The Deemster

This done, he relinquished his worldly possessions, and shut himself from the sickness in a back room of Ballamona, admitting none, and never stirring abroad except to go to church.

The Bishop had newly opened the chapel at Bishop's Court for daily prayers, and of all constant worshipers there Thorkell was now the most constant. Every morning his little shriveled figure knelt at the form before the Communion, and from his blanched lips the prayers were mumbled audibly. Much he sought the Bishop's society, and in every foolish trifle he tried to imitate his brother. A new canon of the Church had lately ordered that every Bishop should wear an episcopal wig, and over his flowing white hair the Bishop of Man had perforce to put the grotesque head-covering. Seeing this, Thorkell sent to England for a periwig, and perched the powdered curls on his own bald crown.

The sickness was at its worst, the terror was at its height, and men were flying from their sick families to caves in the mountains, when one day the Bishop announced in church that across in Ireland, as he had heard, there was a good man who had been blessed under God with miraculous powers of curing this awful malady.

"Send for him! send for him!" the people shouted with one voice, little heeding the place they sat in.

"But," said the Bishop, with a failing voice, "the good man is a Roman Catholic – indeed, a Romish priest."

At that word a groan came from the people, for they were Protestants of Protestants.

"Let us not think that no good can come out of Nazareth," the Bishop continued. "And who shall say, though we love the Papacy not at all, but that holy men adhere to it?"

There was a murmur of disapproval.

"My good people," the Bishop went on, falteringly, "we are in God's hands, and his anger burns among us."

The people broke up abruptly, and talking of what the Bishop had said, they shook their heads. But their terror continued, and before its awful power their qualms of faith went down as before a flood. Then they cried, "Send for the priest!" and the Bishop sent for him.

Seven weary days passed, and at length with a brightening countenance the Bishop announced that the priest had answered that he would come. Other three days went by, and the news passed from north to south that in the brig "Bridget of Cork," bound for Whitehaven, with liberty to call at Peeltown, the Romish priest, Father Dalby, had sailed for the Isle of Man.

Then day after day the men went up to the hilltops to catch sight of the sail of an Irish brig. At last they sighted one from the Mull Hills, and she was five leagues south of the Calf. But the wind was high, and the brig labored hard in a heavy sea. Four hours the people watched her, and saw her bearing down into the most dangerous currents about their coast. Night closed in, and the wind rose to the strength of a gale. Next morning at early dawn the people climbed the headlands again, but no brig could they now see, and none had yet made their ports.

"She must be gone down," they told themselves, and so saying they went home with heavy hearts.

But two days afterward there went through the island a thrilling cry, "He is here! – he has come! – the priest!" And at that word a wave of rosy health swept over a thousand haggard faces.

III

In the dark sleeping-room of a little ivy-covered cottage that stood end-on to the highroad through Michael a blind woman lay dying of the sickness. It was old Kerry; and on a three-legged stool before her bed her husband Hommy sat. Pitiful enough was Hommy's poor ugly face. His thick lubber lips were drawn heavily downward, and under his besom brows his little eyes were red and his eyelids swollen. In his hands he held a shovel, and he was using it as a fan to puff air into Kerry's face.

"It's all as one, man," the sick woman moaned. "Ye're only keeping the breath in me. I'm bound to lave ye."

And thereupon Hommy groaned lustily and redoubled his efforts with the shovel. There was a knock at the door, and a lady entered. It was Mona, pale of face, but very beautiful in her pallor, and with an air of restful sadness.

"And how are you now, dear Kerry?" she asked, leaning over the bed.

"Middling badly, mam," Kerry answered feebly. "I'll be took, sarten sure, as the saying is."

"Don't lose heart, Kerry. Have you not heard that the priest is coming?"

"Chut, mam! I'll be gone, plaze God, where none of the like will follow me."

"Hush, Kerry! He was in Patrick yesterday; he will be in German to-morrow, and the next day he will be here in Michael. He is a good man, and is doing wonders with the sick."

Kerry turned face to the wall, and Hommy talked with Mona. What was to become of him when Kerry was gone? Who would be left to give him a bit of a tidy funeral? The Dempster? Bad cess to the like of him. What could be expected from a master who had turned his own daughter out of doors?

"I am better where I am," Mona whispered, and that was her sole answer to the deaf man's too audible questions. And Hommy, after a pause, assented to the statement with his familiar comment, "The Bishop's a rael ould archangel, so he is."

Thereupon Kerry turned her gaze from the wall and said, "Didn't I tell ye, mam, that he wasn't dead?"

"Who?"

"Why – him – him that we mayn't name —him."

"Hush, dear Kerry, he died long ago."

"I tell ye, mam, he's a living man, and coming back – I know it – he's coming back immadient – I saw him."

"Drop it, woman, it's drames," said Hommy.

"I saw him last night as plain as plain – wearing a long gray sack and curranes on his feet, and a queer sort of hat."

"It must have been the priest that you saw in your dream, dear Kerry."

The sick woman raised herself on one elbow, and answered eagerly, "I tell you no, mam, but him —him."

"Lie still, Kerry; you will be worse if you uncover yourself to the cool air."

There was a moment's quiet, and then the blind woman said finally, "I'm going where I'll have my eyes same as another body."

At that Hommy's rugged face broadened to a look of gruesome sorrow, and he renewed his exertions with the shovel.

IV

At seven o'clock that day the darkness had closed in. A bright turf fire burned in a room in Bishop's Court, and the Bishop sat before it with his slippered feet on a sheepskin rug. His face was mellower than of old, and showed less of strength and more of sadness. Mona stood at a tea-table by his side, cutting slices of bread and butter.

A white face, with eyes of fear, looked in at the dark window. It was Davy Fayle. He was but little older to look upon for the seven years that had gone heavily over his troubled head. His simple look was as vacant and his lagging lip hung as low; but his sluggish intellect had that night become suddenly charged with a ready man's swiftness.

Mona went to the door. "Come in," she said; but Davy would not come. He must speak with her outside, and she went out to him.

He was trembling visibly.

"What is it?" she said.

"Mistress Mona," said Davy, in a voice of great emotion, "it's as true as the living God."

"What?" she said.

"He's alive – ould Kerry said true – he's alive, and coming back."

Mona glanced into his face by the dull light that came through the window. His eyes, usually dull and vacant, were aflame with a strange fire. She laid one hand on the door-jamb, and said, catching her breath, "Davy, remember what the men said long ago – that they saw him lying in the snow."

"He's alive, I'm telling you – I've seen him with my own eyes."

"Where?"

"I went down to Patrick this morning to meet the priest coming up – but it's no priest at all – it's – it's – it's him."

Again Mona drew her breath audibly.

"Think what you are saying, Davy. If it should not be true! Oh, if you should be mistaken!"

"It's Bible truth, Mistress Mona – I'll go bail on it afore God A'mighty."

"The priest, you say?"

"Aw, lave it to me to know Mastha – I mean —him"

"I must go in, Davy. Good-night to you, and thank you – Good-night, and – " the plaintive tenderness of her voice broke down to a sob. "Oh, what can it all mean?" she exclaimed more vehemently.

Davy turned away. The low moan of the sea came up through the dark night.

V

It happened that after service the next morning the Bishop and Thorkell walked out of the chapel side by side.

"We are old men now, Gilcrist," said Thorkell, "and should be good friends together."

"That is so," the Bishop answered.

"We've both lost a son, and can feel for each other."

The Bishop made no reply.

"We're childless men, in fact."

"There's Mona, God bless her!" the Bishop said, very softly.

"True, true," said Thorkell, and there was silence for a moment.

"It was partly her fault when she left me – partly, I say; – don't you think so, Gilcrist?" said Thorkell, nervously.

"She's a dear, sweet soul," the Bishop said.

"It's true."

They stepped on a few paces, and passed by the spot whereon the two fishermen laid down their dread burden from the Mooragh seven years before. Then Thorkell spoke again and in a feverish voice.

"D'ye know, Gilcrist, I sometimes awake in the night crying 'Ewan! Ewan!'"

The Bishop did not answer, and Thorkell, in another tone, asked when the Irish priest was to reach Michael.

"He may be here to-morrow," the Bishop said.

Thorkell shuddered.

"It must be that God is revenging himself upon us with this fearful scourge."

"It dishonors God to say so," the Bishop replied. "He is calling upon us to repent."

There was another pause, and then Thorkell asked what a man should do to set things right in this world if perchance he had taken a little more in usury than was fair and honest.

"Give back whatever was more than justice," said the Bishop promptly.

"But that is often impossible, Gilcrist."

"If he has robbed the widow, and she is dead, let him repay the fatherless."

"It is impossible – I tell you, Gilcrist, it is impossible – impossible."

As they were entering the house Thorkell asked if there was truth in the rumor that the wells had been charmed.

"To believe such stories is to be drawn off from a trust in God and a dependence on his good providence," said the Bishop.

"But I must say, brother, that strange things are known to happen. Now I myself have witnessed extraordinary fulfilments."

"Superstition is a forsaking of God, whom we have most need to fly to in trouble and distress," the Bishop answered.

"True – very true – I loathe it; but still it's a sort of religion, isn't it, Gilcrist?"

"So the wise man says – as the ape is a sort of a man."

VI

Three days later the word went round that he who had been looked for was come to Michael, and many went out to meet him. He was a stalwart man, straight and tall, bony and muscular. His dress was poverty's own livery: a gray shapeless sack-coat, reaching below his knees, curranes on his feet of untanned skin with open clocks, and a cap of cloth, half helmet and half hood, drawn closely down over his head. His cheeks were shaven and deeply bronzed. The expression of his face was of a strange commingling of strength and tenderness. His gestures were few, slow, and gentle. His measured step was a rhythmic stride – the stride of a man who has learned in the long endurance of solitude to walk alone in the ways of the world. He spoke little, and scarcely answered the questions which were put to him. "Aw, but I seem to have seen the good man in my drames," said one; and some said "Ay" to that, and some laughed at it.

Within six hours of his coming he had set the whole parish to work. Half of the men he sent up into the mountains to cut gorse and drag it down to the Curraghs in piles of ten feet high, tied about with long sheep lankets of twisted straw. The other half he set to dig trenches in the marshy places. He made the women to kindle a turf fire in every room with a chimney-flue, and when night came he had great fires of gorse, peat, withered vegetation, and dried sea-wrack built on the open spaces about the houses in which the sickness had broken out. He seemed neither to rest nor eat. From sick house to sick house, from trench to trench, and fire to fire, he moved on with his strong step. And behind him, at all times, having never a word from him and never a look, but trudging along at his heels like a dog, was the man-lad, Davy Fayle.

Many of the affrighted people who had taken refuge in the mountains returned to their homes at his coming, but others, husbands and fathers chiefly, remained on the hills, leaving their wives and families to fend for themselves. Seeing this, he went up and found some of them in their hiding-places, and shaming them out of their cowardice, brought them back behind him, more docile than sheep behind a shepherd. When the ex-town-watch, Billy-by-Nite, next appeared on the Curraghs in the round of his prophetic itineration, the strange man said not a word, but he cut short the vehement jeremiad by taking the Quaker prophet by legs and neck, and throwing him headlong into one of the drain-troughs newly dug in the dampest places.

But the strength of this silent man was no more conspicuous than his tenderness. When in the frenzy of their fever the sufferers would cast off their clothes, and try to rise from their beds and rush into the cooler air from the heat by which he had surrounded them, his big horny hands would restrain them with a great gentleness.

Before he had been five days in Michael and on the Curraghs the sickness began to abate. The deaths were fewer, and some of the sick rose from their beds. Then the people plied him with many questions, and would have overwhelmed him with their rude gratitude. To their questions he gave few answers, and when they thanked him he turned and left them.

They said that their Bishop, who was grown feeble, the good ould angel, thought it strange that he had not yet visited him. To this he answered briefly that before leaving the parish he would go to Bishop's Court.

They told him that Mistress Mona, daughter of the Deemster that was, bad cess to him, had been seeking him high and low. At this his lip trembled, and he bent his head.

"The good man's face plagues me mortal," said old Billy-the-Gawk. "Whiles I know it, and other whiles I don't."

VII

Only another day did the stranger remain in Michael, but the brief times was full of strange events. The night closed in before seven o'clock. It was then very dark across the mountains, and the sea lay black beyond the cliffs, but the Curraghs were dotted over with the many fires which had been kindled about the infected houses.

Within one of these houses, the home of Jabez Gawne, the stranger stood beside the bed of a sick woman, the tailor's wife. Behind him there were anxious faces. Davy Fayle, always near him, leaned against the door-jamb by the porch.

And while the stranger wrapped the sweltering sufferer in hot blankets, other sufferers sent to him to pray of him to come to them. First there came an old man to tell of his grandchild, who had been smitten down that day, and she was the last of his kin whom the Sweat had left alive. Then a woman, to say that her husband, who had started again with the boats but yesterday, had been brought home to her that night with the sickness. He listened to all who came, and answered quietly, "I will go."

At length a young man ran in and said, "The Dempster's down. He's shouting for you, sir. He sent me hot-foot to fetch you."

The stranger listened as before, and seemed to think rapidly for a moment, for his under lip trembled, and was drawn painfully inward. Then he answered as briefly as ever, and with as calm a voice, "I will go."

The man ran back with his answer, but presently returned, saying, with panting breath, "He's rambling, sir; raving mad, sir; and shouting that he must be coming after you if you're not for coming to him."

"We will go together," the stranger said, and they went out immediately. Davy Fayle followed them at a few paces.

VIII

Through the darkness of that night a woman, young and beautiful, in cloak and hood like a nun's, walked from house to house of the Curraghs, where the fires showed that the sickness was still raging. It was Mona. These three days past she had gone hither and thither, partly to tend the sick people, partly in hope of meeting the strange man who had come to cure them. Again and again she had missed him, being sometimes only a few minutes before or after him.

Still she passed on from house to house, looking for him as she went in at every fresh door, yet half dreading the chance that might bring them face to face.

She entered the house where he had received her father's message almost on the instant when he left it. The three men had gone by her in the darkness.

Jabez, the tailor, who sat whimpering in the ingle, told her that the priest had that moment gone off to Ballamona, where the Dempster that was – hadn't she heard the newses? – was new down with the Sweat.

Her delicate face whitened at that, and after a pause she turned to follow. But going back to the hearth, she asked if the stranger had been told that the Bishop wanted to see him. Jabez told her yes, and that he had said he would go up to Bishop's Court before leaving the parish.

Then another question trembled on her tongue, but she could not utter it. At last she asked what manner of man the stranger was to look upon.

"Aw, big and sthraight and tall," said Jabez.

And Billy-the-Gawk, who sat at the opposite side of the ingle, being kin to Jabez's sick wife, said, "Ay, and quiet like, and solemn extraordinary."

"A wonderful man, wonderful, wonderful," said Jabez, still whimpering. "And wherever he comes the Sweat goes down before him with a flood."

"As I say," said Billy-the-Gawk, "the good man's face plagues me mortal. I can't bethink me where I've seen the like of it afore."

Mona's lips quivered at that word, and she seemed to be about to speak; but she said nothing.

"And the strong he is!" said Jabez: "I never knew but one man in the island with half the strength of arm as him."

Mona's pale face twitched visibly, and she listened as with every faculty.

"Who d'ye mane?" asked Billy-the-Gawk.

At that question there was a moment's silence between the men. Then each drew a long breath, dislodged a heavy burden from his throat, glanced significantly up at Mona, and looked into the other's face.

"Him," said Jabez, in a faint underbreath, speaking behind his hand.

"Him?"

Billy-the-Gawk straightened his crooked back, opened wide his rheumy eyes, pursed up his wizened cheeks, and emitted a low, long whistle.

"Lord A'mighty!"

For an instant Jabez looked steadily into the old mendicant's face, and then drew himself up in his seat —

"Lord a-massy!"

Mona's heart leaped to her mouth. She was almost beside herself with suspense, and felt an impulse to scream.

IX

Within a week after old Thorkell had conversed with the Bishop about the rumor that the wells had been charmed, his terror of the sickness had grown nigh to madness. He went to church no longer, but shut himself up in his house. Night and day his restless footstep could be heard to pass from room to room, and floor to floor. He ate little, and such was his dread of the water from his well that for three days together he drank nothing. At length, burning from thirst, he went up the Dhoon Glen and drank at a pool, going down on hands and knees to lap the water like a dog. Always he seemed to be mumbling prayers, and when the bell of the church rang, no matter for what occasion, he dropped to his knees and prayed audibly. He forbade the servants of the house to bring him news of deaths, but waited and watched and listened at open doors for their conversation among themselves. At night he went to the front windows to look at the fires that were kindled about the infected houses on the Curraghs. He never failed to turn from that sight with bitter words. Such work was but the devil's play; it was making a mock of God, who had sent the sickness to revenge Himself on the island's guilty people. Thorkell told Jarvis Kerruish as much time after time. Jarvis answered contemptuously, and Thorkell retorted angrily. At length they got to high words, and Jarvis flung away.

One morning Thorkell called for Hommy-beg. They told him that Hommy had been nursing his wife. The blind woman was now dead, and Hommy was burying her. At this Thorkell's terror was appalling to look upon. All night long he had been telling himself that he despised the belief in second sight, but that he would see if Kerry pretended to know whether he himself was to outlive the scourge. No matter, the woman was dead. So much the better!

Later the same day, Thorkell remembered that somewhere on the mountains there lived an old farmer who was a seer and bard. He would go to see the old charlatan. Yes, he would amuse himself with the superstition that aped religion. Thorkell set out, and found the bard's lonely house far up above the Sherragh Vane. In a corner of the big fireplace the old man sat, with a black shawl bound about his head and tied under his chin. He was past eighty years of age, and his face was as old a face as Thorkell had ever looked upon. On his knee a young child was sitting, and two or three small boys were playing about his feet. A brisk middle-aged woman was stirring the peats and settling the kettle on the chimney-hook. She was the old man's wife, and the young brood were the old man's children.

Thorkell began to talk of carvals, and said he had come to hear some of them. The old bard's eyes brightened. He had written a carol about the sickness. From the "lath" he took a parchment pan, full of papers that were worn, thumb-marked, and greasy. From one of these papers he began to read, and Thorkell tried to listen. The poem was an account of a dream. The dreamer had dreamt that he had gone into a church. There was a congregation gathered, and a preacher was in the pulpit. But when the preacher prayed the dreamer heard nothing of God. At length he discovered that it was a congregation of the dead in the region of the damned. They had all died of the Sweat. Every man of them had been warned by wise men and women in this world. The congregation sang a joyless psalm, and when their service was done they began to break up. Then the dreamer recognized some whom he had known in the flesh. Among them was one who had killed his own son, and he was afflicted with a burning thirst. To this unhappy man the dreamer offered a basin of milk-and-water, but the damned soul could not get the basin to his parched lips, struggle as he might to lift it in his stiff arms.

At first Thorkell listened with the restless mind of a man who had come on better business, and then with a feverish interest. The sky had darkened since he entered the house, and while the old bard chanted in his sing-song voice, and the children made their clatter around his feet, a storm of heavy rain pelted against the window-pane.

The ballad ended in the grim doggerel of a harrowing appeal to the sinner to shun his evil courses:

"O sinner, see your dangerous state,And think of hell ere 'tis too late;When worldly cares would drown each thought,Pray call to mind that hell is hot.Still to increase your godly fearsLet this be sounding in your ears,Still bear in mind that hell is hot,Remember, and forget it not."

Thus, with a swinging motion of the body, the old bard of the mountains chanted this rude song on the dangers of damnation. Thorkell leaped up from the settle and sputtered out an expression of contempt. What madness was this? If he had his way he would clap all superstitious people into the Castle.

The next morning, when sitting down to breakfast, Thorkell told Jarvis Kerruish that he had three nights running dreamt the same dream, and it was a terrible one. Jarvis laughed in his face, and said he was a foolish old man. Thorkell answered with heat, and they parted on the instant, neither touching food. Toward noon Thorkell imagined he felt feverish, and asked for Jarvis Kerruish; but Jarvis was at his toilet and would not be disturbed. At five o'clock the same day Thorkell was sweating from every pore, and crying lustily that he had taken the sickness. Toward seven he ordered the servant – a young man named Juan Caine, who had come to fill Hommy's place – to go in search of the Romish priest, Father Dalby.