Part 23 (1/2)

”With my own eyes, dear sir,” said Jarvis.

The Deemster's lip quivered. ”My G.o.d! it must be true,” he said.

At that moment they heard a foot in the hall, and going to the door in his restless tramping to and fro, the Deemster saw that Ewan had come into the house. He called to him, and Ewan went into the study, and on Ewan going in Jarvis went out.

There was a look of such affright on the Deemster's face that before a word was spoken Ewan had caught the contagion of his father's terror.

Then, grasping his son by the wrist in the intensity of his pa.s.sion, the Deemster poured his tale into Ewan's ear. But it was not the tale that blind Kerry had told to Jarvis, it was not the tale that Jarvis had told to him; it was a tale compounded of superst.i.tion and of hate. Blind Kerry had said of her certain knowledge that Dan was accustomed to visit Mona in her chamber at night alone, entering in at the window. Jarvis Kerruish himself had seen him there--and that very day, not at night, but in the broad daylight, Jarvis had seen Dan come from Mona's room.

What? Had Ewan no bowels that he could submit to the dishonor of his own sister?

Ewan listened to the hot words that came from his father in a rapid and ceaseless whirl. The story was all so fatally circ.u.mstantial as the Deemster told it; no visions; no sights; no sneezings of an old woman; all was clear, hard, deadly, d.a.m.ning circ.u.mstance, or seemed to be so to Ewan's heated brain and poisoned heart.

”Father,” he said, very quietly, but with visible emotion, ”you are my father, but there are only two persons alive from whose lips I would take a story like this, and you are not one of them.”

At that word the Deemster's pa.s.sion overcame him. ”My G.o.d,” he cried, ”what have I done that I should not be believed by my own son? Would I slander my own daughter?”

But Ewan did not hear him. He had turned away, and was going toward the door of Mona's room. He moved slowly; there was an awful silence. Full half a minute his hand rested on the door handle, and only then did his nervous fingers turn it.

He stepped into the room. The room was empty. It was Mona's sitting-room, her work-room, her parlor, her nursery. Out of it there opened another room by a door at the further end of the hall on the left.

The door of that other room was ajar, and Ewan could hear, from where he now stood quivering in every limb, the soft cooing of the child--his child, his dead wife's child--and the inarticulate nothings that Mona, the foster-mother, babbled over it.

”Boo-loo-la-la-pa-pa,” ”Dearee-dearee-dear,” and then the tender cooing died off into a murmur, and an almost noiseless, long kiss on the full round baby-neck.

Ewan stood irresolute for a moment, and the sweat started from his forehead. He felt like one who has been kneeling at a shrine when a foul hand besmudges it. He had half swung about to go back, when his ear caught the sound of the Deemster's restless foot outside. He could not go back: the poison had gone to his heart.

He stepped into the bedroom that led out of the sitting-room. Mona raised her eyes as her brother entered. She was leaning over the cot, her beautiful face alive with the light of a tender love--a very vision of pure and delicious womanhood. Almost she had lifted the child from the cot to Ewan's arms when at a second glance she recognized the solemn expression of his face, and then she let the little one slide back to its pillow.

”What has happened?”

”Is it true,” he began very slowly, ”that Dan has been here?”

Then Mona blushed deeply, and there was a pause.

”Is it true?” he said again, and now with a hurried and startled look; ”is it true that Dan has been here--here?”

Mona misunderstood his emphasis. Ewan was standing in her chamber, and when he asked if Dan had been there, he was inquiring if Dan had been with her in that very room. She did not comprehend the evil thought that had been put in his heart. But she remembered the prohibition placed upon her both by Ewan and her father, never to receive Dan again, and her confusion at the moment of Ewan's question came of the knowledge that, contrary to that prohibition, she had received him.

”Is it true?” he asked yet again, and he trembled with the pa.s.sion he suppressed.

After a pause he answered himself, with an awful composure, ”It _is_ true.”

The child lifted itself and babbled at Mona with its innocent face all smiles, and Mona turned to hide her confusion by leaning over the cot.

”Boo--loo--la-la.”

Then a great wave of pa.s.sion seemed to come to Ewan, and he stepped to his sister, and took her by both hands. He was like a strong man in a dream, who feels sure that he can only be dreaming--struggling in vain to awake from a terrible nightmare, and knowing that a nightmare it must be that sits on him and crushes him.

”No, no, there must be a mistake; there must, there must,” he said, and his hot breathing beat on her face. ”He has never been here --here--never.”