The Deemster

Anxiety was now on tiptoe. "Hush, d'ye hear, hush," whispered Danny from his pew; "hush, man, or it's spoiling it all you'll be, for sure."

At the moment when Mr. Quirk glanced into the face of Hommy-beg there was a smile on that countenance. Mr. Quirk mistook that smile. He imagined he saw a trick. The schoolmaster could read, and he perceived that the carol which the gardener held out to him was not the carol for which he had been told by Master Danny to prepare. They were, by arrangement, to have sung the English version of "Bad Women." This was the Manx version, and though the metre was the same, it was always sung to a different tune. Ah! Mr. Quirk understood it all! The monster wanted to show that he, James Quirk, schoolmaster, could only sing one carol; but, as sure as his name was Jemmy, he would be equal with him! He could sing this Manx version, and he would. It was now Mr. Quirk's turn to smile.

"Aw, look at them – the two of them – grinnin' together like a pair of old gurgoils on the steeple!"

At a motion of the gardener's hand, intended to beat the time, the singers began. Hommy-beg sang the carol agreed upon – the English version of "Bad Women." Mr. Quirk sang the carol they held in their hands – the Manx version of "Bad Women." Neither heard the other, and to dispel the bare notion that either was singing seconds, each bawled at the utmost reach of his lung-power. To one tune Hommy-beg sang:

"Thus from the days of AdamHer mischief you may trace."

And to another Mr. Quirk sang:

"She ish va'n voir ain ooilleySon v'ee da Adam ben."

Such laughter! How the young women in the gallery lay back in their seats with hysterical shrieks! How the young fellows in the body made the sacred edifice ring with guffaws! But the singers, with eyes steadfastly fixed on the paper, heard nothing but each his own voice.

Three verses had been sung, and three strides made toward the communion, when suddenly the laughter and shouting of the people ceased. All eyes had turned toward the porch. There the Bishop stood, with blank amazement printed on his face, his head bare, and one hand on the half-opened door.

If a spectre had appeared the consternation had scarcely been greater. Danny had been rolling in his pew with unconstrained laughter, but at sight of the Bishop his candle fell from his hand and sputtered on the book-rail. The Bishop turned about, and before the people had recovered from their surprise he was gone. At the next moment everybody got up without a word and left the church. In two minutes more not a soul remained except Hommy-beg and Mr. Jemmy Quirk, who, with eyes riveted on the printed carol in their hands, still sang lustily, oblivious of the fact that they had no audience.

When Danny left the church that night it was through the lancet-window of the vestry. Dropping on the turf at the northeast of the church, he leaped the wall that divided the churchyard from a meadow on the north, and struck upon a path that went round to Bishop's Court by way of the cliff-head. The path was a long one, but it was lonesome, and its lonesomeness was no small merit in Danny's view that night. The Bishop must return to the Court by the highway through the village, and the Bishop must be in front of him.

The night was dark and dumb, and, laden with salt scent, the dank vapor floated up from the sea. Danny walked quickly. The deep boom of the waters rolling on the sand below came up to him through the dense air. Late as was the hour, he could hear the little sandpiper screaming at Orris Head. The sea-swallow shot over him too, with its low, mournful cry. Save for these sounds, and the quick beat of his own feet, all was still around him.

Beneath his stubborn bit of skepticism Danny was superstitious. He was full to the throat of fairy-lore and stories of witchcraft. He had learned both from old Billy Quilleash and his mates as they sat barking their nets on the shore. And that night the ghostly memories would arise, do what he might to keep them down. To banish them Danny began to whistle, and, failing to enliven himself much by that exercise, he began to sing. His selection of a song was not the happiest under the circumstances. It was the doleful ballad of "Myle Charaine." Danny sang it in Manx, but here is a stave of it in English:

"Oh, Myle Charaine, where got you your gold?Lone, lone, you have left me here;Oh, not in the Curragh, deep under the mold —Lone, lone, and void of cheer."

He had come up to Bishop's Court on the sea-front, and there the Bishop's library stood out from the body of the old house, between the chapel porch and the kitchen offices. A light was in the library, and passing over the soft grass with the soft flight of a lapwing, Danny peered in at the curtainless window. The familiar room was empty. On the hearth a turf fire burned without flame, and bathed the book-encased walls in a rosy red. The Bishop's easy-chair, in its white covering, stood at one side of the ingle, his slippers in front of it; and beside it, on the little three-legged mahogany table, were the inkhorn and the long quill, and the Bishop's four-cornered library cap. The door stood ajar, and the two candles in the two brass brackets at each side of the fireplace were tipped by their extinguishers.

The Bishop had not returned; but the faint smile of triumph which at that thought rested like a ray of pale sunshine on Danny's face suddenly vanished. In a lad's vague way Danny now realized that it had not been merely because the night was dark and the road lonely that he had whistled and sung. He hung his head where he stood in the night, and as if by an involuntary movement, he lifted his cap and fumbled it.

At the next instant Danny was clambering up the angle of the wall to the lead flat that covered the projecting part of the library. From this lead flat there opened the window of his own bedroom, and in a moment he was striding through it. All was darkness within, but he needed no light to see his way in that room. He knew every crib and corner; the place where he kept his fishing lines, the nail from which his moth-net hung, the bottle on the drawers in which he had his minnows, and the can with the lid well down that contained the newts that were the terror of all the women in the house. If Danny had been as blind as old Kerry he could have found everything his room had in it, except, perhaps, his breeches, or his shirt, or his other coat, or that cap that was always getting itself lost, and of course no sight and no light would help a lad to find things like these.

Hardly had Danny taken a step into his room before he realized that some one had been there since he left it. Derry, his white-eyed collie, who had been lying on the bed, dropped on the floor, and frisked about him. "Down, Derry, down!" he whispered, and for a moment he thought it might have been Derry that had pushed open the door. But the dog's snout could not have turned down the counterpane of the bed, or opened the top drawer that held the fishing flies, or rummaged among the long rods in the corner. The counterpane lay double, the drawer stood open, the rods were scattered – some one had been there to look for him, and, not finding him, had tried to find a reason for his absence, and that some one had either come into the room in the dark, or – been blind.

"Aw, it's always Kerry that's in it," Danny told himself, and with an unpleasant remembrance of Kerry's strange faculty, whereof he was the peculiar victim, he reflected that his race home had been vain. Then on the instant Danny found himself concocting a trick to defeat appearances. He had a foot on the stairs to carry out his design, when he heard the door at the front of the house open and close, and a familiar step pass through the hall. The Bishop had returned. Danny waited and listened. Now there was talking in the library. Danny's quick ear could scarcely distinguish the words, but the voices he could not mistake – they were the voices of the Bishop and blind Kerry. With a stealthy stride Danny went up to Ewan's room. Ewan was sleeping. Feeling hot and cold together, Danny undressed and turned into bed. Before he had time to bury his head under the clothes he heard the Bishop on the stairs. The footsteps passed into the room below, and then after an interval they were again on the stairs. In another moment Danny knew, though of course his eyes were fast shut, and he was sleeping most profoundly, that the Bishop with a lighted candle in his hand was leaning over him.

It would wrong the truth to say that Master Danny's slumber was disturbed that night; but next morning when the boys awoke together, and Ewan rose on his elbow with a puzzled gaze at his unexpected bed-fellow, Danny sidled out of the bed on to the floor, and, without looking too much into Ewan's face, he began his toilet, as was his wont, by putting on his cap. He had got this length, and was standing in cap and shirt, when he blurted out the mischief of last night's adventure, the singing, the sudden appearance of the Bishop, the race home along the cliff, and the coming up to bed. "But you won't let on, Ewan, will you?" he said. Ewan looked at that moment as if the fate of the universe hung on his answer, but he gave the promise that was required of him. Then the boys went downstairs and found Mona, and imparted the dread secret to her. Presently the Bishop came in to breakfast with a face that was paler than usual, and more than ordinarily solemn.

"Danny," he said, "why did you not sleep in your own bed last night, my boy?"

"I slept with Ewan, father," Danny answered, promptly.

The Bishop said no more then, and they all sat down at the table.

"And so you two boys went to bed together —together?" he said, and, with a dig of emphasis on his last word, repeated, he looked at Ewan.

Ewan's face crimsoned, and his tongue faltered, "Yes, uncle."

The Bishop's eyes fell. "Boys," he said, in another tone, "would you think it? I have done you a great wrong."

The boys were just then most intent on the tablecloth.

"You must know," the Bishop went on, "that there was a most unseemly riot at the Oiel Verree, and all night long I have been sore troubled by the bad thought that Danny was in the midst of it."

The boys held their heads very low over their plates, and Mona's big eyes filled visibly. Danny's impulse was to blurt out the whole mischief there and then, but he reflected that to do so would be to charge Ewan with falsehood. Ewan, on his part, would have confessed to the deception, but he knew that this would mean that Danny must be punished. The boy's wise head could see no way out of a tangle like that. The breakfast was the quietest ever eaten on a Christmas morning at Bishop's Court, and, little as the talking was, the Bishop, strangely enough, did it all. But when they rose from the table, and the boys slunk out of the room with most portentous gravity, Mona went up to the Bishop with a face full of liquid grief, and, turning the whole depths of her great troubled eyes upon him, the little maiden said: "Ewan didn't mean to tell you what wasn't true – and cousin Danny didn't intend to deceive – but he was – that is, Danny – I mean – dear uncle, you won't – "

"You mean that Danny was at the Oiel Verree last night – I know it, child, I know it," said the Bishop, and he patted her head and smiled.

But the Bishop knew also that Danny had that day made one more step down the steep of life, and left a little ghost of his child-self behind him, and in his secret heart the Bishop saw that shadowy form, and wept over it.

CHAPTER VIII

PASSING THE LOVE OF WOMEN

Now the facts of this history must stride on some six years, and in that time the Deemster had lost nearly all the little interest he ever felt in his children. Mona had budded into womanhood, tender, gracious, quiet – a tall fair-haired maiden of twenty, with a drooping head like a flower, with a voice soft and low, and the full blue eyes with their depths of love and sympathy shaded by long fluttering lashes as the trembling sedge shades the deep mountain pool. It was as ripe and beautiful a womanhood as the heart of a father might dream of, but the Deemster could take little pleasure in it. If Mona had been his son, her quiet ways and tractable nature might have counted for something; but a woman was only a woman in the Deemster's eyes, and the Deemster, like the Bedouin chief, would have numbered his children without counting his daughter. As for Ewan, he had falsified every hope of the Deemster. His Spartan training had gone for nothing. He was physically a weakling; a tall spare youth of two-and-twenty, fair-haired, like his sister, with a face as spiritual and beautiful, and hardly less feminine. He was of a self-torturing spirit, constantly troubled with vague questionings, and though in this regard he was very much his father's son, the Deemster held his temperament in contempt.

The end of all was that Ewan showed a strong desire to enter the Church. The Deemster had intended that his son should study the law and follow him in his place when his time came. But Ewan's womanly temperament coexisted with a manly temper. Into the law he would not go, and the Church he was resolved to follow. The Bishop had then newly opened at Bishop's Court a training college for his clergy, and Ewan sought and obtained admission. The Deemster fumed, but his son was not to be moved even by his wrath. This was when Ewan was nineteen years of age, and after two more years the spirituality of his character overcame the obstacle of his youth, and the Bishop ordained him at twenty-one. Then Ewan was made chaplain to the household at Bishop's Court.

Hardly had this been done when Ewan took another step in life. With the knowledge of the Bishop, but without consulting the Deemster, he married, being now of age, a pretty child of sixteen, the daughter of his father's old foe, the vicar of the parish. When knowledge of this act of unwisdom reached the Deemster his last remaining spark of interest in his son expired, and he sent Mona across to Bishop's Court with a curt message saying that Ewan and his wife were at liberty, if they liked, to take possession of the old Ballamona. Thus he turned his back upon his son, and did his best to wipe him out of his mind.

Ewan took his young wife to the homestead that had been the place of his people for six generations, the place where he himself had been born, the place where that other Ewan, his good grandfather, had lived and died.

More than ever for these events the Deemster became a solitary man. He kept no company; he took no pleasures. Alone he sat night after night in his study at Ballamona, and Ballamona was asleep before he slept, and before it awoke he was stirring. His daughter's presence in the house was no society for the Deemster. She grew beside him like her mother's youth, a yet fairer vision of the old days coming back to him hour by hour, but he saw nothing of all that. Disappointed in his sole hope, his son, whom truly he had never loved for love's sake, but only for his own sorry ambitions, he sat down under his disappointment a doubly soured and thrice-hardened man. He had grown noticeably older, but his restless energy suffered no abatement. Biweekly he kept his court, but few sought the law whom the law did not first find, for word went round that the Deemster was a hard judge, and deemed the laws in rigor. If men differed about money, they would say, "Och, why go to the Deemster? It's throwing a bone into the bad dog's mouth," and then they would divide their difference.

The one remaining joy of the Deemster's lonely life was centred in his brother's son, Dan. That lusty youth had not disappointed his expectations. At twenty he was a braw, brown-haired, brown-eyed lad of six feet two inches in stature, straight and upright, and with the thews and sinews of an ox. He was the athlete of the island, and where there was a tough job of wrestling to be had, or a delightful bit of fighting to be done, there was Dan in the heart of it. "Aw, and middling few could come anigh him," the people used to say. But more than in Dan's great stature and great strength, the little Deemster took a bitter pleasure in his daring irreverence for things held sacred. In this regard Dan had not improved with improving years. Scores of tricks his sad pugnacity devised to help the farmers to cheat the parson of his tithe, and it added not a little to the Deemster's keen relish of freaks like these that it was none other than the son of the Bishop who perpetrated them. As for the Bishop himself, he tried to shut his eyes to such follies. He meant his son to go into the Church, and, in spite of all outbursts of spirit, notwithstanding wrestling matches and fights, and even some tipsy broils of which rumor was in the air, he entered Dan as a student at the college he kept at Bishop's Court.

In due course the time of Dan's examination came, and then all further clinging to a forlorn hope was at an end. The Archdeacon acted as the Bishop's examining chaplain, and more than once the little man had declared in advance his conscientious intention of dealing with the Bishop's son as he would deal with any other. The examination took place in the library of Bishop's Court, and besides the students and the examiner there were some six or seven of the clergy present, and Ewan Mylrea, then newly ordained, was among them. It was a purely oral examination, and when Dan's turn came the Archdeacon assumed his loftiest look, and first tackled the candidate where he was known to be weakest.

"I suppose, sir, you think you can read your Greek Testament?"

Dan answered that he had never thought anything about it.

"I dare say for all your modesty that you have an idea that you know it well enough to teach it," said the Archdeacon.

Dan hadn't an idea on the subject.

"Take down the Greek Testament, and imagine that I'm your pupil, and proceed to expound it," said the Archdeacon.

Dan took the book from the bookcase and fumbled it in his fingers.

"Well, sir, open at the parable of the tares."

Dan scratched his big head leisurely, and he did his best to find the place. "So I'm to be tutor – is that it?" he said, with a puzzled look.

"That is so."

"And you are to be the pupil?"

"Precisely – suppose yourself my tutor – and now begin."

At this Ewan stepped out with a look of anxiety. "Is not that a rather difficult supposition, Archdeacon?" he said, timidly.

The Archdeacon glanced over his grandson loftily and made no reply.

"Begin, sir, begin," he said, with a sweep of his hand toward Dan, and at that he sat down in the high-backed oak chair at the head of the table.

Then on the instant there came into Dan's quick eyes a most mischievous twinkle. He was standing before the table with the Greek Testament open at the parable of the tares, and he knew too well he could not read the parable.

"When do we change places, Archdeacon?" he asked.

"We have changed places – you are now the tutor – I am your pupil – begin, sir."

"Oh! we have changed places, have we?" said Dan, and at that he lifted up the Archdeacon's silver-tipped walking-cane which lay on the table and brought it down again with a bang. "Then just you get up off your chair, sir," he said, with a tone of command.

The Archdeacon's russet face showed several tints of blue at that moment, but he rose to his feet. Thereupon Dan handed him the open book.

"Now, sir," he said, "first read me the parable of the tares."

The clergy began to shuffle about and look into each other's faces. The Archdeacon's expression was not amiable, but he took the book and read the parable.

"Very fair, very fair indeed," said Dan, in a tone of mild condescension – "a few false quantities, but very fair on the whole."

"Gentlemen, gentlemen, this is going too far," said one of the clergy.

"Silence, sir," said Dan, with a look of outraged authority.

Then there was dire confusion. Some of the clergy laughed outright, and some giggled under their breath, and some protested in white wrath, and the end of it all was that the examination came to a sudden termination, and, rightly or wrongly, wisely or foolishly, Dan was adjudged to be unfit for the ministry of the Church.

When the Bishop heard the verdict his pale face whitened visibly, and he seemed to see the beginning of the end. At that moment he thought of the Deemster with bitterness. This blow to his hopes did not cement the severed lives of the brothers. The forces that had been dividing them year by year since the days of their father appeared to be drawing them yet wider apart in the lives and fortunes of their children. Each felt that the other was frustrating his dearest expectations in his son, and that was an offense that neither could forgive. To the Deemster it seemed that the Bishop was bearing down every ambition of his life, tearing him up as a naked trunk, leaving him a childless man. To the Bishop it seemed that the Deemster was wrecking the one life that was more to him than his own soul, and standing between him and the heart that with all its follies was dearer than the world beside. From the time of Ewan's marriage and Dan's disgrace the Bishop and the Deemster rarely met, and when they passed on the road they exchanged only the coldest salutation.

But if the fates were now more than ever fostering an unnatural enmity between the sons of old Ewan they were cherishing at the same time the loves of their children. Never were cousins more unlike or more fondly attached. Between Dan, the reckless scapegrace, and Mona, with the big soft eyes and the quiet ways, the affection was such as neither understood. They had grown up side by side, they had seen each other daily, they had scampered along the shore with clasped hands, they had screamed at the sea-gulls with one voice, and still they were boy and girl together. But once they were stooking the barley in the glebe, and, the day being hot, Mona tipped back her white sun-bonnet, and it fell on to her shoulders. Seeing this, Dan came stealthily behind and thought very craftily to whisk it away unobserved; but the strings by which it was tied caught in her hair and tugged at its knot, and the beautiful wavy shower fell rip-rip-rippling down her back. The wind caught the loosened hair and tossed it about her, and she stood up erect among the corn with the first blush on her cheeks that Dan had ever brought there, and turned full upon him all the glorious light of her deep blue eyes. Then, then, oh then, Dan seemed to see her for the first time a girl no longer, but a woman, a woman, a woman! And the mountains behind her were in one instant blotted out of Dan's eyes, and everything seemed to spin about him.

When next he knew where he was, and what he was doing, behold, there were Mona's rosy lips under his, and she was panting and gasping for breath.

But if the love of Dan and Mona was more than cousinly, though they knew it not as yet, the love of Ewan for Dan was wonderful and passing the love of women. That pure soul, with its vague spiritual yearnings, seemed to have nothing in common with the jovial roysterer, always fighting, always laughing, taking disgrace as a duck takes water, and losing the trace of it as easily. Twenty times he stood between the scapegrace and the Bishop, twenty times he hid from the good father the follies of the son. He thought for that thoughtless head that never had an ache or a care under its abundant curls; he hoped for that light heart that hoped for nothing; he trembled for the soul that felt no fear. Never was such loyalty between man and man since David wept for Jonathan. And Ewan's marriage disturbed this affection not at all, for the love he bore to Dan was a brotherly passion for which language has yet no name.

Let us tell one story that shall show this friendship in its double bearings – Ewan's love and temper and Dan's heedless harshness and the great nature beneath it, and then we will pass on with fuller knowledge to weightier matters.

Derry, the white-eyed collie that had nestled on the top of his master's bed the night Dan sneaked home in disgrace from Oiel Verree, was a crafty little fox, with cunning and duplicity bred in his very bones. If you were a tramp of the profession of Billy the Gawk, he would look up at you with his big innocent eyes, and lick your hand, and thrust his nose into your palm, and the next moment he would seize you by the hindmost parts and hold on like a leech. His unamiable qualities grew as he grew in years, and one day Dan went on a long journey, leaving Derry behind, and when he returned he had another dog with him, a great shaggy Scotch collie, with bright eyes, a happy phiz, and a huge bush of a tail. Derry was at the gate when his master came home, and he eyed the new-comer with looks askance. From that day Derry turned his back on his master, he would never answer his call, and he did not know his whistle from the croak of a corn-crake. In fact, Derry took his own courses, and forthwith fell into all manner of dissolute habits. He went out at night alone, incognito, and kept most unchristian hours. The farmers around complained that their sheep were found dead in the field, torn and worried by a dog's teeth. Derry was known to be a dog that did not live a reputable life, and suspicion fell on him. Dan took the old fox in hand, and thenceforward Derry looked out on the world through a rope muzzle.