Now, these oxen had been a gift of the Bishop to Dan. They were old, and had grown wise with their years. For fifteen years they had worked on the glebe at Bishop's Court, and they knew the dinner hour as well as if they could have taken the altitude of the sun. When the dinner bell rang at the Court at twelve o'clock, the oxen would stop short, no matter where they were or what they were doing, and not another budge would they make until they had been unyoked and led off for their midday mash.
It was now only a few minutes short of twelve, but no one took note of that circumstance, and the oxen were yoked to a plow.
"Same judge and jury," said the stranger, but Ewan excused himself.
"Aw, what matter about a judge," said Dan, from his plow-handles; "let the jury be judge as well."
Ewan and Mona looked on in silence for some moments. Ewan could scarce contain himself. There was Dan, stripped to his red flannel shirt, his face tanned and glowing, his whole body radiant with fresh life and health, and he was shouting and laughing as if there had never been a shadow to darken his days.
"Look at him," whispered Ewan, with emotion, in Mona's ear. "Look! this good-nature that seems so good to others is almost enough to make me hate him."
Mona was startled, and turned to glance into Ewan's face.
"Come, let us go," said Ewan, with head aside.
"Not yet," said Mona.
Then Jarvis Kerruish, who had stepped aside for a moment, returned and said:
"Will you take a wager with me, Mona – a pair of gloves?"
"Very well," she answered.
"Who do you bet on?"
"Oh, on the stranger," said Mona, coloring slightly, and laughing a little.
"How lucky," said Jarvis, "I bet on the captain."
"I can stand it no longer," whispered Ewan, "will you come?" But Mona's eyes were riveted on the group about the oxen. She did not hear, and Ewan turned away, and walked out of the meadow.
Then there was a shout, and the oxen started with Dan behind them. On they went through the hard, tough ground, tranquilly, steadily, with measured pace, tearing through roots of trees that lay in their way as if nothing could stop them in their great strength.
When the oxen got back after the first stretch the time was called – five minutes thirty seconds – and there was a great cheer, and Mona's pale face was triumphant.
The stranger brought up his horses, and set off again, straining every muscle. He did his stretch in six minutes four seconds, and another cheer – but it was a cheer for Dan – went up after the figures were called.
Then Dan whipped round his oxen once more, and brought them up to the stake. The excitement among the people was now very great. Mona clutched her cloak convulsively, and held her breath. Jarvis was watching her closely, and she knew that his cold eyes were on her face.
"One would almost imagine that you were anxious to lose your bet," he said. She made no answer. When the oxen started again her lips closed tightly, as if she was in pain.
On the oxen went, and made the first half of the stretch without a hitch, and, with the blade of the plow lifted, they were wheeling over the furrow end, when a bell rang across the Curragh – it was the bell for the midday meal at Bishop's Court – and instantly they came to a dead stand. Dan called to them, but they did not budge; then his whip fell heavily across their snouts, and they snorted, but stirred not an inch. The people were in a tumult, and shouted with fifty voices at once. Dan's passion mastered him. He brought his whip down over the flanks and across the eyes and noses of the oxen; they winced under the blows that rained down on them, and then shot away across the meadow, tearing up the furrows they had made.
Then there was a cry of vexation and anger from the people, and Dan, who had let go his reins, strode back to the stake. "I've lost," said Dan, with a muttered oath at the oxen.
All this time Jarvis Kerruish had kept his eye steadily fixed on Mona's twitching face. "You've won, Mona," he said, in a cold voice and with an icy smile.
"I must go. Where is Ewan?" she said, tremulously, and before Jarvis was aware she had gone over the grass.
Dan had heard when Ewan declined to act as judge, he had seen when Ewan left the meadow, and, though he did not look, he knew when Mona was no longer there. His face was set hard, and it glowed red under his sunburned skin.
"Davy, bring them up," he said; and Davy Fayle led back the oxen to the front of the stake.
Then Dan unyoked them, took out the long swinging tree that divided them – a heavy wooden bar clamped with iron – and they stood free and began to nibble the grass under their feet.
"Look out!" he shouted, and he swung the bar over his shoulder.
The crowd receded and left an open space in which Dan stood alone with the oxen, his great limbs holding the ground like their own hoofs, his muscles standing out like bulbs on his bare arms.
"What is he going to do – kill them?" said one.
"Look out!" Dan shouted again, and in another moment there was the swish of the bar through the air. Then down the bar came on the forehead of one of the oxen, and it reeled, and its legs gave way, and it fell dead.
The bar was raised again, and again it fell, and the second of the oxen reeled like the first and fell dead beside its old yoke-fellow.
A cry of horror ran through the crowd, but heeding it not at all, Dan threw on his coat and buckled his belt about him, and strode through the people and out at the gate.
CHAPTER XVII
THE WRONG WAY WITH DAN
What happened next was one of those tragedies of bewildering motive, so common and so fatal, in which it is impossible to decide whether evil passion or evil circumstances plays the chief malicious part.
Dan walked straight to the new Ballamona, and pushed through the house without ceremony, as it had been his habit to do in other days, to the room where Mona was to be found. She was there, and she looked startled at his coming.
"Is it you, Dan?" she said, in a tremulous whisper.
He answered sullenly:
"It is I. I have come to speak with you. I have something to say – but no matter – "
He stopped and threw himself into a chair. His head ached, his eyes were hot, and his mind seemed to him to be in darkness and confusion.
"Mona, I think I must be going mad," he stammered after a moment.
"Why talk like that?" she said. Her bosom heaved and her face was troubled.
He did not answer, but after a pause turned toward her, and said in a quick, harsh tone, "You did not expect to see me here, and you have been forbidden to receive me. Is it not so?"
She colored deeply, and did not answer at once, and then she began, with hesitation:
"My father – it is true, my father – "
"It is so," he said sharply. He got on to his feet and tramped about the room. After a moment he sat down again, and leaned his elbows on his knees and his head in his hands.
"But what of Ewan?" he asked.
"Ewan loves you, Dan, and you have been at fault," said Mona, in broken accents.
"At fault?"
There was a sudden change in his manner. He spoke bruskly, even mockingly, and laughed a short, grating laugh.
"They are taking the wrong way with me, Mona – that's the fact," he said, and now his breast heaved and the words came with difficulty.
Mona was gazing absently out at the window, her head aslant, her fingers interlaced before her. "Oh, Dan, Dan," she murmured in a low tone, "there is your dear, dear father, and Ewan, and – and myself – "
Dan had leapt to his feet again. "Don't turn my eyes into my head, Mona," he said.
He tramped to and fro in the room for a moment and then broke out nervously, "All last night I dreamt such an ugly dream. I dreamt it three times, and, O God! what an ugly dream it was! It was a bad night, and I was walking in the dark, and stumbling first into bogs and then in cart ruts, when all of a sudden a man's hand seized me unawares. I could not see the man, and we struggled long in the darkness, and it seemed as if he would master me. He gripped me by the waist, and I held him by the shoulders. We reeled and fell together, and when I would have risen his knee was on my chest. But a great flood of strength seemed to come to me and I threw him off, and rose to my feet and closed with him again, and at last I was over him, covering him, with his back across my thigh and my hand set hard in his throat. And all this time I heard his loud breathing in the darkness, but never once the sound of his voice. Then instantly, as if by a flash of lightning, I saw the face that was close to mine, and – God Almighty! it was my own face – my own – and it was black already from the pressure of my stiff fingers at the throat."
He trembled as he spoke, and sat again and shivered, and a cold chill ran down his back.
"Mona," he said, half in a sob, "do you believe in omens?"
She did not reply. Her breast heaved visibly, and she could not speak.
"Tush!" he said, in another voice, "omens!" and he laughed bitterly, and rose again and picked up his hat, and then said, in a quieter way, "Only, as I say, they're taking the wrong way with me, Mona."
He had opened the door, and she had turned her swimming eyes toward him.
"It was bad enough to make himself a stranger to me, but why did he want to make you a stranger, too? Stranger, stranger!" He echoed the word in a mocking accent, and threw back his head.
"Dan," said Mona, in a low, passionate tone, and the blinding tears rained down her cheeks, "nothing and nobody can make us strangers, you and me – not my father, or your dear father, or Ewan, or" – she dropped her voice to a deep whisper – "or any misfortune or any disgrace."
"Mona!" he cried, and took a step toward her, and stretched out one arm with a yearning gesture.
But at the next moment he had swung about, and was going out at the door. At sight of all that tenderness and loyalty in Mona's face his conscience smote him as it had never smitten him before.
"Ewan was right, Mona. He is the noblest man on God's earth, and I am the foulest beast on it."
He was pulling the door behind him when he encountered Jarvis Kerruish in the hall. That gentleman had just come into the house, and was passing through the hall in hat and cloak. He looked appalled at seeing Dan there, and stepped aside to let him go by; but Dan did not so much as recognize his presence by lifting his head as he strode out at the porch.
With head still bent, Dan had reached the gate to the road and pushed through it, and sent it back with a swing and a click, when the Deemster walked up to it, and half halted, and would have stopped. But Dan went moodily on, and the frown on the Deemster's wizened face was lost on him. He did not take the lane toward the old Ballamona, but followed the turnpike that led past Bishop's Court, and as he went by the large house behind the trees Ewan came through the smaller gate, and turned toward the new Ballamona. They did not speak, or even glance at each other's faces.
Dan went on until he came to the parish church. There was singing within, and he stopped. He remembered that this was Christmas Eve. The choir was practising the psalms for the morrow's services.
"Before I was troubled, I went wrong; but now have I kept Thy word."
Dan went up to the church porch, and stood there and listened.
"It is good for me that I have been in trouble, that I may learn Thy statutes."
The wooden door, clamped and barred and worm-eaten and cut by knives, was ajar, and from where he stood Dan could see into the church. There were the empty pews, the gaunt, square, green-clad boxes on which he had sat on many a Christmas Eve at Oiel Verree. He could picture the old place as it used to be in those days of his boyhood, the sea of faces, some solemn and some bubbling over with mischief, the candles with their ribbons, the old clerk, Will-as-Thorn, standing up behind the communion rail with his pitch-pipe in his hand, and Hommy-beg in his linsey-woolsey petticoat, singing lustily from a paper held upside down. The singing stopped. Behind were the hills Slieu Dhoo and Slieu Volley, hidden now under a thick veil of mist, and from across the flat Curragh there came in the silence the low moan of the sea. "Once more," said a voice within the church, and then the psalm was sung again. Dan began to breathe easier, he scarce knew why, and a great weight seemed to be lifted off his breast.
As he turned away from the porch a heavy web of cloud was sweeping on and sweeping on from over the sea. He looked up and saw that a snow-storm was coming, and that the snow-cloud would break when it reached the mountains.
The clock in the gray tower was striking – one – two – three – so it was now three o'clock. Dan went down toward the creek known as the Lockjaw, under Orris Head. There he expected to see old Billy Quilleash and his mates, who had liberty to use the "Ben-my-Chree" during the winter months for fishing with the lines. When he got to the creek it was an hour after high water, and the lugger, with Quilleash and Teare, had gone out for cod. Davy Fayle, who, like Dan himself, was still wearing his militia belt and dagger, had been doing something among scraps of net and bits of old rope, which lay in a shed that the men had thrown together for the storing of their odds-and-ends.
Davy was looking out to sea. Down there a stiff breeze was blowing, and the white curves of the breakers outside could just be seen through the thick atmosphere.
"The storm is coming, Mastha Dan," said Davy. "See the diver on the top of the white wave out there! D'ye hear her wild note?"
Davy shaded his eyes from the wind, which was blowing from the sea, and looked up at the stormy petrel that was careering over the head of the cliff above them and uttering its dismal cry: "Ay, and d'ye see Mother Carey's chickens up yonder?" said Davy again. "The storm's coming, and wonderful quick too."
Truly, a storm was coming, and it was a storm more terrible than wind and snow.
CHAPTER XVIII
THE BLIND WOMAN'S SECOND SIGHT
Now, when Jarvis Kerruish encountered Dan in the act of coming out of Mona's room, his surprise was due to something more than the knowledge that Dan had been forbidden the house. On leaving the meadow after the plowing match, and the slaughter of the oxen that followed it, Jarvis had made a long circuit of the Curragh, and returned to Ballamona by the road. He had been pondering on Mona's deportment during the exciting part of the contest between Dan and the stranger, and had just arrived at obvious conclusions of his own by way of explaining the emotion that she could not conceal, when he recognized that he was approaching the cottage occupied by Hommy-beg and his wife Kerry. A droning voice came from within, accompanied by some of the most doleful wails that ever arrested mortal ears.
Jarvis was prompted to stop and enter. He did so, and found both the deaf husband and the blind wife at home. Hommy was squatting on a low three-legged stool, with his fiddle at his shoulder, playing vigorously and singing as he played. It was Christmas Eve to Hommy-beg also, and he was practising the carol that he meant to sing at the Oiel Verree that night. Blind Kerry was sitting by the fire knitting with gray yarn. The deaf man's eyes and the blind woman's ears simultaneously announced the visit of Jarvis, and as Hommy-beg dropped his fiddle from his shoulder, Kerry let fall the needles on her lap, and held up her hand with an expression of concern.
"Och, and didn't I say that something was happening at Ballamona?" said Kerry.
"And so she did," said Hommy-Beg.
"I knew it," said Kerry. "I knew it, as the sayin' is."
All this in return for Jarvis's casual visit and mere salutation surprised him.
"The sight! The sight! It's as true as the ould Book itself. Aw, yes, aw, yes," continued Kerry, and she began to wring her hands.
Jarvis felt uneasy. "Do you know, my good people," he said, largely, "I'm at a loss to understand what you mean. What is it that has happened at Ballamona?"
At that the face of the blind wife looked puzzled.
"Have ye not come from Ballamona straight?" she asked.
"No – it's four hours since I left there," said Jarvis.
"Aw, dear, aw dearee dear!" said Kerry. "The sight! the sight!"
Jarvis's uneasiness developed into curiosity, and in answer to many questions he learned that blind Kerry had that day been visited by another of those visions of Dan which never came to her except when her nursling was in some disgrace or danger, and never failed to come to her then. On this occasion the vision had been one of great sorrow, and Kerry trembled as she recounted it.
"I saw him as plain as plain, and he was standing in Misthress Mona's room, atween the bed and the wee craythur's cot, and he went down on his knees aside of it, and cried, and cried, and cried morthal, and Misthress Mona herself was there sobbing her heart out, as the sayin' is, and the wee craythur was sleeping soft and quiet, and it was dark night outside, and the candle was in the misthress's hand. Aw, yes, I saw it, sir, I saw it, and I tould my man here, and, behould ye, he said, 'Drop it, woman, drop it,' says he, 'it's only drames, it's only drames.'"
Jarvis did not find the story a tragic one, but he listened with an interest that was all his own.
"You saw Mr. Dan in Miss Mona's room – do you mean her chamber?"
"Sure, and he climbed in at the window, and white as a haddock, and all amuck with sweat."
"Climbed in at the window – the window of her chamber – her bedroom – you're sure it was her bedroom?"
"Sarten sure. Don't I know it same as my own bit of a place? The bed, with the curtains all white and dimity, as they're sayin', and the wee thing's cot carved over with the lions, and the tigers, and the beasties, and the goat's rug, and the sheepskin – aw, yes, aw, yes."
The reality of the vision had taken such a hold of Kerry that she had looked upon it as a certain presage of disaster, and when Jarvis had opened the door she had leapt to the conclusion that he came to announce the catastrophe that she foresaw, and to summon her to Ballamona.
Jarvis smiled grimly. He had heard in the old days of Kerry's second sight, and now he laughed at it. But the blind woman's stupid dreams had given him an idea, and he rose suddenly and hurried away.
Jarvis knew the Deemster's weakness, for he knew why he found himself where he was. Stern man as the Deemster might be, keen of wit and strong of soul, Jarvis knew that there was one side of his mind on which he was feebler than a child. On that side of the Deemster Jarvis now meant to play to his own end and profit.
He was full to the throat of the story which he had to pour into credulous ears, that never listened to a superstitious tale without laughing at it, and mocking at it, and believing it, when he stepped into the hall at Ballamona, and came suddenly face to face with Dan, and saw the door of Mona's sitting-room open before and close behind him.
Jarvis was bewildered. Could it be possible that there was something in the blind woman's second sight? He had scarcely recovered from his surprise when the Deemster walked into the porch, looking as black as a thunder-cloud.
"That man has been here again," he said. "Why didn't you turn him out of the house?"
"I have something to tell you," said Jarvis.
They went into the Deemster's study. It was a little place to the left of the hall, half under the stairs, and with the fireplace built across one corner. Over the mantel-shelf a number of curious things were hung from hooks and nails – a huge silver watch with a small face and great seals, a mask, a blunderbuss, a monastic lamp and a crucifix, a piece of silvered glass, and a pistol.
"What now?" asked the Deemster.
Jarvis told the blind woman's story with variations, and the Deemster listened intently, and with a look of deadly rage.
"And you saw him come out of her room – you yourself saw him?" said the Deemster.
"With my own eyes, dear sir," said Jarvis.
The Deemster's lip quivered. "My God! it must be true," he said.
At that moment they heard a foot in the hall, and going to the door in his restless tramping to and fro, the Deemster saw that Ewan had come into the house. He called to him, and Ewan went into the study, and on Ewan going in Jarvis went out.
There was a look of such affright on the Deemster's face that before a word was spoken Ewan had caught the contagion of his father's terror. Then, grasping his son by the wrist in the intensity of his passion, the Deemster poured his tale into Ewan's ear. But it was not the tale that blind Kerry had told to Jarvis, it was not the tale that Jarvis had told to him; it was a tale compounded of superstition and of hate. Blind Kerry had said of her certain knowledge that Dan was accustomed to visit Mona in her chamber at night alone, entering in at the window. Jarvis Kerruish himself had seen him there – and that very day, not at night, but in the broad daylight, Jarvis had seen Dan come from Mona's room. What? Had Ewan no bowels that he could submit to the dishonor of his own sister?
Ewan listened to the hot words that came from his father in a rapid and ceaseless whirl. The story was all so fatally circumstantial as the Deemster told it; no visions; no sights; no sneezings of an old woman; all was clear, hard, deadly, damning circumstance, or seemed to be so to Ewan's heated brain and poisoned heart.
"Father," he said, very quietly, but with visible emotion, "you are my father, but there are only two persons alive from whose lips I would take a story like this, and you are not one of them."
At that word the Deemster's passion overcame him. "My God," he cried, "what have I done that I should not be believed by my own son? Would I slander my own daughter?"
But Ewan did not hear him. He had turned away, and was going toward the door of Mona's room. He moved slowly; there was an awful silence. Full half a minute his hand rested on the door handle, and only then did his nervous fingers turn it.
He stepped into the room. The room was empty. It was Mona's sitting-room, her work-room, her parlor, her nursery. Out of it there opened another room by a door at the further end of the hall on the left.
The door of that other room was ajar, and Ewan could hear, from where he now stood quivering in every limb, the soft cooing of the child – his child, his dead wife's child – and the inarticulate nothings that Mona, the foster-mother, babbled over it.
"Boo-loo-la-la-pa-pa," "Dearee-dearee-dear," and then the tender cooing died off into a murmur, and an almost noiseless, long kiss on the full round baby-neck.
Ewan stood irresolute for a moment, and the sweat started from his forehead. He felt like one who has been kneeling at a shrine when a foul hand besmudges it. He had half swung about to go back, when his ear caught the sound of the Deemster's restless foot outside. He could not go back: the poison had gone to his heart.
He stepped into the bedroom that led out of the sitting-room. Mona raised her eyes as her brother entered. She was leaning over the cot, her beautiful face alive with the light of a tender love – a very vision of pure and delicious womanhood. Almost she had lifted the child from the cot to Ewan's arms when at a second glance she recognized the solemn expression of his face, and then she let the little one slide back to its pillow.
"What has happened?"
"Is it true," he began very slowly, "that Dan has been here?"
Then Mona blushed deeply, and there was a pause.
"Is it true?" he said again, and now with a hurried and startled look; "is it true that Dan has been here – here?"
Mona misunderstood his emphasis. Ewan was standing in her chamber, and when he asked if Dan had been there, he was inquiring if Dan had been with her in that very room. She did not comprehend the evil thought that had been put in his heart. But she remembered the prohibition placed upon her both by Ewan and her father, never to receive Dan again, and her confusion at the moment of Ewan's question came of the knowledge that, contrary to that prohibition, she had received him.
"Is it true?" he asked yet again, and he trembled with the passion he suppressed.
After a pause he answered himself, with an awful composure, "It is true."
The child lifted itself and babbled at Mona with its innocent face all smiles, and Mona turned to hide her confusion by leaning over the cot.
"Boo – loo – la-la."
Then a great wave of passion seemed to come to Ewan, and he stepped to his sister, and took her by both hands. He was like a strong man in a dream, who feels sure that he can only be dreaming – struggling in vain to awake from a terrible nightmare, and knowing that a nightmare it must be that sits on him and crushes him.
"No, no, there must be a mistake; there must, there must," he said, and his hot breathing beat on her face. "He has never been here – here – never."
Mona raised herself. She loosed her hands from his grasp. Her woman's pride had been stung. It seemed to her that her brother was taking more than a brother's part.
"There is no mistake," she said, with some anger; "Dan has been here."
"You confess it?"
She looked him straight in the eyes and answered, "Yes, if you call it so – I confess it. It is of no use to deceive you."
Then there was an ominous silence. Ewan's features became death-like in their rigidity. A sickening sense came over him. He was struggling to ask a question that his tongue would not utter.
"Mona – do you mean – do you mean that Dan has – has – outrage – Great God! what am I to say? How am I to say it?"
Mona drew herself up.
"I mean that I can hide my feelings no longer," she said. "Do with me as you may; I am not a child, and no brother shall govern me. Dan has been here – outrage or none – call it what you will – yes, and – " she dropped her head over the cot, "I love him."
Ewan was not himself: his heart was poisoned, or then and there he would have unraveled the devilish tangle of circumstance. He tried again with another and yet another question. But every question he asked, and every answer Mona gave, made the tangle thicker. His strained jaw seemed to start from his skin.
"I passed him on the road," he said to himself, in a hushed whisper. "Oh, that I had but known!"
Then with a look of reproach at Mona he turned aside and went out of the room.
He stepped back to the study, and there the Deemster was still tramping to and fro.
"Simpleton, simpleton, to expect a woman to acknowledge her own dishonor," the Deemster cried.
Ewan did not answer at once; but in silence he reached up to where the pistol hung over the mantel-shelf and took it down.
"What are you doing?" cried the Deemster.
"She has acknowledged it," said Ewan, still in a suppressed whisper.
For a moment the Deemster was made speechless and powerless by that answer. Then he laid hold of his son's hand and wrenched the pistol away.
"No violence," he cried.
He was now terrified at the wrath that his own evil passions had aroused; he locked the pistol in a cabinet.
"It is better so," said Ewan, and in another moment he was going out at the porch.
The Deemster followed him, and laid a hand on his arm.
"Remember – no violence," he said; "for the love of God, see there is no violence."
But Ewan, without a word more, without relaxing a muscle of his hard, white face, without a glance or a sign, but with bloodshot eyes and quivering nostrils, with teeth compressed and the great veins on his forehead large and dark over the scar that Dan had left there, drew himself away, and went out of the house.