The Wild Geese Part 36

He withdrew himself suddenly, and the sunset light darted into the room through the narrow window, dimming the candle's rays. The Colonel heard him laugh as he strode away across the platform, and down the hill. A moment and the sounds ceased. He was gone. The Colonel was alone.

Until this time to-morrow! Twenty-four hours. Yes, he must tighten his belt.

Morty, poking his head this way and that, peering into the chamber as he had peered yesterday, wished he could see Colonel John's face. But Colonel John, bending resolutely over the handful of embers that glowed in an inner angle of the room, showed only his back. Even that Morty could not see plainly; for the last of the candles had burned out, and in the chamber, dark in comparison with the open air, the crouching figure was no more than a shapeless ma.s.s obscuring the glow of the fuel.

Morty shaded his eyes and peered more closely. He was not a sensitive person, and he was obeying orders. But he was not quite comfortable.

"And that's your last word?" he said slowly. "Come, Colonel dear, ye'll say something more to that."

"That's my last word to-day," Colonel John answered as slowly, and without turning his head.

"Honour bright? Won't ye think better of it before I go?"

"I will not."

Morty paused, to tell the truth, in extreme exasperation. He had no great liking for the part he was playing; but why couldn't the man be reasonable? "You're sure of it, Colonel," he said.

Colonel John did not answer.

"And I'm to tell her so?" Morty concluded.

Colonel John rose sharply, as if at last the other tried him too far.

"Yes," he said, "tell her that! Or," lowering his voice and his hand, "do not tell her, as you please. That is my last word, sir! Let me be."

But it was not his last word. For as Morty turned to go, and suffered the light to fall again through the aperture, the Colonel heard him speak--in a lower and a different tone. At the same moment, or his eyes deceived him, a shadow that was not Morty O'Beirne's fell for one second on the splayed wall inside the window. It was gone as soon as seen; but Colonel John had seen it, and he sprang to the window.

"Flavia!" he cried. "Flavia!"

He paused to listen, his hand on the wall on either side of the opening. His face, which had been pinched and haggard a moment before, was now flushed by the sunset. Then "Flavia!" he repeated, keen appeal in his voice. "Flavia!"

She did not answer. She was gone. And perhaps it was as well. He listened for a long time, but in vain; and he told himself again that it was as well. Why, after all, appeal to her? How, could it avail him?

What good could it do? Slowly he went back to his chair and sat down in the old att.i.tude over the embers. But his lip quivered.

CHAPTER XX

AN UNWELCOME VISITOR

A little before sunset on that same day--almost precisely indeed at the moment at which Flavia's shadow darkened the splayed flank of the window in the Tower--two men stood beside the entrance at Morristown, whence the one's whip had just chased the beggars. They were staring at a third, who, seated nonchalantly upon the horse-block, slapped his boot with his riding switch, and made as poor a show of hiding his amus.e.m.e.nt as they of masking their disgust. The man who slapped his leg and shaped his lips to a silent whistle, was Major Payton of the --th.

The men who looked at him, and cursed the unlucky star which had brought him thither, were Luke Asgill and The McMurrough.

"Faith, and I should have thought," Asgill said, with a clouded face, "that my presence here, Major, and I, a Justice----"

"True for you!" Payton said, with a grin.

"Should have been enough by itself, and the least taste more than enough, to prove the absurdity of the Castle's story."

"True for you again," Payton replied. "And ain't I saying that but for your presence here, and a friend at court that I'll not name, it's not your humble servant this gentleman would be entertaining"--he turned to The McMurrough--"but half a company and a sergeant's guard!"

"I'm allowing it."

"You've no cause to do other."

"Devil a bit I'm denying it," Asgill replied more amicably; and, as far as he could, he cleared his face. "It's not that you're not welcome.

Not at all, Major! Sure, and I'll answer for it, my friend, The McMurrough is glad to welcome any English gentleman, much more one of your reputation."

"Truth, and I am," The McMurrough a.s.sented. But he had not Asgill's self-control, and his sulky tone belied his words.

"Still--I come at an awkward time, perhaps?" Payton answered, looking with a grin from one to the other.

For the first time it struck him that the suspicions at headquarters might be well-founded; in that case he had been rash to put his head in the lion's mouth. For it had been wholly his own notion. Partly to tease Asgill, whom he did not love the more because he owed him money, and partly to see the rustic beauty whom, rumour had it, Asgill was courting in the wilds--a little, too, because life at Tralee was dull, he had volunteered to do with three or four troopers what otherwise a half-company would have been sent to do. That he could at the same time put his creditor under an obligation, and annoy him, had not been the least part of the temptation; while no one at Tralee believed the story sent down from Dublin.

He did not credit it even now for more than two seconds. Then common sense, and his knowledge of Luke Asgill rea.s.sured him. "Eh! An awkward time, perhaps?" he repeated, looking at The McMurrough. "Sorry, I'm sure, but----"

"I'd have entertained you better, I'm thinking," James McMurrough said, "if I'd known you were coming before you came."

"Devil a doubt of it!" said Asgill, whose subtle brain had been at work. "Not that it matters, bedad, for an Irish gentleman will do his best. And to-morrow Colonel Sullivan, that's more knowledge of the mode and foreign ways, will be back, and he'll be helping his cousin. More by token," he added, in a different tone, "you know him of old?"

Payton, who had frowned at the name, reddened at the question. "Is that," he asked, "the Colonel Sullivan who----"

"Who tried the foils with Lemoine at Tralee?" Asgill cried heartily.

"The same and no other! He is away to-day, but he'll be returning tomorrow, and he'll be delighted to see you! And by good luck, there are foils in the house, and he'll pa.s.s the time pleasantly with you!

It's he's the hospitable creature!"

Payton was far from pleased. He was anything but anxious to see the man whose skill had turned the joke against him; and his face betokened his feelings. Had he foreseen the meeting he would certainly have remained in Tralee, and left the job to a subaltern. "Hang it!" he exclaimed, vexed by the recollection, "a fine mess you led me into there, Asgill!"

"I did not know him then," Asgill replied lightly. "And, pho! Take my word for it, he's no man to bear malice!"

"Malice, begad!" Payton answered, ill-humouredly; "I think it's I----"

"Ah, you are right again, to be sure!" Asgill agreed, laughing silently. For already he had formed a hope that the guest might be manoeuvred out of the house on the morrow. Not that he thought Payton was likely either to discover the Colonel's plight, or to interfere if he did. But Asgill had another, and a stronger motive for wishing the intruder away. He knew Payton. He knew the man's arrogance and insolence, the contempt in which he held the Irish, his view of them as an inferior race. And he was sure that, if he saw Flavia and fancied her--and who that saw her would not fancy her?--he was capable of any rudeness, any outrage; or, if he learned her position in regard to the estate, he might prove a formidable, if an honourable, compet.i.tor. In either case, to hasten the man's departure, and to induce Flavia to remain in the background in the meantime, became Asgill's chief aim.

James McMurrough, on the other hand, saw in the unwelcome intruder an English officer; and, troubled by his guilty conscience, he dreaded above all things what he might discover. True, the past was past, the plot spent, the Spanish ship gone. But the Colonel remained, and in durance. And if by any chance the Englishman stumbled on him, released him and heard his story, and lived to carry it back to Tralee--the consequences might be such that a cold sweat broke out on the young man's brow at the thought of them. To add to his alarm, Payton, whose mind was secretly occupied with the Colonel, sought to evince his indifference by changing the subject, and in doing so, hit on one singularly unfortunate.

"A pretty fair piece of water," he said, rising with an affected yawn, and pointing over the lake with his riding-switch. "The tower at the head of it--it's grown too dark to see it--is it inhabited?"

The McMurrough started guiltily. "The tower?" he stammered. Could it be that the man knew all, and was here to expose him? His heart stood still, then raced.

"The Major'll be meaning the tower on the rock," Asgill said smoothly, but with a warning look. "Ah, sure, it'll be used at times, Major, for a prison, you understand."

"Oh!"

"But we'll be better to be moving inside, I'm thinking," he continued.