The Wild Geese

by Stanley John Weyman

But Colonel John knew that many a word was said over the claret which meant less than nothing next morning; and that many a fair hand passed the wine across the water-bowl—the very movement did honour to a shapely arm—without its owner having the least intention of endangering those she loved for the sake of the King across the Water. He knew that a fallen cause has ever two sets of devotees—those who talk and those who act: the many, in other words, who sing the songs and drink the toasts, and delight in the badges of treason—in the sucked orange, the sprig of oak, the knot of white ribbon, the fir-planting; and the few who mean more than they say, who mean, and sternly, to be presently the Spoke on Top.

Consequently he knew that he might be wrong in dotting the i's and crossing the t's of the scene which he had witnessed. Such a scene might mean no more than a burst of high spirits: in nine cases out of ten it would not be followed by action, nor import more than that singing of "'Twas a' for our rightful King!" which had startled him on his arrival. In that house, in the wilds of Kerry, sheer loyalty could not be expected. The wrongs of the nation were too recent, the high seas were too near, the wild geese came and went too freely—wild geese of another feather than his. Such outbursts as he had witnessed were no more than the safety-valves of outraged pride. The ease with which England had put down the Scotch rising a few years before—to say nothing of the fate of those who had taken part in it—must deter all reasonable men, whatever their race or creed, from entering on an undertaking beyond doubt more hopeless.

For Ireland was not as Scotland. Scarcely a generation had passed since she had felt the full weight of the conqueror's hand; and if she possessed, in place of the Highland mountains, vast stretches of uncharted bog and lake, to say nothing of a thousand obscure inlets, she had neither the unbroken clan-feeling nor the unbroken national spirit of the sister country. Scotland was still homogeneous, she still counted for a kingdom, her soil was still owned by her own lords and worked by her own peasants. She had suffered no massacre of Drogheda or of Wexford; no Boyne, no Aghrim, no vast and repeated confiscations. Whereas Ireland, a partitioned and subject land, which had suffered during the last two centuries horrors unspeakable, still cowered like a whipped dog before its master, and was as little likely to rebel.

Colonel John leant upon such arguments; and, disappointed and alarmed as he was by Flavia's behaviour, he told himself that nothing was seriously meant, and that with the morning light things would look more cheerful.

But when he awoke, after a feverish and disturbed sleep, the faint grisly dawn that entered the room was not of a character to inspirit. He turned on his side to sleep again if he could; but in the act, he discovered that the curtain which he had drawn across the window was withdrawn. He could discern the dark mass of his clothes piled on a chair, of his hat clinging like some black bat to the whitewashed wall, of his valise and saddle-bags in the corner—finally of a stout figure bent, listening, at the door.

An old campaigner, Colonel John was not easily surprised. Repressing the exclamation on his lips, he rose to his elbow and waited until the figure at the door straightened itself, and, turning towards him, became recognisable as Uncle Ulick. The big man crossed the floor, saw that he was awake, and, finger on lip, enjoined silence. Then he pointed to the clothes on the chair, and brought his mouth near the Colonel's ear.

"The back-door!" he whispered. "Under the yews in the garden! Come!" And leaving the Colonel staring and mystified, he crept from the room with a stealth and lightness remarkable in one so big. The door closed, the latch fell, and made no sound.

Colonel John reflected that Uncle Ulick was no romantic young person to play at mystery for effect. There was a call for secrecy therefore. The O'Beirnes slept in a room divided from his only by a thin partition; and to gain the stairs he must pass the doors of other chambers, all inhabited. As softly as he could, and as quickly, he dressed himself. He took his boots in his hand; his sword, perhaps from old habit, under his other arm; in this guise he crept from the room and down the dusky staircase. Old Darby and an underling were snoring in the cub, which in the daytime passed for a pantry, and both by day and night gave forth a smell of sour corks and mice: but Colonel John slid by the open door as noiselessly as a shadow, found the back-door—which led to the fold-yard—on the latch, and stepped out into the cool, dark morning, into the sobering freshness and the clean, rain-washed air.

The grass was still grey-hued, the world still colourless and mysterious, the house a long black bulk against a slowly lightening sky. Only the earliest sparrows were twittering; in the trees only the most wakeful rooks were uttering tentative caws. The outburst of joy and life and music which would attend the sun's rising was not yet.

Colonel John paused on the doorstep to draw on his boots, then he picked his way delicately to the leather-hung wicket that broke the hedge which served for a fence to the garden. On the right of the wicket a row of tall Florence yews, set within the hedge, screened the pleasaunce, such as it was, from the house. Under the lee of these he found Uncle Ulick striding to and fro and biting his finger-nails in his impatience.