PASSING THE LOVE OF WOMEN
Now the facts of this history must stride on some six years, and in that
time the Deemster had lost nearly all the little interest he ever felt
in his children. Mona had budded into womanhood, tender, gracious,
quiet--a tall fair-haired maiden of twenty, with a drooping head like a
flower, with a voice soft and low, and the full blue eyes with their
depths of love and sympathy shaded by long fluttering lashes as the
trembling sedge shades the deep mountain pool. It was as ripe and
beautiful a womanhood as the heart of a father might dream of, but the
Deemster could take little pleasure in it. If Mona had been his son, her
quiet ways and tractable nature might have counted for something; but a
woman was only a woman in the Deemster's eyes, and the Deemster, like
the Bedouin chief, would have numbered his children without counting his
daughter. As for Ewan, he had falsified every hope of the Deemster. His
Spartan training had gone for nothing. He was physically a weakling; a
tall spare youth of two-and-twenty, fair-haired, like his sister, with a
face as spiritual and beautiful, and hardly less feminine. He was of a
self-torturing spirit, constantly troubled with vague questionings, and
though in this regard he was very much his father's son, the Deemster
held his temperament in contempt.
The end of all was that Ewan showed a strong desire to enter the Church.
The Deemster had intended that his son should study the law and follow
him in his place when his time came. But Ewan's womanly temperament
coexisted with a manly temper. Into the law he would not go, and the
Church he was resolved to follow. The Bishop had then newly opened at
Bishop's Court a training college for his clergy, and Ewan sought and
obtained admission. The Deemster fumed, but his son was not to be moved
even by his wrath. This was when Ewan was nineteen years of age, and
after two more years the spirituality of his character overcame the
obstacle of his youth, and the Bishop ordained him at twenty-one. Then
Ewan was made chaplain to the household at Bishop's Court.
Hardly had this been done when Ewan took another step in life. With the
knowledge of the Bishop, but without consulting the Deemster, he
married, being now of age, a pretty child of sixteen, the daughter of
his father's old foe, the vicar of the parish. When knowledge of this
act of unwisdom reached the Deemster his last remaining spark of
interest in his son expired, and he sent Mona across to Bishop's Court
with a curt message saying that Ewan and his wife were at liberty, if
they liked, to take possession of the old Ballamona. Thus he turned his
back upon his son, and did his best to wipe him out of his mind.
Ewan took his young wife to the homestead that had been the place of his
people for six generations, the place where he himself had been born,
the place where that other Ewan, his good grandfather, had lived and
died.
More than ever for these events the Deemster became a solitary man. He
kept no company; he took no pleasures. Alone he sat night after night in
his study at Ballamona, and Ballamona was asleep before he slept, and
before it awoke he was stirring. His daughter's presence in the house
was no society for the Deemster. She grew beside him like her mother's
youth, a yet fairer vision of the old days coming back to him hour by
hour, but he saw nothing of all that. Disappointed in his sole hope, his
son, whom truly he had never loved for love's sake, but only for his own
sorry ambitions, he sat down under his disappointment a doubly soured
and thrice-hardened man. He had grown noticeably older, but his restless
energy suffered no abatement. Biweekly he kept his court, but few sought
the law whom the law did not first find, for word went round that the
Deemster was a hard judge, and deemed the laws in rigor. If men differed
about money, they would say, "Och, why go to the Deemster? It's throwing
a bone into the bad dog's mouth," and then they would divide their
difference.
The one remaining joy of the Deemster's lonely life was centred in his
brother's son, Dan. That lusty youth had not disappointed his
expectations. At twenty he was a braw, brown-haired, brown-eyed lad of
six feet two inches in stature, straight and upright, and with the thews
and sinews of an ox. He was the athlete of the island, and where there
was a tough job of wrestling to be had, or a delightful bit of fighting
to be done, there was Dan in the heart of it. "Aw, and middling few
could come anigh him," the people used to say. But more than in Dan's
great stature and great strength, the little Deemster took a bitter
pleasure in his daring irreverence for things held sacred. In this
regard Dan had not improved with improving years. Scores of tricks his
sad pugnacity devised to help the farmers to cheat the parson of his
tithe, and it added not a little to the Deemster's keen relish of freaks
like these that it was none other than the son of the Bishop who
perpetrated them. As for the Bishop himself, he tried to shut his eyes
to such follies. He meant his son to go into the Church, and, in spite
of all outbursts of spirit, notwithstanding wrestling matches and
fights, and even some tipsy broils of which rumor was in the air, he
entered Dan as a student at the college he kept at Bishop's Court.
In due course the time of Dan's examination came, and then all further
clinging to a forlorn hope was at an end. The Archdeacon acted as the
Bishop's examining chaplain, and more than once the little man had
declared in advance his conscientious intention of dealing with the
Bishop's son as he would deal with any other. The examination took place
in the library of Bishop's Court, and besides the students and the
examiner there were some six or seven of the clergy present, and Ewan
Mylrea, then newly ordained, was among them. It was a purely oral
examination, and when Dan's turn came the Archdeacon assumed his
loftiest look, and first tackled the candidate where he was known to be
weakest.
"I suppose, sir, you think you can read your Greek Testament?"
Dan answered that he had never thought anything about it.
"I dare say for all your modesty that you have an idea that you know it
well enough to teach it," said the Archdeacon.
Dan hadn't an idea on the subject.
"Take down the Greek Testament, and imagine that I'm your pupil, and
proceed to expound it," said the Archdeacon.
Dan took the book from the bookcase and fumbled it in his fingers.
"Well, sir, open at the parable of the tares."
Dan scratched his big head leisurely, and he did his best to find the
place. "So I'm to be tutor--is that it?" he said, with a puzzled look.
"That is so."
"And you are to be the pupil?"
"Precisely--suppose yourself my tutor--and now begin."
At this Ewan stepped out with a look of anxiety. "Is not that a rather
difficult supposition, Archdeacon?" he said, timidly.
The Archdeacon glanced over his grandson loftily and made no reply.
"Begin, sir, begin," he said, with a sweep of his hand toward Dan, and
at that he sat down in the high-backed oak chair at the head of the
table.
Then on the instant there came into Dan's quick eyes a most mischievous
twinkle. He was standing before the table with the Greek Testament open
at the parable of the tares, and he knew too well he could not read the
parable.
"When do we change places, Archdeacon?" he asked.
"We have changed places--you are now the tutor--I am your pupil--begin,
sir."
"Oh! we have changed places, have we?" said Dan, and at that he lifted
up the Archdeacon's silver-tipped walking-cane which lay on the table
and brought it down again with a bang. "Then just you get up off your
chair, sir," he said, with a tone of command.
The Archdeacon's russet face showed several tints of blue at that
moment, but he rose to his feet. Thereupon Dan handed him the open book.
"Now, sir," he said, "first read me the parable of the tares."
The clergy began to shuffle about and look into each other's faces. The
Archdeacon's expression was not amiable, but he took the book and read
the parable.
"Very fair, very fair indeed," said Dan, in a tone of mild
condescension--"a few false quantities, but very fair on the whole."
"Gentlemen, gentlemen, this is going too far," said one of the clergy.
"Silence, sir," said Dan, with a look of outraged authority.
Then there was dire confusion. Some of the clergy laughed outright, and
some giggled under their breath, and some protested in white wrath, and
the end of it all was that the examination came to a sudden termination,
and, rightly or wrongly, wisely or foolishly, Dan was adjudged to be
unfit for the ministry of the Church.
When the Bishop heard the verdict his pale face whitened visibly, and he
seemed to see the beginning of the end. At that moment he thought of the
Deemster with bitterness. This blow to his hopes did not cement the
severed lives of the brothers. The forces that had been dividing them
year by year since the days of their father appeared to be drawing them
yet wider apart in the lives and fortunes of their children. Each felt
that the other was frustrating his dearest expectations in his son, and
that was an offense that neither could forgive. To the Deemster it
seemed that the Bishop was bearing down every ambition of his life,
tearing him up as a naked trunk, leaving him a childless man. To the
Bishop it seemed that the Deemster was wrecking the one life that was
more to him than his own soul, and standing between him and the heart
that with all its follies was dearer than the world beside. From the
time of Ewan's marriage and Dan's disgrace the Bishop and the Deemster
rarely met, and when they passed on the road they exchanged only the
coldest salutation.
But if the fates were now more than ever fostering an unnatural enmity
between the sons of old Ewan they were cherishing at the same time the
loves of their children. Never were cousins more unlike or more fondly
attached. Between Dan, the reckless scapegrace, and Mona, with the big
soft eyes and the quiet ways, the affection was such as neither
understood. They had grown up side by side, they had seen each other
daily, they had scampered along the shore with clasped hands, they had
screamed at the sea-gulls with one voice, and still they were boy and
girl together. But once they were stooking the barley in the glebe, and,
the day being hot, Mona tipped back her white sun-bonnet, and it fell on
to her shoulders. Seeing this, Dan came stealthily behind and thought
very craftily to whisk it away unobserved; but the strings by which it
was tied caught in her hair and tugged at its knot, and the beautiful
wavy shower fell rip-rip-rippling down her back. The wind caught the
loosened hair and tossed it about her, and she stood up erect among the
corn with the first blush on her cheeks that Dan had ever brought there,
and turned full upon him all the glorious light of her deep blue eyes.
Then, then, oh then, Dan seemed to see her for the first time a girl no
longer, but a woman, a woman, a woman! And the mountains behind her were
in one instant blotted out of Dan's eyes, and everything seemed to spin
about him.
When next he knew where he was, and what he was doing, behold, there
were Mona's rosy lips under his, and she was panting and gasping for
breath.
But if the love of Dan and Mona was more than cousinly, though they knew
it not as yet, the love of Ewan for Dan was wonderful and passing the
love of women. That pure soul, with its vague spiritual yearnings,
seemed to have nothing in common with the jovial roysterer, always
fighting, always laughing, taking disgrace as a duck takes water, and
losing the trace of it as easily. Twenty times he stood between the
scapegrace and the Bishop, twenty times he hid from the good father the
follies of the son. He thought for that thoughtless head that never had
an ache or a care under its abundant curls; he hoped for that light
heart that hoped for nothing; he trembled for the soul that felt no
fear. Never was such loyalty between man and man since David wept for
Jonathan. And Ewan's marriage disturbed this affection not at all, for
the love he bore to Dan was a brotherly passion for which language has
yet no name.
Let us tell one story that shall show this friendship in its double
bearings--Ewan's love and temper and Dan's heedless harshness and the
great nature beneath it, and then we will pass on with fuller knowledge
to weightier matters.
Derry, the white-eyed collie that had nestled on the top of his master's
bed the night Dan sneaked home in disgrace from Oiel Verree, was a
crafty little fox, with cunning and duplicity bred in his very bones. If
you were a tramp of the profession of Billy the Gawk, he would look up
at you with his big innocent eyes, and lick your hand, and thrust his
nose into your palm, and the next moment he would seize you by the
hindmost parts and hold on like a leech. His unamiable qualities grew as
he grew in years, and one day Dan went on a long journey, leaving Derry
behind, and when he returned he had another dog with him, a great shaggy
Scotch collie, with bright eyes, a happy phiz, and a huge bush of a
tail. Derry was at the gate when his master came home, and he eyed the
new-comer with looks askance. From that day Derry turned his back on his
master, he would never answer his call, and he did not know his whistle
from the croak of a corn-crake. In fact, Derry took his own courses, and
forthwith fell into all manner of dissolute habits. He went out at night
alone, incognito, and kept most unchristian hours. The farmers around
complained that their sheep were found dead in the field, torn and
worried by a dog's teeth. Derry was known to be a dog that did not live
a reputable life, and suspicion fell on him. Dan took the old fox in
hand, and thenceforward Derry looked out on the world through a rope
muzzle.
One day there was to be a sheep-dog match, and Dan entered his Scotch
collie, Laddie. The race was to be in the meadow at the foot of Slieu
Dhoo, and great crowds of people came to witness it. Hurdles were set up
to make all crooks and cranks of difficulty, and then a drift of sheep
were turned loose in the field. The prize was to the dog that would, at
the word of its master, gather the sheep together and take them out at
the gate in the shortest time. Ewan, then newly married, was there, and
beside him was his child-wife. Time was called, and Dan's turn came to
try the mettle of his Laddie. The dog started well, and in two or three
minutes he had driven the whole flock save two into an alcove of hurdles
close to where Ewan and his wife stood together. Then at the word of his
master Laddie set off over the field for the stragglers, and Dan shouted
to Ewan not to stir a hand or foot, or the sheep would be scattered
again. Now, just at that instant who should pop over the hedge but Derry
in his muzzle, and quick as thought he shot down his head, put up his
paws, threw off his muzzle, dashed at the sheep, snapped at their legs,
and away they went in twenty directions.
Before Ewan had time to cry out Derry was gone, with his muzzle between
his teeth. When Dan, who was a perch or two up the meadow, turned round
and saw what had happened, and that his dog's chances were gone, his
anger overcame him, and he turned on Ewan with a torrent of reproaches.
"There--you've done it with your lumbering--curse it."
With complete self-possession Ewan explained how Derry had done the
mischief.
Then Dan's face was darker with wrath than it had ever been before.
"A pretty tale," he said, and his lip curled in a sneer. He turned to
the people around. "Anybody see the dog slip his muzzle?"
None had seen what Ewan had affirmed. The eyes of every one had been on
the two stragglers in the distance pursued by Dan and Laddie.
Now, when Ewan saw that Dan distrusted him, and appealed to strangers as
witness to his word, his face flushed deep, and his delicate nostrils
quivered.
"A pretty tale," Dan repeated, and he was twisting on his heel, when up
came Derry again, his muzzle on his snout, whisking his tail, and
frisking about Dan's feet with an expression of quite lamb-like
simplicity.
At that sight Ewan's livid face turned to a great pallor, and Dan broke
into a hard laugh.
"We've heard of a dog slipping his muzzle," he said, "but who ever heard
of a dog putting a muzzle on again?"
Then Ewan stepped from beside his girl-wife, who stood there with
heaving breast. His eyes were aflame, but for an instant he conquered
his emotions and said, with a constrained quietness, but with a deep
pathos in his tone, "Dan, do you think I've told you the truth?"
Dan wheeled about. "I think you've told me a lie," he said, and his
voice came thick from his throat.
All heard the word, and all held their breath. Ewan stood a moment as if
rooted to the spot, and his pallid face whitened every instant. Then he
fell back, and took the girl-wife by the hand and turned away with her,
his head down, his very heart surging itself out of his choking breast.
And, as he passed through the throng, to carry away from that scene the
madness that was working in his brain, he overheard the mocking comments
of the people. "Aw, well, well, did ye hear that now?--called him a
liar, and not a word to say agen it." "A liar! Och, a liar? and him a
parzon, too!" "Middling chicken-hearted, anyways--a liar! Aw, well,
well, well!"
At that Ewan flung away the hand of his wife, and, quivering from head
to foot, he strode toward Dan.
"You've called me a liar," he said, in a shrill voice that was like a
cry. "Now, you shall prove your word--you shall fight me--you shall, by
God."
He was completely carried away by passion.
"The parzon, the parzon!" "Man alive, the young parzon!" the people
muttered, and they closed around.
Dan stood a moment. He looked down from his great height at Ewan's
quivering form and distorted face. Then he turned about and glanced into
the faces of the people. In another instant his eyes were swimming in
tears; he took a step toward Ewan, flung his arms about him, and buried
his head in his neck, and the great stalwart lad wept like a little
child. In another moment Ewan's passion was melted away, and he kissed
Dan on the cheek.
"Blubbering cowards!" "Aw, blatherskites!" "Och, man alive, a pair of
turtle-doves!"
Dan lifted his head and looked around, raised himself to his full
height, clinched his fists, and said:
"Now, my lads, you did your best to make a fight, and you couldn't
manage it. I won't fight my cousin, and he shan't fight me; but if
there's a man among you would like to know for himself how much of a
coward I am, let him step out--I'm ready."
Not a man budged an inch.