The Deemster

Then the man, taking a long breath, opened his eyes, and seeing me he made some tender of gratitude. He told me that in being put ashore out of the brig "Bridget," from Cork, in Ireland, he had been struck on the head by the boom as it shifted with the wind, but that heeding not his injury, and thinking he could make Port-le-Mary to lie there that night, he had set out over the moor, while his late comrades of the brig put off from our perilous coast for England, whither they were bound.

So much had he said, speaking painfully, when again he fell in unconsciousness, and this time a strong delirium took hold of him. I tried not to hear what then he said, for it seemed to me an awful thing that in such an hour of reason's vanquishment the eye of man might look into the heart, which only God's eye should see. But hear him I must, or leave him alone in his present need. And he talked loudly of some great outrage wherein helpless women were thrown on the roads without shelter, and even the dead in their graves were desecrated. When he came to himself again he knew that his mind had wandered, and he told me that four years before he had been confessor at the convent of Port Royal in France. He said that in that place they had been men and women of the Order of Jansenists, teaching simple goodness and piety. But their convent had been suppressed by commission of the Jesuits, and being banished from France, he had fled to his native country of Ireland, where now he held the place of parish priest. More in this manner he said, but my mind was sorely perplexed, and I cannot recall his words faithfully, or rightly tell of the commerce of conversation between us, save that he put to me some broken questions in his moments of ease from pain, and muttered many times to himself after I had answered him briefly, or when I had answered him not at all.

For the sense that I was a man awakening out of a dream, a long dream of seven lonesome years, grew stronger as he told of what traffic the world had lately seen, and he himself been witness to. And my old creeping terror of the judgment upon me that forbade that any man should speak with me, or that I should speak with any man, struggled hard with the necessity now before me to make a swift choice whether I should turn away and leave this man, who had sought the shelter of my house, or break through the curse that bound me.

Choice of any kind I did not make with a conscious mind, but before I was yet aware I was talking with the priest, and he with me.

The Priest: He said, I am the Catholic priest that your good Bishop sent for out of Ireland, as you have heard I doubt not?

Myself: I answered No, that I had not heard.

The Priest: He asked me, did I live alone in this house, and how long I had been here?

Myself: I said, Yes, and that I had been seven years in this place come Christmas.

The Priest: He asked, What, and do you never go up to the towns?

Myself: I answered, No.

The Priest: Then, said the priest, thinking long before he spoke, you have not heard of the great sickness that has broken out among your people.

Myself: I told him I had heard nothing.

The Priest: He said it was the sweating sickness, and that vast numbers had fallen to it and many had died. I think he said – I can not be sure – that after fruitless efforts of his own to combat the disease, the Bishop of the island had sent to Ireland a message for him, having heard that the Almighty had blessed his efforts in a like terrible scourge that broke out two years before over the bogs of Western Ireland.

I listened with fear, and began to comprehend much that had of late been a puzzle to me. But before the priest had gone far his sickness overcame him afresh, and he fell in another long unconsciousness. While he lay thus, very silent or rambling afresh through the ways of the past, I know not what feelings possessed me, for my heart was in a great turmoil. But when he opened his eyes again, very peaceful in their quiet light, but with less than before of the power of life in them, he said he perceived that his errand had been fruitless, and that he had but come to my house to die. At that word I started to my feet with a cry, but he – thinking that my thoughts were of our poor people, who would lose a deliverer by his death – told me to have patience, for that God who had smitten him down would surely raise up in his stead a far mightier savior of my afflicted countrymen.

Then in the lapses of his pain he talked of the sickness that had befallen his own people; how it was due to long rains that soaked the soil, and was followed by the hot sun that drew out of the earth its foul sweat; how the sickness fell chiefly on such as had their houses on bogs and low-lying ground; and how the cure for it was to keep the body of the sick person closely wrapped in blankets, and to dry the air about him with many fires. He told me, too, that all medicines he had yet seen given for this disease were useless, and being oftenest of a cooling nature were sometimes deadly. He said that those of his own people who had lived on the mountains had escaped the malady. Much he also said of how men had fled from their wives, and women from their children in terror of the infection, but that, save only in the worst cases, contagion from the sweating sickness there could be none. More of this sort he said than I can well set down in this writing. Often he spoke with sore labor, as though a strong impulse prompted him. And I who listened eagerly heard what he said with a mighty fear, for well I knew that if death came to him as he foretold, I had now that knowledge which it must be sin to hide.

After he had said this the lapses into unconsciousness were more frequent than before, and the intervals of cool reason and sweet respite from pain were briefer. But a short while after midnight he came to himself with a smile on his meagre face and peace in his eyes. He asked me would I promise to do one thing for him, for that he was a dying man; and I told him yes, before I had heard what it was that he wished of me. Then he asked did I know where the Bishop lived, and at first I made no answer.

Bishop's Court they call his house, he said, and it lies to the northwest of this island by the land they have named the Curraghs. Do you know it?

I bent my head by way of assent.

The Priest: I would have you to go to him, he said, and say – The Catholic priest you sent for out of Ireland, Father Dalby, fulfilled his pledge to you and came to your island, but died by the visitation of God on the night of his landing on your shores. Will you deliver me this message?

I did not make him an answer, and he put the question again. Still my tongue clave to the roof of my mouth and I could not speak.

The Priest: You need not fear, he said, to go to the Bishop, for he is a holy man, as I have heard, without pride of worldly place, and the poor and outcast are his constant guests.

Even yet I answered nothing, but only held down my head while my heart surged within me.

The Priest: The fame of him as a righteous servant of God had gone far into other lands, and therefore it was I, who love Protestantism not at all, and hold no dalliance with it, came to your island at his call.

He took my hand in his hands and asked me again if I would go to the Bishop to say the words which he had given me, and I, with swimming eyes that saw nothing of the dying face before me, bowed my head, and answered, I will go.

Near three hours longer he lived, and much of that time he passed in a feeble delirium. But just before the end came he awoke, and motioned to a small bag that hung about his waist. I guessed his meaning, and drawing out a crucifix I placed it in his hands.

Then he passed silently away, and Death, the black camel that had knelt at the gate of my lone house these seven years of death-in-life, had entered it at last to take another man than me.

CHAPTER XLIII

OF HIS GREAT RESOLVE

When he had ceased to breathe, the air of my house became suddenly void and empty. With a great awe upon me I rose and stretched him out on the settle, and covered his white face with a cloth. Then in the silence I sat and tried to think of the strange accident that had that night befallen. One thing I saw with a fearful certainty, that a great burden of responsibility had fallen upon me. I thought of the people of this island perishing in their sickness, and I remembered that I alone of all men here knew how to succor and save them. I alone, and who was I? The one man accursed among men; the one man cut off forever from the company of the living; the man without family or kin or name among the people; whose flesh no man might touch with his flesh; whose eye no other eye might look upon.

And thus with the burden of responsibility came a yet more terrible burden of doubt. Was it for me to break through the dread judgment pronounced upon me, and go down among the people to heal them? And if I went would the people receive me, even in this their last extreme? Before the face of death would all other fears sink out of their sight? Or, fearing death itself less than the curse, would they rise up and drive me from them?

Long I sat in the anguish of black misgivings, and then rose and ranged my room from side to side, if perchance I might find some light in my darkness. And oft did the strangeness of that night's accidents so far bewilder me that for an instant it would seem that I must be in a dream. Once I lifted the face-cloth from the face on the settle that I might be sure that I was awake.

At length it fixed itself on my mind that whatsoever the judgment upon me, and whatsoever the people's terror of it, I had no choice but to bear the burden that was now mine own. Go down among my sick countrymen I should and must, let the end be what it would! Accursed man though I was, yet to fulfil the dead priest's mission was a mission wherewith God Himself seemed to charge me!

And now I scarce can say how it escaped me that my first duty was to take the body of the priest who had died in my house to one of the churchyards for Christian burial. There must have been some end of Providence in my strange forgetfulness, for if this thing had but come into my wild thoughts, and I had indeed done what it was fitting that I should do, then must certain wonderful consequences have fallen short of the blessing with which God has blessed them.

What I did, thinking no evil, was to pick up my spade and go out on the moor and delve for the dead man a shallow grave. As I turned to the door I stumbled over something that lay on the floor. Stooping to look at it, I found it to be the poor sea-mew. It was dead and stiff, and had still its wings outstretched as if in the act of flight.

I had not noted until now, when with a fearful glance backward I stepped out into the night, that the storm had gone. A thick dew-cloud lay deep over the land, and the round moon was shining through it. I chose a spot a little to the south of the stone circle on the Black Head, and there by the moon's light I howket a barrow of earth. The better part of an hour I wrought, and when my work was done I went back to my house, and then the dead man was cold. I took a piece of old canvas, and put it about the body, from head to feet, wrapping it over the clothes, and covering the face. This done, I lifted the dead in my arms and carried it out.

Very hollow and heavy was the thud of my feet on the turf in that uncertain light. As I toiled along I recalled the promise that I had given to the priest to see my father and speak with him. This memory brought me the sore pain of a wounded tenderness, but it strengthened my resolve. When I had reached the grave which I had made the night was near to morning, the dew-cloud had lifted away, and out of the unseen, murmuring sea that lay far and wide in front of me a gray streak, like an arrow's barb, was shooting up into the darkness of the sky.

One glance more I took at the dead man's face in that vague foredawn, and its swart meagreness seemed to have passed off under death's composing hand.

I covered the body with the earth, and then I said my prayer, for it was nigh to my accustomed hour. Also I sang my psalm, kneeling with my face toward the sea. And while I sang in that dank air the sky lightened and the sun rose out of the deep.

I know not what touched me then, if it was not the finger of God Himself; but suddenly a great burden seemed to fall from me, and my heart grew full of a blessed joy. And, O Father, I cried, I am delivered from the body of the death I lived in! I have lived, I have died, and I live again!

I saw apparently that the night of my long imprisonment was past, that the doors of my dungeon were broken open, and that its air was to be the breath of my nostrils no more.

Then the tears gushed from mine eyes and rained down my bony cheeks, for well I knew that God had seen that I, even I, had suffered enough.

And when I rose to my feet from beside the dead man's grave I felt of a certainty that the curse had fallen away.

His Last Words

Three days have gone since last I put my hand to this writing, and now I know that though the curse has fallen from me yet must its earthly penalties be mine to the end. Sorely weary, and more sorely ashamed, I have, within these three hours past, escaped from the tumult of the people. How their wild huzzas ring in my ears! "God bless the priest!" "Heaven save the priest!" Their loud cries of a blind gratitude, how they follow me! Oh, that I could fly from the memory of them, and wipe them out of my mind! There were those that appeared to know me among the many that knew me not. The tear-stained faces, the faces hard and stony, the faces abashed and confused – how they live before my eyes! And at the Tynwald, how the children were thrust under my hand for my blessing! My blessing – mine! and at the Tynwald! Thank God, it is all over! I am away from it forever. Home I am at last, and for the last time.

Better than three weeks have passed since the priest died in my house and I buried him on the moor. What strange events have since befallen, and in what a strange, new world! The Deemster's terrible end, and my own going with the priest's message to the Bishop, my father. But I shall not live to set it down. Nor is it needful so to do, for she whom I write for knows all that should be written henceforward. Everything she knows save one thing only, and if this writing should yet come to her hand that also she will then learn.

God's holy grace be with her! I have not seen her. The Deemster I have seen, the Bishop I have spoken with, and a living vision of our Ewan, his sweet child-daughter, have I held to my knee. But not once these many days has she who is dearest of all to me passed before my eyes. It is better so. I shunned her. Where she was, there I would not go. Yet, through all these heavy years I have borne her upon my heart. Day and night she has been with me. Oh, Mona, Mona, my Mona, apart forever are our paths in this dim world, and my tarnished name is your reproach. My love, my lost love, as a man I yearned for you to hold you to my breast. But I was dead to you, and I would not break in with an earthly love that must be brief and might not be blessed on a memory that death has purified of its stains. Adieu, adieu, my love, my own Mona; though we are never to clasp hands again, yet do I know that you will be with me as an unseen presence when the hour comes – ah! how soon – of death's asundering.

For the power of life is low in me. I have taken the sickness. It is from the Deemster that I have taken it. No longer do I fear death. Yet I hesitate to do with myself what I have long thought that I would do when the end should come. "To-morrow," and "to-morrow," and "to-morrow," I say in my heart, and still I am here.

CHAPTER XLIV

THE SWEATING SICKNESS

I

When the sweating sickness first appeared in the island it carried off the lone body known as Auntie Nan, who had lived on the Curragh. "Death never came without an excuse – the woman was old," the people said, and went their way. But presently a bright young girl who had taken herbs and broths and odd comforts to Auntie Nan while she lay helpless was stricken down. Then the people began to hold their heads together. Four days after the girl was laid to rest her mother died suddenly, and two or three days after the mother's death the father was smitten. Then three other children died in quick succession, and in less than three weeks not a soul of that household was left alive. This was on the southwest of the Curragh, and on the north of it, near to the church of Andreas, a similar outbreak occurred about the same time. Two old people named Creer were the first to be taken; and a child at Cregan's farm and a servant at the rectory of the Archdeacon followed quickly.

The truth had now dawned upon the people, and they went about with white faces. It was the time of the hay harvest, and during the two hours' rest for the midday meal the haymakers gathered together in the fields for prayer. At night, when work was done, they met again in the streets of the villages to call on God to avert his threatened judgment. On Sundays they thronged the churches at morning and afternoon services, and in the evening they congregated on the shore to hear the Quaker preachers, who went about, under the shadow of the terror, without hindrance or prosecution. One such preacher, a town-watch at Castletown, known as Billy-by-Nite, threw up his calling, and traveled the country in the cart of a carrier, prophesying a visitation of God's wrath, wherein the houses should be laid waste and the land be left utterly desolate.

The sickness spread rapidly, and passed from the Curraghs to the country south and east of them. Not by ones but tens were the dead now counted day after day, and the terror spread yet faster than the malady. The herring season had run a month only, and it was brought to a swift close. Men who came in from the boats after no more than a night's absence were afraid to go up to their homes lest the sickness had gone up before them. Then they went out to sea no longer, but rambled for herbs in the rank places where herbs grew, and, finding them, good and bad, fit and unfit, they boiled and ate them.

Still the sickness spread, and the dead were now counted in hundreds. Of doctors there were but two in the island, and these two were closely engaged sitting by the bedsides of the richer folk, feeling the pulse with one hand and holding the watch with the other. Better service they did not do, for rich and poor alike fell before the sickness.

The people turned to the clergy, and got "beautiful texes," but no cure. They went to the old Bishop, and prayed for the same help that he had given them in the old days of their great need. He tried to save them and failed. A preparation of laudanum, which had served him in good stead for the flux, produced no effect on the sweating sickness. With other and other medicines he tried and tried again. His old head was held very low. "My poor people," he said, with a look of shame, "I fear that by reason of the sins of me and mine the Spirit of the Lord is gone from me."

Then the people set up a cry as bitter as that which was wrung from them long before when they were in the grip of their hunger. "The Sweat is on us," they groaned; and the old Bishop, that he might not hear their voice of reproach, shut himself up from them like a servant whom the Lord had forsaken.

Then terror spread like a fire, but terror in some minds begets a kind of courage, and soon there were those who would no longer join the prayer-meetings in the hay-fields or listen to the preaching on the shore. One of these was a woman of middle life, an idle slattern, who had for six or seven years lived a wandering life. While others prayed she laughed mockingly and protested that for the Sweat as well as for every other scare of life there was no better preventive than to think nothing about it. She carried out her precept by spending her days in the inns, and her nights on the roads, being supported in her dissolute existence by secret means, whereof gossip spoke frequently. The terrified world about her, busy with its loud prayers, took small heed of her blasphemies until the numbers of the slain had risen from hundreds to thousands. Then in their frenzy the people were carried away by superstition, and heard in the woman's laughter the ring of the devil's own ridicule. Somebody chanced to see her early one morning drawing water to bathe her hot forehead, and before night of that day the evil word had passed from mouth to mouth that it was she who had brought the sweating sickness by poisoning the wells.

Thereupon half a hundred lusty fellows, with fear in their wild eyes, gathered in the street, and set out to search for the woman. In her accustomed haunt, the "Three Legs of Man," they found her, and she was heavy with drink. They hounded her out of the inn into the road, and there, amid oaths and curses, they tossed her from hand to hand until her dress was in rags, her face and arms were bleeding, and she was screaming in the great fright that had sobered her.

It was Tuesday night, and the Deemster, who had been holding court at Peeltown late that day, was riding home in the darkness, when he heard this tumult in the road in front of him. Putting spurs to his horse, he came upon the scene of it. Before he had gathered the meaning of what was proceeding in the dark road, the woman had broken from her tormentors and thrown herself before him, crawling on the ground and gripping his foot in the stirrup.

"Deemster, save me! save me, Deemster!" she cried in her frantic terror.

The men gathered round and told their story. The woman had poisoned the wells, and the bad water had brought the Sweat. She was a charmer by common report, and should be driven out of the island.

"What pedler's French is this?" said the Deemster, turning hotly on the crowd about him. "Men, men, what forgotten age have you stepped out of that you come to me with such driveling, doddering, blank idiocy?"

But the woman, carried away by her terror, and not grasping the Deemster's meaning, cried that if he would but save her she would confess. Yes, she had poisoned the wells. It was true she was a charmer. She acknowledged to the evil eye. But save her, save her, save her, and she would tell all.

The Deemster listened with a feverish impatience. "The woman lies," he said under his breath, and then lifting his voice he asked if any one had a torch. "Who is the woman?" he asked; "I seem to know her voice."

"D – her, she's a witch," said one of the men, thrusting his hot face forward in the darkness over the woman's cowering body. "Ay, and so was her mother before her," he said again.

"Tell me, woman, what's your name?" said the Deemster, stoutly; but this question seemed to break down as he asked it.

There was a moment's pause.

"Mally Kerruish," the woman answered him, slobbering at his stirrup in the dark road before him.

"Let her go," said the Deemster in a thick underbreath. In another moment he had disengaged his foot from the woman's grasp and was riding away.

That night Mally Kerruish died miserably of her fright in the little tool-shed of a cottage by the Cross Vein, where six years before her mother had dropped to a lingering death alone.

News of her end was taken straightway to Ballamona by one of the many tongues of evil rumor. With Jarvis Kerruish, who was in lace collar and silver-buckled shoes, the Deemster had sat down to supper. He rose, left his meat untouched, and Jarvis supped alone. Late that night he said, uneasily:

"I intend to send in my resignation to Castletown – burden of my office as Deemster is too much for my strength."

"Good," said Jarvis; "and if, sir, you should ever think of resigning the management of your estate also, you know with how much willingness I would undertake it, solely in order that you might spend your days in rest and comfort.

"I have often thought of it latterly," said the Deemster. Half an hour thereafter he spent in an uneasy perambulation of the dining-room while Jarvis picked his teeth and cleaned his nails.

"I think I must surely be growing old," he said then, and, drawing a long breath, he took up his bedroom candle.

II

The sickness increased, the deaths were many in the houses about Ballamona, and in less than a week after the night of Mally Kerruish's death, Thorkell Mylrea, a Deemster no longer, had made over to Jarvis Kerruish all absolute interest in his estates. "I shall spend my last days in the cause of religion," he said. He had paid up his tithe in pound-notes – five years' tithe in arrears, with interest added at the rate of six per cent. Blankets he had ordered for the poor of his own parish, a double blanket for each family, with cloaks for some of the old women.