Complete works of hall c.., p.41
Complete Works of Hall Caine, page 41
Kerruish Kinvig was standing by, and heard the harbor-master’s explanation of the going out of the light.
“It’s middling strange,” shouted Kinvig, “that the ghost should potter about only when the Government cutter happens to be out of the way, and Tommy-Bill-beg is yelping and screeching at the ‘Jolly Herrings.’ I’d have a law on such bogies, and clap them in Castle Rushen,” bawled Kinvig, “and all the fiddlers and carol-singers along with them,” he added.
The harbor-master shook his head, apparently more in sorrow than in anger, and whispered Bill Kisseck that, as “the good ould book” says, “Bad is the man that has never no music in his sowl.”
It was one of Tommy-Bill-beg’s peculiarities of mental twist that he was full of quotations, and never by any chance failed to misascribe, misquote, and misapply them.
The fishing-boats were rolling gently with the motion of the rising tide. When everything had been made ready, and the flood was at hand, the fishermen, to the number of several hundred men and boys, trooped off to the shore of the bay. There they were joined by a great multitude of women and children. Presently the vicar appeared, and, standing in an open boat, he offered the customary prayer for the blessing of God on the fishing expedition which was now setting out.
“Restore and continue to us the harvest of the sea!”
And the men, on their knees in the sand, with uncovered heads, and faces in their hats, murmured “Yn Meailley.”
Then they separated, the fishermen returning to their boats.
Bill Kisseck leaped aboard the lugger that lay at the mouth of the harbor. His six men followed him. “See all clear,” he shouted to Danny, who sailed with him as boy. Danny stood on the quay with the duty of clearing ropes from blocks, and then following in the dingey that was moored to the steps.
Among the women who had come down to the harbor to see the departure of the fleet were two who bore no very close resemblance to the great body of the townswomen. One was an elderly woman, with a thin sad face. The other was a young women, of perhaps two or three and twenty, tall and muscular, with a pale cast of countenance, large brown eyes, and rich auburn hair. The face, though strong and beautiful, was not radiant with happiness, and yet it recalled very vividly a glint of human sunshine that we have known before.
In another moment little Ruby, red with running, pranced up to their side, crying, “Mona, come and see Danny Fayle’s boat. Here, look, there; that one with the color on the deck.”
The admiral’s boat was to carry a flag.
The two women were pulled along by the little sprite and stopped just where Danny himself was untying a knot in a rope. Danny recognized them, lifted his hat, blushed, looked confused, and seemed for the moment to forget the cable.
“Tail on there!” shouted Bill Kisseck from the lugger. “Show a leg there, if you don’t want the rat’s tail. D’ye hear?”
Danny was fumbling with his cap. That poor lagging lower lip was giving a yearning look to the lad’s simple face. He muttered some commonplace to Mona, and then dropped his head. At that instant his eyes fell on the lower part of her dress. The blue serge of her gown was bleached near her feet. Danny, who could think of nothing else to say, mumbled something about the salt water having taken the color out of Mona’s dress. The girl looked down, and then said quietly:
“Yes, I was caught by the tide last night — I mean to say, I was—”
She was clearly trying to recall her words, but poor Danny had hardly heard them.
“You cursed booby!” cried Bill Kisseck, leaping ashore, “prating with a pack of women when I’m a-waiting for you. I’ll make you walk handsome over the bricks, my man.”
With that he struck Danny a terrible blow and felled him.
The lad got up abashed, and without a word turned to his work. Kisseck, still in a tempest of wrath, was leaping back to the lugger, when the young woman stepped up to him, looked fearlessly in his face, seemed about to speak, checked herself, and turned away.
Kisseck stood measuring her from head to foot with his eyes, broke into a little bitter laugh, and said:
“I’m right up and down like a yard of pumpwater; that’s what I am.”
He jumped aboard again. Danny ran the rope from the blocks, the admiral’s boat cleared away, and the flag shot up to the mast-head. The other boats followed one after one to the number of nearly one hundred. The bay was full of them.
When Kisseck’s boat had cleared the harbor, Danny ran down the steps of the pier with eyes still averted from the two women and the child, got into the dingey, took an oar and began to scull after it.
“Sissy, Sissy,” cried Ruby, tugging at Mona’s dress, “look at Danny’s little boat. What’s the name that is on it in red letters?”
“‘Ben-my-Chree,’” the young woman answered.
Then the herring fleet sailed away under the glow of the setting sun.
CHAPTER V
CHRISTIAN MYLREA
It was late when young Christian Mylrea got back to Balladhoo that night of Kerruish Kinvig’s visit. “I’ve been up for a walk to the Monument on Horse Hill,” he remarked, carelessly, as he sat down at the piano and touched it lightly to the tune of “Drink to me only with thine eyes.” “Poor old Corrin,” he said, pausing with two fingers on the keyboard, “what a crazy old heretic he must have been to elect to bury himself up yonder.” Then, in a rich full tenor, Christian sang a bar or two of “Sally in our Alley.”
The two older men were still seated at opposite sides of the table smoking leisurely. Mylrea Balladhoo told Christian of the errand on which he had wished to send him.
“The light? Ah, yes,” said Christian, turning his head between the rests in his song, “curious, that, wasn’t it? Do you know that coming round by the pier I noticed that the light had gone out; so” — (a run up the piano)— “so, after ineffectual attempts to rouse that sad dog of a harbor-master of yours, dad, I went up into the box and lit it myself. You see it’s burning now.”
“Humph! so it is,” grunted Kerruish Kinvig, who had got up in the hope of discrediting the statement.
“Only the wick run down, that was all,” said Christian, who had turned to the piano again, and was rattling off a lively French catch.
Christian Mylrea was a handsome young fellow of five or six and twenty, with a refined expression and easy manner, educated, genial, somewhat irresolute one might say, with a weak corner to his mouth; naturally of a sportive disposition, but having an occasional cast of thoughtfulness; loving a laugh, but finding it rather apt of late to die away abruptly on his lips.
Getting up to go, Kinvig said, “Christian, my man, you’ve not seen my new net-looms since you came home. Wonderful inventions! Wonderful! Extraordinary! Talk of your locomotive — pshaw! Come down, man, and see them at work in the morning.”
Christian reflected for a moment. “I will,” he said, in a more serious tone than the occasion seemed to require. “Yes, I’ll do that,” he said.
“In the morning!” said Mylrea Balladhoo. “To-morrow is the first day of the herrings — no time for new net-looms to-morrow at all.”
“The herrings!” shouted Kinvig from the door in an accent of high disdain.
“Nothing like leather,” said Christian laughing. “Let it be the morning after,” he added; and so it was agreed.
Next day Christian busied himself a little among the fishing-smacks that were the property of his father, or were, at least, known by his father’s name. He went in and sat among the fisher-fellows with a cheery voice and pleasant face. Everywhere he was a favorite. When his back was turned it was: “None o’ yer ransy-tansy-tisimitee about Misther Christian; none o’ yer ‘Well, my good man,’ and the like o’ that; awful big and could, sem as if they’d jist riz from the dead.” Or perhaps, “No criss-crossing about the young masther; allis preachin’; and ‘I’ll kermoonicate yer bad behavior’ and all that jaw.” Or again, more plaintively, “I wish he were a bit more studdy-like, and savin’. Of coorse, of coorse, me and him’s allis been middlin’ well acquent.”
CHAPTER VI
THE NET FACTORY
The morning after the fleet left the harbor, Christian walked down to Kerruish Kinvig’s house, and together they went over the net factory. In a large room facing the sea a dozen hand-looms for the manufacture of drift-nets had been set up. Each loom was worked by a young woman, and she had three levers to keep in action — one with the hand and the others with the feet.
Kinvig explained, with all the ardor of an enthusiast, the manifold advantage of the new loom over the old one with which Christian was familiar; dwelt on the knots, the ties and the speed; exhibited a new reel for the unwinding of the cotton thread from the skein, and described a new method of barking when the nets come off the looms. Pausing now and then with the light of triumph in his eyes, he shouted, “Where’s your Geordie Stephenson now? Eh?”
Christian listened with every appearance of rapt attention, and from time to time put questions which were at least respectably relevant. A quicker eye than Kerruish Kinvig’s might perhaps have seen that the young man’s attention was on the whole more occupied with the net-makers than with their looms, and that his quick gaze glanced from face to face with an inquiring expression.
A child of very tender years was working a little thread reel at the end of the room, and, on some pretense, Christian left Kinvig’s side, stepped up to the child, and spoke to her about the click-clack of the levers and cranks. The little woman lifted her head to reply; but having a full view of her face, Christian turned away without waiting for her answer.
After a quarter of an hour, all Christian’s show of interest could not quite conceal a look of weariness. One would have said that he had somehow been disappointed in this factory and its contents. Something that he had expected to see he had not seen. Just then Kinvig announced that the choicest of his looms was in another room. This one would not only make a special knot, but would cut and finish.
“It is a delicate instrument, and wants great care in the working,” said Kinvig. In that regard the net-maker considered himself fortunate, for he had just hit on a wonderfully smart young woman who could work it as well, Kinvig verily believed, as he could work it himself.
“Who is she?” said Christian.
“A stranger in these parts — came from the south somewhere — Castletown way,” said Kinvig; and he added with a grin, “Haven’t you heard of her?”
Christian gave no direct reply, but displayed the profoundest curiosity as to this latest development in net-making ingenuity. He was forthwith carried off to inspect Kinvig’s first treasure in looms.
The two men stepped into a little room apart, and there, working at the only loom that the room contained, was little Ruby’s sister, Mona Cregeen. The young woman was putting her foot on one of the lower treadles when they entered. She made a slight but perceptible start, and the lever went up with a bang.
“Tut, my girl, how’s this?” said Kinvig. “See — you’ve let that line of meshes off the hooks.”
The girl stopped, replaced the threads one after one with nervous fingers, and then proceeded with her work in silence.
Kinvig was beginning an elaborate engineering disquisition for Christian’s benefit — Christian’s head certainly did hang rather too low for Kinvig’s satisfaction — when a girl comes in from the outer factory to say that a man at the gate would like to see the master.
“Botheration!” shouted Kinvig; “but wait here, Christian, and I’ll be back.” Then, turning to the young weaver— “Show this gentleman the action of the loom, my girl.”
* * * * * * * * * * * *
When the door had closed behind Mr. Kinvig, Christian raised his eyes to the young woman’s face. There was silence between them for a moment. The window of the room was open, and the salt breath of the ocean floated in. The sea’s deep murmur was all that could be heard between the clicks of the levers. Then Christian said, softly:
“Mona, have you decided? Will you go back?”
The girl lifted her eyes to his. “No,” she answered, quietly.
“Think again, Mona; think of me. It isn’t that I couldn’t wish to have you here — always here — always with me—”
The girl gave a little hard laugh.
“But think of the risk!” continued Christian, more eagerly. “Is it nothing that I am tortured with suspense already, but that you should follow me?”
“And do I suffer nothing?” said she.
There was no laughter on Christian’s lips now. The transformation to earnest pallor was startling.
“Think of my father,” he said, evading the girl’s question. “I have all but impoverished him already with my cursed follies, and little does he dream, poor old dad, of the utter ruin that yet hangs over his head.”
There was a pause. Then, in a tenderer tone:
“Mona, don’t add to my eternal worries. Go back to Derby Haven, like the dear girl that you are. And when this storm blows over — and it will soon be past — then all shall be made right. Yes, it shall, believe me.”
There was no answer. Christian continued.
“Go at once, my girl. Here,” (diving into his pockets), “I’ve precious little money left, God help me, but here’s enough to pay your way, and something to spare.”
He offered a purse in his palm. The girl tossed up his hand with a disdainful gesture.
“It’s not money I want from you,” she said. Christian looked at her for a moment with blank amazement. She caught the expression, and answered it with a haughty curl of the lip. The sneer died off her face on the instant, and the tears began to gather in her eyes.
“It’s not love a girl wants, then?” she said struggling to curl her lip again. “It’s not love, then, that a girl like me can want,” she said.
She had stopped the loom and covered up her face in her hands.
“No, no,” she added, with a stifled sob, “love is for ladies — fine ladies in silks and satins — pure — virtuous.... Christian,” she exclaimed, dropping her hands and looking into his face with indignant eyes, “I suppose there’s a sort of woman that wants nothing of a man but money, is there?”
Christian’s lips were livid. “That’s not what I meant, Mona, believe me,” he said.
The loom was still. The sweet serenity of the air left hardly a sense of motion.
“You talk of your father, too,” the girl continued, lifting her voice. “What of my mother? You don’t think of her. No, but I do, and it goes nigh to making my heart bleed.”
“Hush, Mona,” whispered Christian; but, heedless of the warning, she continued:
“To be torn away from the place where she was born and bred, where kith and kin still live, where kith and kin lie dead — that was hard. But it would have been harder, far harder, to remain, with shame cast at her from every face, as it has been every day for these five years.”
She paused. A soft boom came up to them from the sea, where the unruffled waters rested under the morning sun.
“Yes, we have both suffered,” said Christian. “What I have suffered God knows. Yes, yes; the man who lives two lives knows what it is to suffer. Talk of crime! no need of that, as the good, goody, charitable world counts crime. Let it be only a hidden thing, that’s enough. Only a secret, and yet how it kills the sunshine off the green fields!” Christian laughed — a hollow, hard, cynical laugh.
“To find the thing creep up behind every thought, lie in ambush behind every smile, break out in mockery behind every innocent laugh. To have the dark thing with you in the dark night. No sleep so sweet but that it is haunted by this nightmare. No dream so fair but that an ugly memory steals up at first awakening — that, yes, that is to suffer!”
Just then a flight of sea-gulls disporting on a rock in the bay sent up a wild, jabbering noise.
“To know that you are not the man men take you for; that dear souls that cling to you would shudder at your touch if the scales could fall from their eyes, or if for an instant — as by a flash of lightning — the mask fell from your face.”
Christian’s voice deepened, and he added:
“Yet to know that bad as one act of your life may have been, that life has not been all bad; that if men could but see you as Heaven sees you, perhaps — perhaps — you would have acquittal—”
His voice trembled and he stopped. Mona was gazing out over the sea with blurred eyes that saw nothing.
Christian had been resting one foot on the loom. Lifting himself he stamped on the floor, threw back his head with a sudden movement, and laughed again, slightly.
“Something too much of this,” he said. Then sobering once more, “Go back, Mona. It shan’t be for long. I swear to you it shan’t. But what must I do with debts hanging over me—”
“I’ll tell you what you must not do,” said the girl with energy.
Christian’s eyes but not his lips asked “What?”
“You must not link yourself with that Bill Kisseck and his Curragh gang.”
A puzzled look crossed Christian’s face.
“Oh, I know their doings, don’t you doubt it,” said the girl.
“What do you know of Bill Kisseck?” said Christian with some perceptible severity. “Tell me, Mona, what harm do you know of Bill and his — his gang, as you call them?”
“I know this — I know they’ll be in Castle Rushen one of these fine days.”
Christian looked relieved. With a cold smile he said, “I dare say you’re right, Mona. They are a rough lot, the Curragh fellows; but no harm in them that I know of.”
