CHAPTER XXI
THE KEY
Colonel John rose and walked unsteadily to the window. He rested a hand on either jamb and looked through it, peering to right and left with wistful eyes. He detected no one, nothing, no change, no movement, and, with a groan, he straightened himself. But he still continued to look out, gazing at the bare sward below the window, at the sparkling sheet of water beyond and beneath it, at the pitiless blue sky above, in which the sun was still high, though it had begun to decline.
Presently he grew weary, and went back to his chair. He sat down with his elbows on his knees and his head between his hands. Again his ears had deceived him! Again hope had told her flattering tale! How many more times would he start to his feet, fancying he heard the footstep that did not fall, calling aloud to those who were not there, anticipating those who, more hard of heart than the stone walls about him, more heedless than the pitiless face of nature without, would not come before the appointed time! And that was hours away, hours of thirst and hunger, almost intolerable; of patience and waiting, weary waiting, broken only by such a fancy, born of his weakened senses, as had just drawn him to the window.
The suffering which is inevitable is more easy to bear than that which is caused by man. In the latter case the sense that the misery felt may be ended by so small a thing as another's will; that another may, by lifting a finger, cut it short, and will not; that to persuade him is all that is needful – this becomes at the last maddening, intolerable, a thing to upset the reason, if that other will not be persuaded.
Colonel John was a man sane and well-balanced, and assuredly not one to despair lightly. But even he had succumbed more than once during the last twelve hours to gusts of rage, provoked as much by the futility of his suffering as by the cruelty of his persecutors. After each of these storms he had laughed, in wonder at himself, had scolded himself and grown calm. But they had made their mark upon him, they had left his eyes wilder, his cheeks more hollow; his hand less firm.
He had burned, in fighting the cold of the past night, all that would burn, except the chair on which he sat; and with the dawn the last spark of his fire had died out. Notwithstanding those fits of rage he was not light-headed. He could command his faculties at will, he could still reflect and plan, marshal the arguments and perfect the reasons that must convince his foes, that, if they inflicted a lingering death on him, they did but work their own undoing. But at times he found himself confounding the present with the past, fancying, for a while, that he was in a Turkish prison, and turning, under that impression, to address Bale; or starting from a waking dream of some cold camp in Russian snows – alas! starting from it only to shiver with that penetrating, heart-piercing, frightful cold, which was worse to bear than the gnawing of hunger or the longing of thirst.
He had not eaten for more than seventy hours. But the long privation which had weakened his limbs and blanched his cheeks, which had even gone some way towards disordering his senses, had not availed to shake his will. The possibility of surrender did not occur to him, partly because he felt sure that James McMurrough would not be so foolish as to let him die; but partly, also, by reason of a noble stubbornness in the man, a fixedness that for no pain of death would leave a woman or a child to perish. More than once Colonel Sullivan had had to make that choice, amid the horrors of a retreat across famished lands, with wolves and Cossacks on his skirts; and perhaps the choice then made had become a habit of the mind. At any rate, whether that were the cause or no, in this new phase he gave no thought to yielding.
He had sat for some minutes in the attitude of depression, or bodily weakness, which has, been described, when once more a sound startled him. He raised his head and turned his eyes, sharpened by hunger, on the window. But this time, distrusting his senses, he did not rise until the sound was repeated. Then he faltered to his feet, and once again went unsteadily to the window, and, leaning a hand on each jamb, looked out.
At the same moment Flavia looked in. Their eyes met. Their faces were less than a yard apart.
The girl started back with a low cry, caused either by alarm on finding him so near her or by horror at the change in his aspect. If the latter, there was abundant cause. For she had left him hungry, she found him starving; she had left him haggard, she found him with eyes unnaturally large, his temples hollow, his lips dry, his chin unshaven. It was indeed a mask rather than a face, a staring mask of famine, that looked out of the dusky room at her, and looked not the less pitifully, not the less wofully, because, as soon as its owner took in her identity, the mask tried to smile.
"Mother of God!" she whispered. Her face had grown nearly as white as his. "O Mother of God!" She had imagined nothing like this.
And Colonel John, believing – his throat was so dry that he could not speak at once – that he read pity as well as horror in her face, felt a sob rise in his breast. He tried to smile the more bravely for that, and presently he found his voice, a queer, husky voice.
"You must not leave me – too long," he said. His smile was becoming ghastly.
She drew in her breath, and averted her face, to hide, he hoped, the effect of the sight upon her. Or perhaps – for he saw her shudder – she was mutely calling the sunlit lake on which her eyes rested, the blue sky, the smiling summer scene, to witness against this foul cruelty, this dark wickedness.
But it seemed that he deceived himself. For when she turned her face to him again, though it was still colourless, it was hard and set.
"You must sign," she said. "You must sign the paper."
His parched lips opened, but he did not answer. He was as one struck dumb.
"You must sign!" she repeated insistently. "Do you hear? You must sign!"
Still he did not answer; he only looked at her with eyes of infinite reproach. The pity of it! The pity of it! She, a woman, a girl, whom compassion should have constrained, whose tender heart should have bled for him, could see him tortured, could aid in the work, and cry "Sign!"
She could indeed, for she repeated the word – fiercely, feverishly. "Sign!" she cried. And then, "If you will," she said, "I will give you – see! See! You shall have this. You shall eat and drink; only sign! For God's sake, sign what they want, and eat and drink!"
And, with fingers that trembled with haste, she drew from a hiding-place in her cloak, bread and milk and wine. "See what I have brought," she continued, holding them before his starting eyes, his cracking lips, "if you will sign."
He gazed at them, at her, with anguish of the mind as well as of the body. How he had mistaken her! How he had misread her! Then, with a groan, "God forgive you!" he cried, "I cannot! I cannot!"
"You will not sign?" she retorted.
"Cannot, and will not!" he said.
"And why? Why will you not?"
On that his patience, sorely tried, gave way; and, swept along by one of those gusts of rage, he spoke. "Why?" he cried in hoarse accents. "You ask me why? Because, ungrateful, unwomanly, miserable as you are – I will not rob you or the dead! Because I will not be false to an old man's trust! I will not give to the forsworn what was meant for the innocent – nor sell my honour for a drink of water! Because," – he laughed a half-delirious laugh – "there is nothing to sign, nothing! I have burned your parchments these two days, and if you tempt me two more days, if you make me suffer twice as much as I have suffered, you can do nothing! If your heart be as hard as – it is, you can do nothing!" He held out hands which trembled with passion. "You can do nothing!" he repeated. "Neither you, who – God forgive you, are no woman, have no woman's heart, no woman's pity! – nor he who would have killed me in the bog to gain that which he now starves me to get! But I foiled him then, as I will foil him to-day, ingrate, perjured, accursed, as he is, accursed – "
He faltered and was silent, steadying himself by resting one hand against the wall. For a moment he covered his eyes with the other hand. Then "God forgive me!" he resumed in a lower tone, "I know not what I say! God forgive me! And you – Go! for you too – God forgive you – know not what you do. You do not know what it is to hunger and thirst, or you would not try me thus! Nor do you know what you were to me, or you would not try me thus! Yet I ought to remember that – that it is not for yourself you do it!"
He turned his back on her then, and on the window. He had taken three steps towards the middle of the room, when she cried, "Wait!"
"Go!" he repeated with a backward gesture of the hand. "Go! and God forgive you, as I do!"
"Wait!" she cried. "And take them! Oh, take them! Quick!" He turned about slowly, almost with suspicion. She was holding the food and the drink through the window, holding them out for him to take. But it might be another deception. He was not sure, and for a moment a cunning look gleamed in his eyes, and he took a step in a stealthy fashion towards the window, as if, were she off her guard, he would snatch them from her. But she cried again, "Take them! Take them!" with tears in her voice. "I brought them for you. May God indeed forgive me!"
The craving was so strong upon him that he took them then without a word, without answering her or thanking her. He turned his back on her, as soon as he had possessed himself of them, as if he dared not let her see the desire in his face; and standing thus, he drew the stopper from the bottle of milk, and drank. He would fain have held the bottle to his lips until he had drained the last drop: but he controlled himself, and when he had swallowed a few mouthfuls, he removed it. Then, with the solemnity of a sacrament, perhaps with the feeling that should attend one, he broke off three or four small fragments of the bread, and ate them one by one and slowly – the first with difficulty, the second more easily, the third with an avidity which he checked only by a firm effort of the will. "Presently!" he told himself. "Presently! There is plenty, there is plenty." Yet he allowed himself two more mouthfuls of bread and another sip of milk – milk that was nectar, rather than any earthly drink his lips had ever encountered.
At length, with new life running in his veins, and not new life only, but a pure thankfulness that she had proved herself very woman at the last, he laid his treasures on the chair, and turned to her. She was gone.
His face fell. For while he had eaten and drunk he had felt her presence at his back, and once he was sure that he had heard her sob. But she was gone. A chill fell upon his spirits. Yet she might not be gone far. He staggered – for he was not yet steady on his feet – to the window, and looked to right and left.
She had not gone far. She was lying prone on the sward, her face hidden on her arms; and it was true that he had heard her sob, for she was weeping without restraint. The change in him, the evidence of suffering which she had read in his face, to say nothing of his reproaches, had done something more than shock her. They had opened her eyes to the true nature – already dimly seen – of the plan to which she had lent herself. They had torn the last veil from the selfishness of those with whom she had acted, their cupidity and their ruthlessness. And they had shown the man himself in a light so new and startling, that even the last twenty-four hours had not prepared her for it. The scales of prejudice which had dimmed her sight fell at length, and wholly, from her eyes; and, for the first time, she saw him as he was. For the first time she perceived that, in pursuing the path he had followed, he might have thought himself right; he might have been moved by a higher motive than self-interest, he might have been standing for others rather than for himself. Parts of the passionate rebuke which suffering and indignation had forced from him remained branded upon her memory; and she wept in shame, feeling her helplessness, her ignorance, her inexperience, feeling that she had no longer any sure support or prop. For how could she trust those who had drawn her into this hideous, this cruel business? Who, taking advantage at once of her wounded vanity, and her affection for her brother, had led her to this act, from which she now shrank in abhorrence?
There was only, of all about her, Uncle Ulick to whom she could turn, or on whom she could depend. And he, though he would not have stooped to this, was little better, she knew, than a broken reed. The sense of her loneliness, the knowledge that those about her used her for their own ends – and those the most unworthy – overwhelmed her; and in proportion as she had been proud and self-reliant, was her present abasement.
When the first passion of self-reproach had spent itself, she heard him calling her by name, and in a voice that stirred her heart-strings. She rose, first to her knees and then to her feet, and, averting her face, "I will open the door," she said, humbly and in a broken voice. "I have brought the key."
He did not answer, and she did not unlock. For as, still keeping her face averted that he might not see her tears, she turned the corner of the Tower to gain the door, her brother's head and shoulders rose above the level of the platform. As The McMurrough stepped on to the latter from the path, he was in time to see her skirt vanishing. He saw no more. But his suspicions were aroused. He strode across the face of the Tower, turned the corner, and came on her in the act of putting the key in the lock.
"What are you doing?" he cried, in a terrible voice. "Are you mad?"
She did not answer, but neither did he pause for her answer. The imminence of the peril, the thought that the man whom he had so deeply wronged, and who knew him for the perjured thing he was, might in another minute be free – free to take what steps he pleased, free to avenge himself and punish his foes, rose up before him, and he thrust her roughly from the door. The key, not yet turned, came away in her hand, and he tried to snatch it from her.
"Give it me!" he cried. "Do you hear? Give it me!"
"I will not!" she cried. "No!"
"Give it up, I say!" he retorted. And this time he made good his hold on her wrist. He tried to force the key from her. "Let it go!" he panted, "or I shall hurt you!"
But he made a great mistake if he thought that he could coerce Flavia in that way. Her fingers only closed more tightly on the key. "Never!" she cried, struggling with him. "Never! I am going to let him out!"
"You coward!" a voice cried through the door. "Coward! Coward!" There was a sound of drumming on the door.
But Colonel John's voice and his blows were powerless to help, as James, in a frenzy of rage and alarm, gripped the girl's wrist, and twisted it. "Let it go! Let it go, you fool!" he cried brutally, "or I will break your arm!"
Her face turned white with pain, but for a moment she endured in silence. Then a shriek escaped her.
It was answered instantly. Neither he nor she had had eyes for aught but one another; and the hand that fell, and fell heavily, on James's shoulder was as unexpected as a thunderbolt.
"By Heaven, man," a voice cried in his ear. "Are you mad? Or is this the way you treat women in Kerry? Let the lady go! Let her go, I say!"
The command was needless, for at the first sound of the voice James had fallen back with a curse, and Flavia, grasping her bruised wrist with her other hand, reeled for support against the Tower wall. For a moment no one spoke. Then James, with scarcely a look at Payton – for he it was – bade her come away with him. "If you are not mad," he growled, "you'll have a care! You'll have a care, and come away, girl!"
"When I have let him out, I will," she answered, her eyes glowing sombrely as she nursed her wrist. In her, too, the old Adam had been raised.
"Give me the key!" he said for the last time.
"I will not," she said. "And if I did – " she continued, with a glance at Payton that reminded the unhappy McMurrough that, with the secret known, the key was no longer of use – "if I did, how would it serve you?"
The McMurrough turned his rage upon the intruder. "Devil take you, what business will it be of yours?" he cried. "Who are you to come between us, eh?"
Payton bowed. "If I offend," he said airily, "I am entirely at your service." He tapped the hilt of his sword. "You do not wear one, but I have no doubt you can use one. I shall be happy to give you satisfaction where and when you please. A time and place – "
But James did not stop to hear him out. He turned with an oath and a snarl, and went off – went off in such a manner that Flavia could not but see that the challenge was not to his taste. At another time she would have blushed for him. But his brutal violence had done more during the last ten minutes to depose his image from her heart than years of neglect and rudeness.
Payton saw him go, and, blessing the good fortune which had put him in a position to command the beauty's thanks, he turned to receive them. But Flavia was not looking at him, was not thinking of him. She had put the key in the lock and was trying to turn it. Her left wrist, however, was too weak, and the right was so strained as to be useless. She signed to him to turn the key, and he did so, and threw open the door, wondering much who was there and what it was all about.
He did not at once recognise the man who, pale and haggard, a mere ghost of himself, dragged himself up the three steps, and, exhausted by the effort, leant against the doorpost. But when Colonel John spoke and tried to thank the girl, he knew him.
He whistled. "You are Colonel Sullivan!" he said.
"The same, sir!" Colonel John murmured mechanically.
"Are you ill?"
"I am not well," the other replied with a sickly smile. The indignation which he had felt during the contest between the girl and her brother had been too much for his strength. "I shall be better presently," he added. He closed his eyes.
"We should be getting him below," Flavia said in an undertone.
Payton looked from one to the other. He was in a fog. "Has he been here long?" he asked.
"Nearly four days," she replied, with a shiver.
"And nothing to eat?"
"Nothing."
"The devil! And why?"
She did not stay to think how much it was wise to tell him. In her repentant mood she was anxious to pour herself out in self-reproach. "We wanted him to convey some property," she said, "as we wished."
"To your brother?"
"Ah, to him!" Then, seeing his astonishment, "It was mine," she added.
Payton knew that estates were much held in trust in that part, and he began to understand. He looked at her; but no, he did not understand now. For if the idea had been to constrain Colonel Sullivan to transfer her property to her brother, how did her interest match with that? He could only suppose that her brother had coerced her, and that she had given him the slip and tried to release the man – with the result he had witnessed.
One thing was clear. The property, large or small, was still hers. The Major looked with a thoughtful face at the smiling valley, with its cabins scattered over the slopes, at the lake and the fishing-boats, and the rambling slate-roofed house with its sheds and peat-stacks. He wondered.
No more was said at that moment, however, for Flavia saw that Colonel Sullivan's strength was not to be revived in an hour. He must be assisted to the house and cared for there. But in the meantime, and to lend some strength, she was anxious to give him such wine and food as he could safely take. To procure these she entered the room in which he had been confined.
As she cast her eyes round its dismal interior, marked the poor handful of embers that told of his long struggle with the cold, marked the one chair which he had saved – for to lie on the floor had been death – marked the beaten path that led from the chair to the window, and spoke of many an hour of painful waiting and of hope deferred, she saw the man in another, a more gentle, a more domestic aspect. She had seen the heroism, she now saw the pathos of his conduct, and tears came afresh to her eyes. "For me!" she murmured. "For me! And how had I treated him!"
Her old grievance against him was forgotten, wiped out of remembrance by his sufferings. She dwelt only on the treatment she had meted out to him.
When they had given him to eat and drink he assured them, smiling, that he could walk. But when he attempted to do so he staggered. "He will need a stronger arm than yours," Payton said, with a grin. "May I offer mine?"
For the first time she looked at him gratefully "Thank you," she said.
"I can walk," the Colonel repeated obstinately. "A little giddy, that is all." But in the end he needed all the help that both could give him. And so it happened that a few minutes later Luke Asgill, standing at the entrance to the courtyard, a little anxious indeed, but aware of no immediate danger, looked along the road, and saw the three approaching, linked in apparent amity.
The shock was great, for James McMurrough had fled, cursing, into solitude and the hills, taking no steps to warn his ally. The sight, thus unforeseen, struck Asgill with the force of a bullet. Colonel John released, and in the company of Flavia and Payton! All his craft, all his coolness forsook him. He slunk out of sight by a back way, but not before Payton had marked his retreat.