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The Shadow of a Crime
THE DEEMSTER
by
HALL CAINE
Hall Caine's Best Books
In Three Volumes
Volume I
P. F. Collier & Son
New York
CONTENTS
CHAPTER I. THE DEATH OF OLD EWAN
CHAPTER II. A MAN CHILD IS BORN
CHAPTER III. THE CHRISTENING OF YOUNG EWAN
CHAPTER IV. THE DEEMSTER OF MAN
CHAPTER V. THE MANXMAN'S BISHOP
CHAPTER VI. THE COZY NEST AT BISHOP'S COURT
CHAPTER VII. DANNY THE MADCAP
CHAPTER VIII. PASSING THE LOVE OF WOMEN
CHAPTER IX. THE SERVICE ON THE SHORE
CHAPTER X. THE FIRST NIGHT WITH THE HERRINGS
CHAPTER XI. THE HERRING BREAKFAST
CHAPTER XII. DAN'S PENANCE
CHAPTER XIII. HOW EWAN MOURNED FOR HIS WIFE
CHAPTER XIV. WRESTLING WITH FATE
CHAPTER XV. THE LIE THAT EWAN TOLD
CHAPTER XVI. THE PLOWING MATCH
CHAPTER XVII. THE WRONG WAY WITH DAN
CHAPTER XVIII. THE BLIND WOMAN'S SECOND SIGHT
CHAPTER XIX. HOW EWAN FOUND DAN
CHAPTER XX. BLIND PASSION AND PAIN
CHAPTER XXI. THE VOICE IN THE NIGHT
CHAPTER XXII. ALONE, ALONE--ALL, ALL ALONE!
CHAPTER XXIII. ALONE ON A WIDE, WIDE SEA
CHAPTER XXIV. "THERE'S GOLD ON THE CUSHAGS YET."
CHAPTER XXV. A RESURRECTION INDEED
CHAPTER XXVI. HOW EWAN CAME TO CHURCH
CHAPTER XXVII. HOW THE NEWS CAME TO THE BISHOP
CHAPTER XXVIII. THE CHILD GHOST IN THE HOUSE
CHAPTER XXIX. BY BISHOP'S LAW OR DEEMSTER'S
CHAPTER XXX. THE DEEMSTER'S INQUEST
CHAPTER XXXI. FATHER AND SON
CHAPTER XXXII. DIVINATION
CHAPTER XXXIII. KIDNAPPED
CHAPTER XXXIV. A RUDE TRIBUNAL
CHAPTER XXXV. THE COURT OF GENERAL JAIL DELIVERY
CHAPTER XXXVI. CUT OFF FROM THE PEOPLE
THE BRIEF RELATION OF DANIEL MYLREA
CHAPTER XXXVII. OF HIS OUTCAST STATE
CHAPTER XXXVIII. OF HIS WAY OF LIFE
CHAPTER XXXIX. OF THE GHOSTLY HAND UPON HIM
CHAPTER XL. OF HIS GREAT LONELINESS
CHAPTER XLI. OF HOW HE KEPT HIS MANHOOD
CHAPTER XLII. OF THE BREAKING OF THE CURSE
CHAPTER XLIII. OF HIS GREAT RESOLVE
CHAPTER XLIV. THE SWEATING SICKNESS
CHAPTER XLV. "OUR FATHER, WHICH ART IN HEAVEN"
THE DEEMSTER
CHAPTER I
THE DEATH OF OLD EWAN
Thorkell Mylrea had waited long for a dead man's shoes, but he was
wearing them at length. He was forty years of age; his black hair was
thin on the crown and streaked with gray about the temples; the
crow's-feet were thick under his small eyes, and the backs of his lean
hands were coated with a reddish down. But he had life in every vein,
and restless energy in every limb.
His father, Ewan Mylrea, had lived long, and mourned much, and died in
sorrow. The good man had been a patriarch among his people, and never a
serener saint had trod the ways of men. He was already an old man when
his wife died. Over her open grave he tried to say, "The Lord gave, and
the Lord hath taken away; blessed--" But his voice faltered and broke.
Though he lived ten years longer, he held up his head no more. Little by
little he relinquished all active interest in material affairs. The
world had lost its light for him, and he was traveling in the dusk.
On his sons, Thorkell, the elder, Gilcrist, the younger, with nearly
five years between them, the conduct of his estate devolved. Never were
brothers more unlike. Gilcrist, resembling his father, was of a simple
and tranquil soul; Thorkell's nature was fiery, impetuous, and crafty.
The end was the inevitable one; the heel of Thorkell was too soon on the
neck of Gilcrist.
Gilcrist's placid spirit overcame its first vexation, and he seemed
content to let his interests slip from his hands. Before he was out
Thorkell Mylrea was in effect the master of Ballamona; his younger
brother was nightly immersed in astronomy and the Fathers, and the old
man was sitting daily, in his slippers, in the high-backed armchair by
the ingle, over which these words were cut in the black oak: "God's
Providence is mine inheritance."
They were strange effects that followed. People said they had never
understood the extraordinary fortunes of Ballamona. Again and again the
rents were raised throughout the estate, until the farmers cried in the
grip of their poverty that they would neither go nor starve. Then the
wagons of Thorkell Mylrea, followed close at their tail-boards by the
carts of the clergy, drove into the cornfields when the corn was cut,
and picked up the stooks and bore them away amid the deep curses of the
bare-armed reapers, who looked on in their impotent rage.
Nevertheless, Thorkell Mylrea said, far and wide, without any show of
reserve, and with every accent of sincerity, that never before had his
father's affairs worn so grave a look. He told Ewan as much time after
time, and then the troubled old face looked puzzled. The end of many
earnest consultations between father and son, as the one sat by the open
hearth and the other leaned against the lettered ingle, was a speedy
recourse to certain moneys that lay at an English bank, as well as the
old man's signature to documents of high moment.
Old Ewan's spirits sank yet lower year by year, but he lived on
peacefully enough. As time went by, he talked less, and his humid eyes
seemed to look within in degree as they grew dim to things without. But
the day came at length when the old man died in his chair, before the
slumberous peat fire on the hearth, quietly, silently, without a
movement, his graspless fingers fumbling a worm-eaten hour-glass, his
long waves of thin white hair falling over his drooping shoulders, and
his upturned eyes fixed in a strong stare on the text carved on the
rannel-tree shelf, "God's Providence is mine inheritance."
That night Thorkell sat alone at the same ingle, in the same chair,
glancing at many parchments, and dropping them one by one into the fire.
Long afterward, when idle tongues were set to wag, it was said that the
elder son of Ewan Mylrea had found a means whereby to sap away his
father's personalty. Then it was remembered that through all his strange
misfortunes Thorkell had borne an equal countenance.
They buried the old man under the elder-tree by the wall of the
churchyard that stands over against the sea. It seemed as if half of the
inhabitants of the island came to his funeral, and six sets of bearers
claimed their turn to carry him to the grave. The day was a gloomy day
of winter; there was not a bird or a breath in the heavy air; the sky
was low and empty; the long dead sea was very gray and cold; and over
the unplowed land the withered stalks of the last crop lay dank on the
mold. When the company returned to Ballamona they sat down to eat and
drink and make merry, for "excessive sorrow is exceeding dry." No one
asked for the will; there was no will because there was no personalty,
and the lands were by law the inheritance of the eldest son. Thorkell
was at the head of his table, and he smiled a little, and sometimes
reached over the board to touch with his glass the glass that was held
out toward him. Gilcrist had stood with these mourners under the empty
sky, and his heart was as bare and desolate, but he could endure their
company no longer. In an agony of grief and remorse, and rage as well,
he got up from his untouched food and walked away to his own room. It
was a little, quiet nest of a room that looked out by one small window
over the marshy Curraghs that lay between the house and the sea. There
Gilcrist sat alone that day in a sort of dull stupor.
The daylight had gone, and the revolving lamps on the headland of Ayre
were twinkling red after black over the blank waters, when the door
opened and Thorkell entered. Gilcrist stirred the fire, and it broke
into a bright blaze. Thorkell's face wore a curious expression.
"I have been thinking a good deal about you, Gilcrist; especially during
the last few days. In fact, I have been troubled about you, to say the
truth," said Thorkell, and then he paused. "Affairs are in a bad way at
Ballamona--very."
Gilcrist made no response whatever, but clasped his hands about his knee
and looked steadily into the fire.
"We are neither of us young men now, but if you should think
of--of--anything, I should consider it wrong to stand--to put myself in
your way--to keep you here, that is--to your disadvantage, you know."
Thorkell was standing with his back to the fire, and his fingers
interlaced behind him.
Gilcrist rose to his feet. "Very well," he said, with a strained
quietness, and then turned toward the window and looked out at the dark
sea. Only the sea's voice from the shore beyond the churchyard broke the
silence in that little room.
Thorkell stood a moment, leaning on the mantel-shelf, and the flickering
lights of the fire seemed to make sinister smiles on his face. Then he
went out without a word.
Next morning, at daybreak, Gilcrist Mylrea was riding toward Derby Haven
with a pack in green cloth across his saddle-bow. He took passage by the
"King Orry," an old sea-tub plying once a week to Liverpool. From
Liverpool he went on to Cambridge to offer himself as a sizar at the
University.
It had never occurred to any one that Thorkell Mylrea would marry. But
his father was scarcely cold in his grave, the old sea-tub that took his
brother across the Channel had hardly grounded at Liverpool, when
Thorkell Mylrea offered his heart and wrinkled hand, and the five
hundred acres of Ballamona, to a lady twenty years of age, who lived at
a distance of some six miles from his estate. It would be more precise
to say that the liberal tender was made to the lady's father, for her
own will was little more than a cypher in the bargaining. She was a girl
of sweet spirit, very tender and submissive, and much under the spell of
religious feeling. Her mother had died during her infancy, and she had
been brought up in a household that was without other children, in a
gaunt rectory that never echoed with children's voices. Her father was
Archdeacon of the island, Archdeacon Teare; her own name was Joance.
If half the inhabitants of the island turned out at old Ewan's funeral,
the entire population of four parishes made a holiday of his son's
wedding. The one followed hard upon the other, and thrift was not absent
from either. Thorkell was married in the early spring at the
Archdeacon's church, at Andreas.
It would be rash to say that the presence of the great company at the
wedding was intended as a tribute to the many virtues of Thorkell
Mylrea. Indeed, it was as well that the elderly bridegroom could not
overhear the conversation with which some of the homely folk beguiled
the way.
"Aw, the murther of it," said one buirdly Manxman, "five-and-forty if
he's a day, and a wizened old polecat anyway."
"You'd really think the gel's got no feelin's. Aw, shockin', shockin',
extraordinary!"
"And a rael good gel too, they're sayin'. Amazin'! Amazin'!"
The marriage of Thorkell was a curious ceremony. First there walked
abreast the fiddler and the piper, playing vigorously the "Black and
Gray"; then came the bridegroom's men carrying osiers, as emblems of
their superiority over the bridesmaids, who followed them. Three times
the company passed round the church before entering it, and then they
trooped up toward the communion-rail.
Thorkell went through the ceremony with the air of a whipped terrier. On
the outside he was gay in frills and cuffs, and his thin hair was
brushed crosswise over the bald patch on his crown. He wore buckled
shoes and blue laces to his breeches. But his brave exterior lent him
small support as he took the ungloved hand of his girlish bride. He gave
his responses in a voice that first faltered, and then sent out a quick,
harsh, loud pipe. No such gaunt and grim shadow of a joyful bridegroom
ever before knelt beside a beautiful bride, and while the Archdeacon
married the spectre of a happy man to his own submissive daughter, the
whispered comments of the throng that filled nave and aisles and gallery
sometimes reached his own ears.
"You wouldn't think it, now, that the craythur's sold his own gel, and
him preaching there about the covenant and Isaac and Rebecca, and all
that!"
"Hush, man, it's Laban and Jacob he's meaning."
When the ceremony had come to an end, and the bridegroom's eyes were no
longer fixed in a stony stare on the words of the Commandments printed
in black and white under the chancel window, the scene underwent a swift
change. In one minute Thorkell was like another man. All his abject
bearing fell away. When the party was clear of the churchyard four of
the groom's men started for the Rectory at a race, and the first to
reach it won a flask of brandy, with which he returned at high speed to
the wedding company. Then Thorkell, as the custom was, bade his friends
to form a circle where they stood in the road, while he drank of the
brandy and handed the flask to his wife.
"Custom must be indulged with custom," said he, "or custom will weep."
After that the company moved on until they reached the door of the
Archdeacon's house, where the bride cake was broken over the bride's
hand, and then thrown to be scrambled for by the noisy throng that blew
neat's horns and fired guns and sang ditties by the way.
Thorkell, with the chivalrous bearing of an old courtier, delivered up
his wife to the flock of ladies who were ready to pounce upon her at the
door of the Rectory. Then he mingled freely with the people, and
chattered and bantered, and made quips and quibbles. Finally, he invited
all and sundry to partake freely of the oaten cake and ale that he had
himself brought from Ballamona in his car for the refreshment of his own
tenants there present. The fare was Lenten fare for a wedding day, and
some of the straggle-headed troop grumbled, and some sniffled, and some
scratched their heads, and some laughed outright. The beer and bread
were left almost untouched.
Thorkell was blind to the discontent of his guests, but the Archdeacon
perceived it, and forthwith called such of the tumultuous assemblage as
came from a distance into his barns. There the creels were turned bottom
up, and four close-jointed gates lifted off their hinges were laid on
the top for tables. Then from pans and boilers that simmered in the
kitchen a great feast was spread. First came the broth, well loaded with
barley and cabbage, and not destitute of the flavor of numerous sheep's
heads. This was served in wooden piggins, shells being used as spoons.
Then suet pudding, as round as a well-fed salmon, and as long as a 30
lb. cod. Last of all a fat hog, roasted whole, and cut with a cleaver,
but further dissected only by teeth and fingers, for the unfastidious
Manxman cared nothing for knife and fork.
After that there were liquor and lusty song. And all the time there
could be heard, over the boisterous harmony of the feasters within the
barn, the yet noisier racket of the people without.
By this time, whatever sentiment of doubtful charity had been harbored
in the icy breast of the Manxman had been thawed away under the
charitable effects of good cheer, and Thorkell Mylrea and Archdeacon
Teare began to appear in truly Christian character.
"It's none so ould he is yet, at all at all."
"Ould? He hasn't the hayseed out of his hair, boy."
"And a shocking powerful head-piece at him for all."
There were rough jokes and dubious toasts, and Thorkell enjoyed them
all. There was dancing, too, and fiddling, and the pipes at intervals,
and all went merry until midnight, when the unharmonious harmonies of
fiddle and pipes and unsteady song went off over the Curraghs in various
directions.
Next morning Thorkell took his wife home to Ballamona. They drove in the
open springless car in which he had brought down the oaten cake and ale.
Thorkell had seen that the remains of these good viands were thriftily
gathered up. He took them back home with him, carefully packed under the
board on which his young wife sat.