The Deemster Part 25

"It is true, I am going mad," he thought, and he fell back on to a bench that stood by the wall. Then there came an instant of unconsciousness, and in that instant he was again by the waters of the Jordan, and the ewes and the rams and the milch camels were toiling through the long gra.s.s, and Esau was falling on the neck of Jacob, and they were weeping together.

CHAPTER XX

BLIND Pa.s.sION AND PAIN

Dan moved uneasily, and presently awoke, opened his eyes, and saw Ewan, and betrayed no surprise at his presence there.

"Ah! Is it you, Ewan?" he said, speaking quietly, partly in a shamefaced way, and with some confusion. "Do you know, I've been dreaming of you--you and Mona?"

Ewan gave no answer. Because sleep is a holy thing, and the brother of death, whose shadow also it is, therefore Ewan's hideous purpose had left him while Dan lay asleep at his feet; but now that Dan was awake, the evil pa.s.sion came again.

"I was dreaming of that Mother Carey's chicken--you remember it? when we were lumps of lads, you know--why, you can't have forgotten it--the old thing I caught in its nest just under the Head?"

Still Ewan gave no sign, but looked down at Dan resting on his elbows.

Dan's eyes fell upon Ewan's face, but he went on in a confused way:

"Mona couldn't bear to see it caged, and would have me put it back.

Don't you remember I clambered up to the nest, and put the bird in again? You were down on the sh.o.r.e, thinking sure I would tumble over the Head, and Mona--Mona--"

Dan glanced afresh into Ewan's face, and its look of terror seemed to stupefy him; still he made shift to go on with his dream in an abashed sort of way:

"My gough! If I didn't dream it all as fresh, as fresh, and the fight in the air, and the screams when I put the old bird in the nest--the young ones had forgotten it clean, and they tumbled it out, and set on it terrible, and drove it away--and then the poor old thing on the rocks sitting by itself as lonesome as lonesome--and little Mona crying and crying down below, and her long hair rip-rip-rippling in the wind, and--and--"

Dan had got to his feet, and then seated himself on a stool as he rambled on with the story of his dream. But once again his shifty eyes came back to Ewan's face, and he stopped short.

"My G.o.d, what is it?" he cried.

Now Ewan, standing there with a thousand vague forms floating in his brain, had heard little of what Dan had said, but he had noted his confused manner, and had taken this story of the dream as a feeble device to hide the momentary discomfiture.

"What does it mean?" he said. "It means that this island is not large enough to hold both you and me."

"What?"

"It means that you must go away."

"Away!"

"Yes--and at once."

In the pause that followed after his first cry of amazement, Dan thought only of the bad business of the killing of the oxen at the plowing match that morning, and so, in a tone of utter abas.e.m.e.nt, with his face to the ground, he went on, in a blundering, humble way, to allow that Ewan had reason for his anger.

"I'm a blind headstrong fool, I know that--and my temper is--well, it's d.a.m.nable, that's the fact--but no one suffers from it more than I do, and if I could have felled myself after I had felled the oxen, why down ... Ewan, for the sake of the dear old times when we were good chums, you and I and little Mona, with her quiet eyes, G.o.d bless her--!"

"Go away, and never come back to either of us," cried Ewan, stamping his foot.

Dan paused, and there was a painful silence.

"Why should I go away?" he said, with an effort at quietness.

"Because you are a scoundrel--the basest scoundrel on G.o.d's earth--the foulest traitor--the blackest-hearted monster--"

Dan's sunburnt face whitened under his tawny skin.

"Easy, easy, man veen, easy," he said, struggling visibly for self-command, while he interrupted Ewan's torrent of reproaches.

"You are a disgrace and a by-word. Only the riff-raff of the island are your friends and a.s.sociates."

"That's true enough, Ewan," said Dan, and his head fell between his hands, his elbows resting on his knees.

"What are you doing? Drinking, gambling, roistering, cheating--yes--"

Dan got on his feet uneasily and took a step to and fro about the little place; then sat again, and buried his head in his hands as before.

"I've been a reckless, self-willed, mad fool, Ewan, but no worse than that. And if you could see me as G.o.d sees me, and know how I suffer for my follies and curse them, for all I seem to make so light of them, and how I am driven to them one on the head of another, perhaps--perhaps--perhaps--you would have pity--ay, pity."

"Pity? Pity for you? You who have brought your father to shame? He is the ruin of the man he was. You have impoverished him; you have spent his substance and wasted it. Ay, and you have made his gray head a mark for reproach. 'Set your own house in order'--that's what the world says to the man of G.o.d whose son is a child of the--"

"Stop!" cried Dan.

He had leapt to his feet, his fist clenched, his knuckles showing like nuts of steel.

But Ewan went on, standing there with a face that was ashy white above his black coat. "Your heart is as dead as your honor. And that is not all, but you must outrage the honor of another."

Now, when Ewan said this, Dan thought of his forged signature, and of the censure and suspension to which Ewan was thereby made liable.

"Go away," Ewan cried again, motioning Dan off with his trembling hand.

Dan lifted his eyes. "And what if I refuse?" he said in a resolute way.

"Then take the consequences."

"You mean the consequences of that--that--that forgery?"

At this Ewan realized the thought in Dan's mind, and perceived that Dan conceived him capable of playing upon his fears by holding over his head the penalty of an offense which he had already taken upon himself. "G.o.d in heaven!" he thought, "and this is the pitiful creature whom I have all these years taken to my heart."

"Is that what your loyalty comes to?" said Dan, and his lip curled.

"Loyalty!" cried Ewan, in white wrath. "Loyalty, and you talk to me of loyalty--you who have outraged the honor of my sister--"

"Mona!"

"I have said it at last, though the word blisters my tongue. Go away from the island forever, and let me never see your face again."

Dan rose to his feet with rigid limbs. He looked about him for a moment in a dazed silence, and put his hand to his forehead as if he had lost himself.