into as many fragments as there were men round the table.

"All!--all!" she cried, still standing erect, and hounding them on with the magic of her voice, while her beautiful face blazed with excitement. "All--but you?"--with which, for the briefest s.p.a.ce, she turned to Colonel John. Her eyes met his. They asked him a defiant question: they challenged the answer.

"I do not understand," he replied, taken by surprise. But indeed he did understand only too well. "Is it a game?"

The men were pinning the white shreds on their coats above their hearts--even her brother, obedient for once. But at that word they turned as one man to him, turned flushed, frowning faces and pa.s.sionate eyes on him. But Flavia was before them; excitement had carried her farther than she had meant to go, yet prudence had not quite left her.

"Yes, a game!" she cried, laughing, a note too high. "Don't you know the Lady's Kerchief?"

"No," he said soberly; he was even a little out of countenance.

"Then no more of it," Uncle Ulick cried, interposing, with a ring of authority in his voice. "For my part, I'm for bed. Bed! We're all children, bedad, and as fond of a frolic! And I'm thinking I'm the worst. The lights, Darby, the lights, and pleasant dreams to you! After all--

The spoke that is to-day on top, To-morrow's on the ground.

Sure, and I'll swear that's true!"

"And no treason!" The McMurrough answered him, with a grin. "Eh, Asgill?"

And so between them they removed Colonel John's last doubt--if he had one.

CHAPTER IX

EARLY RISERS

Colonel Sullivan had returned from Tralee in high spirits. He had succeeded beyond his hopes in the task he had set himself to perform, and he counted with confidence on gaining by that means a sound footing and a firm influence in the house. But as he sat in his room that evening, staring at the rushlight, with the night silent about him, he feared, nay, he almost knew, that his success came too late. Something had happened behind his back, some crisis, some event; and that which he had done was as if it were undone, and that which he had gained availed nothing.

It was plain--whatever was obscure--that the play of the Lady's Kerchief was a cover for matter more serious. Those who had taken part in it had scarcely deigned to pretend. Colonel John had been duller than the dullest if he had not seen in the white shreds for which the men had scrambled, and which they had affixed with pa.s.sion to their coats, the white c.o.c.kade of the Pretender; or found in Uncle Ulick's couplet--uttered while in a careless fashion he affected disguise,

The spoke that is to-day on top, To-morrow's on the ground,

one of those catchwords which suited the taste of the day, and served at once for a pa.s.sport and a sentiment.

But Colonel John knew that many a word was said over the claret which meant less than nothing next morning; and that many a fair hand pa.s.sed the wine across the water-bowl--the very movement did honour to a shapely arm--without its owner having the least intention of endangering those she loved for the sake of the King across the Water.

He knew that a fallen cause has ever two sets of devotees--those who talk and those who act: the many, in other words, who sing the songs and drink the toasts, and delight in the badges of treason--in the sucked orange, the sprig of oak, the knot of white ribbon, the fir-planting; and the few who mean more than they say, who mean, and sternly, to be presently the Spoke on Top.

Consequently he knew that he might be wrong in dotting the i's and crossing the t's of the scene which he had witnessed. Such a scene might mean no more than a burst of high spirits: in nine cases out of ten it would not be followed by action, nor import more than that singing of "'Twas a' for our rightful King!" which had startled him on his arrival. In that house, in the wilds of Kerry, sheer loyalty could not be expected. The wrongs of the nation were too recent, the high seas were too near, the wild geese came and went too freely--wild geese of another feather than his. Such outbursts as he had witnessed were no more than the safety-valves of outraged pride. The ease with which England had put down the Scotch rising a few years before--to say nothing of the fate of those who had taken part in it--must deter all reasonable men, whatever their race or creed, from entering on an undertaking beyond doubt more hopeless.

For Ireland was not as Scotland. Scarcely a generation had pa.s.sed since she had felt the full weight of the conqueror's hand; and if she possessed, in place of the Highland mountains, vast stretches of uncharted bog and lake, to say nothing of a thousand obscure inlets, she had neither the unbroken clan-feeling nor the unbroken national spirit of the sister country. Scotland was still h.o.m.ogeneous, she still counted for a kingdom, her soil was still owned by her own lords and worked by her own peasants. She had suffered no ma.s.sacre of Drogheda or of Wexford; no Boyne, no Aghrim, no vast and repeated confiscations.

Whereas Ireland, a part.i.tioned and subject land, which had suffered during the last two centuries horrors unspeakable, still cowered like a whipped dog before its master, and was as little likely to rebel.

Colonel John leant upon such arguments; and, disappointed and alarmed as he was by Flavia's behaviour, he told himself that nothing was seriously meant, and that with the morning light things would look more cheerful.

But when he awoke, after a feverish and disturbed sleep, the faint grisly dawn that entered the room was not of a character to inspirit.

He turned on his side to sleep again if he could; but in the act, he discovered that the curtain which he had drawn across the window was withdrawn. He could discern the dark ma.s.s of his clothes piled on a chair, of his hat clinging like some black bat to the whitewashed wall, of his valise and saddle-bags in the corner--finally of a stout figure bent, listening, at the door.

An old campaigner, Colonel John was not easily surprised. Repressing the exclamation on his lips, he rose to his elbow and waited until the figure at the door straightened itself, and, turning towards him, became recognisable as Uncle Ulick. The big man crossed the floor, saw that he was awake, and, finger on lip, enjoined silence. Then he pointed to the clothes on the chair, and brought his mouth near the Colonel's ear.

"The back-door!" he whispered. "Under the yews in the garden! Come!"

And leaving the Colonel staring and mystified, he crept from the room with a stealth and lightness remarkable in one so big. The door closed, the latch fell, and made no sound.

Colonel John reflected that Uncle Ulick was no romantic young person to play at mystery for effect. There was a call for secrecy therefore. The O'Beirnes slept in a room divided from his only by a thin part.i.tion; and to gain the stairs he must pa.s.s the doors of other chambers, all inhabited. As softly as he could, and as quickly, he dressed himself.

He took his boots in his hand; his sword, perhaps from old habit, under his other arm; in this guise he crept from the room and down the dusky staircase. Old Darby and an underling were snoring in the cub, which in the daytime pa.s.sed for a pantry, and both by day and night gave forth a smell of sour corks and mice: but Colonel John slid by the open door as noiselessly as a shadow, found the back-door--which led to the fold-yard--on the latch, and stepped out into the cool, dark morning, into the sobering freshness and the clean, rain-washed air.

The gra.s.s was still grey-hued, the world still colourless and mysterious, the house a long black bulk against a slowly lightening sky. Only the earliest sparrows were twittering; in the trees only the most wakeful rooks were uttering tentative caws. The outburst of joy and life and music which would attend the sun's rising was not yet.

Colonel John paused on the doorstep to draw on his boots, then he picked his way delicately to the leather-hung wicket that broke the hedge which served for a fence to the garden. On the right of the wicket a row of tall Florence yews, set within the hedge, screened the pleasaunce, such as it was, from the house. Under the lee of these he found Uncle Ulick striding to and fro and biting his finger-nails in his impatience.

He wrung the Colonel's hand and looked into his face. "You'll do me the justice, John Sullivan," he said, with a touch of pa.s.sion, "that never in my life have I been overhasty? Eh? Will you do me that?"

"Certainly, Ulick," Colonel John answered, wondering much what was coming.

"And that I'm no coward, where it's not a question of trouble?"

"I'll do you that justice, too," the Colonel answered. He smiled at the reservation.