The Deemster Part 53

"It ill becomes a man in your position to refuse the only amends that you can make to justice for the pains to which you have put this court and another."

It was an idle outburst. Dan's firm lip was immovable. He looked steadily into the Deemster's face, and said not a word.

The steward stepped in. "The prisoner," he said, "has elected to make the gravest of all amends to justice," and at that there was a deep murmur among the people. "Nevertheless, I could wish," said the steward, "that he would also make answer to the Deemster's question."

But the prisoner made no sign.

"There is some reason for thinking that, if all were known, where so much is now hidden, the crime to which the prisoner pleads guilty would wear a less grievous aspect."

Still the prisoner gave no answer.

"Come, let us have done," said the Deemster, twisting impatiently in his seat. "p.r.o.nounce the sentence, and let your sergeant carry it into effect."

The murmur among the people grew to a great commotion, but in the midst of it the Bishop was seen to rise, and then a deep hush fell on all.

The Bishop's white head was held erect, his seamed face was firm as it was pale, and his voice, when he spoke, was clear and full. "Daniel Mylrea," he said, "you have pleaded guilty to the great crime of murder.

The sergeant of your barony will now remove you, and on the morning of this day next week he will take you in his safe custody to the Tynwald Hill, in the centre of the island, there in the eye of light, and before the faces of all men, to receive the dreadful sentence of this court, and to endure its punishment."

CHAPTER x.x.xVI

CUT OFF FROM THE PEOPLE

During the week that followed the trial of Daniel Mylrea at the court of his barony the excitement throughout the island pa.s.sed all experience of public feeling. What was to be the sentence of the barony? This was the one question everywhere--at the inn, the mill, the smithy, the market-cross, the street, in the court-house; and if two shepherds hailed each other on the mountains they asked for the last news from Peel.

With a silent acceptance of the idea that death alone could be the penalty of the crime that had been committed, there pa.s.sed through the people the burden, first of a great awe, and then of a great dread that any Christian man should die the death of hanging. Not for nearly twoscore years had the island seen that horror, and old men shuddered at the memory of it.

Then it came to be understood in a vague way that after all Daniel Mylrea was not to die. Whispers went from mouth to mouth that old Quilleash had sailed down to the Calf Sound with the "Ben-my-Chree,"

well stored with provisions. In a few days the old salt returned, walking overland, preserving an air of vast mystery, and shaking his head when his gossips questioned him. Then poor human nature, that could not bear to see Daniel Mylrea die, could not bear to see him saved either, and men who had sworn in their impotent white terror that never again should a gallows be built in the island, l.u.s.ty fellows who had shown ruth for the first time, began to show gall for the hundreth, to nudge, to sn.i.g.g.e.r, and to mutter that blood was thicker than water, and there was much between saying and doing, as the sayin' was.

The compa.s.sion that had been growing in secret began to struggle with the ungentle impulses that came of superst.i.tious fear. It seemed to be true, as old folk were whispering, that Daniel Mylrea was the Jonah of the island. What had happened in the first year of his life? A prolonged drought and a terrible famine. What was happening now? Another drought that threatened another famine. And people tried to persuade themselves that the sword of the Lord was over them, and that it would only rest and be quiet when they had executed G.o.d's judgment on the guilty man.

The day of Tynwald came, and the week before it had pa.s.sed like a year.

There was no sun, but the heat was stifling, the clouds hung low and dark and hot as the roof of an open oven, the air was sluggish, and the earth looked blue. Far across the sea to the northwest there was a thin streak of fiery cloud, and at some moments there was the smell of a thunder-storm in the heavy atmosphere. From north and south, from east and west, the people trooped to Tynwald Hill. Never before within the memory of living man had so vast a concourse been witnessed on that ancient ground of a.s.sembly. Throughout the island the mill-wheel was stopped, the smithy fire was raked over with ashes, the plow lay in the furrow, the sheep were turned out on to the mountains, and men and women, old men, old women, and young children, ten thousand in all, with tanned faces and white, in sun-bonnets, mutches, and capes, and some with cloaks in preparation for the storm that was coming, drove in their little springless carts, or rode on their small Manx ponies, or trudged on foot through the dusty roads, and over the bleached hillsides and the parched Curraghs.

At ten o'clock the open green that surrounds the hill of Tynwald was densely thronged. Carts were tipped up in corners, and their stores of food and drink were guarded by a boy or a woman, who sat on the sternboard. Horses were tethered to the wheels, or turned loose to browse on a common near at hand. Men lounged on the green and talked, their hands in their pockets, their pipes in their mouths, or stood round the Tynwald Inn, lifting pannikins to their lips, and laughing--for there was merriment among them though the work for which they had come together was not a merry one.

The mount itself was still empty, and twelve constables were stationed about the low wall that surrounded it, keeping the crowd back. And though, as the people met and mingled, the men talked of the crops and of the prospect for the fishing, and women of the wool and yarn, and boys tossed somersaults, and young girls betook themselves to girlish games, and girls of older growth in bright ribbons to ogling and giggling, and though there was some coa.r.s.e banter and coa.r.s.er singing, the excitement of the crowd, beneath all, was deep and strong. At intervals there was a movement of the people toward a church--St. John's Church, that stood a little to the east of Tynwald--and sometimes a general rush toward the gate that looked westward toward Peeltown and the sea. Earlier in the day some one had climbed a mountain beyond the chapel and put a light to the dry gorse at the top, and now the fire smoldered in the dense air, and set up a long sinuous trail of blue smoke to the empty vault of the sky. The mountain was called Greeba, which is the native word for grief.

Toward half-past ten old Paton Gorry, the sumner, went down the narrow, tortuous steps that led to the dungeon of Peel Castle. He carried fetters for the hands and legs of his prisoner, and fixed them in their places with nervous and fumbling fingers. His prisoner helped him as far as might be, and spoke cheerily in answer to his mumbled adieu.

"I'm not going to St. John's, sir. I couldn't give myself lave for it,"

the sumner muttered in a breaking voice. With a choking sensation in his throat Daniel Mylrea said, "G.o.d bless you, Paton," and laid hold of the old man's hand. Twenty times during the week the sumner had tried in vain to prevail on the prisoner to explain the circ.u.mstances attending his crime, and so earn the mitigation of punishment which had been partly promised. The prisoner had only shaken his head in silence.

A few minutes afterward Daniel Mylrea was handed over in the guard-room to the sergeant of the barony, and Paton Gorry's duties--the hardest that the world had yet given him to do--were done.

The sergeant and the prisoner went out of the castle and crossed the narrow harbor in a boat. On the wooden jetty, near the steps by which they landed, a small open cart was drawn up, and there was a crowd of gaping faces about it. The two men got into the cart and were driven down the quay toward the path by the river that led to Tynwald under the foot of Slieu Whallin. As they pa.s.sed through the town the prisoner was dimly conscious that white faces looked out of windows and that small knots of people were gathered at the corners of the alleys. But all this was soon blotted out, and when he came to himself he was driving under the trees, and by the side of the rumbling water.

All the day preceding the prisoner had told himself that when his time came, his great hour of suffering and expiation, he must bear himself with fort.i.tude, abating nothing of the whole bitterness of the atonement he was to make, asking no quarter, enduring all contumely, though men jeered as he pa.s.sed or spat in his face. He thought he had counted the cost of that trial. Seven sleepless nights and seven days of torment had he given to try his spirit for that furnace, and he thought he could go through it and not shrink. In his solitary hours he had arranged his plans. While he drove from Peel to St. John's he was to think of nothing that would sap his resolution, and his mind was to be a blank. Then, as he approached the place, he was to lift his eyes without fear, and not let them drop though their gaze fell on the dread thing that must have been built there. And so, very calmly, silently, and firmly, he was to meet the end of all.

But now that he was no longer in the dungeon of the prison, where despair might breed bravery in a timid soul, but under the open sky, where hope and memory grow strong together, he knew, though he tried to shut his heart to it, that his courage was oozing away. He recognized this house and that gate, he knew every turn of the river--where the trout lurked and where the eels sported--and when he looked up at the dun sky he knew how long it might take for the lightning to break through the luminous dulness of the thunder-cloud that hung over the head of Slieu Whallin. Do what he would to keep his mind a blank, or to busy it with trifles of the way, he could not help reflecting that he was seeing these things for the last time.

Then there came a long interval in which the cart wherein he sat seemed to go wearily on, on, on, and nothing awakened his slumbering senses.

When he recovered consciousness with a start he knew that his mind had been busy with many thoughts such as sap a man's resolution and bring his brave schemes to foolishness. He had been asking himself where his father was that day, where Mona would be then, and how deep their shame must be at the thought of the death he was to die. To him his death was his expiation, and little had he thought of the manner of it; but to them it was disgrace and horror. And so he shrunk within himself. He knew now that his great purpose was drifting away like a foolish voice that is emptied in the air. Groaning audibly, praying in broken s.n.a.t.c.hes for strength of spirit, looking up and around with fearful eyes, he rode on and on, until at length, before he was yet near the end of his awful ride, the deep sound came floating to him through the air of the voices of the people gathered at the foot of Tynwald. It was like the sound the sea makes as its white breakers fall on some sharp reef a mile away: a deep, mult.i.tudinous hum of many tongues. When he lifted his head and heard it, his pallid face became ashy, his whitening lips trembled, his head dropped back to his breast, his fettered arms fell between his fettered legs, river and sky were blotted out of his eyes, and he knew that before the face of his death he was no better than a poor broken coward.

At eleven o'clock the crowd at Tynwald had grown to a vast concourse that covered every foot of the green with a dense ma.s.s of moving heads.

In an enclosed pathway that connected the chapel with the mount three carriages were drawn up. The Deemster sat in one of them, and his wizened face was full of uncharity. By his side was Jarvis Kerruish. On an outskirt of the crowd two men stood with a small knot of people around them; they were Quilleash and Teare. The Ballasalla prophetess, with glittering eyes and hair in ringlets, was preaching by the door of the inn, and near her were Corkell and Crennell, and they sang when she sang, and while she prayed they knelt. Suddenly the great clamorous human billow was moved by a ruffle of silence that spread from side to side, and in the midst of a deep hush the door of the chapel opened, and a line of ecclesiastics came out and walked toward the mount. At the end of the line was the Bishop, bareheaded, much bent, his face white and seamed, his step heavy and uncertain, his whole figure and carriage telling of the sword that is too keen for its scabbard. When the procession reached the mount the Bishop ascended to the topmost round of it, and on the four green ledges below him his clergy ranged themselves.

Almost at the same moment there was a subdued murmur among the people, and at one side of the green, the gate to the west, the crowd opened and parted, and the s.p.a.ce widened and the line lengthened until it reached the foot of the Tynwald. Then the cart that brought the sergeant and his prisoner from the castle entered it slowly, and drew up, and then, with head and eyes down, like a beast that is struck to its death, Daniel Mylrea dropped to his feet on the ground. He was clad in the blue cloth of a fisherman, with a brown knitted guernsey under his coat, and sea-boots over his stockings. He stood in his great stature above the shoulders of the tallest of the men around him; and women who were as far away as the door of the inn could see the seaman's cap he wore. The sergeant drew him up to the foot of the mount, but his bowed head was never raised to where the Bishop stood above him. An all-consuming shame sat upon him, and around him was the deep breathing of the people.

Presently a full, clear voice was heard over the low murmur of the crowd, and instantly the ma.s.s of moving heads was lifted to the mount, and the sea of faces flashed white under the heaviness of the sky.

"Daniel Mylrea," said the Bishop, "it is not for us to know if any hidden circ.u.mstance lessens the hideousness of your crime. Against all questions concerning your motive your lips have been sealed, and we who are your earthly judges are compelled to take you at the worst. But if, in the fulness of your remorse, your silence conceals what would soften your great offense, be sure that your Heavenly Judge, who reads your heart, sees all. You have taken a precious life; you have spilled the blood of one who bore himself so meekly and lovingly and with such charity before the world that the hearts of all men were drawn to him.

And you, who slew him in heat or malice, you he ever loved with a great tenderness. Your guilt is confessed, your crime is black, and now your punishment is sure."

The crowd held its breath while the Bishop spoke, but the guilty man moaned feebly and his bowed head swayed to and fro.

"Daniel Mylrea, there is an everlasting sacredness in human life, and G.o.d who gave it guards it jealously. When man violates it, G.o.d calls for vengeance, and if we who are His law-givers on earth shut our ears to that cry of the voice of G.o.d, His fierce anger goes forth as a whirlwind and His word as a fire upon all men. Woe unto us if now we sin against the Lord by falling short of the punishment that He has ordered.

Righteously, and without qualm of human mercy, even as G.o.d has commanded, we, His servants, must execute judgment on the evil-doer, lest His wrath be poured out upon this island itself, upon man and upon beast, and upon the fruit of the ground."

At that word the deep murmur broke out afresh over the people, and under the low sky their upturned faces were turned to a grim paleness. And now a strange light came into the eyes of the Bishop, and his deep voice quavered.

"Daniel Mylrea," he continued, "it is not the way of G.o.d's worse chastis.e.m.e.nt to take an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, and to spill blood for blood that has been spilled. When the sword of the Lord goes forth it is sometimes to destroy the guilty man, and sometimes to cut him off from the land of the living, to banish him to the parched places of the wilderness, to end the days wherein his sleep shall be sweet to him, to blot out his name from the names of men, and to give him no burial at the last when the darkness of death shall cover him."

The Bishop paused. There was a dreadful silence, and the distant sea sent up into the still air, under the low clouds that reverberated like a vault, a hoa.r.s.e, threatening murmur:

"Daniel Mylrea, you are not to die for your crime."

At that ill-omened word the prisoner staggered like a drunken man, and lifted his right hand mechanically above his head, as one who would avert a blow. And now it was easy to see in the wild light in the eyes of the Bishop, and to hear in his hollow, tense voice, that the heart of the father was wrestling with the soul of the priest, and that every word that condemned the guilty man made its sore wound on the spirit of him that uttered it.

"You have chosen death rather than life, but on this side of death's darkness you have yet, by G.o.d's awful will, to become a terror to yourself; you have water of gall to drink; toilfully you have to live in a waste land alone, where the sweet light of morning shall bring you pain, and the darkness of night have eyes to peer into your soul; and so on and on from year to weary year, until your step shall fail and there shall be never another to help you up; hopeless, accursed, finding death in life, looking only for life in death, and crying in the bitterness of your desolation, 'Cursed be the day wherein I was born; let not the day wherein my mother bare me be blessed! Cursed be the man that brought tidings to my father, saying, "A man-child is born unto thee," making his heart glad.'"

One hoa.r.s.e cry as of physical pain burst from the prisoner before these awful words were yet fully uttered. The guilty man gripped his head between his hands, and like a beast that is smitten in the shambles he stood in a stupor, his body swaying slightly, a film upon his eyes, and his mind sullen and stunned. There was silence for a moment, and when the Bishop spoke again his tempest-beaten head, white with the flowers of the grave, trembled visibly. The terrified people were grasping each other's hands, and their hard-drawn breath went through the air like the hiss of the sea at its ebb. As they looked up at the Bishop they understood that an awful struggle of human love and spiritual duty was going on before them, and over all their terror they were moved to a deep compa.s.sion.

"Daniel Mylrea," said the Bishop again, and notwithstanding his efforts to uphold it, his voice softened and all but broke, "vengeance belongs to G.o.d, but we who are men and p.r.o.ne to fall are not to deny mercy. When your fetters are removed, and you leave this place, you will go to the Calf Sound that flows at the extreme south of the island. There you will find your fishing-boat, stored with such as may meet your immediate wants. With that offering we part from you while life shall last. Use it well, but henceforward look for no succor whence it has come. Though you loathe your life, be zealous to preserve it, and hasten not, I warn you, by one hour the great day of G.o.d's final reckoning. Most of all be mindful of the things of an eternal concernment, that we who part from you now may not part forever as from a soul given over to everlasting darkness."

The prisoner gave no further sign. Then the Bishop turned with a wild gesture to the right and to the left and lifted both his hands. "Men and women of Man," he said, in a voice that rose to the shrillness of a cry, "the sentence of the court of the barony of the island is that this man shall be cut off from his people. Henceforth let him have no name among us, nor family, nor kin. From now forever let no flesh touch his flesh.

Let no tongue speak to him. Let no eye look on him. If he should be an-hungered, let none give him meat. When he shall be sick, let none minister to him. When his death shall come, let no man bury him. Alone let him live, alone let him die, and among the beasts of the field let him hide his unburied bones."

A great hoa.r.s.e groan arose from the people, such as comes from the bosom of a sullen sea. The pathos of the awful struggle which they had looked upon was swallowed up in the horror of its tragedy. What they had come to see was as nothing to the awfulness of the thing they had witnessed.

Death was terrible, but this was beyond death's terror. Somewhere in the dark chambers of the memory of their old men the like of it lived as a grim gorgon from old time. They looked up at the mount, and the gaunt figure standing there above the vast mult.i.tude of moving heads seemed to be something beyond nature. The trembling upraised hands, the eyes of fire, the white quivering lips, the fever in the face which consumed the grosser senses, appeared to transcend the natural man. And below was the prisoner, dazed, stunned, a beast smitten mortally and staggering to its fall.

The sergeant removed the fetters from the prisoner's hands and feet, and turned him about with his face toward the south. Not at first did the man seem to realize that he was no longer a prisoner, but an outcast, and free to go whither he would, save where other men might be. Then, recovering some partial consciousness, he moved a pace or two forward, and instantly the crowd opened for him and a long, wide way was made through the dense ma.s.s, and he walked through it, slow, yet strong of step, with head bent and eyes that looked into the eyes of no man. Thus he pa.s.sed away from the Tynwald toward the foot of Slieu Whallin and the valley of Foxdale that runs southward. And the people looked after him, and the Bishop on the mount and the clergy below followed him with their eyes. A great wave of compa.s.sion swept over the crowd as the solitary figure crossed the river and began to ascend the mountain-path. The man was accursed, and none might look upon him with pity; but there were eyes that grew dim at that sight.

The smoke still rose in a long blue column from the side of Greeba, and the heavy cloud that had hung at poise over the head of Slieu Whallin had changed its shape to the outlines of a mighty bird, luminous as a sea-gull, but of a sickly saffron. Over the long line of sea and sky to the west the streak of red that had burned duskily had also changed to a dull phosphoric light that sent eastward over the sky's low roof a misty glow. And while the people watched the lonely man who moved away from them across the breast of the hill, a pale sheet of lightning, without noise of thunder, flashed twice or thrice before their faces. So still was the crowd, and so reverberant the air, that they could hear the man's footsteps on the stony hillside. When he reached the topmost point of the path, and was about to descend to the valley, he was seen to stop, and presently to turn his face, gazing backward for a moment.

Against the dun sky his figure could be seen from head to foot. While he stood the people held their breath. When he was gone, and the mountain had hidden him, the crowd breathed audibly.