The Deemster Part 65

And once again he interrupted and said, in a trembling undertone, "It is true--it has been what I looked for--it has been a death in life."

But as Mona went on to read of how the outcast man, kept back from speech with every living soul, struggled to preserve the spiritual part of him, the Bishop interrupted once more, and said, in a faltering voice:

"This existence has been quite alone in its desolation."

As Mona went on again to read of how the unblessed creature said his prayer in his solitude, not hoping that G.o.d would hear, but thinking himself a man outside G.o.d's grace, though G.o.d's hand was upon him--thinking himself a man doomed to everlasting death, though the blessing of Heaven had already fallen over him like morning dew--then all that remained of spiritual pride in the heart of the Bishop was borne down by the love of the father, and his old head fell into his breast, and the hot tears rained down his wrinkled cheeks.

Later the same night Mona sent for Davy Fayle. The lad was easily found; he had been waiting in the darkness outside the house, struggling hard with a desire to go in and tell Mistress Mona where Daniel Mylrea was to be found.

"Davy," she said, "do you know where he is?"

"Sure," said Davy.

"And you could lead me to him?"

"I could."

"Then come here very early in the morning, and we will go together."

Next day when Mona, attired for her journey, went down for a hasty breakfast, she found the Bishop fumbling a letter in his trembling fingers.

"Read this, child," he said in a thick voice, and he handed the letter to her.

She turned it over nervously. The superscription ran, "These to the Lord Bishop of Man, at his Palace of Bishop's Court," and the seal on the other face was that of the insular Government.

While the Bishop made pretense of wiping with his handkerchief the horn-bridged spectacles on his nose Mona opened and read the letter.

It was from the Governor at Castletown, and said that the Lord of Man and the Isles, in recognition of the great services done by Daniel Mylrea to the people of the island during their recent affliction, would be anxious to appoint him Deemster of Man, in succession to his late uncle, Thorkell Mylrea (being satisfied that he was otherwise qualified for the post), if the Steward of the Ecclesiastical Courts were willing to remove the censure of the Church under which he now labored.

When she had finished reading, Mona cast one glance of nervous supplication upward to the Bishop's face, and then with a quick cry of joy, which was partly pain, she flung her arms about his neck.

The old Bishop was quite broken down.

"Man's judgments on man," he said, "are but as the anger of little children--here to-day, gone to-morrow, and the Father's face is over all."

What need to tell of one of the incidents of Mona's journey, or of the brave hopes that buoyed her up on the long and toilsome way? Many a time during these seven years past she had remembered that it was she who had persuaded Dan to offer his life as an atonement for his sin. And often the thought came back to her with the swiftness of remorse that it was she who, in her blindness, had sent him to a doom that was worse than death. But Heaven's ways had not been her ways, and all was well. The atonement had been made, and the sin had been wiped out of the book of life. Dan, her love, her beloved, had worked out his redemption. He had proved himself the great man she had always known he must be. He was to come back loaded with honor and grat.i.tude, and surrounded by mult.i.tudes of friends.

More than once, when the journey was heaviest, she put her hand to her bosom and touched the paper that nestled so warmly there. Then in her mind's eye she saw Dan in the seat of the Deemster, the righteous judge of his own people. Oh, yes, he would be the Deemster, but he would be Dan still, her Dan, the lively, cheerful, joyous, perhaps even frolicsome Dan, once more. He would sport with her like Ailee; he would play with her as he used to play long ago with another little girl that she herself could remember--tickling her under her armpits, and under her chin, and in twenty different cozy nests of her pretty body, where whole broods of birdies sent up a chorus of squealing song-laughter.

The burden of Mona's long years of weary sorrow had been so suddenly lifted away that she could not restrain her thoughts from childish sportiveness. But sometimes she remembered Ewan, and then her heart saddened, and sometimes she thought of herself, and then it flushed full of quick, hot blood. And, oh, how delicious was the secret thing that sometimes stole up between her visions of Dan and the high destiny that was before him. It was a vision of herself, transfigured by his n.o.ble love, resting upon and looking up to him, and thus pa.s.sing on and on and on to the end.

Once she remembered, with a chill pa.s.sing through her, that in the writing which she had read Dan had said he was ill? But what of that?

She was going to him, and would nurse him back to health.

And Davy Fayle, walking at her side, was full of his own big notions, too. Mastha Dan would be Dempster, true; but he'd have a boat for his pleasure, sarten sure. Davy Fayle would sail man in her, perhaps mate, and maybe skipper some day--who knows? And then--lying aft and drifting at the herrings, and smokin', and the stars out, and the moon makin' a peep--aw, well, well, well!

They reached the end of their journey at last. It was in a small gorse-covered house far over the wild moor, on the edge of the Chasms, looking straight out on the hungry sea. In its one bare room (which was without fire, and was cheerless with little light) there was a table, a settle, a chair, a stool, and a sort of truckle-bed. Dan was there, the same, yet, oh, how different! He lay on the bed unconscious, near to death of the sickness--the last that the scourge was to slay.

Of this story of great love and great suffering what is left to tell?

There are moments when life seems like the blind swirl of a bat in the dusk--blundering, irresponsible, not to be counted with, the swift creature of evil chance. We see a little child's white face at a hospital window, a strong man toiling hopelessly against wrong, the innocent suffering with the guilty, good instincts thwarted and base purposes promoted, and we ask ourselves, with a thrill of the heart, What, after all, is G.o.d doing in this His world? And from such blind laboring of chance the tired and beaten generations of men seem to find it reward enough to drop one after one to the hushed realms of rest.

Shall we marvel very much if such a moment came to this pure and n.o.ble woman as she stood in the death-chamber of her beloved, with whom, after years of longing, she was at last brought face to face?

But again, there are other moments, higher and better, when there is such a thing in this so bewildering world as the victory of vanquishment, when the true man crushed by evil chance is yet the true man undestroyed by it and destroying it, when Job on his dunghill is more to be envied than Pharaoh on his throne, and death is as good as life.

And such a higher moment came to Mona in that death-chamber. She sat many hours by Dan's side, waiting for the breaking of his delirium and the brief s.p.a.ce of consciousness and of peace which would be the beginning of the end. It came at long, long length, and, ah, how soon it came!

The night had come and gone while she sat and watched. When the sunrise shot red through the skin-covered window it fell on Dan and awakened him. Opening his eyes, he saw Mona, and his soul smiled over his wasted face. He could not speak, nor could he lift his worn hands. She knew that the time was near, and holding back her grief, like wild creatures held by the leash, she dropped to her knees, and clasped her hands together to pray. And while she prayed the dying man repeated some of the words after her. "Our Father--"

"Our--Father--"

"Which art in heaven, hallowed be Thy name--"

"Hallowed--be--Thy--name--"

"Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven; give us this day our daily bread; and forgive us our trespa.s.ses, as we forgive them that trespa.s.s against us; and lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil--"

"But deliver us from evil--"

"Amen."

"Amen."