The Deemster Part 28

"Way out--this direction? Yes, sir," Davy stammered.

"How? show me the way."

"By the sea, sir."

"The sea! Simpleton, what are you doing here?"

"Waiting for the boat, sir."

"What shed is this?"

Dan could hear that at this question Davy was in a fever of excitement.

"Only a place for bits of net and cable, and all to that," said Davy, eagerly.

Dan could feel that Jarvis had stepped up to the shed, and that he was trying to look in through the little window.

"Do you keep a fire to warm your nets and cables?" he asked in a suspicious tone.

At the next moment he was trying to force the door. Dan stood behind.

The bolt creaked in the hasp. If the hasp should give way, he and Jarvis would stand face to face.

"Strange--there's something strange about all this," said the man outside. "I heard a scream as I came over the Head. Did you hear anything?"

"I tell you I heard nothing," said Davy, sullenly.

Dan grew dizzy, and groping for something to cling to, his hand sc.r.a.ped across the door.

"Wait! I could have sworn I heard something move inside. Who keeps the key of this shed?"

"Kay? There's never a kay at the like of it."

"Then how is it fastened? From within? Wait--let me see."

There was a sound like the brushing of a hand over the outside face of the door.

"Has the snow stopped up the keyhole, or is there no such thing? Or is the door fastened by a padlock?"

Dan had regained his self-possession by this time. He felt an impulse to throw the door open. He groped at his waist for the dagger, but belt and dagger were both gone.

"All this is very strange," said Jarvis, and then he seemed to turn from the door and move away.

"Stop. Where is the man Dan--the captain?" he asked, from a little distance.

"I dunno," said Davy, stoutly.

"That's a lie, my lad."

Then the man's footsteps went off in dull beats on the snow-clotted pebbles.

After a moment's silence there was a soft knocking; Davy had crept up to the door.

"Mastha Dan," he whispered, amid panting breath.

Dan did not stir. The latch was lifted in vain.

"Mastha Dan, Mastha Dan." The soft knocking continued.

Dan found his voice at last.

"Go away, Davy--go away," he said, hoa.r.s.ely.

There was a short pause, and then there came from without an answer like a sob.

"I'm going, Mastha Dan."

After that all was silent as death. Half an hour later, Dan Mylrea was walking through the darkness toward Ballamona. In his blind misery he was going to Mona. The snow was not falling now, and in the lift of the storm the sky was lighter than it had been. As Dan pa.s.sed the old church, he could just descry the clock. The snow lay thick on the face, and clogged the hands. The clock had stopped. It stood at five exactly.

The blind leading that is here of pa.s.sion by accident is everywhere that great tragedies are done. It is not the evil in man's heart more than the deep perfidy of circ.u.mstance that brings him to crime.

CHAPTER XXI

THE VOICE IN THE NIGHT

However bleak the night, however dark the mood of the world might be, there was a room in Ballamona that was bright with one beautiful human flower in bloom. Mona was there--Mona of the quiet eyes and the silent ways and the little elfish head. It was Christmas Eve with her as with other people, and she was dressing the house in hibbin and hollin from a great mountain of both that Hommy-beg had piled up in the hall. She was looking very smart and happy that night in her short body of homespun turned in from neck to waist, showing a white habit-shirt and a white handkercheif crossed upon it; a quilted overskirt and linen ap.r.o.n that did not fall so low as to hide the open-work stockings and the sandal-shoes. Her room, too, was bright and sweet, with its glowing fire of peat and logs on the wide hearth, its lamp on the square oak table, and the oak settle drawn up between them.

In one corner of the settle, bubbling and babbling and spluttering and cooing amid a very crater of red baize cushions, was Mona's foster-child, Ewan's motherless daughter, lying on her back and fighting the air with clinched fists.

While Mona picked out the hibbin from the hollin, dissected both, made arches and crosses and crowns and rosettes, and then sprinkled flour to resemble snow on the red berries and the green leaves, she sung an old Manx ballad in s.n.a.t.c.hes, or prattled to the little one in that half-articulate tongue that comes with the instinct of motherhood to every good woman that G.o.d ever makes.

I rede ye beware of the Carrasdoo men As ye come up the wold; I rede ye beware of the haunted glen--

But a fretful whimper would interrupt the singer.

"Hush, hush, Ailee darling--hush."

The whimper would be hushed, and again there would be a s.n.a.t.c.h of the ballad:

In Jorby curragh they dwell alone By dark peat bogs, where the willows moan, Down in a gloomy and lonely glen--

Once again the whimper would stop the song.

"Hush, darling; papa is coming to Ailee, yes; and Ailee will see papa, yes, and papa will see Ailee, yes, and Ailee--"