It was between four o'clock and five when the fleet ran into Peeltown harbor after the first night of the herring season, and toward eight the fisher-fellows, to the number of fifty at least, had gathered for their customary first breakfast in the kitchen of the "Three Legs of Man." What sport! What noisy laughter! What singing and rollicking cheers! The men stood neither on the order of their coming nor their going, their sitting nor their standing. In they trooped in their woolen caps or their broad sou'westers, their oilskins or their long sea-boots swung across their arms. They wore their caps or not as pleased them, they sang or talked as suited them, they laughed or sneezed, they sulked or snarled, they were noisy or silent, precisely as the whim of the individual prescribed the individual rule of manners. Rather later than the rest Dan Mylrea came swinging in, with a loud laugh and a shout, and something like an oath, too, and the broad homespun on his lips.
"Billy Quilleash—I say, Billy, there—why don't you put up the young mastha for the chair?"
"Aw, lave me alone," answered Billy Quilleash, with a contemptuous toss of the head.
"Uncle Billy's proud uncommon of the mastha," whispered Davy Fayle, who sat meekly on a form near the door, to the man who sat cross-legged on the form beside him.
"It's a bit free them chaps is making," said old Billy, in a confidential undertone to Dan, who was stretching himself out on the settle. Then rising to his feet with gravity, "Gen'l'men," said Quilleash, "what d'ye say now to Mistha Dan'l Mylrea for the elber-cheer yander?"
At that there was the response of loud raps on the table with the heels of the long boots swung over various arms, and with several clay pipes that lost their heads in the encounter. Old Billy resumed his seat with a lofty glance of patronage at the men about him, which said as plainly as words themselves, "I tould ye to lave it all to me."
"Proud, d'ye say? Look at him," muttered the fisherman sitting by Davy Fayle.
Dan staggered up and shouldered his way to the elbow-chair at the head of the table. He had no sooner taken his seat than he shouted for the breakfast, and without more ado the breakfast was lifted direct on to the table from the pans and boilers that simmered on the hearth.
First came the broth, well loaded with barley and cabbage; then suet puddings; and last of all the frying-pan was taken down from the wall, and four or five dozen of fresh herrings were made to grizzle and crackle and sputter over the fire.
Dan ate ravenously, and laughed noisily, and talked incessantly as he ate. The men at first caught the contagion of his boisterous manners, but after a time they shook their tousled heads and laid them together in gravity, and began to repeat in whispers, "What's agate of the young mastha, at all, at all?"
Away went the dishes, away went the cloth, an oil-lamp with its open mouth—a relic of some monkish sanctuary of the Middle Ages—was lifted from the mantel-shelf and put on the table for the receipt of custom; a brass censer, choked with spills, was placed beside it; pipes emerged from waistcoat-pockets, and pots of liquor with glasses and bottles came in from the outer bar.
"Is it heavy on the liquor you're going to be, Billy?" said Ned, the mate; and old Billy replied with a superior smile and the lifting up of a whisky bottle, from which he had just drawn the cork.
Then came the toasts. The chairman arose amid hip, hip, hooraa! and gave "Life to man and death to fish!" and Quilleash gave "Death to the head that never wore hair!"
Then came more noise and more liquor, and a good deal of both in the vicinity of the chair. Dan struck up a song. He sang "Drink to Me Only," and the noisy company were at first hushed to silence and then melted to audible sobs.
"Aw, man, the voice he has, anyway!"
"And the loud it is, and the tender, too, and the way he slidders up and down, and no squeaks and jumps."
"No, no; nothin' like squeezin' a tune out of an ould sow by pulling the tail at her."
Old Billy listened to this dialogue among the fisher-fellows about him, and smiled loftily. "It's nothin'," he said, condescendingly—"that's nothin'. You should hear him out in the boat, when we're lying at anchor, and me and him together, and the stars just makin' a peep, and the moon, and the mar-fire, and all to that, and me and him lying aft and smookin', and having a glass maybe, but nothin' to do no harm—that's the when you should hear him. Aw, man alive, him and me's same as brothers."
"More liquor there," shouted Dan, climbing with difficulty to his feet.
"Ay, look here. D'ye hear, down yander? Give us a swipe o' them speerits. Right. More liquor for the chair!" said Billy Quilleash. "And for some one besides?—is that what they're saying, the loblolly-boys? Well, look here, bad cess to it, of coorse, some for me, too. It's terrible good for the narves, and they're telling me it's morthal good for steddyin' the vi'ce. Going to sing? Coorse, coorse. What's that from the elber-cheer? Enemy, eh? Confound it, and that's true, though. What's that it's sayin'? 'Who's fool enough to put the enemy into his mouth to stale away his brains?' Aw, now, it's the good ould Book that's fine at summin' it all up."
Then there was more liquor and yet more, till the mouth of the monastic lamp ran over with chinking coin. Old Billy struck up his song. It was a doleful ditty on the loss of the herring fleet on one St. Matthew's Day not long before.
An hour before day,Tom Grimshaw, they say,To run for the port had resolved;Himself and John MoreWere lost in that hour,And also unfortunate Kinved.
An hour before day,Tom Grimshaw, they say,To run for the port had resolved;Himself and John MoreWere lost in that hour,And also unfortunate Kinved.
The last three lines of each verse were repeated by the whole company in chorus. Doleful as the ditty might be, the men gave it voice with a heartiness that suggested no special sense of sorrow, and loud as were the voices of the fisher-fellows, Dan's voice was yet louder.
"Aw, Dan, man, Dan, man alive, Dan," the men whispered among themselves. "What's agate of Mastha Dan? it's more than's good, man, aw, yes, yes, yes."
Still more liquor and yet more noise, and then, through the dense fumes of tobacco-smoke, old Billy Quilleash could be seen struggling to his feet. "Silence!" he shouted; "aisy there!" and he lifted up his glass. "Here's to Mistha Dan'l Mylrea, and if he's not going among the parzons, bad cess to them, he's going among the Kays, and when he gets to the big house at Castletown, I'm calkerlatin' it'll be all up with the lot o' them parzons, with their tithes and their censures, and their customs and their canons, and their regalashuns agen the countin' of the herrin', and all the rest of their messin'. What d'ye say, men? 'Skulking cowards?' Coorse, and right sarved, too, as I say. And what's that you're grinning and winkin' at, Ned Teare? It's middlin' free you're gettin' with the mastha anyhow, and if it wasn't for me he wouldn't bemane himself by comin' among the like of you, singin' and makin' aisy. Chaps, fill up your glasses every man of you, d'ye hear? Here's to the best gen'l'man in the island, bar none—Mistha Dan'l Mylrea, hip, hip, hooraa!"
The toast was responded to with alacrity, and loud shouts of "Dan'l Mylrea—best gen'l'man—bar none."
But what was going on at the head of the table? Dan had risen from the elbow-chair; it was the moment for him to respond, but he stared wildly around, and stood there in silence, and his tongue seemed to cleave to his mouth. Every eye was now fixed on his face, and that face quivered and turned white. The glass he had held in his hand fell from his nerveless fingers and broke on the table. Laughter died on every lip, and the voices were hushed. At last Dan spoke; his words came slowly, and fell heavily on the ear.
"Men," he said, "you have been drinking my health. You call me a good fellow. That's wrong. I'm the worst man among you. Old Billy says I'm going to the House of Keys. That's wrong, too. Shall I tell you where I am going? Shall I tell you? I'm going to the devil," and then, amid breathless silence, he dropped back in his seat and buried his head in his hands.
No one spoke. The fair head lay on the table among broken pipes and the refuse of spilled liquor. There could be no more drinking that morning. Every man rose to his feet, and picking up his waterproofs or his long sea-boots, one after one went shambling out. The room was dense with smoke; but outside the air was light and free, and the morning sun shone brightly.
"Strange now, wasn't it?" muttered one of the fellows.
"Strange uncommon!"
"He's been middlin' heavy on the liquor lately."
"And he'd never no right to strike the young parzon, and him his cousin, too, and terrible fond of him, as they're saying."
"Well, well, it's middlin' wicked anyway."
And so the croakers went their way. In two minutes more the room was empty, except for the stricken man, who lay there with hidden face, and Davy Fayle, who, with big tears glistening in his eyes, was stroking the tangled curls.
Dan rose to his feet a sobered man, and went out of the smoky pot-house without a word to any one, and without lifting his bleared and bloodshot eyes unto any face. He took the lane to the shore, and behind him, with downcast eyes, like a dog at the heels of his master, Davy Fayle slouched along. When they reached the shore Dan turned toward Orris Head, walking within a yard or two of the water's edge. Striding over the sands, the past of his childhood came back to him with a sense of pain. He saw himself flying along the beach with Ewan and Mona, shouting at the gull, mocking the cormorant, clambering up the rocks to where the long-necked bird laid her spotted eggs, and the sea-pink grew under the fresh grass of the corries. Under the head Dan sat on a rock and lifted away his hat from his burning forehead; but not a breath of wind stirred his soft hair.
Dan rose again with a new resolve. He knew now what course he must take. He would go to the Deemster, confess to the outrage of which he had been guilty, and submit to the just punishment of the law. With quick steps he strode back over the beach, and Davy followed him until he turned up to the gates of the new Ballamona, and then the lad rambled away under the foot of Slieu Dhoo. Dan found the Deemster's house in a tumult. Hommy-beg was rushing here and there, and Dan called to him, but he waved his arm and shouted something in reply, whereof the purport was lost, and then disappeared. Blind Kerry was there, and when Dan spoke to her as she went up the stairs, he could gather nothing from her hurried answer except that some one was morthal bad, as the saying was, and in another moment she, too, had gone. Dan stood in the hall with a sense of impending disaster. What had happened? A dread idea struck him at that moment like a blow on the brain. The sweat started from his forehead. He could bear the uncertainty no longer, and had set foot on the stairs to follow the blind woman, when there was the sound of a light step descending. In another moment he stood face to face with Mona. She colored deeply, and his head fell before her.
"Is it Ewan?" he said, and his voice came like a hoarse whisper.
"No, his wife," said Mona.
It turned out that not long after daybreak that morning the young wife of Ewan, who had slept with Mona, had awakened with a start, and the sensation of having received a heavy blow on the forehead. She had roused Mona, and told her what seemed to have occurred. They had looked about and seen nothing that could have fallen. They had risen from bed and examined the room, and had found everything as it had been when they lay down. The door was shut and there was no hood above the bed. But Mona had drawn up the window blind, and then she had seen, clearly marked on the white forehead of Ewan's young wife, a little above the temple, on the spot where she had seemed to feel the blow, a streak of pale color such as might have been made by the scratch of a thorn that had not torn the skin. It had been a perplexing difficulty, and the girls had gone back to bed, and talked of it in whispers until they had fallen asleep in each other's arms. When they had awakened again, the Deemster was rapping at their door to say that he had taken an early breakfast, that he was going off to hold his court at Ramsey, and expected to be back at midday. Then half-timidly, Mona had told her father of their strange experience, but he had bantered them on their folly, and they had still heard his laughter when he had leaped to the saddle in front of the house, and was cantering away over the gravel. Reassured by the Deemster's unbelief, the girls had thrown off their vague misgivings, and given way to good spirits. Ewan's young wife had said that all morning she had dreamed of her husband, and that her dreams had been bright and happy. They had gone down to breakfast, but scarcely had they been seated at the table before they had heard the click of the gate from the road.
Then they had risen together, and Ewan had come up the path with a white bandage about his head, and with a streak of blood above the temple. With a sharp cry, Ewan's young wife had fallen to the ground insensible, and when Ewan himself had come into the house they had carried her back to bed. There she was at that moment, and from a peculiar delicacy of her health at the time, there was but too much reason to fear that the shock might have serious results.
All this Mona told to Dan from where she stood, three steps up the stairs, and he listened with his head held low, one hand gripping the stair-rail, and his foot pawing the mat at the bottom. When she finished, there was a pause, and then there came from overhead a long, deep moan of pain.
Dan lifted his face; its sudden pallor was startling. "Mona," he said, in a voice that was husky in his throat, "do you know who struck Ewan that blow?"
There was silence for a moment and then, half in a whisper, half with a sob, Mona answered that she knew. It had not been from Ewan himself, but by one of the many tongues of scandal, that the news had come to Ballamona.
Dan railed at himself in bitter words, and called God to witness that he had been a curse to himself and every one about him. Mona let the torrent of his self-reproach spend itself, and then she said:
"Dan, you must be reconciled to Ewan."
"Not yet," he answered.
"Yes, yes, I'm sure he would forgive you," said Mona, and she turned about as if in the act of going back to seek for Ewan.
Dan grasped her hand firmly. "No," he said, "don't heap coals of fire on my head, Mona; don't, don't." And after a moment, with a calmer manner, "I must see the Deemster first."
Hardly had this been spoken when they heard a horse's hoofs on the gravel path, and the Deemster's voice calling to Hommy-beg as he threw the reins over the post near the door and entered the house. The Deemster was in unusual spirits, and slapped Dan on the back and laughed as he went into his room. Dan followed him, and Mona crept nervously to the open door. With head held down, Dan told what had occurred. The Deemster listened and laughed, asked further particulars and laughed again, threw off his riding boots and leggings, looked knowingly from under his shaggy brows, and then laughed once more.
"And what d'ye say you want me to do for you, Danny veg?" he asked, with one side of his wrinkled face twisted awry.
"To punish me, sir," said Dan.
At that the Deemster, who was buckling his slippers, threw himself back in his chair, and sent a shrill peal of mocking laughter through the house.
Dan was unmoved. His countenance did not bend as he said slowly, and in a low tone, "If you don't do it, sir, I shall never look into Ewan's face again."
The Deemster fixed his buckles, rose to his feet, slapped Dan on the back, and said: "Go home, man veen, go home," and then hurried away to the kitchen, where in another moment his testy voice could be heard directing Hommy-beg to put up the saddle on the "lath."
Mona looked into Dan's face. "Will you be reconciled to Ewan now?" she said, and took both his hands and held them.
"No," he answered firmly, "I will see the Bishop." His eyes were dilated; his face, that had hitherto been very mournful to see, was alive with a strange fire. Mona held his hands with a passionate grasp.
"Dan," she said, with a great tenderness, "this is very, very noble of you; this is like our Dan, this—"
She stopped; she trembled and glowed; her eyes were close to his.
"Don't look at me like that," he said.
She dropped his hands, and at the next instant he was gone from the house.
Dan found the Bishop at Bishop's Court, and told him all. The Bishop had heard the story already, but he said nothing of that. He knew when Dan hid his provocation and painted his offense at its blackest. With a grave face he listened while Dan accused himself, and his heart heaved within him.
"It is a serious offense," he said; "to strike a minister is a grievous offense, and the Church provides a censure."
Dan held his face very low, and clasped his hands in front of him.
"The censure is that on the next Sabbath morning following, in the presence of the congregation, you shall walk up the aisle of the parish church from the porch to the communion behind the minister, who shall read the 51st Psalm meantime."
The Bishop's deep tones and quiet manner concealed his strong emotion, and Dan went out without another word.
This was Friday, and on the evening of the same day Ewan heard what had passed between Dan and the Deemster and between Dan and the Bishop, and with a great lump in his throat he went across to Bishop's Court to pray that the censure might be taken off.
"The provocation was mine, and he is penitent," said Ewan; and with heaving breast the Bishop heard him out, and then shook his head.
"The censures of the Church were never meant to pass by the house of the Bishop," he said.
"But he is too deeply abased already," said Ewan.
"The offense was committed in public, and before the eyes of all men the expiation must be made."
"But I, too, am ashamed—think of it, and remove the censure," said Ewan, and his voice trembled and broke.
The Bishop gazed out at the window with blurred eyes that saw nothing. "Ewan," he said, "it is God's hand on the lad. Let it be; let it be."
Next day the Bishop sent his sumner round the parish, asking that every house might send one at least to the parish church next morning.
On Sunday Ewan's young wife kept her bed; but when Ewan left her for the church the shock of her nerves seemed in a measure to have passed away. There was still, however, one great disaster to fear, and Mona remained at the bedside.
The meaning of the sumner's summons had eked out, and long before the hour of service the parish church was crowded. The riff-raff that never came to church from year's end to year's end, except to celebrate the Oiel Verree, were there with eager eyes. While Willas-Thorn tolled the bell from the rope suspended in the porch, there was a low buzz of gossip, but when the bell ceased its hoarse clangor, and Will-as-Thorn appeared with his pitch-pipe in the front of the gallery, there could be heard, in the silence that followed over the crowded church, the loud tick of the wooden clock in front of him.
Presently from the porch there came a low, tremulous voice reading the Psalm that begins, "Have mercy upon me, O God, after Thy great goodness: according to the multitude of Thy mercies do away mine offenses."
Then the people who sat in front turned about, and those who sat at the side strained across, and those who sat above craned forward.
Ewan was walking slowly up the aisle in his surplice, with his pale face and scarred forehead bent low over the book in his hand, and close behind him, towering above him in his great stature, with head held down, but with a steadfast gaze, his hat in his hands, his step firm and resolute, Dan Mylrea strode along.
There was a dead hush over the congregation.
"Wash me thoroughly from my wickedness, and cleanse me from my sin. For I acknowledge my faults; and my sin is ever before me."
The tremulous voice rose and fell, and nothing else broke the silence except the uncertain step of the reader, and the strong tread of the penitent behind him.
"Against Thee only have I sinned, and done this evil in Thy sight—"
At this the tremulous voice deepened, and stopped, and went on and stopped again, and when the words came once more they came in a deep, low sob, and the reader's head fell into his breast.
Not until the Psalm came to an end, and Ewan and Dan had reached the communion, and the vicar had begun the morning prayer, and Will-as-Thorn had sent out a blast from his pitch-pipe, was the hard tension of that moment broken.
When the morning service ended, the Deemster rose from his pew and hurried down the aisle. As usual, he was the first to leave the church. The ghostly smile with which he had witnessed the penance that had brought tears to the eyes of others was still on the Deemster's lip, and a chuckle was in his throat when at the gate of the churchyard he met Hommy-beg, whose face was livid from a long run, and who stood for an instant panting for breath.
"Well, well, well?" said the Deemster, sending the words like small shot into Hommy-beg's deaf ear.
"Terrible, terrible, terrible," said Hommy-beg, and he lifted his hands.
"What is it? What? What?"
"The young woman-body is dead in child-bed."
Then the ghostly smile fled from the Deemster's face.
What passed at the new Ballamona on that morning of Dan's penance was very pitiful. There, in the death-chamber already darkened, lay Ewan's young wife, her eyes lightly closed, her girlish features composed, and a faint tinge of color in her cheeks. Her breast was half open, and her beautiful head lay in a pillow of her soft brown hair. One round arm was stretched over the counterpane, and the delicate fingers were curved inward until the thumb-nail, like an acorn, rested on the inner rim of a ring. Quiet, peaceful, very sweet and tender, she lay there like one who slept. After a short, sharp pang she had died gently, without a struggle, almost without a sigh, merely closing her eyes as one who was weary, and drawing a long, deep breath. In dying she had given premature birth to a child, a girl, and the infant was alive, and was taken from the mother at the moment of death.
When the Deemster entered the room, with a face of great pallor and eyes of fear, Mona was standing by the bed-head gazing down, but seeing nothing. The Deemster felt the pulse of the arm over the counterpane with fingers that trembled visibly. Then he shot away from the room, and was no more seen that day. The vicar, the child-wife's father, came with panting breath and stood by the bedside for a moment, and then turned aside in silence. Ewan came, too, and behind him Dan walked to the door and there stopped, and let Ewan enter the chamber of his great sorrow alone. Not a word was said until Ewan went down on his knees by the side of his wife, and put his arms about her, and kissed her lips, still warm, with his own far colder lips, and called to her softly by her name, as though she slept gently, and must not be awakened too harshly, and drew her to his breast, and called again, in a tenderer tone that brushed the upturned face like a caress:
"Aileen! Aileen! Aileen!"
Mona covered her eyes in her hands, and Dan, where he stood at the door, turned his head away.
"Aileen! Ailee! Ailee! My Ailee!"
The voice went like a whisper and a kiss into the deaf ear, and only one other sound was heard, and that was the faint cry of an infant from the room below.
Ewan raised his head and seemed to listen; he paused and looked at the faint color in the quiet cheeks; he put his hand lightly on the heart, and looked long at the breast that did not heave. Then he drew his arms very slowly away, and rose to his feet.
For a moment he stood as one dazed, like a man whose brain is benumbed, and, with the vacant light still in his eyes, he touched Mona on the arm and drew her hand from her eyes, and he said, as one who tells you something that you could not think, "She is dead!"
Mona looked up into his face, and at sight of it the tears rained down her own. Dan had stepped into the room noiselessly, and came behind Ewan, and when Ewan felt his presence, he turned to Dan with the same vacant look, and repeated in the same empty tone, "She is dead!"
And never a tear came into Ewan's eyes to soften their look of dull torpor; never again did he stretch out his arms to the silent form beneath him; only with dazed, dry eyes, he looked down, and said once more, "She is dead!"
Dan could bear up no longer; his heart was choking, and he went out without a word.
It was the dread silence of feeling that was frozen, but the thaw came in its time. They laid out the body of the young wife in the darkened room, and Ewan went away and rambled over the house all day long, and when night fell in, and the lighted candles were set in the death-chamber, and all in Ballamona were going off to bed, Ewan was still rambling aimlessly from room to room. He was very quiet, and he spoke little and did not weep at all. In the middle of that night the Deemster opened his bedroom door and listened, and Ewan's step was still passing from room to room, and Mona heard the same restless footfall in every break of her fitful sleep. But later on, in the dark hour that comes before day, the Deemster opened his door and listened again, and then all was quiet in the house. "He has gone to bed at last," thought the Deemster; but in the early morning, as he passed by Ewan's room, he found the door open, and saw that the bed had not been slept in.
The second day went by like the first, and the next night like the former one, and again in the dead of night the Deemster opened his door and heard Ewan's step. Once more, in the dark hour that goes before the day, he opened his door and listened again, and all was quiet as before. "Surely he is in bed now," thought the Deemster. He was turning back into his own room, when he felt a sudden impulse to go to Ewan's room first and see if it was as he supposed. He went, and the door was open and Ewan was not there, and again the bed had not been slept in.
The Deemster crept back on tiptoe, and a gruesome feeling took hold of him. He could not lie, and no sleep had come near his wakeful eyes, so he waited and listened for that unquiet beat of restless feet, but the sound did not come. Then, as the day was breaking over the top of Slieu Dhoo, and all the Curraghs around lay veiled in mist, and far away to the west a deep line stretched across where the dark sea lay with the lightening sky above it, the Deemster opened his door yet again, and went along the corridor steadily until he came to the door of the room where the body was. "Perhaps he is sitting with her," he thought, with awe, and he turned the handle. But when the door swung open the Deemster paused; a faint sound broke the silence; it was a soft and measured breathing from within. Quivering with dread, the Deemster stepped into the death-chamber, and his head turned rigidly toward the bed. There, in the gloom of the dawn that came over the light of the last candle that flickered in its socket, Ewan lay outstretched by the side of the white, upturned face of his dead wife, and his hand lay on her hand, and he was in a deep sleep.
To the Deemster it was as if a spirit had passed before his face, and the hair of his flesh stood up.
They buried Ewan's young wife side by side with his mother, under the elder-tree (now thick with clusters of the green berry) by the wall of the churchyard that stood over by the sea. The morning was fine, but the sun shone dimly through a crust of hot air that gathered and slumbered and caked above. Ewan passed through all without a word, or a sigh, or a tear. But when the company returned to the Deemster's house, and Mona spoke to Ewan and he answered her without any show of feeling, and Dan told him of his own remorse and accused himself of every disaster, and still Ewan gave no sign, but went in and out among them all with the vacant light in his eyes, then the Bishop whispered to Mona, and she went out and presently came again, and in her arms was the infant in its white linen clothes.
The sun was now hidden by the heavy cloud overhead, and against the window-panes at that moment there was a light pattering of rain-drops. Ewan had watched with his vacant gaze when Mona went out, but when she came again a new light seemed to come into his eyes, and he stepped up to her and looked down at the little face that was sleeping softly against her breast. Then he put out his arms to take the child, and Mona passed it to him, and he held it, and sat down with it, and all at once the tears came into his dry eyes and he wept aloud.
So far as concerned the Deemster, the death of Ewan's wife was the beginning of the end. Had she not died under the roof of the new Ballamona? Was it not by the strangest of accidents that she had died there, and not in her own home? Had she not died in child-bed? Did not everything attending her death suggest the force of an irresistible fate? More than twenty years ago the woman Kerruish, the mother of Mally Kerruish, had cursed this house, and said that no life would come to it but death would come with it.
And for more than twenty years the Deemster had done his best to laugh at the prediction and to forget it. Who was he that he should be the victim of fear at the sneezing of an old woman? What was he that he should not be master of his fate? But what had occurred? For more than twenty years one disturbing and distinct idea had engrossed him. In all his waking hours it exasperated him, and even in his hours of sleep it lay heavy at the back of his brain as a dull feeling of dread. On the bench, in the saddle, at table, alone by the winter's fire, alone in summer walks, the obstinate idea was always there. And nothing but death seemed likely to shake it off.
Often he laughed at it in his long, lingering, nervous laugh; but it was a chain that was slowly tightening about him. Everything was being fulfilled. First came the death of his wife at the birth of Mona, and now, after an interval of twenty years, the death of his son's wife at the birth of her child. In that stretch of time he had become in his own view a childless man; his hopes had been thwarted in the son on whom alone his hopes had been built; the house he had founded was but an echoing vault; the fortune he had reared an empty bubble. He was accursed; God had heard the woman's voice; he looked too steadily at the facts to mistake them, and let the incredulous fools laugh if they liked.
When, twenty years before, the Deemster realized that he was the slave of one tyrannical idea, he tried to break the fate that hung over him. He bought up the cottage on the Brew, and turned the woman Kerruish into the roads. Then he put his foot on every sign of superstitious belief that came in his way as judge.
But not with such brave shows of unbelief could he conquer his one disturbing idea. His nature had never been kindly, but now there grew upon him an obstinate hatred of everybody. This was in the days when his children, Ewan and Mona, lived in the cozy nest at Bishop's Court. If in these days any man mentioned the Kerruishes in the Deemster's presence, he showed irritation, but he kept his ears open for every syllable said about them. He knew all their history; he knew when the girl Mally fled away from the island on the day of Ewan's christening; he knew by what boat she sailed; he knew where she settled herself in England; he knew when her child was born, and when, in terror at the unfulfilled censure of the Church that hung over her (separating her from all communion with God's people in life or hope of redemption in death), she came back to the island, drawn by an irresistible idea, her child at her breast, to work out her penance on the scene of her shame.
Thereafter he watched her daily, and knew her life. She had been taken back to work at the net-looms of Kinvig, the Peeltown net-maker, and she lived with her mother at the cottage over the Head, and there in poverty she brought up her child, her boy, Jarvis Kerruish, as she had called him. If any pointed at her and laughed with cruelty; if any pretended to sympathize with her and said, with a snigger, "The first error is always forgiven, Mally woman"; if any mentioned the Deemster himself, and said, with a wink, "I'm thinking it terrible strange, Mally, that you don't take a slue round and put a sight on him"; if any said to her when she bought a new garment out of her scant earnings, a gown, or even a scarf or bit of bright ribbon such as she loved in the old days, "Dearee dear! I thought you wouldn't take rest, but be up and put a sight on the ould crooky"—the Deemster knew it all. He saw the ruddy, audacious girl of twenty sink into the pallid slattern of thirty, without hope, without joy in life, and with only a single tie.
And the Deemster found that there grew upon him daily his old malicious feeling; but so far as concerned his outer bearing, matters took a turn on the day he came upon the boys, Dan Mylrea and Jarvis Kerruish, fighting in the road. It was the first time he had seen the boy Jarvis. "Who is he?" he had asked, and the old woman Kerruish had made answer, "Don't you know him, Deemster? Do you never see a face like that? Not when you look in the glass?"
There was no need to look twice into a mirror like the face of that lad to know whose son he was.
The Deemster went home to Ballamona, and thought over the fierce encounter. He could tolerate no longer the living reproach of this boy's presence within a few miles of his own house, and, by an impulse no better than humbled pride, he went back to the cottage of the Kerruishes at night, alone, and afoot. The cottage was a lone place on the top of a bare heath, with the bleak sea in front, and the purple hills behind, and with a fenceless cart-track leading up to it. A lead mine, known as the Cross Vein, had been worked there forty years before. The shaft was still open, and now full of dark, foul water almost to the surface. One roofless wall showed where the gear had stood, and under the shelter of this wall there crouched a low thatched tool-shed, having a door and a small window. This was the cottage; and until old Mrs. Kerruish had brought there her few rickety sticks when, by the Deemster's orders, they had been thrown into the road, none had ever occupied the tool-shed as a house.
The door was open, and the Deemster stepped in. One of the women, old Mrs. Kerruish, was sitting on a stool by the fire—it was a fire of sputtering hazel sticks—shredding some scraps of green vegetables into a pot of broth that swung from the iron hook of the chimney. The other woman, Mally, was doing something in the dark crib of a sleeping-room, shut off from the living-room by a wooden partition like the stanchion-board of a stable. The boy was asleep; his soft breathing came from the dark crib.
"Mrs. Kerruish," said the Deemster, "I am willing to take the lad, and rear him, and when the time comes, to set him to business, and give him a start in life."
Mrs. Kerruish had risen stiffly from her stool, and her face was set hard.
"Think of it, woman, think of it, and don't answer in haste," said the Deemster.
"We'd have to be despard hard put to for a bite and a sup before we'd take anything from you, Deemster," said the old woman.
The Deemster's quick eyes, under the shaggy gray brows, glanced about the room. It was a place of poverty, descending to squalor. The floor was of the bare earth trodden hard, the roof was of the bare thatch, with here and there a lath pushed between the uphewn spars to keep it up, and here and there a broken patch dropping hayseed.
"You are desperate hard put to, woman," said the Deemster, and at that Mally herself came out of the sleeping-crib. Her face was thin and pale, and her bleared eyes had lost their sharp light; it was a countenance without one ray of hope.
"Stop, mother," she said; "let us hear what the Deemster has to offer."
"Offer? Offer?" the old woman rapped out; "you've had enough of the Deemster's offers, I'm thinking."
"Be quiet, mother," said Mally, and then she turned to the Deemster and said, "Well, sir, and what is it?"
"Aw, very nate and amazing civil to dirks like that—go on, girl, go on," said the old woman, tossing her head and hand in anger toward Mally.
"Mother, this is my concern, I'm thinking—what is it, sir?"
But the old woman's wrath at her daughter's patience was not to be kept down. "Behold ye!" she said, "it's my own girl that's after telling me before strangers that I've not a farthing at me, and me good for nothing at working, and only fit to hobble about on a stick, and fix the house tidy maybe, and to have no say in nothing—go on, och, go on, girl."
The Deemster explained his proposal. It was that the boy Jarvis should be given entirely into his control, and be no more known by his mother and his mother's mother, and perhaps no more seen or claimed or acknowledged by them, and that the Deemster should provide for him and see him started in life.
Mrs. Kerruish's impatience knew no bounds. "My gough!" she cried—"my gough, my gough!" But Mally listened and reflected. Her spirit was broken, and she was thinking of her poverty. Her mother was now laid aside by rheumatism, and could earn nothing, and she herself worked piecework at the net-making—so much for a piece of net, a hundred yards long by two hundred meshes deep, toiling without heart from eight to eight, and earning four, five, and six shillings a week. And if there was a want, her boy felt it. She did not answer at once, and after a moment the Deemster turned to the door. "Think of it," he said; "think of it."
"Hurroo! hurroo!" cried the old woman, derisively, from her stool, her untamable soul aflame with indignation.
"Be quiet, mother," said Mally, and the hopelessness that had spoken from her eyes seemed then to find a way into her voice.
The end of it was that Jarvis Kerruish was sent to a school at Liverpool, and remained there three years, and then became a clerk in the counting-house of Benas Brothers, of the Goree Piazza, ostensibly African merchants, really English money-lenders. Jarvis did not fret at the loss of his mother, and of course he never wrote to her; but he addressed a careful letter to the Deemster twice a year, beginning "Honored Sir," and ending "Yours, with much respect, most obediently."
Mally had miscalculated her self-command. If she had thought of her poverty, it had been because she had thought of her boy as well. He would be lifted above it all if she could but bring herself to part with him. She wrought up her feelings to the sacrifice, and gave away her son, and sat down as a broken-spirited and childless woman. Then she realized the price she had to pay. The boy had been the cause of her shame; but he had been the centre of her pride as well. If she had been a hopeless woman before, she was now a heartless one. Little by little she fell into habits of idleness and intemperance. Before young Jarvis sat in his frilled shirt on the stool in the Goree Piazza, and before the down had begun to show on his lean cheeks, his mother was a lost and abandoned woman.
But not yet had the Deemster broken his fate. When Ewan disappointed his hopes and went into the Church, and married without his sanction or knowledge, it seemed to him that the chain was gradually tightening about him. Then the Deemster went over once more to the cottage at the Cross Vein, alone, and in the night.
"Mrs. Kerruish," he said, "I am willing to allow you six pounds a year pension, and I will pay it in three pound notes on Lady Day and Martinmas," and putting his first payment on the table he turned about and was gone before the rheumatic old body could twist in her chair.
The Deemster had just made his third visit to the cottage at the Cross Vein, and left his second payment, when the death of Ewan's young wife came as a thunderbolt and startled him to the soul. For days and nights thereafter he went about like a beaten horse, trembling to the very bone. He had resisted the truth for twenty years; he had laughed at it in his long lingering laugh at going to bed at night and at rising in the morning; he had ridiculed superstition in others, and punished it when he could; he was the judge of the island, and she through whose mouth his fate fell upon him was a miserable ruin cast aside on life's highway; but the truth would be resisted no longer: the house over his head was accursed—accursed to him, and to his children, and to his children's children.
The Deemster's engrossing idea became a dominating terror. Was there no way left to him to break the fate that hung over him? None? The Deemster revolved the problem night and day, and meantime lived the life of the damned. At length he hit on a plan, and then peace seemed to come to him, a poor paltering show of peace, and he went about no longer like a beaten and broken horse. His project was a strange one; it was the last that prudence would have suggested, but the first that the evil spirit of his destiny could have hoped for—it was to send to Liverpool for Jarvis Kerruish, and establish him in Ballamona as his son.
In that project the hand of his fate was strongly upon him; he could not resist it; he seemed to yield himself to its power; he made himself its willing victim; he was even as Saul when the Spirit of the Lord had gone from him and an evil spirit troubled him, sending for the anointed son of Jesse to play on the harp to him and to supplant him on the throne.
It was not for long that Dan bore the signs of contrition. As soon as Ewan's pale face had lost the weight of its gloom, Dan's curly poll knew no more trouble. He followed the herrings all through that season, grew brown with the sun and the briny air, and caught the sea's laughter in his rollicking voice. He drifted into some bad habits from which he had hitherto held himself in check. Every morning when the boats ran into harbor, and Teare, the mate, and Crennel, the cook, stayed behind to sell the fish, Dan and old Billy Quilleash trooped up to the "Three Legs of Man" together. There Dan was made much of, and the lad's spirit was not proof against the poor flattery. It was Mastha Dan here, and Mastha Dan there, and Where is Mastha Dan? and What does Mastha Dan say? and great shoutings, and tearings, and sprees; and all the time the old cat with the whiskers who kept the pot-house was scoring up against Dan at the back of the cupboard door.
Did the Bishop know? Know? Did ever a young fellow go to the dogs but some old woman of either sex found her way to the very ear that ought not to be tormented with Job's comfort, and whisper, "Aw, dear! aw, dear!" and "Lawk-a-day!" and "I'm the last to bring bad newses, as the saying is," and "Och, and it's a pity, and him a fine, brave young fellow too!" and "I wouldn't have told it on no account to another living soul!"
The Bishop said little, and tried not to hear; but when Dan would have hoodwinked him, he saw through the device as the sun sees through glass. Dan never left his father's presence without a sense of shame that was harder to bear than any reproach would have been. Something patient and trustful, and strong in hope, and stronger in love, seemed to go out from the Bishop's silence to Dan's reticence. Dan would slink off with the bearing of a whipped hound, or perhaps, with a muttered curse under his teeth, and always with a stern resolve to pitch himself or his cronies straightway into the sea. The tragical purpose usually lasted him over the short mile and a half that divided Bishop's Court from the "Three Legs of Man," and then it went down with some other troubles and a long pint of Manx jough.
Of all men, the most prompt to keep the Bishop informed of Dan's sad pranks was no other than the Deemster. Since the death of Ewan's wife the Deemster's feelings toward Dan had undergone a complete change. From that time forward he looked on Dan with eyes of distrust, amounting in its intensity to hatred. He forbade him his house, though Dan laughed at the prohibition and ignored it. He also went across to Bishop's Court for the first time for ten years, and poured into the Bishop's ears the story of every bad bit of business in which Dan got involved. Dan kept him fully employed in this regard, and Bishop's Court saw the Deemster at frequent intervals.
If it was degrading to the Bishop's place as father of the Church that his son should consort with all the "ragabash" of the island, the scum of the land, and the dirtiest froth of the sea, the Bishop was made to know the full bitterness of that degradation. He would listen with head held down, and when the Deemster, passing from remonstrance to reproach, would call upon him to set his own house in order before he ever ascended the pulpit again, the Bishop would lift his great heavy eyes with an agonizing look of appeal, and answer in a voice like a sob, "Have patience, Thorkell—have patience with the lad; he is my son, my only son."
It chanced that toward the end of the herring season an old man of eighty, one William Callow, died, and he was the captain of the parish of Michael. The captaincy was a semi-civil, semi-military office, and it included the functions of parish head-constable. Callow had been a a man of extreme probity, and his walk in life had been without a slip.
"The ould man's left no living craythur to fill his shoes," the people said when they buried him, but when the name of the old man's successor came down from Castletown, who should be the new captain but Daniel Mylrea? The people were amazed, the Deemster laughed in his throat, and Dan himself looked appalled.
Hardly a month after this event, the relations of Dan and the Deemster, and Dan and the Bishop, reached a climax.
For months past the Bishop had been hatching a scheme for the sub-division of his episcopal glebe, the large extent of which had long been a burden on the dwindling energies of his advancing age; and he had determined that, since his son was not to be a minister of the Church, he should be its tenant, and farm its lands. So he cut off from the demesne a farm of eighty acres of fine Curragh land, well drained and tilled. This would be a stay and a solid source of livelihood to Dan when the herring fishing had ceased to be a pastime. There was no farmhouse on the eighty acres, but barns and stables were to be erected, and Dan was to share with Ewan the old Ballamona as a home.
Dan witnessed these preparations, but entered into them with only a moderate enthusiasm. The reason of his lukewarmness was that he found himself deeply involved in debts whereof his father knew nothing. When the fishing season finished and the calculations were made, it was found that the boat had earned no more than £240. Of this, old Billy Quilleash took four shares, every man took two shares, there was a share set aside for Davy, the boy, and the owner was entitled to eight shares for himself, his nets, and his boat. So far, all was reasonably satisfactory. The difficulty and dissatisfaction arose when Dan began to count the treasury. Then it was discovered that there was not enough in hand to pay old Billy and his men and the boy, leaving Dan's eight shares out of the count Dan scratched his head and pondered. He was not brilliant at figures, but he totted up his numbers again with the same result. Then he computed the provisioning—tea, at four shillings a pound, besides fresh meat four times a week, and fine flour biscuits. It was heavy, but not ruinous, and the season had been poor, but not bad, and whatever the net results, there ought not to have been a deficit where the principle of cooperation between master and man was that of share and share.
Dan began to see his way through the mystery—it was most painfully transparent in the light of the score that had been chalked up from time to time on the inside of the cupboard of the "Three Legs of Man." But it was easier to see where the money had gone than to make it up, and old Billy and his chums began to mutter and to grumble.
"It's raely wuss till ever," said one.
"The tack we've been on hasn't been worth workin'," said another.
Dan heard their murmurs, and went up to Bishop's Court. After all, the deficit was only forty pounds, and his father would lend him that much. But hardly had Dan sat down to breakfast than the Bishop, who was clearly in lower spirits than usual, began to lament that his charities to the poor had been interrupted by the cost of building the barns and stables on the farm intended for his son.
"I hope your fishing will turn out well, Dan," he said, "for I've scarce a pound in hand to start you."
So Dan said nothing about the debt, and went back to the fisher-fellows with a face as long as a haddock's. "I'll tell you, men, the storm is coming," he said.
Old Billy looked as black as thunder, and answered with an impatient gesture, "Then keep your weather eye liftin', that's all."
Dan measured the old salt from head to foot, and hitched his hand into his guernsey. "You wouldn't talk to me like that, Billy Quilleash, if I hadn't been a fool with you. It's a true saying, that when you tell your servant your secret you make him your master."
Old Billy sniggered, and his men snorted. Billy wanted to know why he had left Kinvig's boat, where he had a sure thirty pounds for his season; and Ned Teare wished to be told what his missus would say when he took her five pound ten; and Crennel, the slushy, asked what sort of a season the mastha was aftha callin' it, at all, at all.
Not a man of them remembered his share of the long scores chalked up on the inside of the cupboard door.
"Poor old dad," thought Dan, "he must find the money after all—no way but that," and once again he turned toward Bishop's Court.
Billy Quilleash saw him going off, and followed him. "I've somethin' terrible fine up here," said Billy, tapping his forehead mysteriously.
"What is it?" Dan asked.
"Och, a shockin' powerful schame. It'll get you out of the shoal water anyways," said Billy.
It turned out that the "shockin' powerful schame" was the ancient device of borrowing the money from a money-lender. Old Billy knew the very man to serve the turn. His name was Kisseck, and he kept the "Jolly Herrings" in Peeltown, near the bottom of the crabbed little thoroughfare that wound and twisted and descended to that part of the quay which overlooked the castle rock.
"No, no; that'll not do," said Dan.
"Aw, and why not at all?"
"Why not? Why not? Because it's blank robbery to borrow what you can't pay back."
"Robbery? Now, what's the use of sayin' the like o' that? Aw, the shockin' notions! Well, well, and do you raely think a person's got no feelin's? Robbery? Aw, well now, well now."
And old Billy tramped along with the air of an injured man.
But the end of it was that Dan said nothing to the Bishop that day, and the same night found him at the "Jolly Herrings." The landlord had nothing to lend, not he, but he knew people who would not mind parting with money on good security, or on anybody's bail, as the sayin' was. Couldn't Mastha Dan get a good man's name to a bit o' paper, like? Coorse he could, and nothing easier, for a gen'l'man same as him. Who was the people? They belonged to Liverpool, the Goree Peaizy—Benas they were callin' them.
Three days afterward the forty pounds, made up to fifty for round numbers, came to Kisseck, the landlord, and the bit o' paper came with it. Dan took the paper and went off with it to the old Ballamona. Ewan would go bail for him, and so the Bishop need know nothing of the muddle. But when Dan reached his new home Ewan was away—a poor old Quaker named Christian, who had brought himself to beggary by neglecting Solomon's injunction against suretyship, was dying, and had sent for the parson.
Dan was in a hurry; the fisher-fellows were grumbling, and their wives were hanging close about their coat-tails; the money must be got without delay, and of course Ewan would sign for it straight-away if he were there. An idea struck Dan, and made the sweat to start from his forehead. He had put the paper on the table and taken up a pen, when he heard Ewan's voice outside, and then he threw the pen down and his heart leaped with a sense of relief.
Ewan came in, and rattled on about old Christian, the Quaker. He hadn't a week to live, poor old soul, and he hadn't a shilling left in the world. Once he farmed his hundred acres, but he had stood surety for this man and surety for that man, and paid up the defalcations of both, and now, while they were eating the bread of luxury, he was dying as a homeless pauper.
"Well, he has been practising a bad virtue," said Ewan. "I wouldn't stand surety for my own brother—not for my own brother if I had one. It would be helping him to eat to-day the bread he earns to-morrow."
Dan went out without saying anything of the bit of paper from Liverpool. The fisher-fellows met him, and when they heard what he had to say their grumblings broke out again.
"Well, I'm off for the Bishop—and no disrespec'," said old Billy.
He did not go; the bit o' paper was signed, but not by Ewan; the money was paid; the grateful sea-dogs were sent home with their wages in their pockets and a smart cuff on either ear.
A month or two went by, and Dan grew quiet and thoughtful, and sometimes gloomy, and people began to say, "It's none so wild the young mastha is at all, at all," or perhaps, "Wonderful studdy he's growing," or even, "I wouldn't trust but he'll turn out a parson after all." One day in November Dan went over to new Ballamona and asked for Mona, and sat with her in earnest talk. He told her of some impending disaster, and she listened with a whitening face.
From that day forward Mona was a changed woman. She seemed to share some great burden of fear with Dan, and it lay heavy upon her, and made the way of life very long and cheerless to the sweet and silent girl.
Toward the beginning of December, sundry letters came out of their season from the young clerk of Benas Brothers, Jarvis Kerruish. Then the Deemster went over more than once to Bishop's Court, and had grave interviews with the Bishop.
"If you can prove this that you say, Thorkell, I shall turn my back on him forever—yes, forever," said the Bishop, and his voice was husky and his sad face was seamed with lines of pain.
A few days passed and a stranger appeared at Ballamona, and when the stranger had gone the Deemster said to Mona, "Be ready to go to Bishop's Court with me in the morning."
Mona's breath seemed to be suddenly arrested. "Will Ewan be there?" she asked.
"Yes—isn't it the day of his week-day service at the chapel—Wednesday—isn't it?"
"And Dan?" she said.
"Dan? Why Dan? Well, woman, perhaps Dan too—who knows?"
The Bishop had sent across to the old Ballamona to say that he wished to see his son in the library after service on the following morning.
At twelve next day, Dan, who had been plowing, turned in at Bishop's Court in his long boots and rough red shirt, and there in the library he found Mona and the Deemster seated. Mona did not speak when Dan spoke to her. Her voice seemed to fail; but the Deemster answered in a jaunty word or two; and then the Bishop, looking very thoughtful, came in with Ewan, whose eyes were brighter than they had been for many a day, and behind them walked the stranger whom Mona had seen at Ballamona the day before.
"Why, and how's this?" said Ewan, on perceiving that so many of them were gathered there.
The Bishop closed the door, and then answered, with averted face, "We have a painful interview before us, Ewan—be seated."
It was a dark day; the clouds hung low, and the dull rumble of the sea came through the dead air. A fire of logs and peat burned on the hearth, and the Deemster rose and stood with his back to it, his hands interlaced behind him. The Bishop sat on his brass-clamped chair at the table, and rested his pale cheek on his hand. There was a pause, and then without lifting his eyes the Bishop said, "Ewan, do you know that it is contrary to the customs of the Church for a minister to stand security for a debtor?"
Ewan was standing by the table, fumbling the covers of a book that he had lifted. "I know it," he said, quietly.
"Do you know that the minister who disregards that custom stands liable to suspension at the hands of his Bishop?"
Ewan looked about with a stare of bewilderment, but he answered again, and as quietly, "I know it."
There was silence for a moment, and then the Deemster, clearing his throat noisily, turned to where Dan was pawing up a rug that lay under a column and bust of Bunyan.
"And do you know, sir," said the Deemster, in his shrill tones, "what the punishment of forgery may be?"
Dan's face had undergone some changes during the last few minutes, but when he lifted it to the Deemster's, it was as firm as a rock.
"Hanging, perhaps," he answered, sullenly; "transportation, perhaps. What of it? Out with it—be quick."
Dan's eyes flashed; the Deemster tittered audibly; the Bishop looked up at his son from under the rims of his spectacles and drew a long breath. Mona had covered her face in her hands where she sat in silence by the ingle, and Ewan, still fumbling the book in his nervous fingers, was glancing from Dan to the Deemster, and from the Bishop to Dan, with a look of blank amazement.
The Deemster motioned to the stranger, who thereupon advanced from where he had stood by the door, and stepped up to Ewan.
"May I ask if this document was drawn by your authority?" and saying this the stranger held out a paper, and Ewan took it in his listless fingers.
There was a moment's silence. Ewan glanced down at the document. It showed that fifty pounds had been lent to Daniel Mylrea, by Benas Brothers, of the Goree Piazza, Liverpool, and it was signed by Ewan's own name as that of surety.
"Is that your signature?" asked the stranger.
Ewan glanced at Dan, and Dan's head was on his breast and his lips quivered. The Bishop was trembling visibly, and sat with head bent low by the sorrow of a wrecked and shattered hope.
The stranger looked from Ewan to Dan, and from Dan to the Bishop. The Deemster gazed steadily before him, and his face wore a ghostly smile.
"Is it your signature?" repeated the stranger, and his words fell on the silence like the clank of a chain.
Ewan saw it all now. He glanced again at the document, but his eyes were dim, and he could read nothing. Then he lifted his face, and its lines of agony told of a terrible struggle.
"Yes," he answered, "the signatureismine—what of it?"
At that the Bishop and Mona raised their eyes together. The stranger looked incredulous.
"It is quite right if you say so," the stranger replied, with a cold smile.
Ewan trembled in every limb. "I do say so," he said.
His fingers crumpled the document as he spoke, but his head was erect, and the truth seemed to sit on his lips. Dan dropped heavily into a chair and buried his face in his hands.
The stranger smiled again the same cold smile. "The lenders wish to withdraw the loan," he said.
"They may do so—in a month," said Ewan.
"That will suffice."
The Deemster's face twitched; Mona's cheeks were wet with tears; the Bishop had risen and gone to the window, and was gazing out through blurred eyes into the blinding rain that was now pelting against the glass.
"It would be cruel to prolong a painful interview," said the stranger; and then, with a glance toward Dan where he sat convulsed with distress that he made no effort to conceal, he added, in a hard tone:
"Only the lenders came to have reasons to fear that perhaps the document had been drawn without your knowledge."
Ewan handed the paper back with a nerveless hand. He looked at the stranger through swimming eyes and said gently, but with an awful inward effort, "You have my answer, sir—I knew of it."
The stranger bowed and went out. Dan leaped to his feet and threw his arms about Ewan's neck, but dared not to look into his troubled face. Mona covered her eyes and sobbed.
The Deemster picked up his hat to go, and in passing out he paused in front of Ewan and said, in a bitter whisper:
"Fool! fool! You have taken this man's part to your own confusion."
When the door closed behind the Deemster the Bishop turned from the window. "Ewan," he said, in a voice like a cry, "the Recording Angel has set down the lie you have told to-day in the Book of Life to your credit in heaven."
Then the Bishop paused, and Dan lifted his head from Ewan's neck.
"As for you, sir," the Bishop added, turning to his son, "I am done with you forever—go from me—let me see your face no more."
Dan went out of the room with bended head.