When the oxen got back after the first stretch the time was called--five minutes thirty seconds--and there was a great cheer, and Mona"s pale face was triumphant.
The stranger brought up his horses, and set off again, straining every muscle. He did his stretch in six minutes four seconds, and another cheer--but it was a cheer for Dan--went up after the figures were called.
Then Dan whipped round his oxen once more, and brought them up to the stake. The excitement among the people was now very great. Mona clutched her cloak convulsively, and held her breath. Jarvis was watching her closely, and she knew that his cold eyes were on her face.
"One would almost imagine that you were anxious to lose your bet," he said. She made no answer. When the oxen started again her lips closed tightly, as if she was in pain.
On the oxen went, and made the first half of the stretch without a hitch, and, with the blade of the plow lifted, they were wheeling over the furrow end, when a bell rang across the Curragh--it was the bell for the midday meal at Bishop"s Court--and instantly they came to a dead stand. Dan called to them, but they did not budge; then his whip fell heavily across their snouts, and they snorted, but stirred not an inch.
The people were in a tumult, and shouted with fifty voices at once.
Dan"s pa.s.sion mastered him. He brought his whip down over the flanks and across the eyes and noses of the oxen; they winced under the blows that rained down on them, and then shot away across the meadow, tearing up the furrows they had made.
Then there was a cry of vexation and anger from the people, and Dan, who had let go his reins, strode back to the stake. "I"ve lost," said Dan, with a muttered oath at the oxen.
All this time Jarvis Kerruish had kept his eye steadily fixed on Mona"s twitching face. "You"ve won, Mona," he said, in a cold voice and with an icy smile.
"I must go. Where is Ewan?" she said, tremulously, and before Jarvis was aware she had gone over the gra.s.s.
Dan had heard when Ewan declined to act as judge, he had seen when Ewan left the meadow, and, though he did not look, he knew when Mona was no longer there. His face was set hard, and it glowed red under his sunburned skin.
"Davy, bring them up," he said; and Davy Fayle led back the oxen to the front of the stake.
Then Dan unyoked them, took out the long swinging tree that divided them--a heavy wooden bar clamped with iron--and they stood free and began to nibble the gra.s.s under their feet.
"Look out!" he shouted, and he swung the bar over his shoulder.
The crowd receded and left an open s.p.a.ce in which Dan stood alone with the oxen, his great limbs holding the ground like their own hoofs, his muscles standing out like bulbs on his bare arms.
"What is he going to do--kill them?" said one.
"Look out!" Dan shouted again, and in another moment there was the swish of the bar through the air. Then down the bar came on the forehead of one of the oxen, and it reeled, and its legs gave way, and it fell dead.
The bar was raised again, and again it fell, and the second of the oxen reeled like the first and fell dead beside its old yoke-fellow.
A cry of horror ran through the crowd, but heeding it not at all, Dan threw on his coat and buckled his belt about him, and strode through the people and out at the gate.
CHAPTER XVII
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 pa.s.sion or evil circ.u.mstances 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 G.o.d! 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--G.o.d 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, pa.s.sionate tone, and the blinding tears rained down her cheeks, "nothing and n.o.body 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.