The Deemster Part 38

"Aw, yes, Kerry, woman, it's yourself for it, and a rael stout heart at you, and blind for all, thank the Lord."

"I'll try, please G.o.d," said Kerry, and with that she moved slowly toward the vestry door, where the Bishop had stopped to stroke the yellow curls of a little shy boy, and to ask him his age next birthday, and to wish him a merry Christmas and eighty more of them, and all merry ones. It was observed that the good man's face was brighter now than it had been when he went into the chapel.

The people watched Kerry as she moved up to the Bishop. Could she be telling him? He was smiling! Was it not his laugh that they heard? Kerry was standing before him in an irresolute way, and now with a wave of the hand he was leaving her. He was coming forward. No, he had stopped again to speak to old Auntie Nan from the Curragh, and Kerry had pa.s.sed him in returning to the crowd.

"I couldn't do it; he spoke so cheerful, poor thing," said Kerry; "and when I was goin' to speak he looked the spitten picture of my ould father."

The Bishop parted from the old woman of the Curragh, and then on raising his eyes he became conscious of the throng by the porch.

"Lave it to me," said a rough voice, and Billy the Gawk stepped out. The crowd fell aside, and the fishermen placed themselves in front of the dread thing on the ground. Smiling and bowing on the right and left, the Bishop was pa.s.sing on toward the door that led to the house, when the old beggar of the highways hobbled in front of him.

"We're right sorry, sir, my lord, to bring ye bad newses," the old man stammered, lifting the torn cap from his head.

The Bishop's face fell to a sudden gravity. "What is it?" he said, and his voice sank.

"We're rael sorry, and we know your heart was gript to him with grapplin's."

"Ay, ay," said some in the crowd.

"What is it, man? Speak," said the Bishop, and all around was silence and awe.

The old man stood irresolute for a moment. Then, just as he was lifting his head to speak, and every eye was on the two who stood in the midst, the Bishop and the old beggar, there came a loud noise from near at hand, and voices that sounded hoa.r.s.e and jarring were in the air.

"Where is it? When did they bring it up? Why is it not taken into the house?"

It was the Deemster, and he came on with great flashing eyes, and behind him was Jarvis Kerruish. In an instant the crowd had fallen aside for him, and he had pushed through and come to a stand in front of the Bishop.

"We know what has happened. We have heard it in the village," he said.

"I knew what it must come to sooner or later. I told you a hundred times, and you have only yourself to thank for it."

The Bishop said not a word. He saw what lay behind the feet of the fishermen, and stepped up to it.

"It's of your own doing," shouted the Deemster in a voice of no ruth or pity. "You would not heed my warning. It was easy to see that the devil's own dues were in him. He hadn't an ounce of grace in his carca.s.s. He put his foot on your neck, and threatened to do as much for me some day. And see where he is now! Look at him! This is how your son comes home to you!"

As he spoke, the Deemster pointed contemptuously with the handle of his walking-cane to the thing that lay between them.

Then the hard tension of the people's silence was broken; they began to mutter among themselves and to propose and demur to something. They saw the Deemster's awful error, and that he thought the dead man was Dan.

The Bishop still stood immovable, with not the sign of a tear on his white face, but over it the skin was drawn hard.

"And let me tell you one thing more," said the Deemster. "Whoever he may be that brought matters to this pa.s.s, he shall not suffer. I will not lift a finger against him. The man who brings about his own death shall have the burden of it on his own head. The law will uphold me."

Then a hoa.r.s.e murmur ran from lip to lip among the people who stood around, and one man, a burly fellow, nerved by the Deemster's error, pushed forward and said:

"Deemster, be merciful, as you hope for mercy; you don't know what you're saying."

At that the Deemster turned about hotly and brought down his walking-cane with a heavy blow on the man's breast.

The stalwart fellow took the blow without lifting a hand. "G.o.d help you!

Deemster," he said, in a thick voice. "G.o.d help you! you don't know what you're doing. Go and look at it, Deemster. Go and look, if you've the heart for it. Look at it, man, and may the Lord have mercy on you, and on us all in our day of trouble, and may G.o.d forgive you the cruel words you've spoken to your own brother this day!"

There was then a great silence for a moment. The Deemster gazed in a sort of stupor into the man's face, and his stick dropped out of his hand. With a look of majesty and of suffering the Bishop stood at one side of the body, quiet, silent, giving no sign, seeing nothing but the thing at his feet, and hardly hearing the reproaches that were being hurled at him in the face of his people. The beating of his heart fell low.

There was a moment of suspense, and then, breathing rapid, audible breath, the Deemster stooped beside the body, stretched out a half-palsied hand, and drew aside the loose canvas, and saw the face of his own son Ewan.

One long exclamation of surprise and consternation broke from the Deemster, and after that there came another fearful pause, wherein the Bishop went down on his knees beside the body.

In an instant the Deemster fell back to his savage mood. He rose to his full height; his face became suddenly and awfully discolored and stern, and, tottering almost to falling, he lifted his clenched fist to the sky in silent imprecation of heaven.

The people dropped aside in horror, and their flesh crawled over them.

"Lord ha' ma.s.sy!" they cried again, and Kerry, who was blind and could not see the Deemster, covered her ears that she might not hear him.

And from where he knelt the Bishop, who had not spoken until now, said, with an awful emphasis, "Brother, the Lord of heaven looks down on us."

But the Deemster, recovering himself, laughed in scorn of his own weakness no less than of the Bishop's reproof. He picked up the walking-cane that he had dropped, slapped his leg with it, ordered the two fishermen to shoulder their burden again and take it to Ballamona, and sent straightway for the coroner and the joiner, "For," said he, "my son having come out of the sea, must be buried this same day."

CHAPTER XXVII

HOW THE NEWS CAME TO THE BISHOP

The Deemster swung aside and went off, followed by Jarvis Kerruish. Then the two fishermen took up their dread burden and set their faces toward Ballamona. In a blind agony of uncertainty the Bishop went into his house. His mind was confused; he sat and did his best to compose himself. The thing that had happened perplexed him cruelly. He tried to think it out, but found it impossible to a.n.a.lyze his unlinked ideas. His faculties were benumbed, and not even pain, the pain of Ewan's loss, could yet penetrate the dead blank that lay between him and a full consciousness of the awful event. He shed no tears, and not a sigh broke from him. Silent he sat, with an expression of suffering that might have been frozen in his stony eyes and on his whitening lips, so rigid was it, and as if the power of life had ebbed away like the last ebb of an exhausted tide.

Then the people from without began to crowd in upon him where he sat in his library. They were in a state of great excitement, and all reserve and ceremony were broken down. Each had his tale to tell, each his conjecture to offer. One told what the longsh.o.r.e shrimper had said of finding the body near the fishing-ground known as the Mooragh. Another had his opinion as to how the body had sailed ash.o.r.e instead of sinking.

A third fumbled his cap, and said, "I take sorrow to see you in such trouble, my lord, and wouldn't bring bad newses if I could give myself lave to bring good newses instead, but I'll go bail there's been bad work goin', and foul play, as they're sayin', and I wouldn't trust but Mastha Dan--I'm saying I wouldn't trust but Mastha Dan could tell us something--"

The Bishop cut short the man's garrulity with a slight gesture, and one by one the people went out. He had listened to them in silence and with a face of saintly suffering, scarcely hearing what they had said. "I will await events," he thought, "and trust in G.o.d." But a great fear was laying hold of him, and he had to gird up his heart to conquer it. "I will trust in G.o.d," he told himself a score of times, and in his faith in the goodness of his G.o.d he tried to be calm and brave. But one after another his people came back and back and back with new and still newer facts. At every fresh blow from d.a.m.ning circ.u.mstances his thin lips trembled, his nervous fingers ran through his flowing white hair, and his deep eyes filled without moving.

And after the first tempest of his own sorrow for the loss of Ewan, he thought of Dan, and of Dan's sure grief. He remembered the love of Ewan for Dan, and the love of Dan for Ewan. He recalled many instances of that beautiful affection, and in the quickening flow of the light of that love half the follies of his wayward son sank out of sight. Dan must be told what had occurred, and if none had told him already, it was best that it should be broken to him from lips that loved him.

Thus it was that this brave and long-hara.s.sed man, trying to think ill of his own harshness, that looked so impotent and so childish now, remembering no longer his vow never to set eyes on the face of his son, or hold speech with him again, sent a messenger to the old Ballamona to ask for Dan, and to bring him to Bishop's Court without delay.

Half an hour later, at the sound of a knock at his door, the Bishop, thinking it was Dan himself, stood up to his stately height, and tried to hide his agitation, and answered in an unsteady voice, that not all the resolution of his brave heart could subdue to calmness. But it was the messenger, and not Dan, and he had returned to say that Mastha Dan had not been home since yesterday, and that when Mastha Ewan was last seen at home, he had asked for Mastha Dan, and, not finding him, had gone down to the Lockjaw Creek to seek him.

"When was that?" the Bishop asked.

"The ould body at the house said it might be a piece after three o'clock yesterday evening," said the man.

Beneath the cold quietness of the regard with which the Bishop dismissed his messenger, a keener eye than his might have noted a fearful tumult.

The Bishop's hand grew cold and trembled. At the next instant he had become conscious of his agitation, and had begun to reproach himself for his want of faith. "I will trust in G.o.d and await events," he told himself again. "No, I will not speak; I will maintain silence. Yes, I will await the turn of events, and trust in the good Father of all."

Then there came another knock at his door. "Surely it is Dan at length; his old housekeeper has sent him on," he thought. "Come in," he called, in a voice that shook.

It was Hommy-beg. The Deemster had sent him across with a message.

"And what is it?" the Bishop asked, speaking at the deaf man's ear.