She had not known before what it was to hate. Now she only lived to hate: to hate the man who had shown himself so much cleverer than her friends, who, in a twinkling, and by a single blow, had wrecked her plans, duped her allies, betrayed her brother, made her name a laughing-stock, robbed Ireland of a last chance of freedom! who had held her in his arms, terrified her, mastered her! Oh, why had she swooned? Why had she not rather, disregarding her womanish weakness, her womanish fears, snatched the knife from him and plunged it into his treacherous breast? Why? Why?
CHAPTER XIV
THE COLONEL'S TERMS
Passive courage—courage in circumstances in which a man cannot help himself, but must abide with bound hands whatever a frowning fortune and his enemy's spite threaten—is so much higher a virtue than that which carries him through hot emprises, and is so much more common among women, that the palm for bravery may fairly be given to the weaker sex. True, it is not in the first face of danger that a woman shines; time must be given her to string her nerves. But grant time and there is no calamity so dreadful, no fate so abhorrent to trembling humanity, that a woman has not met it smiling: in the sack of cities, or in the slow agony of towns perishing of hunger, in the dungeon, or in the grip of disease.
The bravest men share this gift, and some whom the shock of conflict appals. Cammock and the Bishop belonged to the former class. Seized in a moment of activity, certain only that they were in hostile hands, and hurried, blind and helpless, to an unknown doom, they might have been pardoned had they succumbed to despair. But they did not succumb. The habit of danger, and a hundred adventures and escapes, had hardened them; they felt more rage than fear. Stunned for a moment by the audacity of the attack, and humiliated by its success, they had not been dragged a hundred yards before they began to reason and to calculate the chances. If the purpose of those into whose hands they had fallen were to murder them they would have been piked on the spot. On the other hand, if their captors' object was to deliver them to English justice, it was a long way to the Four Courts, and farther to Westminster. Weeks, if not months, must elapse before they stood at the bar on a capital charge; much water must flow under the bridges, and many a thing might happen, by force or fraud, in the interval.
So, half-stifled and bitterly chagrined as they were, they did not waste their strength in a vain resistance. They allowed themselves to be pushed this way and pulled that, took what care they could of their limbs, and for their thoughts gave as many to vengeance as to safety. They had known many reverses in many lands. They did not believe that this was the end. And presently it would be their turn.
With the third of the prisoners it was otherwise. The courage of the Irish is more conspicuous in the advance than in the retreat; and even of that recklessness in fight, that joy in the conflict, which is their birthright and their fame, Flavia had taken more than her woman's share. In James McMurrough's mean and narrow nature there was small room for the generous passions. Unlike his sister, he would have struck the face of no man in whose power he lay; nor was he one to keep a stout heart when his hands were bound. Conscience does not always make cowards. But he knew into whose hands he had fallen, he knew the fate to which he had himself consigned Colonel John—or would have consigned him but for self-interest—and his heart was water, his knees were aspens, his hair rose, as, helpless, he pictured in livid hues the fate that now awaited himself.
As he had meant to do to the other, it would be done to him! He felt the cruel pike rend the gasping throat; he had heard that it was the most painful death that a man could die, and that the shrieks of men dying on the pike-point could be heard a mile! Or would they throw him, bound and blind as he was, into the sullen lake—yes, that was it! They were carrying him that way, they were taking him to the lake.
And once and twice, in the insanity of fear, he fought with his bonds until the blood came, even throwing himself down, until the men, out of patience, pricked him savagely, and drove him, venting choked cries of pain, to his feet again. After the second attempt, if attempt that could be called which had no reasoning behind it, but only sheer animal fear, he staggered on, beaten, hopeless. He was aware that Colonel John was not with them; and then, again, that he was with them; and then—they were on the wide track now between the end of the lake and the sea—that they were proceeding with increased caution. That might have given a braver man hope, the hope of rescue. But rescue had itself terrors for The McMurrough. His captors, if pressed, might hasten the end, or his friends might strike him in the mêlée. And so, with every furlong of the forced journey, he died a fresh death.