It went for something in his decision that he believed that Flavia, if he failed her, would go to the one person in the house who had no cause to fear Payton – to Colonel Sullivan. If she did that, Asgill was sure that his own chance was at an end. This was his chance. It lay with him now, to-day, at this moment – to dare or to retire, to win her favour at the risk of his life, or to yield her to another. In the chill morning hour he had discovered that the choice lay before him, that he must risk all or lose all: and he had decided. That decision he now announced.
"I will make it possible," he said slowly, questioning in his mind whether he could make terms with her – whether he dared make terms with her. "I will make it possible," he repeated, still more slowly, and with his eyes fixed on her face.
"If you could!" she cried, clasping her hands.
"I will!" he said, a sullen undertone in his voice. His eyes still dwelt darkly on her. "If he raises an objection, I will fight him – myself!"
She shrank from him. "Ah, but I can't ask that!" she cried, trembling.
"It is that or nothing."
"That or – "
"There is no other way," he said. He spoke with the same ungraciousness; for, try as he would, and though the habit and the education of a life cried to him to treat with her and make conditions, he could not; and he was enraged that he could not.
The more as her quivering lips, her wet eyes, her quick mounting colour, told of her gratitude. In another moment she might, almost certainly she would, have said a word fit to unlock his lips. And he would have spoken; and she would have pledged herself. But fate, in the person of old Darby, intervened. Timely or untimely, the butler appeared in the distant doorway, cried "Hist!" and, by a backward gesture, warned them of some approaching peril.
"I fear – " she began.
"Yes, go!" Asgill replied, almost roughly. "He is coming, and he must not find us together."
She fled swiftly, but the garden gate had barely closed on her skirts before Payton issued from the courtyard. The Englishman paused an instant in the gateway, his sword under his arm and a handkerchief in his hand. Thence he looked up and down the road with an air of scornful confidence that provoked Asgill beyond measure. The sun did not seem bright enough for him, nor the air scented to his liking. Finally he approached the Irishman, who, affecting to be engaged with his own thoughts, had kept his distance.
"Is he ready?" he asked, with a sneer.
With an effort Asgill controlled himself. "He is not," he said.
"At his prayers, is he? Well, he'll need them."
"He is not, to my knowledge," Asgill replied. "But he is ill."
Payton's face lightened with a joy not pleasant to see. "A coward!" he said coolly. "I am not surprised! Ill is he? Ay, I know that illness. It's not the first time I've met it."
Asgill had no wish to precipitate a quarrel. On the contrary, he had made up his mind to gain time if he could; at any rate, to put off the ultima ratio until evening, or until the next morning. Only in the last resort had he determined to fling off the mask. But at that word "coward," though he knew it to be well deserved, his temper, sapped by the knowledge that love was forcing him into a position which reason repudiated, gave way, and he spoke his true thoughts.
"What a d – d bully you are, Payton!" he said, in his slowest tone. "Sure, and you insult the man's sister in your drink – "
"What's that to you?"
"You insult the man's sister," Asgill persisted coolly, "and because he treats you like the tipsy creature you are, you'd kill him like a dog."
Payton turned white. "And you, too," he said, "if you say another word! What in Heaven's name is amiss with you, man, this morning? Are you mad?"
"I'll not hear the word 'coward' used of the family – I'll soon be one of!" Asgill returned, speaking on the spur of the moment, and wondering at himself the moment he had made the statement. "That's what I'm meaning! Do you see? And if you are for repeating the word, more by token, it'll be all the breakfast you'll have, for I'll cram it down your ugly throat!"
Payton stared dumbfounded, divided between rage and astonishment. But the former was not slow to get the upper hand, and "Enough said," he replied, in a voice that trembled, but not with fear. "If you are willing to make it good, you'll be coming this way."
"Willingly!" Asgill answered.
"I'll have one of my men for witness. Ay, that I will! I don't trust you, Mr. Asgill, and that's flat. Get you whom you please! In five minutes, in the garden, then?"
Asgill nodded. The Englishman looked once more at him to make sure that he was sober; then he turned on his heel and went back through the courtyard. Asgill remained alone.
He had taken the step there was no retracing. He had cast the dice, and the next few minutes would decide whether it was for life or death. He had done it deliberately; yet at the last he had been so carried away by impulse that, as he stood there, looking after the man he had insulted, looking on the placid water glittering in the early sunshine, looking along the lake-side road, by which he had come, he could hardly credit what had happened, or that in a moment he had thrown for a stake so stupendous, that in a moment he had changed all. The sunshine lost its warmth and grew pale, the hills lost their colour and their beauty, as he reflected that he might never see the one or the other again, might never return by that lake-side road by which he had come; as he remembered that all his plans for his aggrandisement, and they were many and clever, might end this day, this morning, this hour! Life! It was that, it was all, it was the future, with its pleasures, hopes, ambitions, that he had staked. And the stake was down. He could not now take it up. It might well be, for the odds were great against him, that it was to this day that all his life had led up; that life by which men would by-and-by judge him, recalling this and that, this chicane and that extortion, thanking God that he was dead, or perhaps one here and there shrugging his shoulders in good-natured regret.
From the hedge-school in which he had first grasped the clue-line of his life, to the day when his father had encouraged him to "turn Protestant," that he might the better exploit his Papist neighbours, ay, and forward to this day on which, at the bidding of a woman, he had given the lie to his instincts, his training, and his education – from the one to the other he saw his life stretched out before him! And he could have cried upon his folly. Yet for that woman – "
"Faith, Mr. Asgill," cried a voice in his ear, "it's if you're ill, the Major's asking. And, by the power, it's not very well you're looking this day!"
Asgill eyed the interrupter – it was Morty O'Beirne – with a sternness which his pallor made more striking. "I am coming," he said, "I am going to fight him."
"The devil you are!" the young man answered. "Now, are you meaning? This morning that ever is?"
"Ay, now. Where is – "
He stopped on the word, and was silent. Instead, he looked across the courtyard in the direction of the house. If he might see her again. If he might speak to her. But, no. Yet – was it certain that she knew? That she understood? And if she understood, would she know that he had gone to the meeting well-nigh without hope, aware against what skill he pitted himself, and how large, how very large were the odds against him?
"But, faith, and it's no jest fighting him, if the least bit in life of what I've heard be true!" Morty said, a cloud on his face. He looked uncertainly from Asgill to the house and back. "Is it to be doing anything you want me?"
"I want you to come with me and see it out," Asgill said. He wheeled brusquely to the garden gate, but when he was within a pace of it he paused and turned his head. "Mr. O'Beirne," he said, "I'm going in by this gate, and it's not much to be expected I'll come out any way but feet first. Will you be telling her, if you please, that I knew that same?"
"I will," Morty answered, genuinely distressed. "But I'm asking, is there no other way?"
"There is none," Asgill said. And he opened the gate.
Payton was waiting for him on the path under the yew-trees, with two of his troopers on guard in the background. He had removed his coat and vest, and stood, a not ungraceful figure, in the sunshine, bending his rapier and feeling its point with his thumb. He was doing this when his eyes surprised his opponent's entrance, and, without desisting from his employment, he smiled.
If the other's courage had begun to wane – but, with all his faults, Asgill was brave – that smile would have restored it. For it roused in him a stronger passion than fear – the passion of hatred. He saw in the man before him, the man with the cruel smile, who handled his weapon with a scornful ease, a demon – a demon who, in pure malice, without reason and without cause, would take his life, would rob him of joy and love and sunshine, and hurl him into the blackness of the gulf. And he was seized with a rage at once fierce and deliberate. This man, who would kill him, and whom he saw smiling before him, he would kill! He thirsted to set his foot upon his throat and squeeze, and squeeze the life out of him! These were the thoughts that passed through his mind as he paused an instant at the gate to throw off the encumbering coat. Then he advanced, drawing his weapon as he moved, and fixing his eyes on Payton; who, for his part, reading the other's thoughts in his face – for more than once he had seen that look – put himself on his guard without a word.
Asgill had no more than the rudimentary knowledge of the sword which was possessed in that day by all who wore it. He knew that, given time and the decent observances of the fencing-school, he would be a mere child in Payton's hands; that it would matter nothing whether the sun were on this side or that, or his sword the longer or the shorter by an inch. The moment he was within reach therefore, and his blade touched the other's he rushed in, lunging fiercely at his opponent's breast and trusting to the vigour of his attack and the circular sweep of his point to protect himself. Not seldom has a man skilled in the subtleties of the art found himself confused and overcome by this mode of attack. But Payton had met his man too often on the green to be taken by surprise. He parried the first thrust, the second he evaded by stepping adroitly aside. By the same movement he put the sun in Asgill's eyes.
Again the latter rushed in, striving to get within his opponent's guard; and again Payton stepped aside, and allowed the random thrust to pass wasted under his arm. Once more the same thing happened – Asgill rushed in, Payton parried or evaded with the ease and coolness of long-tried skill. By this time Asgill, forced to keep his blade in motion, was beginning to breathe quickly. The sweat stood on his brow, he struck more and more wildly, and with less and less strength or aim. He was aware – it could be read in the glare of his eyes – that he was being reduced to the defensive; and he knew that to be fatal. An oath broke from his panting lips and he rushed in again, even more recklessly, more at random than before, his sole object now to kill the other, to stab him at close quarters, no matter what happened to himself.
Again Payton avoided the full force of the rush, but this time after a different fashion. He retreated a step. Then, with a flicker and a girding of steel on steel, Asgill's sword flew from his hand, and at the same instant – or so nearly at the same instant that the disarming and the thrust might have seemed to an untrained eye one motion – Payton turned his wrist and his sword buried itself in Asgill's body. The unfortunate man recoiled with a gasping cry, staggered and sank sideways to the ground.
"By the powers," O'Beirne exclaimed, springing forward, "a foul stroke! By G – d, a foul stroke! He was disarmed. I – "
"Have a care what you say!" Payton answered slowly, and in a terrible tone. "You'd do better to look to your friend – for he'll need it."
"It's you that struck him after he was disarmed!" Morty cried, almost weeping with rage. "Devil a bit of a chance did you give him! You – "
"Silence, I say!" Payton answered, in a fierce tone of authority. "I know my duty; and if you know yours you'll look to him."
He turned aside with that, and thrust the point of his sword twice and thrice into the sod before he sheathed the weapon. Meanwhile Morty had cast himself down beside the fallen man, who, speechless, and with his head hanging, continued to support himself on his hand. A patch of blood, bright-coloured, was growing slowly on his vest: and there was blood on his lips.
"Oh, whirra, whirra, what'll I do?" the Irishman exclaimed, helplessly wringing his hands. "What'll I do for him? He's murdered entirely!"
Payton, aided by one of the troopers, was putting on his coat and vest. He paused to bid the other help the gentleman. Then, with a cold look at the fallen man, for whom, though they had been friends, as friends go in the world, he seemed to have no feeling except one of contempt, he walked away in the direction of the rear of the house.
By the time he reached the back door the alarm was abroad, the maids were running to and fro and screaming, and on the threshold he encountered Flavia. Pale as the stricken man, she looked on Payton with an eye of horror, and, as he stood aside to let her pass, she drew – unconscious what she did – her skirts away, that they might not touch him.
He went on, with rage in his heart. "Very good, my lady," he muttered, "very good! But I've not done with you yet. I know a way to pull your pride down. And I'll go about it!"
He might have moved less at ease, he might have spoken less confidently, had he, before he retired from the scene of the fight, cast one upward glance in the direction of the house, had he marked an opening high up in the wall of yew, and noticed through that opening a window, so placed that it alone of all the windows in the house commanded the scene of action. For then he would have discovered at that casement a face he knew, and a pair of stern eyes that had followed the course of the struggle throughout, noted each separate attack, and judged the issue – and the man.
And he might have taken warning.
CHAPTER XXIV
THE PITCHER AT THE WELL
The surgeon of that day was better skilled in letting blood than in staunching it, in cupping than in curing. It was well for Luke Asgill, therefore, that none lived nearer than distant Tralee. It was still more fortunate for him that there was one in the house to whom the treatment of such a wound as his was an everyday matter, and who was guided in his practice less by the rules of the faculty than by those of experience and common sense.
Even under his care Asgill's life hung for many hours in the balance. There was a time, when he was at his weakest, when his breath, in the old phrase, would not raise a feather, and those about his bed despaired of detaining the spirit fluttering to be free. The servants were ready to raise the "keen," the cook sought the salt for the death-plate. But Colonel John, mindful of many a man found living on the field hours after he should, by all the rules, have died, did not despair; and little by little, though the patient knew nothing of the battle which was maintained for his life, the Colonel's skill and patience prevailed. The breathing grew stronger and more regular; and, though it seemed likely that fever would follow and the end must remain uncertain, death, for the moment, was repelled.
Now, he who possesses the habit of command in emergencies, who, when others are distraught and wring their hands, knows both what to do and how to do it, cannot fail to impress the imagination. Unsupported by Flavia, unaided by her deft fingers, Colonel John might have done less: yet she who seconded him the most ably, who fetched and carried for him, and shrank from no sight of blood or wound, was also the one who yielded him the fullest meed, and succumbed the most completely to his ascendancy. Flavia's feelings towards her cousin had been altering hour by hour; and this experience of him hastened her tacit surrender. She had seen him in many parts. It had been hers to witness, by turns, his defeat and his triumph. She had felt aversion, born of his unwelcome appearance in the character of her guardian, yield to a budding interest, which his opposition to her plans, and his success in foiling them, had converted anew into disdain and hatred.
But in all strong passions lurk the seeds of the opposite. The object of hatred is the object of interest. So it had been in her case. The very lengths to which she had allowed herself to be carried against him had revolted her, and pity had taken the place of hatred. Nor pity alone. For, having seen how high he could rise in adversity, what courage, what patience, what firmness he could exert – for her sake who persecuted him – she now saw also how naturally he took the lead of others, how completely he dominated the crowd. And while she no longer marvelled at the skill with which he had baffled the Admiral and Cammock, and thwarted plans which she began to appraise at their value, she found herself relying upon him, as she watched him moving to and fro, to an extent which startled and frightened her.
Was it only that morning that she had trembled for her brother's life? Was it only that morning that she had opened her eyes and known him craven, unworthy of his name and race? Was it only that morning that she had sent into peril the man who lay wan and moribund before her; only that morning that she had felt her unhappiness greater than she could bear, her difficulties insuperable, her loneliness a misery? For if that were so why did she now feel so different? Why did she now feel inexplicably relieved, inconceivably at ease, almost happy? Why, with the man whom she had thrust into peril lying in extremis before her, and claiming all her gratitude, did she find her mind straying to another? Finally, why, with her troubles the same, with her brother no less dishonoured, were her thoughts neither with him nor with herself, but with the man whose movements she watched, whose hands touched hers in the work of tendance, whose voice once chid her sharply – and gave her an odd pang of pleasure – who, low-toned, ordered her hither and thither, and was obeyed?
She asked herself the question as she sat in the darkened room, watching. And in the twilight she blushed. Once, at a crisis, Colonel John had taken her roughly by the wrist and forced her to hold the bandage so, while he twisted it. She looked at the wrist now, and, fancying she could see the imprint of his fingers on it, she blushed more deeply.
Presently there came, as they sat listening to the fluttering breath, a low scratching at the door. At a sign from Colonel Sullivan, who sat on the inner side of the bed, she stole to it and found Morty O'Beirne on the threshold. He beckoned to her, and, closing the door, she followed him downstairs, to where, in the living-room, she found the other O'Beirne standing sheepishly beside the table.
"It's not knowing what to do, we are," Morty said.
He did not look at her, nor did his brother. Her heart sank. "What is it?" she asked.
"The fiend's in the man," Morty replied, tapping with his fingers on the table. "But – it's you will be telling her, Phelim."
"It's he that's not content," Phelim muttered. "The thief of the world!"
"Curse him!" cried his brother.
"Not content?" she echoed. "Not content? After what he's done?" For an instant her eyes flashed hot indignation, her very hair seemed to rise about her head. Then the downcast demeanour of the two, their embarrassment, their silence, told the story; and she gasped. "He's for – fighting my brother?" she whispered.
"He'll be content with no less," Morty answered, with a groan. "Bad cess to him! And The McMurrough – sure it's certain death, and who's blaming him, but he's no stomach for it. And whirra, whirra, on that the man says he'll be telling it in Tralee that he'd not meet him, and as far as Galway City he'll cut his comb for him! Ay, bedad, he says that, and that none of his name shall show their face there, night or day, fair or foul, race or cockfight – the bloody-minded villain!"
She listened, despairing. The house was quiet, as houses in the country are of an afternoon, and the quieter for the battle with death which was joined in the darkened room upstairs. Her thoughts were no longer with the injured man, however, but in that other room, where her brother lurked in squalid fear – fear that in a nameless man might have been pardoned, but in him, in a McMurrough, head of his race, last of his race, never! She came of heroes, to her the strain had descended pure and untainted, and she would rather have seen him dead. The two men before her – who knew, alas! who knew! – she was sure that they would have taken up the glove, unwillingly and perforce, perhaps, but they would have fought! While her brother, The McMurrough – But even while she thought of it, she saw through the open door the figure of a man saunter slowly past the courtyard gates, his sword under his arm. It was the Englishman. She felt the added sting. Her cheek, that had been pale, burned darkly, her eyes shone.
"St. Patrick fly away with the toad and the ugly smile of him!" Morty said. "I'm thinking it's between the two of us, Phelim, my jewel! And he that's killed will help the other."
"God forbid!" Flavia cried, pale with horror at the thought. "Not another!"
"But sure, and I'm not seeing how else we'll be rid of him handsomely," Phelim replied.
"No!" she repeated firmly. "No! I forbid it!"
Again the man sauntered by the entrance, and again he cast the same insolent, smiling look at the house. They watched him pass, an ominous shadow in the sunshine, and Flavia shuddered.
"But what will you be doing, then?" Morty asked, rubbing, his chin in perplexity. "He's saying that if The McMurrough'll not meet him by four o'clock, and it isn't much short of it, he'll be riding this day! And him once gone he's a bitter tongue, and 'twill be foul shame on the house!"
Flavia stood silent in thought, but at length she drew in her breath sharply – she had made up her mind. "I know what I will do," she said. "I will tell him all." And she turned to go.
"It's not worth the shoe-leather!" Morty cried after her, letting his scorn of James be seen.
But she was out of hearing, and when she returned a minute later she was followed, not by James McMurrough, but by Colonel Sullivan. The Colonel's face, seen in the full light, had lost the brown of health; it was thin and peaky, and still bore signs of privation. But he trod firmly, and his eyes were clear and kind. If he was aware of the O'Beirnes' embarrassment, his greeting did not betray it.
"I am willing to help if I can," he said. "What is your trouble?"
"Tell him," Flavia said, averting her face.
They told him lamely – they were scarcely less jealous of the honour of the house than she was – in almost the same words in which they had broken the news to her. "And the curse of Cromwell on me, but he's parading up and down now," Morty continued, "and cocking his eye at the sun-dial whenever he passes, as much as to say, 'Is it coming, you are?' till the heart's fairly melted in me with the rage!"
"And it's shame on us we let him be!" cried Phelim.
Colonel John did not answer. He was silent even when, under the eyes of all, the ominous shadow passed again before the entrance gates – came and went. He was so long silent that Flavia turned to him at last, and held out her hands. "What shall we do?" she cried – and in that cry she betrayed her new dependence on him. "Tell us!"
"It is hard to say," Colonel John answered gravely. His face was very gloomy, and to hide it or his thoughts he turned from them and went to one of the windows – that very window through which Uncle Ulick and he had looked at his first coming. He gazed out, not that he might see, but that he might think unwatched.
They waited, the men expecting little, but glad to be rid of some part of the burden, Flavia with a growing sense of disappointment. She did not know for what she had hoped, or what she had thought that he would do. But she had been confident that he could help; and it seemed that he could do no more than others. Neither to her, nor to the men, did it seem as strange as it was that they should turn to him, against whose guidance they had lately revolted so fiercely.
He came back to them presently, his face sad and depressed. "I will deal with it," he said – and he sighed. "You can leave it to me. Do you," he continued, addressing Morty, "come with me, Mr. O'Beirne."
He was for leaving them with that, but Flavia put herself between him and the door. She fixed her eyes on his face. "What are you going to do?" she asked in a low voice.
"I will tell you all – later," he replied gently.
"No, now!" she retorted, controlling herself with difficulty. "Now! You are not going – to fight him?"
"I am not going to fight," he answered slowly.
But her heart was not so easily deceived as her ear. "There is something under your words," she said jealously. "What is it?"
"I am not going to fight," he replied gravely, "but to punish. There is a limit." Even while he spoke she remembered in what circumstances those words had been used. "There is a limit," he repeated solemnly. "He has the blood of four on his head, and another lies at death's door. And he is not satisfied. He is not satisfied! Once I warned him. To-day the time for warning is past, the hour for judgment is come. God forgive me if I err, for vengeance is His and it is terrible to be His hand." He turned to Phelim, and, in the same stern tone, "my sword is broken," he said. "Fetch me the man's sword who lies upstairs."
Phelim went, awe-stricken, and marvelling. Morty remained, marvelling also. And Flavia – but, as she tried to speak, Payton's shadow once more came into sight at the entrance-gates and went slowly by, and she clapped her hand to her mouth that she might not scream. Colonel Sullivan saw the action, understood, and touched her softly on the shoulder. "Pray," he said, "pray!"
"For you!" she cried in a voice that, to those who had ears, betrayed her heart. "Ah, I will pray!"
"No, for him," he replied. "For him now. For me when I return."
She dropped on her knees before a chair, and, shuddering, hid her face in her hands. And almost at once she knew that they were gone, and that she was alone in the room.
Then, whether she prayed most or listened most, or the very intensity of her listening was itself prayer – prayer in its highest form – she never knew; but only that, whenever in the agony of her suspense she raised her head from the chair to hear if there was news, the common sounds of afternoon life in the house and without lashed her with a dreadful irony. The low whirr of a spinning-wheel, a girl's distant chatter, the cluck of a hen in the courtyard, the satisfied grunt of a roving pig, all bore home to her heart the bitter message that, whatever happened, and though nightfall found her lonely in a dishonoured home, life would proceed as usual, the men and the women about her would eat and drink, and the smallest things would stand where they stood now – unchanged, unmoved.
What was that? Only the fall of a spit in the kitchen, or the clatter of a pot-lid. Would they never come? Would she never know? At this moment – what was that? That surely was something. They were returning! In a moment she would know. She rose to her feet and stared with stony eyes at the door. But when she had listened long – it was nothing. Nothing! And then – ah, that surely was something – was news – was the end! They were coming now. In a moment she would know. Yes, they were coming. In a moment she would know. She pressed her hands to her breast.
She might have known already, for, had she gone to the door, she would have seen who came. But she could not go. She could not move.
And he, when he came in, did not look at her. He walked from the threshold to the hearth, and – strange coincidence – he set the unsheathed blade he carried in the self-same angle, beside the fire-back, from which she had once taken a sword to attempt his life. And still he did not look at her, but stood with bowed head.
At last he turned. "God forgive us all," he said.
She broke into wild weeping. And what her lips, babbling incoherent thanksgiving, did not tell him, the clinging of her arms, as she hung on him, conveyed.