BLIND PASSION AND PAIN
Dan moved uneasily, and presently awoke, opened his eyes, and saw Ewan,
and betrayed no surprise at his presence there.
"Ah! Is it you, Ewan?" he said, speaking quietly, partly in a shamefaced
way, and with some confusion. "Do you know, I've been dreaming of
you--you and Mona?"
Ewan gave no answer. Because sleep is a holy thing, and the brother of
death, whose shadow also it is, therefore Ewan's hideous purpose had
left him while Dan lay asleep at his feet; but now that Dan was awake,
the evil passion came again.
"I was dreaming of that Mother Carey's chicken--you remember it? when we
were lumps of lads, you know--why, you can't have forgotten it--the old
thing I caught in its nest just under the Head?"
Still Ewan gave no sign, but looked down at Dan resting on his elbows.
Dan's eyes fell upon Ewan's face, but he went on in a confused way:
"Mona couldn't bear to see it caged, and would have me put it back.
Don't you remember I clambered up to the nest, and put the bird in
again? You were down on the shore, thinking sure I would tumble over the
Head, and Mona--Mona--"
Dan glanced afresh into Ewan's face, and its look of terror seemed to
stupefy him; still he made shift to go on with his dream in an abashed
sort of way:
"My gough! If I didn't dream it all as fresh, as fresh, and the fight in
the air, and the screams when I put the old bird in the nest--the young
ones had forgotten it clean, and they tumbled it out, and set on it
terrible, and drove it away--and then the poor old thing on the rocks
sitting by itself as lonesome as lonesome--and little Mona crying and
crying down below, and her long hair rip-rip-rippling in the wind,
and--and--"
Dan had got to his feet, and then seated himself on a stool as he
rambled on with the story of his dream. But once again his shifty eyes
came back to Ewan's face, and he stopped short.
"My God, what is it?" he cried.
Now Ewan, standing there with a thousand vague forms floating in his
brain, had heard little of what Dan had said, but he had noted his
confused manner, and had taken this story of the dream as a feeble
device to hide the momentary discomfiture.
"What does it mean?" he said. "It means that this island is not large
enough to hold both you and me."
"What?"
"It means that you must go away."
"Away!"
"Yes--and at once."
In the pause that followed after his first cry of amazement, Dan thought
only of the bad business of the killing of the oxen at the plowing match
that morning, and so, in a tone of utter abasement, with his face to the
ground, he went on, in a blundering, humble way, to allow that Ewan had
reason for his anger.
"I'm a blind headstrong fool, I know that--and my temper is--well, it's
damnable, that's the fact--but no one suffers from it more than I do,
and if I could have felled myself after I had felled the oxen, why
down ... Ewan, for the sake of the dear old times when we were good
chums, you and I and little Mona, with her quiet eyes, God bless her--!"
"Go away, and never come back to either of us," cried Ewan, stamping his
foot.
Dan paused, and there was a painful silence.
"Why should I go away?" he said, with an effort at quietness.
"Because you are a scoundrel--the basest scoundrel on God's earth--the
foulest traitor--the blackest-hearted monster--"
Dan's sunburnt face whitened under his tawny skin.
"Easy, easy, man veen, easy," he said, struggling visibly for
self-command, while he interrupted Ewan's torrent of reproaches.
"You are a disgrace and a by-word. Only the riff-raff of the island are
your friends and associates."
"That's true enough, Ewan," said Dan, and his head fell between his
hands, his elbows resting on his knees.
"What are you doing? Drinking, gambling, roistering, cheating--yes--"
Dan got on his feet uneasily and took a step to and fro about the little
place; then sat again, and buried his head in his hands as before.
"I've been a reckless, self-willed, mad fool, Ewan, but no worse than
that. And if you could see me as God sees me, and know how I suffer
for my follies and curse them, for all I seem to make so light of
them, and how I am driven to them one on the head of another,
perhaps--perhaps--perhaps--you would have pity--ay, pity."
"Pity? Pity for you? You who have brought your father to shame? He is
the ruin of the man he was. You have impoverished him; you have spent
his substance and wasted it. Ay, and you have made his gray head a mark
for reproach. 'Set your own house in order'--that's what the world says
to the man of God whose son is a child of the--"
"Stop!" cried Dan.
He had leapt to his feet, his fist clenched, his knuckles showing like
nuts of steel.
But Ewan went on, standing there with a face that was ashy white above
his black coat. "Your heart is as dead as your honor. And that is not
all, but you must outrage the honor of another."
Now, when Ewan said this, Dan thought of his forged signature, and of
the censure and suspension to which Ewan was thereby made liable.
"Go away," Ewan cried again, motioning Dan off with his trembling hand.
Dan lifted his eyes. "And what if I refuse?" he said in a resolute way.
"Then take the consequences."
"You mean the consequences of that--that--that forgery?"
At this Ewan realized the thought in Dan's mind, and perceived that Dan
conceived him capable of playing upon his fears by holding over his head
the penalty of an offense which he had already taken upon himself. "God
in heaven!" he thought, "and this is the pitiful creature whom I have
all these years taken to my heart."
"Is that what your loyalty comes to?" said Dan, and his lip curled.
"Loyalty!" cried Ewan, in white wrath. "Loyalty, and you talk to me of
loyalty--you who have outraged the honor of my sister--"
"Mona!"
"I have said it at last, though the word blisters my tongue. Go away
from the island forever, and let me never see your face again."
Dan rose to his feet with rigid limbs. He looked about him for a moment
in a dazed silence, and put his hand to his forehead as if he had lost
himself.
"Do you believe _that_?" he said, in a slow whisper.
"Don't deny it--don't let me know you for a liar as well," Ewan said,
eagerly; and then added in another tone, "I have had her own
confession."
"Her confession?"
"Yes, and the witness of another."
"The witness of another!"
Dan echoed Ewan's words in a vague, half-conscious way.
Then, in a torrent of hot words that seemed to blister and sting the man
who spoke them no less than the man who heard them, Ewan told all, and
Dan listened like one in a stupor.
There was silence, and then Ewan spoke again in a tone of agony. "Dan,
there was a time when in spite of yourself I loved you--yes, though I'm
ashamed to say it, for it was against God's own leading; still I loved
you, Dan. But let us part forever now, and each go his own way, and
perhaps, though we can never forget the wrong that you have done us, we
may yet think more kindly of you, and time may help us to forgive--"
But Dan had awakened from his stupor, and he flung aside.
"Damn your forgiveness!" he said, hotly, and then, with teeth set and
lips drawn hard and eyes aflame, he turned upon Ewan and strode up to
him, and they stood together face to face.
"You said just now that there was not room enough in the island for you
and me," he said, in a hushed whisper. "You were right, but I shall mend
your words: if you believe what you have said--by Heaven, I'll not deny
it for you!--there is not room enough for both of us in the world."
"It was my own thought," said Ewan, and then for an instant each looked
into the other's eyes and read the other's purpose.
The horror of that moment of silence was broken by the lifting of the
latch. Davy Fayle came shambling into the tent on some pretended errand.
He took off his militia belt with the dagger in the sheath attached to
it, and hung it on a long rusty nail driven into an upright timber at
one corner. Then he picked up from among some ling on the floor a
waterproof coat and put it on. He was going out, with furtive glances at
Dan and Ewan, who said not a word in his presence, and were bearing
themselves toward each other with a painful constraint, when his glance
fell on the hatchet which lay a few feet from the door. Davy picked it
up and carried it out, muttering to himself, "Strange, strange,
uncommon!"
Hardly had the boy dropped the latch of the door from without than Ewan
took the militia belt from the nail and buckled it about his waist. Dan
understood his thought; he was still wearing his own militia belt and
dagger. There was now not an instant's paltering between them--not a
word of explanation.
"We must get rid of the lad," said Dan.
Ewan bowed his head. It had come to him to reflect that when all was
over Mona might hear of what had been done. What they had to do was to
be done for her honor, or for what seemed to be her honor in that blind
tangle of passion and circumstance. But none the less, though she loved
both of them now, would she loathe that one who returned to her with the
blood of the other upon him.
"She must never know," he said. "Send the boy away. Then we must go to
where this work can be done between you and me alone."
Dan had followed his thought in silence, and was stepping toward the
door to call to Davy, when the lad came back, carrying a log of
driftwood for the fire. There were some small flakes of snow on his
waterproof coat.
"Go up to the shambles, Davy," said Dan, speaking with an effort at
composure, "and tell Jemmy Curghey to keep me the ox-horns."
Davy looked up in a vacant way, and his lip lagged low. "Aw, and didn't
you tell Jemmy yourself, and terrible partic'lar, too?"
"Do you say so, Davy?"
"Sarten sure."
"Then just slip away and fetch them."
Davy fixed the log on the fire, tapped it into the flame, glanced
anxiously at Dan and Ewan, and then in a lingering way went out. His
simple face looked sad under its vacant expression.
The men listened while the lad's footsteps could be heard on the
shingle, above the deep murmur of the sea. Then Dan stepped to the door
and threw it open.
"Now," he said.
It was rapidly growing dark. The wind blew strongly into the shed. Dan
stepped out, and Ewan followed him.
They walked in silence through the gully that led from the creek to the
cliff head. The snow that had begun to fall was swirled about in the
wind that came from over the sea, and spinning in the air, it sometimes
beat against their faces.
Ewan went along like a man condemned to death. He had begun to doubt,
though he did not know it, and would have shut his mind to the idea if
it had occurred to him. But once, when Dan seemed to stop as if only
half resolved, and partly turn his face toward him, Ewan mistook his
intention. "He is going to tell me that there is some hideous error," he
thought. He was burning for that word. But no, Dan went plodding on
again, and never after shifted his steadfast gaze, never spoke, and gave
no sign. At length he stopped, and Ewan stopped with him. They were
standing on the summit of Orris Head.
It was a sad, a lonesome, and a desolate place, in sight of a wide waste
of common land, without a house, and with never a tree rising above the
purple gorse and tussocks of long grass. The sky hung very low over it;
the steep red cliffs, with their patches of green in ledges, swept down
from it to the shingle and the sharp shelves of slate covered with
seaweed. The ground swell came up from below with a very mournful noise,
but the air seemed to be empty, and every beat of the foot on the soft
turf sounded near and large. Above their heads the sea-fowl kept up a
wild clamor, and far out, where sea and sky seemed to meet in the
gathering darkness, the sea's steady blow on the bare rocks of the naze
sent up a deep, hoarse boom.
Dan unbuckled his belt, and threw off his coat and vest. Ewan did the
same, and they stood there face to face in the thin flakes of snow, Dan
in his red shirt, Ewan in his white shirt open at the neck, these two
men whose souls had been knit together as the soul of Jonathan was knit
to the soul of David, and each ready to lift his hand against his
heart's best brother. Then all at once a startled cry came from near at
hand.
It was Davy Fayle's voice. The lad had not gone to the shambles.
Realizing in some vague way that the errand was a subterfuge and that
mischief was about, he had hidden himself at a little distance, and had
seen when Dan and Ewan came out of the tent together. Creeping through
the ling, and partly hidden by the dusk, he had followed the men until
they had stopped on the Head. Then Davy had dropped to his knees. His
ideas were obscure, he scarcely knew what was going on before his eyes,
but he held his breath and watched and listened. At length, when the men
threw off their clothes, the truth dawned on Davy; and though he tried
to smother an exclamation, a cry of terror burst from his husky throat.
Dan and Ewan exchanged glances, and each seemed in one moment to read
the other's thoughts. In another instant, at three quick strides, Dan
had taken Davy by the shoulders.
"Promise," he said, "that you will never tell what you have seen."
Davy struggled to free himself, but his frantic efforts were useless. In
Dan's grip he was held as in a vice.
"Let me go, Mastha Dan," the lad cried.
"Promise to hold your tongue," said Dan; "promise it, promise it."
"Let me go, will you? let me go," the lad shouted sullenly.
"Be quiet," said Dan.
"I won't be quiet," was the stubborn answer. "Help! help! help!" and the
lad screamed lustily.
"Hold your tongue, or by G--"
Dan held Davy by one of his great hands hitched into the lad's guernsey,
and he lifted the other hand threateningly.
"Help! help! help!" Davy screamed still louder, and struggled yet more
fiercely, until his strength was spent, and his breath was gone, and
then there was a moment's silence.
The desolate place was still as desolate as before. Not a sign of life
around; not an answering cry.
"There's nobody to help you," said Dan. "You have got to promise never
to tell what you have seen to man, woman, or child."
"I won't promise, and I won't hould my tongue," said the lad, stoutly.
"You are goin' to fight, you and Mastha Ewan, and--"
Dan stopped him. "Hearken here. If you are to live another hour, you
will promise--"
But Davy had regained both strength and voice.
"I don't care--help! help! help!" he shouted.
Dan put his hand over the lad's mouth, and dragged him to the cliff
head. Below was the brant steep, dark and jagged, and quivering in the
deepening gloom, and the sea-birds were darting through the mid-air like
bats in the dark.
"Look," said Dan, "you've got to swear never to tell what you have seen
to-night, so help you God!"
The lad, held tightly by the breast and throat, and gripping the arms
that held him with fingers that clung like claws, took one horrified
glance down into the darkness. He struggled no longer. His face was very
pitiful to see.
"I can not promise," he said, in a voice like a cry.
At that answer Dan drew Davy back from the cliff edge, and loosed his
hold of him. He was abashed and ashamed. He felt himself a little man by
the side of this half-daft fisher-lad.
All this time Ewan had stood aside looking on while Dan demanded the
promise, and saying nothing. Now he went up to Davy, and said, in a
quiet voice:
"Davy, if you should ever tell any one what you have seen, Dan will be a
lost man all his life hereafter."
"Then let him pitch me over the cliff," said Davy, in a smothered cry.
"Listen to me, Davy," Ewan went on; "you're a brave lad, and I know
what's in your head, but--"
"Then what for do you want to fight him?" Davy broke out. The lad's
throat was dry and husky, and his eyes were growing dim.
Ewan paused. Half his passion was spent. Davy's poor dense head had
found him a question that he could not answer.
"Davy, if you don't promise, you will ruin Dan--yes, it will be you who
will ruin him, you, remember that. He will be a lost man, and my sister,
my good sister Mona, she will be a broken-hearted woman."
Then Davy broke down utterly, and big tears filled his eyes, and ran
down his cheeks.
"I promise," he sobbed.
"Good lad--now go."
Davy turned about and went away, at first running, and then dragging
slowly, then running again, and then again lingering.
What followed was a very pitiful conflict of emotion. Nature, who looks
down pitilessly on man and his big, little passions, that clamor so loud
but never touch her at all--even Nature played her part in this tragedy.
When Davy Fayle was gone, Dan and Ewan stood face to face as before, Dan
with his back to the cliff, Ewan with his face to the sea. Then, without
a word, each turned aside and picked up his militia belt.
The snowflakes had thickened during the last few moments, but now they
seemed to cease and the sky to lighten. Suddenly in the west the sky was
cloven as though by the sweep of a sword, and under a black bar of cloud
and above a silvered water-line the sun came through very red and hazy
in its setting, and with its ragged streamers around it.
Ewan was buckling the belt about his waist when the setting sun rose
upon them, and all at once there came to him the Scripture that says,
"Let not the sun go down on your wrath." If God's hand had appeared in
the heavens, the effect on Ewan could not have been greater. Already his
passion was more than half gone, and now it melted entirely away.
"Dan," he cried, and his voice was a sob, "Dan, I can not fight--right
or wrong I can not," and he flung himself down, and the tears filled his
eyes.
Then Dan, whose face was afire, laughed loud and bitterly. "Coward," he
said, "coward and poltroon!"
At that word all the evil passion came back to Ewan and he leapt to his
feet.
"That is enough," he said; "the belts--buckle them together."
Dan understood Ewan's purpose. At the next breath the belt about Dan's
waist was buckled to the belt about the waist of Ewan, and the two men
stood strapped together. Then they drew the daggers, and an awful
struggle followed.
With breast to breast until their flesh all but touched, and with thighs
entwined, they reeled and swayed, the right hand of each held up for
thrust, the left for guard and parry. What Dan gained in strength Ewan
made up in rage, and the fight was fierce and terrible, Dan still with
his back to the cliff, Ewan still with his face to the sea.
At one instant Dan, by his great stature, had reached over Ewan's
shoulder to thrust from behind, and at the next instant Ewan had
wrenched his lithe body backward and had taken the blow in his lifted
arm, which forthwith spouted blood above the wrist. In that encounter
they reeled about, changing places, and Ewan's back was henceforward
toward the cliff, and Dan fought with his face toward the sea.
It was a hideous and savage fight. The sun had gone down, the cleft in
the heavens had closed again, once more the thin flakes of snow were
falling, and the world had dropped back to its dark mood. A stormy
petrel came up from the cliff and swirled above the men as they fought,
and made its direful scream over them.
Up and down, to and fro, embracing closely, clutching, guarding, and
meantime panting hoarsely, and drawing hard breath, the two men fought
in their deadly hate. At last they had backed and swayed to within three
yards of the cliff, and then Ewan, with the gasp of a drowning man,
flung his weapon into the air, and Dan ripped his dagger's edge across
the belts that bound them together, and at the next breath the belts
were cut, and the two were divided, and Ewan, separated from Dan, and
leaning heavily backward, was reeling, by force of his own weight,
toward the cliff.
Then Dan stood as one transfixed with uplifted hand, and a deep groan
came from his throat. Passion and pain were gone from him in that awful
moment, and the world itself seemed to be blotted out. When he came to
himself, he was standing on the cliff head alone.
The clock in the old church was striking. How the bell echoed on that
lonely height! One--two--three--four--five. Five o'clock! Everything
else was silent as death. The day was gone. The snow began to fall in
thick, large flakes. It fell heavily on Dan's hot cheeks and bare neck.
His heart seemed to stand still, and the very silence itself was awful.
His terror stupefied him. "What have I done?" he asked himself. He could
not think. He covered his eyes with his hands, and strode up and down
the cliff head, up and down, up and down. Then in a bewildered state of
semi-consciousness he looked out to sea, and there far off, a league
away, he saw a black thing looming large against the darkening sky. He
recognized that it was a sail, and then perceived that it was a lugger,
and quite mechanically he tried to divide the mainmast and mizzen, the
mainsail and yawlsail, and to note if the boat were fetching to leeward
or beating down the Channel.
All at once sea and sky were blotted out, and he could not stand on his
legs, but dropped to his knees, and great beads of perspiration rolled
down his face and neck. He tried to call "Ewan! Ewan!" but he could not
utter the least cry. His throat was parched; his tongue swelled and
filled his mouth. His lips moved, but no words came from him. Then he
rose to his feet, and the world flowed back upon him; the sea-fowl
crying over his head, the shrillness of the wind in the snow-capped
gorse, and the sea's hoarse voice swelling upward through the air, while
its heavy, monotonous blow on the beach shook the earth beneath him. If
anything else had appeared to Dan at that moment, he must have screamed
with terror.
Quaking in every limb, he picked up his clothes and turned back toward
the shore. He was so feeble that he could scarcely walk through the snow
that now lay thick on the short grass. When he reached the mouth of the
gully he did not turn into the shed, but went on over the pebbles of the
creek. His bloodshot eyes, which almost started from their sockets,
glanced eagerly from side to side. At last he saw the thing he sought,
and now that it was under him, within reach of his hand, he dare hardly
look upon it.
At the foot of a jagged crag that hung heavily over from the cliff the
body of Ewan Mylrea lay dead and cold. There was no mark of violence
upon it save a gash on the wrist of the left hand, and over the wound
there was a clot of blood. The white face lay deep in the breast, as if
the neck had been dislocated. There were no other outward marks of
injury from the fall. The body was outstretched on its back, with one
arm--the left arm--lying half over the forehead, and the other, the
right arm, with the hand open and the listless fingers apart, thrown
loosely aside.
Dan knelt beside the body, and his heart was benumbed like ice. He tried
to pray, but no prayer would come, and he could not weep.
"Ewan! Ewan!" he cried at length, and his voice of agony rolled round
the corpse like the soughing of the wind.
"Ewan! Ewan!" he cried again; but only the sea's voice broke the silence
that followed. Then his head fell on the cold breast, and his arms
covered the lifeless body, and he cried upon God to have mercy on him,
and to lift up His hand against him and cut him off.
Presently he got on his feet, and scarcely knowing what he was doing, he
lifted the body in his arms, with the head lying backward on his
shoulder, and the white face looking up in its stony stare to the
darkening heavens. As he did so his eyes were raised to the cliff, and
there, clearly outlined over the black crags and against the somewhat
lighter sky, he saw the figure of a man.
He toiled along toward the shed. He was so weak that he could scarce
keep on his legs, and when he reached the little place at the mouth of
the creek he was more dead than alive. He put the body to lie on the bed
of straw on which he had himself slept and dreamed an hour before. Then
all at once he felt a low sort of cunning coming over him, and he went
back to the door and shut it, and drew the long wooden bolt into its
iron hoop on the jamb.
He had hardly done so when he heard an impatient footstep on the shingle
outside. In another instant the latch was lifted and the door pushed
heavily. Then there was a knock. Dan made no answer, but stood very
still and held his breath. There was another knock, and another. Then,
in a low tremulous murmur there came the words:
"Where is he? God A'mighty! where is he?" It was Davy Fayle. Another
knock, louder, and still no reply.
"Mastha Dan, Mastha Dan, they're coming; Mastha Dan, God A'mighty!--"
Davy was now tramping restlessly to and fro. Dan was trying to consider
what it was best to do, whether to open to Davy and hear what he had to
say, or to carry it off as if he were not within, when another foot
sounded on the shingle and cut short his meditations.
"Have you seen Mr. Ewan--Parson Ewan?"
Dan recognized the voice. It was the voice of Jarvis Kerruish.
Davy did not answer immediately.
"Have you seen him, eh?"
"No, sir," Davy faltered.
"Then why didn't you say so at once? It is very strange. The people said
he was walking toward the creek. There's no way out in this direction,
is there?"
"Way out--this direction? Yes, sir," Davy stammered.
"How? show me the way."
"By the sea, sir."
"The sea! Simpleton, what are you doing here?"
"Waiting for the boat, sir."
"What shed is this?"
Dan could hear that at this question Davy was in a fever of excitement.
"Only a place for bits of net and cable, and all to that," said Davy,
eagerly.
Dan could feel that Jarvis had stepped up to the shed, and that he was
trying to look in through the little window.
"Do you keep a fire to warm your nets and cables?" he asked in a
suspicious tone.
At the next moment he was trying to force the door. Dan stood behind.
The bolt creaked in the hasp. If the hasp should give way, he and Jarvis
would stand face to face.
"Strange--there's something strange about all this," said the man
outside. "I heard a scream as I came over the Head. Did you hear
anything?"
"I tell you I heard nothing," said Davy, sullenly.
Dan grew dizzy, and groping for something to cling to, his hand scraped
across the door.
"Wait! I could have sworn I heard something move inside. Who keeps the
key of this shed?"
"Kay? There's never a kay at the like of it."
"Then how is it fastened? From within? Wait--let me see."
There was a sound like the brushing of a hand over the outside face of
the door.
"Has the snow stopped up the keyhole, or is there no such thing? Or is
the door fastened by a padlock?"
Dan had regained his self-possession by this time. He felt an impulse to
throw the door open. He groped at his waist for the dagger, but belt and
dagger were both gone.
"All this is very strange," said Jarvis, and then he seemed to turn from
the door and move away.
"Stop. Where is the man Dan--the captain?" he asked, from a little
distance.
"I dunno," said Davy, stoutly.
"That's a lie, my lad."
Then the man's footsteps went off in dull beats on the snow-clotted
pebbles.
After a moment's silence there was a soft knocking; Davy had crept up to
the door.
"Mastha Dan," he whispered, amid panting breath.
Dan did not stir. The latch was lifted in vain.
"Mastha Dan, Mastha Dan." The soft knocking continued.
Dan found his voice at last.
"Go away, Davy--go away," he said, hoarsely.
There was a short pause, and then there came from without an answer like
a sob.
"I'm going, Mastha Dan."
After that all was silent as death. Half an hour later, Dan Mylrea was
walking through the darkness toward Ballamona. In his blind misery he
was going to Mona. The snow was not falling now, and in the lift of the
storm the sky was lighter than it had been. As Dan passed the old
church, he could just descry the clock. The snow lay thick on the face,
and clogged the hands. The clock had stopped. It stood at five exactly.
The blind leading that is here of passion by accident is everywhere that
great tragedies are done. It is not the evil in man's heart more than
the deep perfidy of circumstance that brings him to crime.