Part 31 (2/2)

”Then you'll be telling me indoors!” James answered curtly.

”No!” said Colonel Sullivan.

But at that the young man exploded. ”No?” he cried. ”No? And, why no?

Confusion, sir, it's too far you are driving us,” he continued pa.s.sionately. ”Is it at your bidding I must stand in a mob of beggars at my own gate--I, The McMurrough? And be telling and taking for all the gossoons in the country to hear? No? But it's yes, I say! There's bounds to it all, and if you must be falling to words with my friends, quarrel like gentlemen within doors, and not in a parcel of loons at the gate.”

He turned without waiting for a reply and strode into the courtyard.

Colonel John hesitated a moment, then he stood aside, and, with a stern face, he invited Asgill to precede him. The Justice did so, smiling. He had won the first bout; and now, if he was not much mistaken, his opponent had made a false move.

That opponent, following with a sombre face, began to be of the same opinion. In his simplicity he had supposed that it would be easy to bell the cat. He had seen, he fancied, a way to do it in a corner, quietly, with little outcry and no disturbance. But the cat had teeth and claws and the cunning of a cat, and was not, it now appeared, an animal easy to bell.

They pa.s.sed into the house, The McMurrough leading. There were two or three buckeens in the hall, and Darby and one of the down-at-heel serving-boys were laying the evening meal. ”You'll be getting out,”

James said curtly.

”We will,” replied one of the men. And they trooped out at the back.

”Now, what is it?” the McMurrough asked, turning on his followers and speaking in a tone hardly more civil.

”It's what you're saying--Get out!” Asgill answered smiling. ”Only it's the Colonel here's for saying it, and it seems I'm the one to get out.”

”What the saints do you mean?” James growled. ”Sorra bit of your fun am I wis.h.i.+ng at this present!” He wanted no trouble, and he saw that here was trouble.

”I can tell you in a few words,” Colonel Sullivan answered. ”You know on what terms we are here. I wish to do nothing uncivil, and I was looking for this gentleman to take a hint and go quietly. He will not, it seems, and so I must say plainly what I mean. I object to his presence here.”

James stared. He did not understand. ”Why, man, he's no Jacobite,” he cried, ”whoever the other is!” His surprise was genuine.

”I will say nothing as to that,” Colonel John answered precisely.

”Then, faith, what are you saying?” James asked. Asgill stood by smiling, aware that silence would best fight his battle.

”This,” Colonel John returned. ”That I know those things of him that make him unfit company here.”

”The devil you do!”

”And----”

But James's patience was at an end. ”Unfit company for whom?” he cried.

”Eh! Unfit company for whom? Is it Darby he'll be spoiling? Or Thaddy the lad? Or”--resentment gradually overcoming irony--”is it Phelim or Morty he'll be tainting the souls of, and he a Protestant like yourself? Curse me, Colonel Sullivan, it's clean out of patience you put me! Are we boys at school, to be scolded and flouted and put right by you? Unfit company? For whom? For whom, sir? I'd like to know. More, by token, I'd like to know also where this is to end--and I will, by your leave! For whom, sir?”

”For your sister,” Colonel John replied. ”Without saying more, Mr.

Asgill is not of the cla.s.s with whom your grandfather----”

”My grandfather--be hanged!” cried the angry young man--angry with some cause, for it must be confessed that Colonel John, with the best intentions, was a little heavy-handed. ”You said you'd be master here, and faith,” he continued with bitterness, ”it's master you mean to be.

But there's a limit! By Heaven, there's a limit----”

”Yes, James, there is a limit!” a voice struck in--a voice as angry as The McMurrough's, but vibrating to a purer note of pa.s.sion; so that the indignation which it expressed seemed to raise the opposition to Colonel John's action to a higher plane. ”There is a limit, Colonel Sullivan!” Flavia repeated, stepping from the foot of the stairs, on the upper flight of which--drawn from her room by the first outburst--she had heard the whole. ”And it has been reached! It has been reached when the head of The McMurroughs of Morristown is told on his own hearth whom he shall receive and whom he shall put to the door!

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