|
|
CHAPTER XXII.
Fair weather continued that year almost till the last week in October, when it was suddenly broken by a night of storm and tropical rain. Not without warning to those who could read the signs of the skies; for though the preceeding day had been calm and gently bright, and the sea only agitated by the never-dying swell of the tide and the Atlantic currents, the sun had gone down amid a coppery haze, which reminded one of an angry countenance. And scarcely had he sunk ere the black vapours began to gather from the north, and the furnace hue spread high over the heavens in lurid patches, and a moaning came through the air in short gusts of sound from the far deep, where the elements seem to have their great labouratory, and to improvise tempests. Into many a poor woman’s heart along the iron-bound coast did those weather-tokens strike a deadly fear; for numerous canoes and hookers had gone out to the fishing-grounds this morning; could they get back before the storm?
All night it grew, till the moaning increased to a rushing as of innumerable mighty wings filling the vaulted zenith; and a roar as of ten thousand unchained lions from the ocean beneath. Indistinctly through the vapoury sky appeared vast cloud-shapes, writhing, heaping, as if the wind was working its will on them; and occasionally a few passionate drops drove through the air, like lashings of steel. But toward daylight some further condensation too place, and the vapours seemed melting together in rain.
The Manuscript Man was waked by a continuous knocking at the cabin-door. A woman’s voice answered his inquiry; and when he drew back the bolt he saw Colman’s wife, having one child on her back, and two by her side, all drenched with wet.
“Katty, woman! what’s brought you out at this hour in the pourin’ rain?”
“Good reason enough,” said she, in a manner of stolid misery. “My Pat is drowned.”
He stared at her. “Come inside,” and he took the heavy child from her shoulders. “You don’t know rightly what yer sayin’, my poor woman. With the help of God, Pat is not drowned.”
Laying the child on the settle, he began to heap down turf for a fire, which was indeed badly wanting to dry the new comers. Maureen appeared from the inner room, and lent her aid, with many expressions of sympathy. Mrs. Colman wrung the rain out of the children’s clothes and her own.
“Pat went out yesterday morning,” was her account, “himself and Owen pulling the canoe. ‘I’ll go down to the banks,’ says he,’ for may be for three months I wont have so calm a week again, an’ sure ‘tis only I can do less work an’ will be slower comin’ home,’ says he, ‘owin’ to the want of a couple more hands.’ For they wouldn’t work with my Pat, one of ‘em, since the curse; my Pat, that was a better Christian than they all put together!” She sat down on the settle, and began to cry and rock herself.
“Keep up, keep up,” said the Manuscript Man, though he could not but acknowledge the case looked bad enough. “He may have gone to the fishing-banks yesterday, and have got in safe somewhere before the storm came on. Naturally he’d make for the nearest land.”
“I tell you he can’t be alive out in them waves—if you only seen it! they’re thunderin’ enough to shake down the mountains. And he an’ Owneen couldn’t pull as fast as the rest of the canoes that had more oars. Ah no, no, no! the curse is come true at last!”
The poor creature covered her face with her hands, and shook with sobs.
“Woman, the curse is not come true!” exclaimed Clare, standing up before her. “Any mortal man curse one of God’s own family, like your Pat was! God put a bar across that curse, and across all the curses in the universe, the day that he redeemed us. Even if it was a thing that it was his will the canoe should be lost, that would be no curse to your husband, but God’s heaven right away. But you’ve given him up too soon, Mrs. Colman. Pat was a fine seaman, and till we hear more there’s no reason why he hasn’t gone ashore somewhere else than at the the Black Man’s Path.”
She revived somewhat under his words of hope, and the poor little children, who had been crying also, smiled as they streched their brown hands to the blaze. “Patsey stayed up above to mind the cabin,” said his mother: “for he says, (as wise as an ould man, the craythur,) if my daddy come home, he’d have no one to make down a bit of fire.’ But I thought, Manuscript Man, as you’d be the sort would go down to Rienvella, an’ see was there any news of the canoes?” “So I will, my poor woman, though not one of the people will spake to me these times: but sure Pat’s own brother couldn’t be so hard-hearted but he’d set us at ease if he could?” And away went Donat Clare presently through all the wet, across country to the fishing village.
The air was full of spray more than of rain just now; of spray drifted in sheets over the cliffs, and for a considerable space inland. Also was it full of the illimitable roar of the sea, that majestic sound which the dweller on the coast learns to gauge with his ear so as to estimate the intensity of the storm. It touched the Manuscript Man with a great dread lest Mrs. Colman’s apprehension might probably be true; certainly no boat could live in a sea with that booming surge.
“He shall not be afraid of evil tidings.” Archbishop Leighton thus sweetly discourses concerning the privilege of the Christian soul: “Being once fixed on God, the heart may put cases to itself, and suppose all things imaginable, even the most terrible, and look for them: not troubled, before trouble comes, with dark and dismal apprehensions; but satisfied in a quiet, unmoved expectation of the hardest things. Whatsoever it is, the heart is not afraid of the news of it; because it is fixed, trusting in the Lord. . . . This is the impregnable fortress of a soul. All is at the disposal and command of my God; my Father rules all!”
Donat had it in a measure this disastrous morning. Yet he could not help crying with a strong inward cry to his God, and pleading a plea like that of Moses, For thine own honor’s sake, O Lord! Let not thy people be put to reproach! Let not the enemy say that the curse has wrought evil against thy chosen ones.
Late in the day the Manuscript Man returned, taking his way over the soaked spongy cliffs to Colman’s cabin, whither the poor wife and her children were to go back. No tidings had he of any consequence; other canoes had made the land, though with difficulty, having more pairs of oars than that of which he was in search. Clare was avoided as if he had the plague.
After many appeals, one fisherman sulkily called out from his fireside that he “seen the souper” in his canoe far beyond the rest, and supposed the curse had overtaken him at last; and if the Manuscript Man did not go away “he’d take the pitchfork” to him. Colman’s brother shouted that he should come no nearer than the middle of the road, and said if Pat was drowned he had nobody but himself to blame, “for goin’ aginst his reverence,” and he hoped the wife would return to her duty “like a dacent woman.” Never had priestly power stood higher in Rienvella.
Maureen was in the cabin on the cliff, having stayed with the afflicted woman all day, and purposing to stay all night should no good tidings arrive.
“May be he got ashore at the light-house, outside on Arrahbeg, an’ if so we couldn’t hear of him for a day or two till the swell goes down,” was the last crumb of earthly comfort. But God sends a peace into the spirits of those who trust him, quite independent of human hope; and thus it was here.
The Manuscript Man went back to his own place late at night, when the sky had cleared enough to reveal a low western moon, hung over the tumbling sea. Approaching the cabin, he thought there was a gleam of light in the window—a red gleam, not such as the low, yellow moon could cause; yet the door must be locked—he had the key on his finger, as his daughter had given it to him. Truly a fire was burning on the hearth, and a man sitting before it.
“Pat himself!” was his first thought, seeing this through the window. And then a momentary chill of superstition crept over him—was it his spirit, given back by the dripping sea? How otherwise could he enter through the fastened door?
“No, no,” reasoned the Manuscript Man, as he gazed into the dim chamber, and tried to make out more than the outline of the form. “If Pat Colman’s soul is gone from his body, he’s with the Lord. Why should he come back from heaven, without he had a message from the Lord, like Moses and Elias?”
Presently a blaze bursting up through the turf showed figure and feature more distinctly, and the hard echo of a cough smote on the watcher’s ear. “My brother Redmond himself!” he exclaimed aloud, and pushed open the door.
