CHAPTER XXII
THE SCENE IN THE PASSAGE
Asgill saw himself in the position of a commander whose force has been outflanked, and who has to decide on the instant how he may best re-form it on a new front. Flavia and Colonel Sullivan, Flavia and Payton, Payton and Colonel Sullivan—each of these conjunctions had for him a separate menace; each threatened either his suit for Flavia, or his standing in the house through which, and through which alone, he could hope to win her. In addition, the absence of James McMurrough at this critical moment left Asgill in the most painful perplexity. If James knew what had happened, why was he wanting at this moment, when it behoved them to decide, and to decide quickly, what line they would take?
Under the shadow of the great peat-stack at the back of the house, whither he had retired that he might make up his mind before he faced the three, Asgill bit his nails and cursed The McMurrough with all his heart, calling him a score of names, each worse than the other. It was, it must be, through his folly and mismanagement that the thing had befallen, that the prisoner had been released, that Payton had been let into the secret. The volley of oaths that flew from Asgill expressed no more than a tithe of his rage and his bewilderment.
How was he to get rid of Payton? How prevent Colonel John from resuming that sway in the house which he had exercised before? How nip in the bud that nascent sympathy, that feeling for him which Flavia's outbreak the night before had suggested? Or how, short of all this, was he to face either Payton or the Colonel?
Again a volley of oaths flew from him.
In council with James McMurrough he might have arranged a plan of action; at least, he would have learned from him what Payton knew. But James's absence ruined all. In the end, after waiting some time in the vain hope that he would appear, Asgill went in to supper.
Colonel Sullivan was not there; he was in no condition to descend. Nor was Flavia; whereon Asgill reflected, with chagrin, that probably she was attending upon the invalid. Payton was at table, with the two O'Beirnes, and three other buckeens. The Englishman, amused and uplifted by the discovery he had made, was openly disdainful of his companions; while the Irishmen, sullen and suspicious, were not aware how much he knew, nor all of them how much there was to know. If The McMurrough chose to imprison his strange and unpopular kinsman, it was nothing to them; nor a matter into which gentlemen eating at his table and drinking his potheen and claret were called upon to peer too closely.
The position was singular; for the English officer, partly by virtue of his mission and partly by reason of the knowledge he had gained, carried himself as if he held that ascendency in the house which Colonel Sullivan had enjoyed—an ascendency, like his, grudged and precarious, as the men's savage and furtive glances proved. But for his repute as a duellist they would have picked a quarrel with the visitor there and then. And but for the presence of his four troopers in the background they might have fallen upon him in some less regular fashion. As it was, they sat, eating slowly and eyeing him askance; and, without shame, were relieved when Asgill entered. They looked to him to clear up the situation and put the interloper in his right place. At any rate, the burden was now lifted from their shoulders.