DANNY THE MADCAP
Now, Danny was a great favorite with the Deemster, and nothing that he
could do was amiss. The spice of mischief in the lad made him the
darling of the Deemster's heart. His own son disappointed the Deemster.
He seemed to have no joy in him. Ewan was quiet, and his father thought
him a milksop. There was more than one sense in which the Deemster was
an indifferent judge of his species, but he found no difficulty in
comprehending the idiosyncrasy of his brother's son. Over the pathetic
story of Danny's maddest prank, or the last mournful account of his
daring devilry, the Deemster would chuckle and shake, and roll his head
between his shoulders, then give the boy a slap on his hindmost part,
accompanied by a lusty name, and finally rummage for something in his
pocket, and smuggle that something into the young rascal's palm.
Danny would be about fifteen years of age--a lump of a lad, and
therefore out of the leading-strings of his nurse, Kerry Quayle--when he
concocted a most audacious scheme, whereof Kerry was the chief subject
and victim. This had nothing less for its aim and object than to get
Kerry married to Hommy-beg--the blind woman to the deaf man. Now, Hommy
was a gaunt, raw-boned man, dressed in a rough blue jacket and a short
gray petticoat. His full and proper name was now quite lost. He was
known as Hommy-beg, sometimes as Hommy-beg-Bill, a name which at once
embodied a playful allusion to his great physique, and a certain
genealogical record in showing that he was little Tom, the son of Bill.
Though scarcely short of stone-deaf, he was musical. He played two
instruments, the fiddle and the voice. The former squeaked like a rasp,
and the latter thundered like a fog-horn. Away to Ballamona Master Danny
went, and found Hommy-beg thinning a bed of peonies.
"Aw, man, the terrible fond she is of the like o' that swate flower,"
said the young rogue, who spoke the homespun to the life. "Aw, dear, the
way she smells at them when you bring them up for the Bishop!"
"What, ould Kerry? Smelling, is it? And never a whiff of a smell at the
breed o' them!"
"Och, no, it's not the flowers, it's the man--the man, Hommy."
"That'll do, that'll do. And blind, too! Well, well."
"But the swate temper that's at her, Hommy! And the coaxing and coaxing
of her! And, man alive, the fond she is of you! _A fine sort of a man
anyways_, and _A rael good voice at him_. Aw, extraordinary,
extraordinary."
"D'ye raely mane it?"
"Mane it? Aw, well, well, and who but you doesn't know it, Hommy?"
"Astonishing, astonishing!"
"Come up to the Coort and take a cup o' tay with her."
Hommy-beg scratched his head. "Is it rarely true, Danny veg?"
"I'll lave it with you, Hommy," said Danny, and straightway the young
rascal went back to Bishop's Court, lighted upon blind Kerry, and
entered upon a glowing description of the personal charms of Hommy-beg.
"Aw, the good-looking he is, astonishing! My gough! You should see him
in his Sunday hat, or maybe with a frill on his shirt, and smiling, and
all to that! Terrible dacent sort is Hommy-beg!"
"What, the loblolly-boy in the petticoat?"
"Aw, but the tender-hearted he is for all, and, bless me, Kerry woman,
the swate he is on you!"
"What, the ould red-head that comes singing, as the saying is?"
"Aw, no, woman, but as black as the raven, and the way he looks
sorrowful-like when he comes beside of you. You wouldn't believe it!
And, bless me, the rael bad he is to come up to the Coort and take a cup
of tay with you, and the like o' that."
"Do you raely mane it, Danny, my chree?"
The very next day Hommy-beg arrived at the kitchen door of Bishop's
Court in his Sunday hat, in the shirt with the frill to it, and with a
peony as big as a March cabbage in his fist. The end of it all was that
Kerry and Hommy-beg were forthwith asked in church. Wild as the freak
was that made the deaf man and the blind woman man and wife, their
marriage was none the less happy for their infirmities.
The Deemster heard of the plot on his way to church on Sunday morning,
and he laughed in his throat all through the service, and when the first
of the askings was solemnly proclaimed from the reading-desk, he
tittered audibly in his pew. "Danny was tired of the woman's second
sight--found it inconvenient, very--wanted to be rid of her--good!" he
chuckled. But not long afterward he enjoyed a jest that was yet more to
his taste, for his own prime butt of ridicule, the Church itself, was
then the victim.
It was an old Manx custom that on Christmas Eve the church should be
given up to the people for the singing of their native carols or
carvals. The curious service was known as Oiel Verree (the Eve of Mary),
and at every such service for the last twenty years Hommy-beg, the
gardener, and Mr. James Quirk, the schoolmaster, had officiated as
singers in the strange Manx ritual. Great had hitherto been the rivalry
between these musical celebrities, but word had gone round the town that
at length their efforts were to be combined in a carol which they were
to sing together. Dan had effected this extraordinary combination of
talent by a plot which was expected to add largely to the amusement of
the listeners.
Hommy-beg could not read a syllable, yet he never would sing his carol
without having the printed copy of it in his hand. Of course, Mr. Quirk,
the schoolmaster, could read, but, as we have seen, he resembled
Hommy-beg in being almost stone-deaf. Each could hear himself sing, but
neither could hear another.
And now for the plot. Master Dan called on the gardener at his cottage
on the Brew on the morning of the day before Christmas Day, and "Hommy,"
said he, "it's morthal strange the way a man of your common-sense can't
see that you'd wallop that squeaking ould Jemmy Quirk in a jiffy if
you'd only consent to sing a ballad along of him. Bless me, man alive,
it's then they'd be seeing what a weak, ould cracked pot of a voice is
at him."
Hommy-beg's face began to wear a smile of benevolent condescension.
Observing his advantage, the young rascal continued, "Do it at the Oiel
Verree to-night, Hommy. He'll sing his treble, and you'll sing seconds
to him."
It was an unlucky remark. The gardener frowned austerely. "Me sing
seconds to the craythur? No, never!"
Dan explained to Hommy-beg, with a world of abject apologies, that there
was a sense in which seconds meant firsts, and at length the gardener
was mollified, and consented to the proposal; but one idea was firmly
rooted in his mind--namely, that if he was to sing a carol with the
schoolmaster, he must take the best of care to sing his loudest, in
order to drown at once the voice of his rival, and the bare notion that
it was he who was singing seconds to such a poor creature as that.
Then Master Danny trotted off to the schoolhouse, where he was now no
longer a scholar, and consequently enjoyed an old boy's privilege of
approaching the master on equal terms, and "Jemmy," he said, "it's
morthal strange the way a man of your common-sense can't see that you'd
wallop that squeaking old Hommy-beg in a jiffy if you'd only consent to
sing a ballad along of him. Do it at the Oiel Verree to-night, Jemmy,
and, bless me! that's the when they'll be seeing what a weak, ould
crack-pot of a voice is at the craythur."
The schoolmaster fell even an easier prey to the plot than the gardener
had been. A carol was selected; it was to be the ancient Manx carol on
the bad women mentioned in the Bible as having (from Eve downward)
brought evil on mankind.
Now, Hommy-beg kept his carols pinned against the walls of his cottage.
The "Bad Women" was the carol which was pinned above the mantelpiece,
just under the pendulum of the clock with the facetious face. It
resembled the other prints in being worn, crumpled, and dirty; but
Hommy-beg knew it by its position, and he could distinguish every other
carol by its place on the walls.
Danny had somehow got a "skute" into this literary mystery, and after
arranging with the schoolmaster the carol that was to be sung, he
watched Hommy-beg out of his cottage, and then went into it under
pretense of a friendly call upon blind Kerry. Before he left the cottage
he had taken down the carol that had been pinned above the mantelpiece,
and fixed up another in place of it from the opposite side of the room.
The substituted carol happened, oddly enough, to be a second copy of the
carol on "Bad Women," with this radical difference: the copy taken from
under the clock was the version of the carol in English, and the copy
put up was the version in Manx. Toward ten o'clock that night the church
bells began to ring, and Hommy-beg looked at the clock, took the carol
from under the pendulum, put on his best petticoat, and went off to
church.
Now, there were to be seasonable rejoicings at the Court on the morrow,
and Kerry had gone over to help at the Christmas preparations. Ewan and
Mona had always spent their Christmas at Bishop's Court since the day
when they left it as children. That night they had arrived as usual, and
after they had spent some hours with Danny in dressing the house in a
green-and-red garment of hibbin and hollin, the Bishop had turned them
off to bed. Danny's bedroom was the little crib over the library, and
Ewan's was the room over that. All three bade the Bishop good-night and
went into their rooms. But Danny did not go to bed; he listened until he
heard the Bishop in the library twisting his chair and stirring the
peats, and then he whipped off his boots and crept upstairs to Ewan's
room. There in bated breath he told of the great sport that was to come
off at the Oiel Verree, announced his intention of going, and urged Ewan
to go with him. They could just jump through the little window of his
room, and light on the soft grass by the library wall, and get in again
by the same easy means. No one would know that they had been out, and
what high jinks they must have! But no, Ewan was not to be persuaded,
and Danny set off alone.
Hommy-beg did not reach the church until the parson's sermon was almost
over. Prayers had been said in a thin congregation, but no sooner were
they done than crowds of young men and maidens tripped down the aisles.
The young women went up into the gallery, and from that elevation they
shot down at their bachelor friends large handfuls of peas. To what
ancient spirit of usage, beyond the ancient spirit of mischief, the
strange practise was due, we must be content to leave, as a solemn
problem, to the learned and curious antiquaries. Nearly everyboy carried
a candle, and the candles of the young women were adorned with a red
ribbon or rosette.
In passing out of the church the parson came face to face with
Hommy-beg, who was pushing his way up the aisle. The expression on his
face was not at the moment one of peculiar grace, and he stopped the
gardener and said sharply in his ear, "Mind you see that all is done in
decency and order, and that you close my church before midnight."
"Aw, but the church is the people's, I'm thinkin'," said Hommy-beg with
a shake of his tousled head.
"The people are as ignorant as goats," said the parson, angrily.
"Aw, well, and you're their shepherd, so just make sheeps of them," said
Hommy-beg, and he pushed on.
Danny was there by this time, and, with a face of mighty solemnity, he
sat on the right of Hommy-beg, and held a candle in his left hand. When
everything was understood to be ready, and Will-as-Thorn, the clerk, had
taken his station inside the communion rail, the business of the Oiel
Verree began. First one man got up and sung a carol in English; then
another sung a Manx carol. But the great event of the night was to be
the carol sung by the sworn enemies and rivals, Hommy-beg and Mr. James
Quirk.
At last the time came for these worthies. They rose from opposite sides
of the church, eyed each other with severe looks, stepped out of their
pews, and walked down the aisle to the door of the porch. Then they
turned about in silence, and, standing side by side, faced the
communion.
The tittering in the gallery and whispering in the body were audible to
all except the persons who were the cause of both. "Hush, hush, man
alive, that's him, that's him." "Bless me, look at Hommy-beg and the
petticut, and the handkercher pinnin' round his throat." "Aw, dear, it's
what he's used of." "A regular Punch and Judy."
Danny was exerting himself at that moment to keep order and silence.
"Hush, man, let them make a start for all."
The carol the rivals were about to sing contained some thirty verses. It
was an ancient usage that after each verse the carol singers should take
a long stride toward the communion. By the time the carol of "Bad Women"
came to an end the carol singers must, therefore, be at the opposite end
of the church.
There was now a sublime scorn printed on the features of Mr. Quirk. As
for Hommy-beg, he looked, at this last instant, like a man who was
rather sorry than otherwise for his rash adversary.
"The rermantic they're looking," whispered a girl in the gallery to the
giggling companion beside her.
Expectation was at its highest when Hommy-beg thrust his hand into his
pocket and brought out the printed copy of the carol. Hommy unfolded it,
glanced at it with the air of a conductor taking a final look at his
score, nodded his head at it as if in approval, and then, with a
magnanimous gesture, held it between himself and Mr. Quirk. The
schoolmaster in turn glanced at it, glanced again, glanced a third time
at the paper, and up into the face of Hommy-beg.
Anxiety was now on tiptoe. "Hush, d'ye hear, hush," whispered Danny from
his pew; "hush, man, or it's spoiling it all you'll be, for sure."
At the moment when Mr. Quirk glanced into the face of Hommy-beg there
was a smile on that countenance. Mr. Quirk mistook that smile. He
imagined he saw a trick. The schoolmaster could read, and he perceived
that the carol which the gardener held out to him was not the carol for
which he had been told by Master Danny to prepare. They were, by
arrangement, to have sung the English version of "Bad Women." This was
the Manx version, and though the metre was the same, it was always sung
to a different tune. Ah! Mr. Quirk understood it all! The monster wanted
to show that he, James Quirk, schoolmaster, could only sing one carol;
but, as sure as his name was Jemmy, he would be equal with him! He could
sing this Manx version, and he would. It was now Mr. Quirk's turn to
smile.
"Aw, look at them--the two of them--grinnin' together like a pair of old
gurgoils on the steeple!"
At a motion of the gardener's hand, intended to beat the time, the
singers began. Hommy-beg sang the carol agreed upon--the English version
of "Bad Women." Mr. Quirk sang the carol they held in their hands--the
Manx version of "Bad Women." Neither heard the other, and to dispel the
bare notion that either was singing seconds, each bawled at the utmost
reach of his lung-power. To one tune Hommy-beg sang:
"Thus from the days of Adam
Her mischief you may trace."
And to another Mr. Quirk sang:
"She ish va'n voir ain ooilley
Son v'ee da Adam ben."
Such laughter! How the young women in the gallery lay back in their
seats with hysterical shrieks! How the young fellows in the body made
the sacred edifice ring with guffaws! But the singers, with eyes
steadfastly fixed on the paper, heard nothing but each his own voice.
Three verses had been sung, and three strides made toward the communion,
when suddenly the laughter and shouting of the people ceased. All eyes
had turned toward the porch. There the Bishop stood, with blank
amazement printed on his face, his head bare, and one hand on the
half-opened door.
If a spectre had appeared the consternation had scarcely been greater.
Danny had been rolling in his pew with unconstrained laughter, but at
sight of the Bishop his candle fell from his hand and sputtered on the
book-rail. The Bishop turned about, and before the people had recovered
from their surprise he was gone. At the next moment everybody got up
without a word and left the church. In two minutes more not a soul
remained except Hommy-beg and Mr. Jemmy Quirk, who, with eyes riveted on
the printed carol in their hands, still sang lustily, oblivious of the
fact that they had no audience.
When Danny left the church that night it was through the lancet-window
of the vestry. Dropping on the turf at the northeast of the church, he
leaped the wall that divided the churchyard from a meadow on the north,
and struck upon a path that went round to Bishop's Court by way of the
cliff-head. The path was a long one, but it was lonesome, and its
lonesomeness was no small merit in Danny's view that night. The Bishop
must return to the Court by the highway through the village, and the
Bishop must be in front of him.
The night was dark and dumb, and, laden with salt scent, the dank vapor
floated up from the sea. Danny walked quickly. The deep boom of the
waters rolling on the sand below came up to him through the dense air.
Late as was the hour, he could hear the little sandpiper screaming at
Orris Head. The sea-swallow shot over him too, with its low, mournful
cry. Save for these sounds, and the quick beat of his own feet, all was
still around him.
Beneath his stubborn bit of skepticism Danny was superstitious. He was
full to the throat of fairy-lore and stories of witchcraft. He had
learned both from old Billy Quilleash and his mates as they sat barking
their nets on the shore. And that night the ghostly memories would
arise, do what he might to keep them down. To banish them Danny began to
whistle, and, failing to enliven himself much by that exercise, he began
to sing. His selection of a song was not the happiest under the
circumstances. It was the doleful ballad of "Myle Charaine." Danny sang
it in Manx, but here is a stave of it in English:
"Oh, Myle Charaine, where got you your gold?
Lone, lone, you have left me here;
Oh, not in the Curragh, deep under the mold--
Lone, lone, and void of cheer."
He had come up to Bishop's Court on the sea-front, and there the
Bishop's library stood out from the body of the old house, between the
chapel porch and the kitchen offices. A light was in the library, and
passing over the soft grass with the soft flight of a lapwing, Danny
peered in at the curtainless window. The familiar room was empty. On the
hearth a turf fire burned without flame, and bathed the book-encased
walls in a rosy red. The Bishop's easy-chair, in its white covering,
stood at one side of the ingle, his slippers in front of it; and beside
it, on the little three-legged mahogany table, were the inkhorn and the
long quill, and the Bishop's four-cornered library cap. The door stood
ajar, and the two candles in the two brass brackets at each side of the
fireplace were tipped by their extinguishers.
The Bishop had not returned; but the faint smile of triumph which at
that thought rested like a ray of pale sunshine on Danny's face suddenly
vanished. In a lad's vague way Danny now realized that it had not been
merely because the night was dark and the road lonely that he had
whistled and sung. He hung his head where he stood in the night, and as
if by an involuntary movement, he lifted his cap and fumbled it.
At the next instant Danny was clambering up the angle of the wall to the
lead flat that covered the projecting part of the library. From this
lead flat there opened the window of his own bedroom, and in a moment he
was striding through it. All was darkness within, but he needed no light
to see his way in that room. He knew every crib and corner; the place
where he kept his fishing lines, the nail from which his moth-net hung,
the bottle on the drawers in which he had his minnows, and the can with
the lid well down that contained the newts that were the terror of all
the women in the house. If Danny had been as blind as old Kerry he could
have found everything his room had in it, except, perhaps, his breeches,
or his shirt, or his other coat, or that cap that was always getting
itself lost, and of course no sight and no light would help a lad to
find things like these.
Hardly had Danny taken a step into his room before he realized that some
one had been there since he left it. Derry, his white-eyed collie, who
had been lying on the bed, dropped on the floor, and frisked about him.
"Down, Derry, down!" he whispered, and for a moment he thought it might
have been Derry that had pushed open the door. But the dog's snout could
not have turned down the counterpane of the bed, or opened the top
drawer that held the fishing flies, or rummaged among the long rods in
the corner. The counterpane lay double, the drawer stood open, the rods
were scattered--some one had been there to look for him, and, not
finding him, had tried to find a reason for his absence, and that some
one had either come into the room in the dark, or--been blind.
"Aw, it's always Kerry that's in it," Danny told himself, and with an
unpleasant remembrance of Kerry's strange faculty, whereof he was the
peculiar victim, he reflected that his race home had been vain. Then on
the instant Danny found himself concocting a trick to defeat
appearances. He had a foot on the stairs to carry out his design, when
he heard the door at the front of the house open and close, and a
familiar step pass through the hall. The Bishop had returned. Danny
waited and listened. Now there was talking in the library. Danny's quick
ear could scarcely distinguish the words, but the voices he could not
mistake--they were the voices of the Bishop and blind Kerry. With a
stealthy stride Danny went up to Ewan's room. Ewan was sleeping. Feeling
hot and cold together, Danny undressed and turned into bed. Before he
had time to bury his head under the clothes he heard the Bishop on the
stairs. The footsteps passed into the room below, and then after an
interval they were again on the stairs. In another moment Danny knew,
though of course his eyes were fast shut, and he was sleeping most
profoundly, that the Bishop with a lighted candle in his hand was
leaning over him.
It would wrong the truth to say that Master Danny's slumber was
disturbed that night; but next morning when the boys awoke together, and
Ewan rose on his elbow with a puzzled gaze at his unexpected bed-fellow,
Danny sidled out of the bed on to the floor, and, without looking too
much into Ewan's face, he began his toilet, as was his wont, by putting
on his cap. He had got this length, and was standing in cap and shirt,
when he blurted out the mischief of last night's adventure, the singing,
the sudden appearance of the Bishop, the race home along the cliff, and
the coming up to bed. "But you won't let on, Ewan, will you?" he said.
Ewan looked at that moment as if the fate of the universe hung on his
answer, but he gave the promise that was required of him. Then the boys
went downstairs and found Mona, and imparted the dread secret to her.
Presently the Bishop came in to breakfast with a face that was paler
than usual, and more than ordinarily solemn.
"Danny," he said, "why did you not sleep in your own bed last night, my
boy?"
"I slept with Ewan, father," Danny answered, promptly.
The Bishop said no more then, and they all sat down at the table.
"And so you two boys went to bed together--_together_?" he said, and,
with a dig of emphasis on his last word, repeated, he looked at Ewan.
Ewan's face crimsoned, and his tongue faltered, "Yes, uncle."
The Bishop's eyes fell. "Boys," he said, in another tone, "would you
think it? I have done you a great wrong."
The boys were just then most intent on the tablecloth.
"You must know," the Bishop went on, "that there was a most unseemly
riot at the Oiel Verree, and all night long I have been sore troubled by
the bad thought that Danny was in the midst of it."
The boys held their heads very low over their plates, and Mona's big
eyes filled visibly. Danny's impulse was to blurt out the whole mischief
there and then, but he reflected that to do so would be to charge Ewan
with falsehood. Ewan, on his part, would have confessed to the
deception, but he knew that this would mean that Danny must be punished.
The boy's wise head could see no way out of a tangle like that. The
breakfast was the quietest ever eaten on a Christmas morning at Bishop's
Court, and, little as the talking was, the Bishop, strangely enough, did
it all. But when they rose from the table, and the boys slunk out of the
room with most portentous gravity, Mona went up to the Bishop with a
face full of liquid grief, and, turning the whole depths of her great
troubled eyes upon him, the little maiden said: "Ewan didn't mean to
tell you what wasn't true--and cousin Danny didn't intend to
deceive--but he was--that is, Danny--I mean--dear uncle, you won't--"
"You mean that Danny was at the Oiel Verree last night--I know it,
child, I know it," said the Bishop, and he patted her head and smiled.
But the Bishop knew also that Danny had that day made one more step down
the steep of life, and left a little ghost of his child-self behind him,
and in his secret heart the Bishop saw that shadowy form, and wept over
it.