The Deemster Part 37

And still the bells rang for service of Christmas morning.

Inside the chapel the congregation was larger than common. There was so much hand-shaking and "taking of joy" to be gone through in the aisles and the pews that Christmas morning that it was not at first observed--except by malcontents like Billy the Gawk and Jabez Gawne, to whom the wine of life was mostly vinegar--when the hour for beginning the service had come and gone. The choir in the west gallery had taken their places on either side of Will-as-Thorn's empty seat over the clock, with the pitch-pipe resting on the rail above it, and opening their books, they faced about for gossip. Then the bell stopped, having rung some minutes longer than was its wont; the whispering was hushed from pew to choir, and only the sound of the turning of the leaves of many books disturbed the silence a moment afterward.

The Bishop entered the chancel, and while he knelt to pray, down like corn before a south wind went a hundred heads on to the book-rail before the wind of custom. When the Bishop rose there was the sound of shuffling and settling in the pews, followed by some craning of necks in his direction and some subdued whispering.

"Where is Pazon Ewan?"

"What's come of the young pazon?"

The Bishop sat alone in the chancel, and gave no sign of any intention to commence the service. In the gallery, the choir, books in hand, waited for Will-as-Thorn to take his seat over the clock; but his place remained empty. Then, to the universal surprise, the bell began to ring again. Steadily at first and timidly, and after that with l.u.s.ty voice the bell rang out over the heads of the astonished people. Forth-with the people laid those same heads together and whispered.

What was agate of Pazon Ewan? Had he forgotten that he had to preach that morning? Blind Kerry wanted to know if some of the men craythurs shouldn't just take a slieu round to the ould Ballamona and wake him up, as the saying is; but Mr. Quirk, in more "gintale" phraseology, as became his scholastic calling, gave it out as probable that the young pazon had only been making a "little deetower" after breakfast, and gone a little too far.

Still the bell rang, and the uneasy shuffling in the pews grew more noticeable. Presently, in the middle of an abridged movement of the iron tongue in the loft, the head and shoulders of Will-as-Thorn appeared in the opening of the green curtain that divided the porch from the body of the chapel, and the parish clerk beckoned to Hommy-beg. Shambling to his feet and down the aisle, Hommy obeyed the summons, and then, amid yet more vigorous bobbing together of many heads in the pews, the schoolmaster, not to be eclipsed at a moment of public excitement, got up also and followed the gardener into the porch. The whispering had risen to a sibilant hiss that deadened even the bell's loud clangor when little Jabez Gawne himself felt a call to rise and go out after the others.

All this time the Bishop sat motionless in the chancel, his head down, his face rather paler than usual, his whole figure somewhat weak and languid, as if continued suffering in silence and in secret had at length taken the power of life out of him. Presently the bell stopped suddenly, and almost instantly little Jabez, with a face as sharp as a pen, came back to his pew, and Mr. Quirk also returned to his place, shaking his head meantime with portentous gravity. A moment later Will-as-Thorn appeared inside the communion-rail, having put on his coat and whipped the lash comb through his hair, which now hung like a dozen of wet dip-candles down his forehead straight for his eyes.

The dull buzz of gossip ceased, all was dead silence in the chapel, and many necks were craned forward as Will-as-Thorn was seen to go up to the Bishop and speak to him. Listening without much apparent concern, the Bishop nodded his head once or twice, then rose immediately and walked to the reading-desk. Almost at the same moment Will-as-Thorn took his seat over the clock in the little west gallery, and straightway the service began.

The choir sang the psalm which they had practised at the parish church the evening before--"It is good for me that I have been in trouble, that I may learn thy statutes." For the first of his lessons the Bishop read the story of Eli and of Samuel, and of the taking by the Philistines of the ark of the covenant of G.o.d. His voice was deep and measured, and when he came to read of the death of Eli's sons, and of how the bad news was brought to Eli, his voice softened and all but broke.

"And there ran a man of Benjamin out of the army, and came to Shiloh the same day with his clothes rent, and with earth upon his head.

"And when he came, lo, Eli sat upon a seat by the wayside watching: for his heart trembled for the ark of G.o.d. And when the man came into the city, and told it, all the city cried out.

"And when Eli heard the noise of the crying, he said, What meaneth the noise of this tumult? And the man came in hastily, and told Eli.

"Now Eli was ninety and eight years old; and his eyes were dim, that he could not see.

"And the man said unto Eli, I am he that came out of the army, and I fled to-day out of the army. And he said, What is there done, my son?"

The Bishop preached but rarely now, and partly for the reverence they always owed the good man, and partly for the reason that they did not often hear him, the people composed themselves to a mood of sympathy as he ascended the pulpit that Christmas morning. It was a beautiful sermon that he gave them, and it was spoken without premeditation, and was loose enough in its structure. But it was full of thought that seemed to be too simple to be deep, and of emotion that was too deep to be anything but simple. It touched on the life of Christ, from his birth in Bethlehem to his coming as a boy to the Temple where the doctors sat, and so on to the agony in the garden. And then it glanced aside, as touchingly as irrelevantly, at the story of Eli and his sons, and the judgment of G.o.d on Israel's prophet. In that beautiful digression the Bishop warned all parents that it was their duty before G.o.d to bring up their children in G.o.d's fear, or theirs would be the sorrow, and their children's the suffering and the shame everlasting. And then in a voice that could barely support itself he made an allusion that none could mistake.

"Strange it is, and very pitiful," he said, "that what we think in our weakness to be the holiest of our human affections may be a snare and a stumbling-block. Strange enough, surely, and very sad, that even as the hardest of soul among us all may be free from blame where his children stand for judgment, so the tenderest of heart may, like Eli of old, be swept from the face of the living G.o.d for the iniquity of his children, which he has not restrained. But the best of our earthly pa.s.sions, or what seem to be the best, the love of the mother for the babe at her breast, the pride of the father in the son that is flesh of his flesh, must be indulged with sin if it is not accepted with grace. True, too true, that there are those of us who may cast no stone, who should offer no counsel. Like Eli, we know that the word of G.o.d has gone out against us, and we can but bend our foreheads and say, 'It is the Lord, let him do what seemeth him good.'"

When the sermon ended there was much needless industry in searching for books under the book-rail, much furtive wiping of the eyes, much demonstrative blowing of the nose, and in the midst of the benediction a good deal of subdued whispering.

"Aw, 'deed, the ould Bishop bates the young pazon himself at putting out the talk--studdier-like, and not so fiery maybe; but, man alive, the tender he is!"

"And d'ye mind that taste about Eli and them two idiot waistrels Hoffnee and Fin-e-a.s.s?"

"And did ye observe the ould man thrembling mortal?"

"Och, yes, and I'll go bail it wasn't them two blackyards he was thinking of, at all, at all."

When the service came to an end, and the congregation was breaking up, and Billy the Gawk was hobbling down the aisle on a pair of sticks, that h.o.a.ry old sinner, turned saint because fallen sick, was muttering something about "a rael good ould father," and "dirts like than Dan,"

and "a thund'rin rascal with all."

A strange scene came next. The last of the congregation had not yet reached the porch, when all at once there was an uneasy move among them like the ground-swell among the shoalings before the storm comes to sh.o.r.e. Those who were in front fell back or turned about and nodded as if they wished to say something; and those who were behind seemed to think and wonder. Then sudden as the sharp crack of the first breaker on a reef, the faces of the people fell to a great heaviness of horror, and the air was full of mournful exclamations, surprise, and terror.

"Lord ha' ma.s.sy!"

"Dead, you say?"

"Aw, dead enough."

"Washed ash.o.r.e by the Mooragh?"

"So they're sayin', so they're sayin'."

"_Hiain Jean myghin orrin_--Lord have mercy upon us!"

Half a minute later the whole congregation were gathered outside the west porch. There, in the recess between the chapel and the house, two men, fisher-fellows of Michael, stood surrounded by a throng of people.

Something lay at their feet, and the crowd made a circle about it, looked down at it, and drew long breaths. And when one after another came up, reached over the heads of others, and saw what lay within, he turned away with uplifted hands and a face that was white with fear.

"Lord ha' ma.s.sy! Lord ha' ma.s.sy!" cried the people on every side, and their senses were confused and overpowered.

What the dread thing was that lay at the feet of the two fishermen does not need to be said.

"At the Mooragh, d'ye say--came ash.o.r.e at the Mooragh?"

"Ay, at the top of the flood."

"G.o.d bless me!"

"I saw it an hour before it drifted in," said one of the two grave fellows. "I was down 'longsh.o.r.e shrimping, and it was a good piece out to sea, and a heavy tide running. 'Lord ha' ma.s.sy, what's that?' I says.

'It's a gig with a sail,' I was thinking, but no, it was looking too small. 'It's a diver, or maybe a solan goose with its wings stretched out'; but no, it was looking too big."

"Bless me! Lord bless me!"

"And when it came a piece nearer it was into the sea I was going, breast-high and a more, and I came anigh it, and saw what it was--and frightened mortal, you go bail--and away to the street for Jemmy here, and back middlin' sharp, and it driffin' and driffin' on the beach by that time, and the water flopping on it, and the two of us up with it on to our shoulders, and straight away for the Coort."

And sure enough the fisherman's clothes were drenched above his middle, and the shoulders of both men were wet.

"Bless me! bless me! Lord ha' ma.s.sy!" echoed one, and then another, and once again they craned their necks forward and looked down.

The loose canvas that had been ripped open by the weights was lying where the seams were stretched, and none uncovered the face, for the sense of human death was strong on all. But word had gone about whose body it was, and blind Kerry, wringing her hands and muttering something about the sights, pushed her way to the side of the two men, and asked why they had brought their burden to Bishop's Court instead of taking it to Ballamona.

"Aw, well," they answered, "we were thinking the Bishop was his true father, and Bishop's Coort his true home for all."

"And that's true, too," said Kerry, "for his own father has been worse than a haythen naygro to him, and lave it to me to know, for didn't I bring the millish into the world?"

Then there came a rush of people down the road from the village. A rumor that something horrible had washed ash.o.r.e had pa.s.sed quickly from mouth to mouth, after the fisherman had run up to the village for help. And now, in low, eager tones, questions and answers came and went among the crowd. "Who is it?" "Is it the captain?" "What, Mastha Dan?" "That's what they're saying up the street anyway." "Wrapped in a hammock--good Lord preserve us!" "Came up in the tideway at the Mooragh--gracious me!

and I saw him myself on'y yesterday."

The Bishop was seen to come out of the vestry door, and at the sight of him the crowd seemed to awake out of its first stupor. "G.o.d help the Bishop!" "Here he's coming." "Bless me, he'll have to pa.s.s it by, going into the house." "The shock will kill the ould man." "Poor thing, poor thing!" "Some one must up and break the bad newses to him." "Aw, yes, for sure."

And then came the question of who was to tell the Bishop. First the people asked one Corlett Ballafayle. Corlett farmed a hundred acres, and was a churchwarden, and a member of the Keys. But the big man said no, and edged away. Then they asked one of the Tubmans, but the brewer shook his head. He could not look into the Bishop's face and tell him a tale like that. At length they thought of blind Kerry. She at least would not see the face of the stricken man when she took him the fearful news.