CHAPTER X.
"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 main–land, 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 hill–side, 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 light–house. 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 towards 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.