The Wild Geese

"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.

CHAPTER XXV

PEACE

Uncle Ulick, with the mud of the road still undried on his boots, and the curls still stiff in the wig which the town barber at Mallow had dressed for him, rubbed his chin with his hand and, covertly looking round the room, owned himself puzzled. He had returned a week later to the day than he had arranged to return. But had his absence run into months instead of weeks the lapse of time had not sufficed to explain the change which he felt, but could not define, in his surroundings.

Certainly old Darby looked a thought more trim, and the room a trifle better ordered than he had left them. But he was sensible, though vaguely, that the change did not stop there – perhaps did not begin there. Full of news of the outer world as he was, he caught himself pausing in mid-career to question himself. And more than once his furtive eyes scanned his companions' faces for the answer his mind refused to give.

An insolent Englishman had come, and given reins to the 'ubris that was in him, and, after running Luke Asgill through the body, had paid the penalty – in fight so fair that the very troopers who had witnessed it could make no complaint nor raise trouble. So much Uncle Ulick had learned. But he had not known Payton, and, exciting as the episode sounded, it did not explain the difference in the atmosphere of the house. Where he had left enmity and suspicion, lowering brows and a silent table, he found smiles, and easiness, and a cheerful sense of well-being.

Again he looked about him. "And where will James be?" he asked, for the first time missing his nephew.

"He has left us," Flavia said slowly, with her eyes on Colonel Sullivan.

"It's away to Galway City he is," Morty O'Beirne explained with a chuckle.

"The saints be between us and harm!" Uncle Ulick exclaimed in astonishment. "And why's he there?"

"The story is long," said Colonel Sullivan.

"But I can tell it in a few words," Flavia continued with dignity. "And the sooner it is told the better. He has not behaved well, Uncle Ulick. And at his request and with – the legal owner's consent – it's I have agreed to pay him one-half of the value of the property."

"The devil you have!" Uncle Ulick exclaimed, in greater astonishment. And, pushing back his seat and rubbing his huge thigh with his hand, he looked from one to another. "By the powers! if I may take the liberty of saying so, young lady, you've done a vast deal in a very little time-faith, in no time at all, at all!" he added.

"It was done at his request," Flavia answered gravely.

Uncle Ulick continued to rub his thigh and to stare. These things were very surprising. "And they're telling me," he said, "that Luke Asgill's in bed upstairs?"

"He is."

"And recovering?"

"He is, glory be to God!"

"Nor that same's not the best news of him," Morty said with a grin. "Nor the last."

"True for you!" Phelim cried. "If it was the last word you spoke!"

"What are you meaning?" Uncle Ulick asked.

"He's turned," said Morty. "No less! Turned! He's what his father was before him, Mr. Sullivan – come back to Holy Church, and not a morning but Father O'Hara's with him making his soul and what not!"

"Turned!" Uncle Ulick cried. "Luke Asgill, the Justice? Boys, you're making fun of me!" And, unable to believe what the O'Beirnes told him, he looked to Flavia for confirmation.

"It is true," she said.

"Bedad, it is?" Uncle Ulick replied. "Then I'll not be surprised in all my life again! More by token, there's only one thing left to hope for, my jewel, and that's certain. Cannot you do the same to the man that's beside you?"

Flavia glanced quickly at Colonel John, then, with a heightened colour, she looked again at Uncle Ulick. "That's what I cannot do," she said.

But the blush, and the smile that accompanied it, and something perhaps in the way she hung towards her neighbour as she turned to him, told Uncle Ulick all. The big man smacked the table with his hand till the platters leapt from the board. "Holy poker!" he cried, "is it that you're meaning? And I felt it, and I didn't feel it, and you sitting there forenent me, and prating as if butter wouldn't melt in your mouth! It is so, is it? But there, the red of your cheek is answer enough!"

For Flavia was blushing more brightly than before, and Colonel John was smiling, and the two young men were laughing openly.

"You must get Flavia alone," Colonel John said, "and perhaps she'll tell you."

"Bedad, it's true, and I felt it in the air," Ulick Sullivan answered, smiling all over his face. "Ho, ho! Ho, ho! Indeed you've not been idle while I've been away. But what does Father O'Hara say, eh?"

"The Father – " Flavia began in a small voice.

"Ay, what does the Father say?"