THE WRONG WAY WITH DAN
What happened next was one of those tragedies of bewildering motive, so
common and so fatal, in which it is impossible to decide whether evil
passion or evil circumstances plays the chief malicious part.
Dan walked straight to the new Ballamona, and pushed through the house
without ceremony, as it had been his habit to do in other days, to the
room where Mona was to be found. She was there, and she looked startled
at his coming.
"Is it you, Dan?" she said, in a tremulous whisper.
He answered sullenly:
"It is I. I have come to speak with you. I have something to say--but no
matter--"
He stopped and threw himself into a chair. His head ached, his eyes were
hot, and his mind seemed to him to be in darkness and confusion.
"Mona, I think I must be going mad," he stammered after a moment.
"Why talk like that?" she said. Her bosom heaved and her face was
troubled.
He did not answer, but after a pause turned toward her, and said in a
quick, harsh tone, "You did not expect to see me here, and you have been
forbidden to receive me. Is it not so?"
She colored deeply, and did not answer at once, and then she began, with
hesitation:
"My father--it is true, my father--"
"It _is_ so," he said sharply. He got on to his feet and tramped about
the room. After a moment he sat down again, and leaned his elbows on his
knees and his head in his hands.
"But what of Ewan?" he asked.
"Ewan loves you, Dan, and you have been at fault," said Mona, in broken
accents.
"At fault?"
There was a sudden change in his manner. He spoke bruskly, even
mockingly, and laughed a short, grating laugh.
"They are taking the wrong way with me, Mona--that's the fact," he said,
and now his breast heaved and the words came with difficulty.
Mona was gazing absently out at the window, her head aslant, her fingers
interlaced before her. "Oh, Dan, Dan," she murmured in a low tone,
"there is your dear, dear father, and Ewan, and--and myself--"
Dan had leapt to his feet again. "Don't turn my eyes into my head,
Mona," he said.
He tramped to and fro in the room for a moment and then broke out
nervously, "All last night I dreamt such an ugly dream. I dreamt it
three times, and, O God! what an ugly dream it was! It was a bad night,
and I was walking in the dark, and stumbling first into bogs and then in
cart ruts, when all of a sudden a man's hand seized me unawares. I could
not see the man, and we struggled long in the darkness, and it seemed as
if he would master me. He gripped me by the waist, and I held him by the
shoulders. We reeled and fell together, and when I would have risen his
knee was on my chest. But a great flood of strength seemed to come to me
and I threw him off, and rose to my feet and closed with him again, and
at last I was over him, covering him, with his back across my thigh and
my hand set hard in his throat. And all this time I heard his loud
breathing in the darkness, but never once the sound of his voice. Then
instantly, as if by a flash of lightning, I saw the face that was close
to mine, and--God Almighty! it was my own face--my own--and it was black
already from the pressure of my stiff fingers at the throat."
He trembled as he spoke, and sat again and shivered, and a cold chill
ran down his back.
"Mona," he said, half in a sob, "do you believe in omens?"
She did not reply. Her breast heaved visibly, and she could not speak.
"Tush!" he said, in another voice, "omens!" and he laughed bitterly, and
rose again and picked up his hat, and then said, in a quieter way,
"Only, as I say, they're taking the wrong way with me, Mona."
He had opened the door, and she had turned her swimming eyes toward him.
"It was bad enough to make himself a stranger to me, but why did he want
to make you a stranger, too? Stranger, stranger!" He echoed the word in
a mocking accent, and threw back his head.
"Dan," said Mona, in a low, passionate tone, and the blinding tears
rained down her cheeks, "nothing and nobody can make us strangers, you
and me--not my father, or your dear father, or Ewan, or"--she dropped
her voice to a deep whisper--"or any misfortune or any disgrace."
"Mona!" he cried, and took a step toward her, and stretched out one arm
with a yearning gesture.
But at the next moment he had swung about, and was going out at the
door. At sight of all that tenderness and loyalty in Mona's face his
conscience smote him as it had never smitten him before.
"Ewan was right, Mona. He is the noblest man on God's earth, and I am
the foulest beast on it."
He was pulling the door behind him when he encountered Jarvis Kerruish
in the hall. That gentleman had just come into the house, and was
passing through the hall in hat and cloak. He looked appalled at seeing
Dan there, and stepped aside to let him go by; but Dan did not so much
as recognize his presence by lifting his head as he strode out at the
porch.
With head still bent, Dan had reached the gate to the road and pushed
through it, and sent it back with a swing and a click, when the Deemster
walked up to it, and half halted, and would have stopped. But Dan went
moodily on, and the frown on the Deemster's wizened face was lost on
him. He did not take the lane toward the old Ballamona, but followed the
turnpike that led past Bishop's Court, and as he went by the large house
behind the trees Ewan came through the smaller gate, and turned toward
the new Ballamona. They did not speak, or even glance at each other's
faces.
Dan went on until he came to the parish church. There was singing
within, and he stopped. He remembered that this was Christmas Eve. The
choir was practising the psalms for the morrow's services.
"Before I was troubled, I went wrong; but now have I kept Thy word."
Dan went up to the church porch, and stood there and listened.
"It is good for me that I have been in trouble, that I may learn Thy
statutes."
The wooden door, clamped and barred and worm-eaten and cut by knives,
was ajar, and from where he stood Dan could see into the church. There
were the empty pews, the gaunt, square, green-clad boxes on which he had
sat on many a Christmas Eve at Oiel Verree. He could picture the old
place as it used to be in those days of his boyhood, the sea of faces,
some solemn and some bubbling over with mischief, the candles with their
ribbons, the old clerk, Will-as-Thorn, standing up behind the communion
rail with his pitch-pipe in his hand, and Hommy-beg in his
linsey-woolsey petticoat, singing lustily from a paper held upside down.
The singing stopped. Behind were the hills Slieu Dhoo and Slieu Volley,
hidden now under a thick veil of mist, and from across the flat Curragh
there came in the silence the low moan of the sea. "Once more," said a
voice within the church, and then the psalm was sung again. Dan began to
breathe easier, he scarce knew why, and a great weight seemed to be
lifted off his breast.
As he turned away from the porch a heavy web of cloud was sweeping on
and sweeping on from over the sea. He looked up and saw that a
snow-storm was coming, and that the snow-cloud would break when it
reached the mountains.
The clock in the gray tower was striking--one--two--three--so it was now
three o'clock. Dan went down toward the creek known as the Lockjaw,
under Orris Head. There he expected to see old Billy Quilleash and his
mates, who had liberty to use the "Ben-my-Chree" during the winter
months for fishing with the lines. When he got to the creek it was an
hour after high water, and the lugger, with Quilleash and Teare, had
gone out for cod. Davy Fayle, who, like Dan himself, was still wearing
his militia belt and dagger, had been doing something among scraps of
net and bits of old rope, which lay in a shed that the men had thrown
together for the storing of their odds-and-ends.
Davy was looking out to sea. Down there a stiff breeze was blowing, and
the white curves of the breakers outside could just be seen through the
thick atmosphere.
"The storm is coming, Mastha Dan," said Davy. "See the diver on the top
of the white wave out there! D'ye hear her wild note?"
Davy shaded his eyes from the wind, which was blowing from the sea, and
looked up at the stormy petrel that was careering over the head of the
cliff above them and uttering its dismal cry: "Ay, and d'ye see Mother
Carey's chickens up yonder?" said Davy again. "The storm's coming, and
wonderful quick too."
Truly, a storm was coming, and it was a storm more terrible than wind
and snow.