Saying this, Thorkell began to laugh, loudly, frantically, atrociously.
Jarvis Kerruish had entered while he was running on with his tirade. The stranger did not lift his eyes to Jarvis, but Jarvis looked at him attentively.
When Thorkell had finished his hideous laugh, he turned to Jarvis and asked if superst.i.tion was not the plague of the island, and if it ought not to be put down by law. Jarvis curled his lips for answer, but his form of contempt was lost on old Thorkell"s dim eyes.
"Have we not often agreed that it is so?" said Thorkell.
"And that you," said Jarvis, speaking slowly and bitterly, "are the most superst.i.tious man alive."
"What? what?" Thorkell cried.
The stranger lifted his face, and looked steadily into Jarvis"s eyes.
"_You_," he said, calmly, "have some reason to say so."
Jarvis reddened, turned about, stepped to the door, glanced back at the stranger, and went out of the room.
Thorkell was now moaning on the pillow. "I am all alone," he said; and he fell to a bout of weeping.
The stranger waited until the hysterical fit was over, and then said, "Where is your daughter?"
"Ah!" said Thorkell, dropping his red eyes.
"Send for her."
"I will. Juan, go to Bishop"s Court. Juan, I say, run fast and fetch Mistress Mona. Tell her that her father is ill."
As Thorkell gave this order Jarvis Kerruish returned to the room.
"No!" said Jarvis, lifting his hand against the young man.
"No?" cried Thorkell.
"If this is my house, I will be master in it," said Jarvis.
"Master! your house! yours!" Thorkell cried; and then he fell to a fiercer bout of hysterical curses. "b.a.s.t.a.r.d, I gave you all! But for me you would be on the roads--ay, the dunghill!"
"This violence will avail you nothing," said Jarvis, with hard constraint. "Mistress Mona shall not enter this house."
Jarvis placed himself with his back to the door. The stranger stepped up to him, laid one powerful hand on his arm, and drew him aside. "Go for Mistress Mona," he said to the young man. "Knock at the door on your return. I will open it."
The young man obeyed the stranger. Jarvis stood a moment looking blankly into the stranger"s face. Then he went out of the room.
Thorkell was whimpering on the pillow. "It is true," he said, with laboring breath, "though I hate superst.i.tion and loathe it, I was once its victim--once only. My son Ewan was killed by my brother"s son, Dan.
They loved each other like David and Jonathan, but I told Ewan a lie, and they fought, and Ewan was brought home dead. Yes, I told a lie, but I believed it then. I made myself believe it. I listened to some old wife"s balderdash, and thought it true. And Dan was cut off--that is to say, banished, excommunicated; worse, worse. But he"s dead now. He was found dead in the snow." Again Thorkell tried to laugh, a poor despairing laugh that was half a cry. "Dead! They threatened me that he would push me from my place. And he is dead before me! So much for divination! But tell me--you are a priest--tell me if that sin will drag me down to--to--But then, remember, I believed it was true--yes, I--"
The stranger"s face twitched, and his breathing became quick.
"And it was you who led the way to all that followed" he said, in a subdued voice.
"It was; it was--"
The stranger had suddenly reached over the bed and taken Thorkell by the shoulders. At the next instant he had relinquished his hard grasp, and was standing upright as before, and with as calm a face. And Thorkell went jabbering on:
"These three nights I have dreamt a fearful dream. Shall I tell you what it was? Shall I? I thought Dan, my brother"s son, arose out of his grave, and came to my bedside, and peered into my face. Then I thought I shrieked and died; and the first thing I saw in the other world was my son Ewan, and he peered into my face also, and told me that I was d.a.m.ned eternally. But, tell me, don"t you think it was only a dream? Father!
Father! I say, tell me--"
Thorkell was clambering up by hold of the stranger"s coat.
The stranger pushed him gently back.
"Lie still; lie still--you, too, have suffered much," he said. "Lie quiet--G.o.d is merciful."
Just then Jarvis Kerruish entered, in wild excitement. "Now I know who this man is," he said, pointing to the stranger.
"Father Dalby," said Thorkell.
"Pshaw!--it is DAN MYLREA."
Thorkell lifted himself stiffly on his elbow, and rigidly drew his face closely up to the stranger"s face, and peered into the stranger"s eyes.
Then he took a convulsive hold of the stranger"s coat, shrieked, and fell back on to the pillow.
At that moment there was a loud knocking at the door below. The stranger left the room. In the hall a candle was burning. He put it out. Then he opened the door. A woman entered. She was alone. She pa.s.sed him in the darkness without speaking. He went out of the house and pulled the door after him.
X
An hour later than this terrible interview, wherein his ident.i.ty (never hidden by any sorry masquerade) was suddenly revealed, Daniel Mylrea, followed closely at his heels by Davy Fayle, walked amid the fires of the valley to Bishop"s Court. He approached the old house by the sea-front, and went into its grounds by a gate that opened on a footpath to the library through a clump of elms. Sluggish as was Davy"s intellect, he reflected that this was a path that no stranger could know.
The sky of the night had lightened, and here and there a star gleamed through the thinning branches overhead. In a faint breeze the withering leaves of the dying summer rustled slightly. On the meadow before the house a silvery haze of night-dew lay in its silence. Sometimes the croak of a frog came from the glen; and from the sea beyond (though seemingly from the mountains opposite) there rose into the air the rumble of the waves on the sh.o.r.e.
Daniel Mylrea pa.s.sed on with a slow, strong step, but a secret pain oppressed him. He was walking on the ground that was dear with a thousand memories of happy childhood. He was going back for some brief moments that must be painful and joyful, awful and delicious, to the house which he had looked to see no more. Already he was very near to those who were very dear to him, and to whom he, too--yes, it must be so--to whom he, too, in spite of all, must still be dear. "Father, father," he whispered to himself. "And Mona, my Mona, my love, my love."
Only the idle chatter of the sapless leaves answered to the yearning cry of his broken spirit.
He had pa.s.sed out of the shade of the elms into the open green of the meadow with the stars above it, when another voice came to him. It was the voice of a child singing. Clear and sweet, and with a burden of tenderness such as a child"s voice rarely carries, it floated through the quiet air.
Daniel Mylrea pa.s.sed on until he came by the library window, which was alight with a rosy glow. There he stood for a moment and looked into the room. His father, the Bishop, was seated in the oak chair that was clamped with iron clamps. Older he seemed to be, and with the lines a thought deeper on his ma.s.sive brow. On a stool at his feet, with one elbow resting on the ap.r.o.n in front of him, a little maiden sat, and she was singing. A fire burned red on the hearth before them. Presently the Bishop rose from his chair, and went out of the room, walking feebly, and with drooping head.
Then Daniel Mylrea walked round to the front of the house and knocked.
The door was opened by a servant whose face was strange to him.
Everything that he saw was strange, and yet everything was familiar. The hall was the same but smaller, and when it echoed to his foot a thrill pa.s.sed through him.
He asked for the Bishop, and was led like a stranger through his father"s house to the door of the library. The little maiden was now alone in the room. She rose from her stool as he entered, and, without the least reserve, stepped up to him and held out her hand. He took her tender little palm in his great fingers, and held it for a moment while he looked into her face. It was a beautiful child-face, soft and fair and oval, with a faint tinge of olive in the pale cheeks, and with yellow hair--almost white in the glow of the red fire--falling in thin tresses over a full, smooth forehead.
He sat and drew her closer to him, still looking steadily into her face.
Then, in a tremulous voice he asked her what her name was, and the little maiden, who had shown no fear at all, nor any bashfulness, answered that her name was Aileen.
"But they call me Ailee," she added, promptly; "everybody calls me Ailee."
"Everybody? Who?"