Complete works of hall c.., p.40
Complete Works of Hall Caine, page 40
Danny had walked about a quarter of a mile, when he paused for a moment at the gate of a cottage that stood halfway down the hill to the town. There was a light in the kitchen, and from where he stood in the road Danny could see those who were within. As if by an involuntary movement, his cap was lifted from his head and fumbled in his fingers, while his eyes gazed yearningly in at the curtainless window. Then he remembered the harsh word of Kerruish Kinvig, and started off again more rapidly. It was as though he had been kneeling at a fair shrine when a cruel hand befouled and blurred it.
Danny was superstitious. He was full to the throat of fairy lore and stories of witchcraft. The night was dark; the road was lonely; hardly a sound save that of his own footsteps broke the stillness, and the ghostly memories would arise. To banish them Danny began to whistle, and, failing with that form of musical society, to sing. His selection of a song was not the happiest under the circumstances. Oddly enough, it was the doleful ballad of Myle Charaine. Danny sang it in Manx, but here is a stave of it in the lusty tones of the fine old “Lavengro” —
“O, Myle Charaine, where got you your gold?
Lone, lone, you have left me here.
O, not in the curragh, deep under the mold,
Lone, lone, and void of cheer.”
There was not much cheer that Danny could get out of Myle Charaine’s company, but he could not at the moment think of any ballad hero who was much more heartsome. He had a good step of the road to go yet. Somehow the wild legend of the Moddey Dhoo would creep up into Danny’s mind. In the days when the old castle was garrisoned, the soldiers in the guardroom were curious about a strange black dog that came every night and lay in their midst. “It’s a devil,” said one. “I’ll follow it and see,” said another. When the dog arose to go, the intrepid soldier went out after it. His comrades tried to prevent him. “I’ll follow it,” he said, “if it leads to hell.” A minute afterward there was an unearthly scream; the soldier rushed back pale as a corpse, and with great staring eyes. He said not a word, and died within the hour. The Moddey Dhoo kept tormenting poor Danny to-night. So he set up the song afresh, and to heighten the sportive soul of it, he began to run. Once having taken to his heels, Danny ran as if the black dog itself had been behind him. By the time he reached the town he was fairly spent. Myle Charaine and the Moddey Dhoo together had been too much for Danny. What with the combined exertion of legs and lungs, the lad was perspiring from head to foot.
The house of the harbor-master was a little ivy-covered cottage that stood on the east end of the quay, near the bridge that crossed the river. The harbor-master himself was an unmarried elderly man, who enjoyed the curious distinction of having always worn short petticoats. His full and correct name seems almost to have been lost. He was known as Tommy-Bill-beg, a by-name which had at least a certain genealogical value in showing that the harbor-master was Tommy the son of Little Bill. When Danny reached the cottage he knocked, and had no answer. Then he lifted the latch and walked in. The house was empty, though a light was burning. It had two rooms and no more. One was a dark closet of a sleeping-crib. The other, the living room, was choked with nearly every conceivable article of furniture and species of domestic ornament. Shells, fish-bones, bits of iron and lead ore, sticks and pipes lay on tables, chairs, chests, settles, and corner cupboards. A three-legged stool stood before the fire-place; and with all his wealth of rickety furniture, this was probably the sole article which the harbor-master used.
There was a facetious-faced timepiece on the mantel-piece; and when folks pitied the isolation of Tommy-Bill-beg, and asked him if he never felt lonely, he always replied, “Not while I hear the clock tick.” But Tommy-Bill-beg had not heard the clock tick for twenty years. He resembled Jemmy Quark in being almost stone-deaf, and had a further bond of union with the gardener of Balladhoo in being musical. He played no instrument, however, except his voice, which he believed to be of the finest quality and compass. The harbor-master was wofully wrong as to the former, but right as to the latter; he had a voice like a rasp, and as loud as a fog-horn. Printed copies of ballads were pinned up on various parts of the wall of his kitchen. Tommy-Bill-beg could not read a line; but he would rather have died than allow that this was so, and he never sang except from print.
Danny Fayle knew well how often the musical weakness of the harbor-master was played upon by the Peel men; and when he found the cottage empty he suspected that some wags of fisher-fellows had decoyed Tommy-Bill-beg away to the “Jolly Herrings” for the sport of having him sing on this their last night ashore. Danny set off for the inn, which was in Castle Street. He walked along the quay, intending to turn up a passage.
The night seemed darker than ever now, and not a breath of wind was stirring. The harbor on Danny’s left was some twenty yards across, and another twenty yards divided the mainland from the island rock, on which stood the ruins of the old fortress. The tide was out, and the fishing-luggers lay at secure anchorage on the shingle, and in six inches of mud. The pier was straight ahead, and there the light should now be burning.
As Danny approached the passage that led up to Castle Street he heard the distant rumble of noisy singing. Yes, it came from the “Jolly Herrings” beyond question, and Tommy-Bill-beg was there airing his single vanity.
Danny was about to turn up the passage when, in a lull in the singing, he thought he caught the sound of voices and of the tread of feet. Both came from the rock outside, and Danny could not resist the temptation to walk on and listen.
There could be no doubt of it. Some people were going up to the castle. What could they want in that desolate place at night, and thus late? In Danny’s mind the ancient castle had always been encircled by ghostly imaginings. Perhaps it was fear that drew him to it now. Probably ordinary common-sense would have suggested that Danny should run off first to the harbor-master with the message that he had been charged to deliver, but Danny had neither part nor lot in that ordinary inheritance.
Near the bottom of the ebb tide the neck that divided the pier from the castle could be forded. Danny stole down the pier steps and crossed the ford as noiselessly as he could. A flight of other steps hewn out of the rock went up from the water’s edge to the deep portcullis. Danny crept up. He found that the old notched and barred door leading into the castle stood open. Danny stood and listened. The footsteps that he heard before were now far ahead of him. It was darkest of all under these thick walls. Danny had to pass the doorway of the ruined guardroom, terrible with the tradition of the black dog. As he went by the door he turned his head toward it in the darkness. At that instant he thought he heard something stir. He gasped, but could not scream. He stretched his arms fearfully toward the sound. There was nothing. All was still once more; only the receding footsteps dying away. Danny thought he had deceived himself. It was as though he had heard the rustle of a dress, but it must have been the soft rustle of leaves.
Yet there were no trees in the castle.
Danny stepped forward into the courtyard. His feet fell softly on the grass that now grew there. But he stopped again, and his heart seemed to stand still. He could have sworn that behind him he heard a light stealthy tread. Danny dropped to his knees, breathless and trembling.
It was gone. The deep, thick boom of the sea came from the shore far behind, and the thin, low plash of broken waters from the rocks beneath. The footsteps had ceased now, but Danny could hear voices. He rose to his feet and walked toward whence they came.
He found himself outside the crumbling walls of the roofless chapel of St. Patrick. He heard noises from within, and crouched behind a stone. Presently a light was struck. It lighted all the air above it. Danny crept up to the chapel wall and peered in at one of the lancet windows.
A company of men were there, but he could not distinguish their faces. The single lantern they carried was now turned with its face to the ground. One of them had a crowbar with which he was prizing up a stone. It was a gravestone. The men were tearing open an old vault.
There was some muttering, and one of the men seemed to protest. “Stop!” he cried; “I’m not going to have a hand in a job like this. I’m bad enough, God knows, but no man shall say that I helped to violate a grave.”
Danny shook from head to foot. He knew that voice. Just then the sea-swallow shot again overhead, uttering its low, mournful cry. At the same instant Danny thought he heard a half-stiffed moan not far from his side, and once more his ear caught that soft rustling sound. Quivering in every limb, he could not stir. He must stand and be silent. He clung to the stone wall with convulsive fingers.
The man with the crowbar laughed. “Dowse that now,” he said, and laughed again.
“Och, the timid he is to be sure, and the religious, too, all at once.”
Danny knew that voice also, and knew as well that to utter a word or sound at that moment might be as much as his life was worth. The men were raising the stone.
“Here, bear a hand,” said one.
“Never,” said the first speaker.
There was a low, grating laugh. One of the men leaped into the vault.
“Now, then, tail on here more hands. Let’s have it, quick.”
Then Danny saw that, lying on the ground, was something that he had not observed before. It was like a thick black roll some four feet long. Two of the men got hold of it to hand it to the man below.
“Come! lay down, d’ye hear?”
Danny’s terror mastered him. He turned to run. Then the man who had spoken first cried, “What’s that?”
There was a moment’s pause.
“What’s what?” said the man in the vault.
“I’ll swear on my soul I saw a woman pass the porch.”
A bitter little laugh followed.
“Och, it’s always a woman he’s seeing.”
Danny had found his legs at last. Flying along the grass as softly as a lapwing, he reached the old gate. Then he turned and listened. No; there was nothing to show that he had been heard. He crept down the steps to the water’s edge. There in a creek he saw a boat which he had not observed on going up. He looked at the name.
It was “Ben-my-Chree.”
Danny turned to the ford. The tide had risen a foot since he crossed, but he paddled through the water and gained the pier. Then he ran home as fast as his long legs would carry him, wet with sweat and speechless with dismay.
Next morning Danny remembered that he had forgotten all about the harbor-master and the light.
“Och, the cursed young imp that he is,” cried his uncle, Bill Kisseck, hitching his hand into Danny’s guernsey at the neck, and steadying him as if he had been a sack with an open mouth. “Aw, the booby; just taking a rovin’ commission and snappin’ his finger at the ould masther. What d’ye think would a happent to you, ye beach-comber, if some ship had run ashore and been wrecked and scuttled and all hands lost, and not a pound of cargo left at her, and never a light on the pier, and all along of you, ye idiot waistrel!”
CHAPTER III
“MACK’REL — MACKER-EL — MACK-ER-EL!”
It was a brilliant morning. The sea lay like a glass floor, and the sunshine, like a million fairies, danced on it. The town looked as bright as it was possible for Peel to look. The smoke was only beginning to coil upward from the chimney stacks and the streets were yet quiet when the silvery voice of a child was heard to cry —
“Sweet violets and primroses the sweetest.”
It was a little auburn-haired lassie of five, with ruddy cheeks, and laughing lips, and sparkling brown eyes. She wore a clean white apron that covered her skirt, which was tucked up and pinned in fish-wife fashion in front. Her head was bare; she carried a basket over one arm, and a straw hat that swung on the other hand.
The basket contained flowers which the child was selling: “A ha’penny a bunch, ma’am, only a ha’penny!” The little thing was as bright as the sunlight that glistened over her head. She had made a song of her sweet call, and chanted the simple words with a rhythmic swing —
“Sweet violets and primroses the sweetest.”
“Ruby,” cried a gentleman at the door of a house facing the sea. “Here, little one, give me a bunch of your falderolls. What? No! not falderolls? Is that it, little one, eh?”
It was Mr. Kerruish Kinvig.
The child pouted prettily and drew back her basket.
“What! not sell to me this morning! Oh, I see you choose your customers, you do, my lady. But I’ll have the law on you, I will.”
Ruby looked up fearlessly into the face of the dread iconoclast.
“I don’t love you,” she said.
“No — eh? And why not, now?”
“Because you call the flowers bad names.”
“Oh, I do, do I? Well never mind, little one. Say we strike a peace — eh?”
“I don’t like people that strike,” said Ruby, with averted eyes.
“Well, then, cry a truce — anything you like.”
Ruby knew what crying a flower or a fish meant.
“Here, now, little one, here’s a penny; that’s double wages, you know. Don’t you think the law would uphold me if I asked for a—”
“A what?” asked the child, with innocent eyes.
“Well, say a kiss.”
The bargain was concluded and the purchase ratified. In another minute the little feet were tripping away, and from a side street came the silvery voice that sang —
“Sweet violets and primroses the sweetest.”
At the next corner the lassie’s childlike tones were suddenly drowned by a lustier voice which cried, “Mack’rel! Macker — el! Fine, ladies — fresh, ladies — and bellies as big as bishops’ — Mack — er — el!”
It was Danny Fayle with a board on his head containing his last instalment of the season’s mackerel. When the two street-venders came together they stopped.
“Aw now, the fresh you’re looking this morning, Ruby veg — as fresh as a dewdrop, my chree!”
The little one lifted her eyes and laughed. Then she plunged her hand into her basket and brought out a bunch of wild roses.
“That’s for you, Danny,” she said.
“Och, for me is it now? Aw, and is it for me it is?” said Danny, with wondering eyes. “The clean ruined it would be in half a minute, though, at the likes of me, Ruby veg. Keep it for yourself, woman.” Louder: “Mack’rel — fine, ladies — fresh, ladies — Macker-el!” Then lower: “Aw now, the sweet and tidy they’d be lookin’ in your own breast, my chree — the sweet extraordinary!”
The child looked up and smiled, looked down and pondered: then half reluctantly, half coquettishly, fixed the flowers in her bosom.
“Danny, I love you,” she said, simply.
The object of Ruby’s affection blushed violently and was silent.
“And so does Sissy,” added the little one.
“Mona?” asked Danny, and his tongue seemed to cleave to his mouth.
“Yes, and mama too.”
Danny’s face, which had begun to brighten, suddenly lost its sunshine. His lower lip was lagging wofully.
“Yes, Mona and mama, and — and everybody,” said the child, with ungrudging spontaneity.
“No, Ruby ven.”
Danny’s voice was breaking. He tried to conquer this weakness by shouting aloud, “Mack-er — Mack—” Then, in a softer tone, “Not everybody, my chree.”
“Well,” said the child in earnest defense, “everybody except your uncle Kisseck.”
“Bill? Bill? What about Bill?” said Danny, hoarsely.
“Why don’t you fight into him, Danny? You’re a big boy now, Danny. Why don’t you fight into him?”
Danny’s simple face grew very grave. The soft blue eyes had an uncertain look.
“Did Sissy say that, Ruby veg?”
“No, but she said Bill Kisseck was a — was a—”
“A what, Rue?”
“A brute — to you, Danny.”
The lad’s face trembled. The hanging lower lip quivered, and the whole countenance became charged with sudden energy. Lifting his board from his head, and taking up the finest of the fish, he said:
“Ruby, take this home to Mona. Here now; it’s at the bottom of your basket I’m putting it.”
“My flowers, Danny!” cried Ruby, anxiously.
“Aw, what’s the harm they’ll take at all. There — there” (fixing some seaweed over the mackerel)— “nice, extraordinary — nice, nice!”
“But what will your uncle Bill say, Danny?” asked the little one with the shadow of fear in her eyes.
“Bill? Bill? Oh, Bill,” said Danny, turning away his eyes for a moment. Then, with an access of strength as he lifted his board onto his head and turned to go, “if Bill says anything, I’ll — I’ll—”
“No, don’t, Danny; no, don’t,” cried Ruby, the tears rising to her eyes.
“Just a minute since,” said Danny, “there came a sort of a flash, like that” (he swung one arm across his eyes), “and all of a sudden I knew middlin’ well what to do with Bill.”
“Don’t fight, Danny,” cried Ruby; but Danny was gone, and from another street came “Mack’rel — fine, ladies — fresh, ladies — and bellies as big as bishops’ — Mack-er-el!”
CHAPTER IV
THE FIRST OF “THE HERRINGS”
Later in the day the final preparations were being made for the departure of the herring fleet. Tommy-Bill-beg, the harbor-master, in his short petticoat, was bawling all over the quay, first at this man in the harbor and then at that. Bill Kisseck was also there in his capacity as admiral of the fleet — an insular office for which he had been duly sworn in, and for which he received his five pounds a year. Bill was a big black-bearded creature in top-boots — a relic of the reign of the Norseman in Man. Tommy-Bill-beg was chaffed about the light going out on the pier. He looked grave, declared there was “something in it.” Something supernatural, Tommy meant. Tommy-Bill-beg believed in his heart it was “all along of the spite of Gentleman Johnny” — now a bogy, erst a thief who in the flesh had been put into a spiked barrel and rolled over the pier into the sea, swearing furiously, as long as he could be heard, that to prove his innocence it was his fixed intention to haunt forever the scene of his martyrdom.
