"And so you two boys went to bed together--_together_?" he said, and, with a dig of emphasis on his last word, repeated, he looked at Ewan.
Ewan"s face crimsoned, and his tongue faltered, "Yes, uncle."
The Bishop"s eyes fell. "Boys," he said, in another tone, "would you think it? I have done you a great wrong."
The boys were just then most intent on the tablecloth.
"You must know," the Bishop went on, "that there was a most unseemly riot at the Oiel Verree, and all night long I have been sore troubled by the bad thought that Danny was in the midst of it."
The boys held their heads very low over their plates, and Mona"s big eyes filled visibly. Danny"s impulse was to blurt out the whole mischief there and then, but he reflected that to do so would be to charge Ewan with falsehood. Ewan, on his part, would have confessed to the deception, but he knew that this would mean that Danny must be punished.
The boy"s wise head could see no way out of a tangle like that. The breakfast was the quietest ever eaten on a Christmas morning at Bishop"s Court, and, little as the talking was, the Bishop, strangely enough, did it all. But when they rose from the table, and the boys slunk out of the room with most portentous gravity, Mona went up to the Bishop with a face full of liquid grief, and, turning the whole depths of her great troubled eyes upon him, the little maiden said: "Ewan didn"t mean to tell you what wasn"t true--and cousin Danny didn"t intend to deceive--but he was--that is, Danny--I mean--dear uncle, you won"t--"
"You mean that Danny was at the Oiel Verree last night--I know it, child, I know it," said the Bishop, and he patted her head and smiled.
But the Bishop knew also that Danny had that day made one more step down the steep of life, and left a little ghost of his child-self behind him, and in his secret heart the Bishop saw that shadowy form, and wept over it.
CHAPTER VIII
Pa.s.sING THE LOVE OF WOMEN
Now the facts of this history must stride on some six years, and in that time the Deemster had lost nearly all the little interest he ever felt in his children. Mona had budded into womanhood, tender, gracious, quiet--a tall fair-haired maiden of twenty, with a drooping head like a flower, with a voice soft and low, and the full blue eyes with their depths of love and sympathy shaded by long fluttering lashes as the trembling sedge shades the deep mountain pool. It was as ripe and beautiful a womanhood as the heart of a father might dream of, but the Deemster could take little pleasure in it. If Mona had been his son, her quiet ways and tractable nature might have counted for something; but a woman was only a woman in the Deemster"s eyes, and the Deemster, like the Bedouin chief, would have numbered his children without counting his daughter. As for Ewan, he had falsified every hope of the Deemster. His Spartan training had gone for nothing. He was physically a weakling; a tall spare youth of two-and-twenty, fair-haired, like his sister, with a face as spiritual and beautiful, and hardly less feminine. He was of a self-torturing spirit, constantly troubled with vague questionings, and though in this regard he was very much his father"s son, the Deemster held his temperament in contempt.
The end of all was that Ewan showed a strong desire to enter the Church.
The Deemster had intended that his son should study the law and follow him in his place when his time came. But Ewan"s womanly temperament coexisted with a manly temper. Into the law he would not go, and the Church he was resolved to follow. The Bishop had then newly opened at Bishop"s Court a training college for his clergy, and Ewan sought and obtained admission. The Deemster fumed, but his son was not to be moved even by his wrath. This was when Ewan was nineteen years of age, and after two more years the spirituality of his character overcame the obstacle of his youth, and the Bishop ordained him at twenty-one. Then Ewan was made chaplain to the household at Bishop"s Court.
Hardly had this been done when Ewan took another step in life. With the knowledge of the Bishop, but without consulting the Deemster, he married, being now of age, a pretty child of sixteen, the daughter of his father"s old foe, the vicar of the parish. When knowledge of this act of unwisdom reached the Deemster his last remaining spark of interest in his son expired, and he sent Mona across to Bishop"s Court with a curt message saying that Ewan and his wife were at liberty, if they liked, to take possession of the old Ballamona. Thus he turned his back upon his son, and did his best to wipe him out of his mind.
Ewan took his young wife to the homestead that had been the place of his people for six generations, the place where he himself had been born, the place where that other Ewan, his good grandfather, had lived and died.
More than ever for these events the Deemster became a solitary man. He kept no company; he took no pleasures. Alone he sat night after night in his study at Ballamona, and Ballamona was asleep before he slept, and before it awoke he was stirring. His daughter"s presence in the house was no society for the Deemster. She grew beside him like her mother"s youth, a yet fairer vision of the old days coming back to him hour by hour, but he saw nothing of all that. Disappointed in his sole hope, his son, whom truly he had never loved for love"s sake, but only for his own sorry ambitions, he sat down under his disappointment a doubly soured and thrice-hardened man. He had grown noticeably older, but his restless energy suffered no abatement. Biweekly he kept his court, but few sought the law whom the law did not first find, for word went round that the Deemster was a hard judge, and deemed the laws in rigor. If men differed about money, they would say, "Och, why go to the Deemster? It"s throwing a bone into the bad dog"s mouth," and then they would divide their difference.
The one remaining joy of the Deemster"s lonely life was centred in his brother"s son, Dan. That l.u.s.ty youth had not disappointed his expectations. At twenty he was a braw, brown-haired, brown-eyed lad of six feet two inches in stature, straight and upright, and with the thews and sinews of an ox. He was the athlete of the island, and where there was a tough job of wrestling to be had, or a delightful bit of fighting to be done, there was Dan in the heart of it. "Aw, and middling few could come anigh him," the people used to say. But more than in Dan"s great stature and great strength, the little Deemster took a bitter pleasure in his daring irreverence for things held sacred. In this regard Dan had not improved with improving years. Scores of tricks his sad pugnacity devised to help the farmers to cheat the parson of his t.i.the, and it added not a little to the Deemster"s keen relish of freaks like these that it was none other than the son of the Bishop who perpetrated them. As for the Bishop himself, he tried to shut his eyes to such follies. He meant his son to go into the Church, and, in spite of all outbursts of spirit, notwithstanding wrestling matches and fights, and even some tipsy broils of which rumor was in the air, he entered Dan as a student at the college he kept at Bishop"s Court.
In due course the time of Dan"s examination came, and then all further clinging to a forlorn hope was at an end. The Archdeacon acted as the Bishop"s examining chaplain, and more than once the little man had declared in advance his conscientious intention of dealing with the Bishop"s son as he would deal with any other. The examination took place in the library of Bishop"s Court, and besides the students and the examiner there were some six or seven of the clergy present, and Ewan Mylrea, then newly ordained, was among them. It was a purely oral examination, and when Dan"s turn came the Archdeacon a.s.sumed his loftiest look, and first tackled the candidate where he was known to be weakest.
"I suppose, sir, you think you can read your Greek Testament?"
Dan answered that he had never thought anything about it.
"I dare say for all your modesty that you have an idea that you know it well enough to teach it," said the Archdeacon.
Dan hadn"t an idea on the subject.
"Take down the Greek Testament, and imagine that I"m your pupil, and proceed to expound it," said the Archdeacon.
Dan took the book from the bookcase and fumbled it in his fingers.
"Well, sir, open at the parable of the tares."
Dan scratched his big head leisurely, and he did his best to find the place. "So I"m to be tutor--is that it?" he said, with a puzzled look.
"That is so."
"And you are to be the pupil?"
"Precisely--suppose yourself my tutor--and now begin."
At this Ewan stepped out with a look of anxiety. "Is not that a rather difficult supposition, Archdeacon?" he said, timidly.
The Archdeacon glanced over his grandson loftily and made no reply.
"Begin, sir, begin," he said, with a sweep of his hand toward Dan, and at that he sat down in the high-backed oak chair at the head of the table.
Then on the instant there came into Dan"s quick eyes a most mischievous twinkle. He was standing before the table with the Greek Testament open at the parable of the tares, and he knew too well he could not read the parable.
"When do we change places, Archdeacon?" he asked.
"We have changed places--you are now the tutor--I am your pupil--begin, sir."
"Oh! we have changed places, have we?" said Dan, and at that he lifted up the Archdeacon"s silver-tipped walking-cane which lay on the table and brought it down again with a bang. "Then just you get up off your chair, sir," he said, with a tone of command.
The Archdeacon"s russet face showed several tints of blue at that moment, but he rose to his feet. Thereupon Dan handed him the open book.
"Now, sir," he said, "first read me the parable of the tares."
The clergy began to shuffle about and look into each other"s faces. The Archdeacon"s expression was not amiable, but he took the book and read the parable.
"Very fair, very fair indeed," said Dan, in a tone of mild condescension--"a few false quant.i.ties, but very fair on the whole."
"Gentlemen, gentlemen, this is going too far," said one of the clergy.
"Silence, sir," said Dan, with a look of outraged authority.
Then there was dire confusion. Some of the clergy laughed outright, and some giggled under their breath, and some protested in white wrath, and the end of it all was that the examination came to a sudden termination, and, rightly or wrongly, wisely or foolishly, Dan was adjudged to be unfit for the ministry of the Church.
When the Bishop heard the verdict his pale face whitened visibly, and he seemed to see the beginning of the end. At that moment he thought of the Deemster with bitterness. This blow to his hopes did not cement the severed lives of the brothers. The forces that had been dividing them year by year since the days of their father appeared to be drawing them yet wider apart in the lives and fortunes of their children. Each felt that the other was frustrating his dearest expectations in his son, and that was an offense that neither could forgive. To the Deemster it seemed that the Bishop was bearing down every ambition of his life, tearing him up as a naked trunk, leaving him a childless man. To the Bishop it seemed that the Deemster was wrecking the one life that was more to him than his own soul, and standing between him and the heart that with all its follies was dearer than the world beside. From the time of Ewan"s marriage and Dan"s disgrace the Bishop and the Deemster rarely met, and when they pa.s.sed on the road they exchanged only the coldest salutation.
But if the fates were now more than ever fostering an unnatural enmity between the sons of old Ewan they were cherishing at the same time the loves of their children. Never were cousins more unlike or more fondly attached. Between Dan, the reckless scapegrace, and Mona, with the big soft eyes and the quiet ways, the affection was such as neither understood. They had grown up side by side, they had seen each other daily, they had scampered along the sh.o.r.e with clasped hands, they had screamed at the sea-gulls with one voice, and still they were boy and girl together. But once they were stooking the barley in the glebe, and, the day being hot, Mona tipped back her white sun-bonnet, and it fell on to her shoulders. Seeing this, Dan came stealthily behind and thought very craftily to whisk it away un.o.bserved; but the strings by which it was tied caught in her hair and tugged at its knot, and the beautiful wavy shower fell rip-rip-rippling down her back. The wind caught the loosened hair and tossed it about her, and she stood up erect among the corn with the first blush on her cheeks that Dan had ever brought there, and turned full upon him all the glorious light of her deep blue eyes.
Then, then, oh then, Dan seemed to see her for the first time a girl no longer, but a woman, a woman, a woman! And the mountains behind her were in one instant blotted out of Dan"s eyes, and everything seemed to spin about him.
When next he knew where he was, and what he was doing, behold, there were Mona"s rosy lips under his, and she was panting and gasping for breath.
But if the love of Dan and Mona was more than cousinly, though they knew it not as yet, the love of Ewan for Dan was wonderful and pa.s.sing the love of women. That pure soul, with its vague spiritual yearnings, seemed to have nothing in common with the jovial roysterer, always fighting, always laughing, taking disgrace as a duck takes water, and losing the trace of it as easily. Twenty times he stood between the scapegrace and the Bishop, twenty times he hid from the good father the follies of the son. He thought for that thoughtless head that never had an ache or a care under its abundant curls; he hoped for that light heart that hoped for nothing; he trembled for the soul that felt no fear. Never was such loyalty between man and man since David wept for Jonathan. And Ewan"s marriage disturbed this affection not at all, for the love he bore to Dan was a brotherly pa.s.sion for which language has yet no name.