Sir Hall Caine

“ Then the boys would strip and bathe, and Mona, being only a woman, would mind the men's clothes, or they would shout all together at the gulls, and Danny would mock Mother Cary's chicken and catch the doleful cry of the cormorant, and pelt with pebbles the long-necked bird as it sat on the rocks; or he would clamber up over the slippery seaweed, across the sharp slate ribs to where the sea-pinks grew in the corries and the sea-duck laid her eggs, and sing out from some dizzy height to where Ewan held his breath below and Mona stood crying and trembling on the sands. ”

“ That would imperil your soul, and then we should be divided forever."
"It is so already, Mona," said Dan, with solemnity. "We are divided forever—as the blessed are divided from the damned."
"Don't say that, don't say that."
"Yes, Mona," he said, with a fearful calmness, "we have thought of my crime as against Ewan, as against you, myself, the world, and its law. But it is a crime against God also, and surely it is the unpardonable sin."
"Don't say that, Dan. There is one great anchor of hope." ”

“ Then straightway Ewan flung himself into the chair from which Dan had risen, and his slight frame shook with suppressed sobs. After some minutes the sense of his own degradation diminished, and left room for a just idea of Dan's abject humiliation. "I have gone too far," he thought; "I will make amends." He had risen to follow Dan, when another thought trod heavily on the heels of the first. "Leave him alone, it will be best for himself—leave him alone, for his own sake." And so, with the madness of wrath fermenting in his own brain, he left it to ferment in Dan's brain as well. ”

“ Dan stood at the helm. When the speck that had glided along the waters like a spectre boat could be no more seen, he gazed in silence toward the eastern light and the green shores of morning. Then he had a sweet half-hour's blessed respite from terrible thoughts. He saw calmly what he had done, and in what a temper of blind passion he had done it. "Surely God is merciful," he thought, and his mind turned to Mona. It relieved him to think of her. She intertwined herself with his yearning hope of pardon and peace. ”

“ No sight on earth was less like that they had looked to see than the sight they then beheld.
There, in a dense cloud of smoke, was Davy Fayle, still bound and helpless, pale and speechless with affright; and there was Dan, also bound, and burning over one shoulder as if the arm itself were afire, and straining his great muscles to break the rope that held him. Quilleash was in the middle of the floor as if rooted to the spot, and his gun was in his hands. Teare was on the first rung of the wall-ladder, and the two white faces of Corkell and Crennell were peering down from the trap-hole above. ”

“ He knows the feebleness of His creatures, and has pity. Yes, our dear Ewan is with God; now he knows what you suffer, my poor Dan; and he is taking blame to himself and pleading for you."
"No, no; I did it all, Mona. He would not have fought. He would have made peace at the last, but I drove him on. 'I can not fight, Dan,' he said. I can see him saying it, and the sun was setting. No, it was not fight, it was murder. And God will punish me, my poor girl. Death is my just punishment—everlasting death." ”

“ But not so soon is hope conquered when it is hope of life. Cry for help he must; be dragged out of this grave he should, let the issue be what it could or would. To lie there and die was not human. To live was the first duty, the first necessity, be the price of life no less than future death.
Dan looked up at the sky; it was a small square patch of leaden gray against the impenetrable blackness of his prison-walls. Standing on the ledge of the rock, and steadying himself with one hand, he lifted the other cautiously upward to feel the sides of the shaft. ”

“ When Mona had prompted him to the idea of atonement, it had come to him like a gleam of sunlight that, though he might never, never clasp her hands on earth, in heaven she would yet be his, to love for ever and ever. But no, no, no; between them now the great gulf was fixed.
Much of this time Dan lay on the deck with only the dead and the lad Davy for company, and the fishing-boat lay motionless with only the lap of the waters about her. The stars died off, the darkness came again, and then, deep in the night, the first gray streaks stretching along the east foretold the dawn. ”

“ 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 passion for which language has yet no name. ”

“ The Bishop echoed Dan's words in a dull, mechanical underbreath, and stood a long time silent while Dan poured forth his bitter remorse. Then he said, speaking with something of his own courageous calm of voice, from something like his own pure face, and with some of the upright wrinkles of his high forehead smoothed away: "Dan, I will go home and think. I seem to be awakening from a dreadful nightmare in a world where no God is, and no light reigns, but all is dark. To tell you the truth, Dan, I fear my faith is not what it was or should be. ”

“ When Dan stepped aboard a dull, dense aching at his heart was all the consciousness he had. The world was dead to him. He had then no clear purpose of concealing his crime, and none of carrying out the atonement that Mona had urged him to attempt. He was stunned. His spirit seemed to be dead. It was as though it could awake to life again only in another world. He had watched old Billy when he whispered into Ewan's deaf ear the words of the mystic charm. Without will or intention he had followed the men when they came to the boat. ”

“ Nay, if he must die, who was no longer worthy of life, better to die there, none knowing his way of death, than to die on the gallows.
At that thought his hair rose from its roots. He had never rightly put it to himself until now that if he had to die for the death of Ewan he must die the death of hanging. That horror of hanging which all men have was stronger in Dan than in most. With the grim vision before him of a shameful and damning death it came to him to tell himself that better, a thousand times better, was death in that living tomb than the death that awaited him outside it. ”

“ I had stepped my mast and hoisted sail before yet I knew what impulse possessed me, but with my hand on the tiller to go to the relief of the men in peril. On a sudden I was seized with a mighty fear, and it was as though a ghostly hand laid on me from behind, and a voice above the tumult of that moment seemed to cry in my ears: "Not for you, not for you." Then in great terror I turned my boat's head away from the burning smack, and as I did so the ghostly hand did relax, and the voice did cease to peal in mine ears.
"They will drop into their dingey," I said with myself. ”

“ As Mona went on again to read of how the unblessed creature said his prayer in his solitude, not hoping that God would hear, but thinking himself a man outside God's grace, though God'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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ On the floor of earth, in one corner of the small place, a fire of gorse, turf, and logs burned slowly; and near the fire Dan lay outstretched on a bed of straw, his head pillowed on a coil of old rope, one hand twisted under his head, the other resting lightly on his breast, and he slept peacefully like a child.
Ewan stood for a moment shuddering and dismayed. The sight of Dan, helpless and at his mercy, unnerved his arm and drove the fever from his blood. There was an awful power in that sleeping man, and sleep had wrapped him in its own divinity. ”

“ Half an hour later, Dan Mylrea was walking through the darkness toward Ballamona. In his blind misery he was going to Mona. The snow was not falling now, and in the lift of the storm the sky was lighter than it had been. As Dan passed the old church, he could just descry the clock. The snow lay thick on the face, and clogged the hands. The clock had stopped. It stood at five exactly.
The blind leading that is here of passion by accident is everywhere that great tragedies are done. It is not the evil in man's heart more than the deep perfidy of circumstance that brings him to crime. ”

“ And he on his part saw the product of his headstrong wrath, and the pitiful grounds for it, so small and so absurd as such grounds oftenest are. And together these shipwrecked voyagers on the waters of life sat and wept, and wondered what evil could be in hell itself if man in his blindness could find the world so full of it.
And Dan cursed himself and said:
"Oh, the madness of thinking that if either were gone the other could ever again know one hour's happiness with you, Mona. Ay, though the crime lay hidden, yet would it wither and blast every hour. ”

“ The Bishop's spirit was broken in a moment.
"What would you have me do, Thorkell?"
"To present your son for murder in the court of your barony."
"Man, man, do you wish to abase me?" said the Bishop. "Do you come to drive me to despair? Is it not enough that I am bent to the very earth with grief, but that you of all men should crush me to the dust itself with shame? Think of it—my son is my only tie to earth, I have none left but him; and, because I am a judge in the island as well as its poor priest, I am to take him and put him to death." ”

“ It was then in the deadly sickness of fear that there came to Dan the dread of miscarrying forever if he should die now. He seemed to see what it was to die unredeemed. Not to be forgiven, but to be forever accursed, to be cut off from the living that live in God's peace?—the dead darkness of that doom stood up before him. Life had looked very dear to him before, but what now of everlasting death? He was as one who was dead before his death came. Live he could not, die he dared not. ”

“ How the lad seemed to swell and grow every day of life! Before he was ten he had outgrown Ewan by half an inch, and gone through a stand-up fight with every ruffian under twelve. Then, down among the fishermen on the beach, what sport! Knocking about among the boats, pulling at the oars like mad, or tugging at the sheets, baling out and pushing off, and riding away over the white breakers, and shouting for pure devilment above the plash of the water.
"Aw, man, it's all for the happy the lad feels inside," said Billy Quilleash. ”

“ Thorkell had thrust his hands in his pockets, and was making a great show of laughing boisterously.
The old woman stood silent for a moment, and her pale face turned livid. Then by a sudden impulse she lifted her eyes and her two trembling arms. "God in Heaven," she said, in a hoarse whisper, "let Thy wrath rest on this man's head; make this house that he has built for himself and for his children a curse to him and them and theirs; bring it to pass that no birth come to it but death come with it, and so on and on until Thou hast done justice between him and me." ”

“ Thorkell's bedroom in his new house on Slieu Dhoo looked over the Curraghs to the sea. As the day dawned he opened the window, and thrust out his head to drink of the cool morning air. The sun was rising over the land behind, a strong breeze was sweeping over the marshes from the shore, and the white curves of the breakers to the west reflected here and there the glow of the eastern sky. With the salt breath of the sea in his nostrils, it seemed to Thorkell a pitiful thing that a man should be a slave to a mere idea ”

“ 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. ”

“ Behind were the hills Slieu Dhoo and Slieu Volley, hidden now under a thick veil of mist, and from across the flat Curragh there came in the silence the low moan of the sea. "Once more," said a voice within the church, and then the psalm was sung again. Dan began to breathe easier, he scarce knew why, and a great weight seemed to be lifted off his breast.
As he turned away from the porch a heavy web of cloud was sweeping on and sweeping on from over the sea. He looked up and saw that a snow-storm was coming, and that the snow-cloud would break when it reached the mountains. ”

“ At ten in the morning Mona muffled herself in a great cloak, and went over to the meadow with Ewan. There a crowd had already gathered, strong men in blue pilots, old men in sheepskin coats, women with their short blue camblet gowns tucked over their linen caps, boys and girls on every side, all coming and going like shadows in the mist. At one end of the meadow several pairs of horses stood yoked to plows, and a few lads were in charge of them. On Ewan's arrival there was a general movement among a group of men standing together, and a respectful salutation to the parson. ”

“ Ewan's features became death-like in their rigidity. A sickening sense came over him. He was struggling to ask a question that his tongue would not utter.
"Mona—do you mean—do you mean that Dan has—has—outrage—Great God! what am I to say? How am I to say it?"
Mona drew herself up.
"I mean that I can hide my feelings no longer," she said. "Do with me as you may; I am not a child, and no brother shall govern me. Dan has been here—outrage or none—call it what you will—yes, and—" she dropped her head over the cot, "I love him." ”

“ You have health and food and freedom, and you live under no taskmaster's eye. Let the morning see you rise in content, and let the night look on you lying down in thankfulness. And turn not your face to the future to the unsettling of your spirit, so that when your time comes you may not die with a pale face. Then did I laugh at my old yearning for fellowship, and asked wherefore I should be lonely since I lived in the same planet with other men, and had the same moon and stars above my sleep as hung over the busy world of men. ”

“ Old Quilleash whispered again in the dead ear, and then he made a wild command to the blood to cease flowing, in the name of the three godly men who came to Rome—Christ, Peter, and Paul.
There was a minute of silence, and the blood seemed to stop. The men trembled; Davy, the lad, grew more pale than before, and Dan stood as if in a stupor, looking down and seeing all, yet seeing nothing.
Then the old man lifted his tawny face. "Cha marroo as clagh," he said, in another hoarse whisper. "He is dead as a stone." ”

“ 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 space of consciousness and of peace which would be the beginning of the end. ”

“ Or is it the sea that beats on the rock outside? And over our heads are the dead of ten generations."
But Dan was suffocating with shame; the desolation around, the death that was lying silent above, and the mother of sorrows that was wailing beneath had no terrors left for him.
"Father, my father," he cried again, "think what you ask me to do. Only think of it. You ask me to allow you to buy the silence of the meanest hinds alive. And at what a price? At the price of the influence, the esteem, the love, and the reverence that you have won by the labor of twenty years. ”