"THERE IS SORROW ON THE SEA"
Two months passed away, and the mists from the sea were chased by the
winds of winter. It was the twenty-third of December. In the two days
that followed between that day and Christmas morning occurred the whole
series of appalling events which it now remains to us to narrate.
Mona Cregeen and Danny Fayle, with Ruby between them, were walking along
the shore from Orry's Head toward the south. The little one prattled and
sang, shook out her hair in the wind, and flew down the sand; ran back
and clasped a hand of each; and dragged Danny aside to look at this
sea-weed, or pulled Mona along to look at that shell; tripped down to
the water's edge until the big waves touched her boots, and then back
once more with a half-frightened, half-affected laughter-loaded scream.
Mona was serious and even sad, and Danny wore a dejected look in his
simple face which added a melancholy interest to its vacant expression.
Since we saw him first in the house of Mylrea Balladhoo, Danny had
passed through a bitter experience. There was no tangible sorrow, yet
who shall measure the depth of his suffering?
When the new element of love first entered into Danny's life, he knew
nothing of what it was. A glance out of woman's eyes had in an instant
penetrated his nature. He was helpless and passive. He would stand for
an hour neither thinking nor feeling, but with a look of sheer
stupidity. If this was love, Danny knew it by no such name. But
presently a ray of sunlight floated into the lad's poor, dense
intelligence and everything around was bathed in a new, glad light. The
vacant look died away from his face. He smiled and laughed. He ran here
and there with a jovial willingness. Even Kisseck's sneers and curses,
his threats and blows became all at once easier to bear. "Be aisy with
me, Uncle Bill," he would say; "be aisy, uncle, and I'll do it smart and
quick astonishin'." People marked the change. "It's none so daft the lad
is at all, at all," they said sometimes. This was the second stage of
Danny's passion--and presently came the third. Then arose a vague
yearning not only to love but to be loved. The satisfied heart had not
asked so much before, but now it needed this further sustenance. Curious
and pathetic were the simple appeals made by Danny for the affection of
the woman he loved. Sometimes he took up a huge fish to the cottage of
the Cregeens, threw it on the floor, and vanished. Sometimes he talked
to Mona of what great things he had done in his time--what fish he had
caught, how fast he had rowed, and what weather he had faced. There was
not a lad in Peel more modest than Danny, but his simple soul was
struggling in this way with a desire to make itself seem worthy of
Mona's love. The girl would listen in silence to the accounts of his
daring deeds, and when she would look up with a glance of pity into his
animated eyes, the eyes of Danny would be brave no more, but fall in
confusion to his feet.
Then, bit by bit, it was borne in on Danny that his great, strong,
simple love could never be returned; and this was the last stage of his
affection. The idea of love had itself been hard to realize, but much
harder to understand was the strange and solemn idea of unrequited
passion. Twenty times had Mona tried in vain to convey this idea to his
mind without doing violence to the tenderness of the lad's nature. But
that which no artifice could achieve time itself accomplished. Danny
began to stay away from the cottage on the "brew," and when, in pity for
that unspeakable sorrow which Mona herself knew but too well, the girl
asked him why he did not come up as often as before, he answered, "I'm
thinking it's not me you're wanting up there." And Danny felt as if the
words would choke him.
Then the whole world, which had seemed brighter, or at least less cruel,
became bathed in gloom. The lad haunted the seashore. The moan of the
long dead sea seemed to speak to him in a voice not indeed of cheer but
of comforting grief. The white curves of the breakers had something in
them that suited better with his mood than the sunlit ripples of a
summer sea. The dapple-gray clouds that scudded across the leaden sky,
the chill wind that scattered the salt spray and whistled along the
gunwale of his boat, the mist, the scream of the sea-bird--all these
spoke to his desolate heart in an inarticulate language that was
answered by tears.
Poor Danny, a hurricane had uprooted the only idol of your soul, and for
you the one flower of life, the flower of love, was torn up and withered
forever!
Love? Yes, even the image of a happy love had at length stood up for one
moment before his mind, even before his mind. That love itself might
have been possible to him, yes, possible to such a one as he was, though
laughed at--"rigged" as he called it--here, there, and everywhere--this
was the blessed vision of one brief instant. He thought of how he might
have clasped her hands by the bright sea, and looked lovingly into her
eyes. But no, no, no; not for him had God sent the gracious love, and
Danny turned in his dumb despair to the cold winter sea, shrinking from
every human face.
"Is there not a storm coming?" said Mona to Danny, as she and Ruby
overtook the boy on the shore that morning.
"Ay, the long cat's tail was going off at a slant a while ago, and now
the round thick skate yonder is hanging very low."
As he spoke, Danny turned about and looked at the clouds which we have
been taught to know by less homely names.
"Danny, Danny," interrupted the little one, "what is that funny thing
you told me the sailors say when the wind is getting up?"
"'Davy's putting on the coppers for the parson,'" answered the lad,
absently, and without the semblance of a smile. For the twentieth time
Ruby laughed and crowed over the dubious epigram.
Mona glanced sometimes at Danny's listless face as they walked together
along the shore with the child between them. His look was dull and at
certain moments even silly. Once she thought she saw a tear glistening
in his eye, but he had turned his head away in an instant. There were
moments when her heart bled for him. People thought her harsh and even
cynical. "Aw, allis cowld and freezin' is the air she keeps about her,"
they would say. Perhaps some bitter experience of the past had not a
little to do with this. Nothing so sure to petrify the warmer
sensibilities as neglect and wrong. But in the presence of Danny's
silent sorrow the girl's heart melted, and the almost habitual upward
curve at one corner of her mouth disappeared. She knew something of his
suffering. She could read it in her own. At some thrilling moment, if
Heaven had so ordered it, they two, she and this simple lad, might have
uncovered to the other the bleeding wound that each carried hidden in
the breast. And that great moment was yet to come, though she knew it
not.
Love is a selfish thing, let us say what we will of it besides.
"Danny," said Mona, "have you seen anything more of Christian?"
"Yes," said the lad. Some momentary remorse on Mona's part compelled her
to glance into Danny's face. There was no trace of feeling there. It was
baffled love, and not jealousy, that had taken the joy out of Danny's
life. And as yet the lad had not once reflected that if Mona did not
love him it was, perhaps, because she loved another.
"He isn't going," continued Danny.
"Thank God," said Mona, fervently. "And Kisseck, does he still mean to
go?"
"Ay, of coorse he's going. It'll be to-morrow, it seems. I'm to go,
too."
"Danny, you must not go," said Mona, dropping Ruby's hand to take hold
of the lad's arm. He glanced up vacantly.
"Seems to me it doesn't matter much what I do," he said.
"But it does matter, Danny. What these men are attempting is
crime--black, cruel, pitiless crime--murder, no less."
"That's what the young masther was sayin'," answered the lad, absently;
"and the one of them hadn't a word to say agen it."
Ruby had tripped away for a moment. Returning with a little oval thing
in her hand, she cried, "Danny, what's this? I found it under a stone,
and its gills were shining like fire."
"A sea-mouse," said the lad, and taking it out of the child's hand, he
added, "I'm less nor this worm to our Bill."
"Danny, would it hurt you much if you were to hear that your uncle
Kisseck was being punished?"
The lad lifted his eyes with a bewildered stare. The idea that Bill
Kisseck could be punished had never really come to him as within the
limits of possibility. Once, indeed, he had thought of something that he
might himself do, but the wild notion had vanished with the next glance
at Kisseck's face.
"He could be punished," said Mona, "and must be."
Then Danny's eyes glittered and looked strange, but he said not a word.
They walked on, the happy child once more taking a hand from each, and
laughing, prattling, leaping, and making little runs between them. Ruby
was in a deeper sense the link that bound them, and in the deepest sense
of all she was the link that held them apart forever. They had walked to
the mouth of the harbor, and Mona held out her hand to say good-bye.
Danny looked beyond her over the sea. There was something in his face
that Mona had never before seen there. What it meant she knew not then,
except that in a moment he had grown to look old. "The storm is coming,"
said Mona. "I see the diver out at sea. Do you hear his wild note?"
"Ay, and ye see Mother Carey's chicken yonder," said Danny, pointing
where the stormy petrel was scudding close to a white wave and uttering
a dismal cry. Then, absently and in a low tone, "I think at whiles I'd
like to die in a big sea like that," said the lad.
Mona looked for a moment in silence into the lad's hopeless eyes. Danny
turned back with his hand in his pockets and his face toward the sand.
Truly a storm was coming, and it was a storm more terrible than wind and
rain.
Mona and Ruby continued their walk. It was the slack season at the
factory, and Mr. Kinvig's jewel in looms was compelled to stand idle
three working days out of the six. The young woman and the child passed
down the quay to the bridge, crossed to the foot of the Horse Hill, and
walked along the south side of the harbor--now full of idle
luggers--toward Contrary Head. When they reached the narrow strait which
cut off the Castle Isle from the mainland, they took a path that led
upward over Contrary Head. A little way up the hill they passed Bill
Kisseck's cottage. The house stood on a wild headland, and faced nothing
but the ruined castle and the open sea. An old quarry had once been
worked on the spot, and Kisseck's cottage stood with its front to what
must have been the level cutting, and its back to the straight wall of
rock. A path wound round the house and came close to the edge of the
little precipice. Mona took this path, and as they walked past the back
part of the roof a woman's head looked out of a little dormered window
that stood in the thatch.
"Good-morning, Bridget," said Mona, cheerfully.
"Good-mornin'," answered Bridget, morosely. "It's middlin' cowld, isn't
it, missis, for you and that poor babby to be walkin' up there?"
"It's a sharp morning, but we're strong and well, Ruby and I," said
Mona, going on.
"The craythur!" mumbled Bridget to herself when they were gone, "it's
not lookin' like it she is anyway, with a face as white as a haddick."
Mona and the little one walked briskly along the path, which from
Kisseck's cottage was nearly level, and cut across the Head toward the
south. There was a second path a few yards below them, and between these
two, at a distance of some five or six hundred yards from the house, was
the open shaft of an old disused lead mine which has since been filled
up.
"What a dreadful pit," said Ruby, clinging to Mona's skirts in the wind.
They continued their walk until they came to a steep path that led down
to a little bay. Then they paused, and looked back, around, and beneath.
Overhead were the drifting black clouds, heavy, wide, and low. Behind
was the Horse Hill, purple to the summit with gorse. To the north was
the Castle Island, with its Fennella's Tower against the sky, and the
black rocks, fringed at the water's edge with white spray. Beneath was
the narrow covelet cleft out of the hillside, and apparently accessible
only from the sea. In front was the ocean, whose moan came up to them
mingled with the shrill cry of the long-necked birds that labored midway
in the burdened air.
"What is the name of that pretty bay?" asked the child. "Poolvash,"
answered Mona.
"And what does it mean?" asked the little one.
"The Bay of Death," said Mona; "that's what they used to call it long
ago, but they call it the Lockjaw now."
"And what does that mean?" asked Ruby again, with a child's tireless
curiosity.
"It means, I suppose, that the tide comes up into it, and then no one
can get either in or out."
"Oh, what a pity! Look at the lovely shells in the shingle," said Ruby.
Just then a step was heard on the path below, and in a moment Bill
Kisseck came up beside them. He looked suspiciously at Mona and passed
without a word.
"That gel of Kinvig's is sniffin' round," he said to his wife when he
reached home. "She wouldn't be partikler what she'd do if she got a peep
and a skute into anything."
"Didn't you say no one could get up or down the Lockjaw when the tide is
up?" asked Ruby as she tripped home at Mona's side.
"Yes," said Mona, "except from the sea."
"And isn't the tide up now?" said Ruby. Mona did not answer.
That night the storm that Danny had predicted from the aspect of the
"cat's tail" and the "skate" broke over Peel with terrific violence.
When morning dawned it was found that barns had been unroofed and that
luggers in the harbor had been torn from their moorings. The worst
damage done was to the old wooden pier and the little wooden lighthouse.
These had been torn entirely away, and nothing remained but the huge
stone foundations which were visible now at the bottom of the ebb tide.
The morning was clear and fine, the wind had dropped, and only the
swelling billows in the bay and the timbers floating on every side
remained to tell of last night's tempest.
Little Ruby was early stirring, and before Mona and her mother were
awake she ran down the hill toward Peel. An hour passed and the little
one had not returned. Two hours went by, and Mona could see no sign of
the child from the corner of the road. Then she became anxious, and went
in search of her.
* * * * *
"Gerr out of this and take the boat round to the Lockjaw, d'ye hear?"
shouted Bill Kisseck, "and see if any harm's been done down there. Take
a rope or two and that tarpaulin and cover up anything that's wet."
Danny lifted the tarpaulin, and went quietly out of the house.
"I'll never make nothin' of that lad," said Kisseck; "he hasn't a word
to chuck at a dog."
Danny walked down to the harbor, threw the tarpaulin and two ropes into
the boat, got into it himself, took the oar, and began to scull toward
the sea. As he passed the ruined end of the pier a voice hailed him. He
looked up. It was Christian Mylrea.
"If you are going round the Head I'd like to go with you," said
Christian. "I want to see what mischief the sea has done to the west
wall of the castle. Five years ago a storm like this swept away ten
yards of it at least."
Danny touched his cap and pulled up to the pier. Christian dropped,
hand-under-hand, down a fixed wooden ladder, and into the boat. Then
they sculled away. When they reached the west of the island, and had
with difficulty brought-to against the rocks, Christian landed, and
found the old boundary wall overlooking the traditional Giant's Grave
torn down to the depth of several feet. His interest was so strongly
aroused that he would have stayed longer than Danny's business allowed.
"Leave me here and call as you return," he said, and then, with
characteristic irresolution, he added, "No, take me with you."
The morning was fine but cold, and to keep up a comfortable warmth
Christian took an oar, and they rowed.
"This pestilential hole, I hate it," said Christian, as they swept into
the Lockjaw. "How high the tide is here," he added, in another tone.
They ran the boat up the shingle and jumped ashore. As they did so their
ears became sensible of a feeble moan. Turning about they saw something
lying on the stones. It was a child. Christian ran to it and picked it
up. It was little Ruby. She was cold and apparently insensible.
Christian's face was livid, and his eyes seemed to start from his head.
"Merciful God," he cried, "what can have happened?"
Then a torrent of emotion came over him, and, bending on one knee, with
the child in his arms, the tears coursed down his cheeks. He hugged the
little one to his breast to warm it; he chafed its little hands and
kissed its pale lips, and cried, "Ruby, Ruby, my darling, my darling!"
Danny stood by with amazement written on his face. Rising to his feet,
Christian bore his burden to the boat, and called on Danny to push off
and away. The lad did so without a word. He felt as if something was
choking him, and he could not speak. Christian stripped off his coat and
wrapped it about the child. Presently the little one's eyes opened, and
she whispered, "How cold!" and cried piteously. When the tears had
ceased to flow, but still stood in big drops on the little face, Ruby
looked up at Christian and then toward Danny, where he sculled at the
stern.
"She wants to go to you," said Christian, after a pause, and with a
great gulp in his throat. Danny dropped the oar and lifted the child
very tenderly in his big horny hands. "Ruby ven, Ruby ven," he whispered
hoarsely, and the little one put her arms about his neck and drew down
his head to kiss him.
Christian turned his own head aside in agony. "Mercy, mercy, have
mercy!" he cried, with his eyes toward the sky. "What have I lost! What
love have I lost!"
He took the oars, and with head bent he pulled in silence toward the
town. When they got there he took the little one again in his arms and
carried her to the cottage on the "brew." Mona had newly returned from a
fruitless search. She and her mother stood together with anxious faces
as Christian, bearing the child, entered the cottage and stopped in the
middle of the floor. Danny Fayle was behind him. There was a moment's
silence. At length Christian said, huskily, "We found her in the
Poolvash, cut off by the tide."
No one spoke. Mona took Ruby out of his arms and sat with her before the
fire. Christian stepped to the back of the chair and looked down into
the child's eyes, now wet with fresh tears. Mrs. Cregeen gazed into his
face. Not a word was said to him. He took up his coat, turned aside,
paused for an instant at the door, and then walked away.