The Deemster Part 6

He had a book, which he called his "Matricula Pauperum," in which he entered the names of his pensioners with notes of their circ.u.mstances.

He knew all the bits of family history--when Jemmy Corkell's wife was down with lumbago, and when Robbie Quirk was to kill his little pig.

Billy the Gawk was not alone in thinking that he could outwit the Bishop. When the Bishop wanted a new pair of boots or a new coat, the tailor or shoemaker came to Bishop's Court, and was kept there until his job of work was finished. The first winter after his arrival in his Patmos, he wanted a cloak, and sent for Jabez Gawne, the sleek little fox who had been spokesman for the conspirators against James Quirk, the schoolmaster. Jabez had cut out the cloak, and was preparing it for a truly gorgeous adornment, when the Bishop ordered him to put merely a b.u.t.ton and a loop on it to keep it together. Jabez thereupon dropped his cloth and held up his hands where he sat cross-legged on the kitchen dresser, and exclaimed, with every accent of aggrieved surprise:

"My Lord, what would become of the poor b.u.t.tonmakers and their families if every one ordered his tailor in that way?"

"How so, Jabez?"

"Why, they would be starved outright."

"Do you say so, Jabez?"

"Yes, my Lord, I do."

"Then b.u.t.ton it all over, Jabez," said the Bishop.

The Deemster was present at that interview, and went away from it t.i.ttering audibly.

"Give to the raven and he'll come again," he muttered.

"I forgot that poor Jabez would have his b.u.t.tons in his breeches-pocket," said the Bishop.

The Manxman had not yet made up his mind concerning the composite character of Bishop Mylrea, his dignity and his humility, his reserve and his simplicity, when a great event settled for the Manxman's heart the problem that had been too much for his head. This was no less a catastrophe than a general famine. It came upon the island in the second year of the Bishop's residence, and was the cause of many changes. One of the changes was that the Bishop came to be regarded by his people with the reverence of Israel for Samuel, and by his brother, the Deemster, with the distrust, envy, and, at length, mingled fear and hatred of Saul for Israel's prophet.

The land of the island had been held under a tenure of straw, known as the three-lives' tenure; the third life was everywhere running out, and the farms were reverting to the Lord of the Isle. This disheartened the farmers, who lost all interest in agriculture, let their lands lie fallow, and turned to the only other industry in which they had an interest, the herring fishing. The herrings failed this season, and without fish, with empty barns, and a scant potato crop, caused by a long summer of drought, the people were reduced to poverty.

Then the Bishop opened wider the gates of Bishop's Court, which since his coming had never been closed. Heaven seemed to have given him a special blessing. The drought had parched up the gra.s.s even of the damp Curragh, and left bleached on the whitening mold the poor, thin, dwarfed corn, that could never be reaped. But the glebe of Bishop's Court gave fair crops, and when the people cried in the grip of their necessity the Bishop sent round a pastoral letter to his clergy, saying that he had eight hundred bushels of wheat, barley, and oats more than his household required. Then there came from the north and the south, the east and the west, long, straggling troops of buyers with little or no money to buy, and Bishop's Court was turned into a public market. The Bishop sold to those who had money at the price that corn fetched before the famine, and in his barn behind the house he kept a chest for those who came in at the back with nothing but a sack in their hands. Once a day he inspected the chest, and when it was low, which was frequently, he replenished it, and when it was high, which was rarely, he smiled, and said that G.o.d was turning away his displeasure from his people.

The eight hundred bushels were at an end in a month, and still the famine continued. Then the Bishop bought eight hundred other bushels: wheat at ten shillings, barley at six shillings, and oats at four shillings, and sold them at half these prices. He gave orders that the bushel of the poor man was not to be stroked, but left in heaped-up measure.

A second month went by; the second eight hundred bushels were consumed, and the famine showed no abatement. The Bishop waited for vessels from Liverpool, but no vessels came. He was a poor priest, with a great t.i.tle, and he had little money; but he wrote to England asking for a thousand bushels of grain and five hundred kischen of potatoes, and promised to pay at six days after the next annual revenue. A week of weary waiting ensued, and every day the Bishop cheered the haggard folk that came to Bishop's Court with accounts of the provisions that were coming; and every day they went up on to the head of the hill, and strained their bleared eyes seaward for the sails of an English ship.

When patience was worn to despair, the old "King Orry" brought the Bishop a letter saying that the drought had been general, that the famine was felt throughout the kingdom, and that an embargo had been put on all food to forbid traders to send it from English sh.o.r.es. Then the voice of the hungry mult.i.tudes went up in one deep cry of pain. "The hunger is on us," they moaned. "Poor once, poor forever," they muttered; and the voice of the Bishop was silent.

Just at that moment a further disaster threatened the people. Their cattle, which they could not sell, they had grazed on the mountains, and the milk of the cows had been the chief food of the children, and the wool of the sheep the only clothing of their old men. With parched meadows and Curraghs, where the turf was so dry that it would take fire from the sun, the broad tops of the furze-covered hills were the sole resource of the poor. At daybreak the shepherd with his six ewe lambs and one goat, and the day laborer with his cow, would troop up to where the gra.s.s looked greenest, and at dusk they would come down to shelter, with weary limbs and heavy hearts. "What's it sayin'," they would mutter, "a green hill when far from me; bare, bare, when it is near."

At this crisis it began to be whispered that the Deemster had made an offer to the Lord to rent the whole stretch of mountain land from Ramsey to Peeltown. The rumor created consternation, and was not at first believed. But one day the Deemster, with the Governor of the Grand Enquest, drove to the glen at Sulby and went up the hillside. Not long after, a light cart was seen to follow the highroad to the glen beyond Ballaugh, and then turn up toward the mountains by the cart track. The people who were grazing their cattle on the hills came down and gathered with the people of the valleys at the foot, and there were dark faces and firm-set lips among them, and hot words and deep oaths were heard.

"Let's off to the Bishop," said one, and then went to Bishop's Court.

Half an hour later the Bishop came from Bishop's Court at the head of a draggled company of men, and his face was white and hard. They overtook the cart half-way up the side of the mountain, and the Bishop called on the driver to stop, and asked what he carried, and where he was going.

The man answered that he had provisions for the Governor, the Deemster, and the Grand Enquest, who were surveying the tops of the mountains.

The Bishop looked round, and his lip was set, and his nostrils quivered.

"Can any man lend me a knife?" he asked, with a strained quietness.

A huge knife was handed to him, such as shepherds carry in the long legs of their boots. He stepped to the cart and ripped up the harness, which was rope harness, the shafts fell and the horse was free. Then the Bishop turned to the driver and said very quietly:

"Where do you live, my man?"

"At Sulby, my Lord," said the man, trembling with fear.

"You shall have leather harness to-morrow."

Then the Bishop went on, his soiled and draggled company following him, the cart lying helpless in the cart track behind them.

When they got to the top of the mountain they could see the Governor and the Deemster and their a.s.sociates stretching the chain in the purple distance. The Bishop made in their direction, and when he came up with them, he said:

"Gentlemen, no food will reach you on the mountains to-day; the harness of your cart has been cut, and cart and provisions are lying on the hillside."

At this Thorkell turned white with wrath, and clenched his fists and stamped his foot on the turf, and looked piercingly into the faces of the Bishop's followers.

"As sure as I'm Deemster," he said, with an oath, "the man who has done this shall suffer. Don't let him deceive himself--no one, not even the Bishop himself, shall step in between that man and the punishment of the law."

The Bishop listened with calmness, and then said, "Thorkell, the Bishop will not intercede for him. Punish him if you can."

"And so, by G.o.d, I will," cried the Deemster, and his eye traversed the men behind his brother.

The Bishop then took a step forward. "_I_ am that man," he said, and then there was a great silence.

Thorkell's face flinched, his head fell between his shoulders, his manner grew dogged, he said not a word, his braggadocio was gone.

The Bishop approached the Governor. "You have no more right to rent these mountains than to rent yonder sea," he said, and he stretched his arm toward the broad blue line to the west. "They belong to G.o.d and to the poor. Let me warn you, sir, that as sure as you set up one stone to enclose these true G.o.d's acres, I shall be the first to pull that stone down."

The Grand Enquest broke up in confusion, and the mountains were saved to the people.

It blew hard on the hilltop that day, and the next morning the news spread through the island that a ship laden with barley had put in from bad weather at Douglas Harbor. "And a terrible wonderful sight of corn, plenty for all, plenty, plenty," was the word that went round. In three hours' time hundreds of men and women trooped down to the quay with money to buy. To all comers the master shook his head, and refused to sell.

"Sell, man--sell, sell," they cried.

"I can't sell. The cargo is not mine. I'm a poor man myself," said the master.

"Well, and what's that it's sayin', 'When one poor man helps another poor man G.o.d laughs.'"

The Bishop came to the ship's side, and tried to treat for the cargo.

"I've given bond to land it all at Whitehaven," said the master.

Then the people's faces grew black, and deep oaths rose to their lips, and they turned and looked into each other's eyes in their impotent rage. "The hunger is on us--we can't starve--let every herring hang by its own gill--let's board her," they muttered among themselves.

And the Bishop heard their threats. "My people," he said, "what will become of this poor island unless G.o.d averts his awful judgments, only G.o.d himself can know; but this good man has given his bond, and let us not bring on our heads G.o.d's further displeasure."

There was a murmur of discontent, and then one long sigh of patient endurance, and then the Bishop lifted his hands, and down on their knees on the quay the people with famished faces fell around the tall, drooping figure of the man of G.o.d, and from parched throats, and hearts wellnigh as dry, sent up a great cry to heaven to grant them succor lest they should die.

About a week afterward another ship put in by contrary winds at Castletown. It had a cargo of Welsh oats bound to Dumfries, on the order of the Provost. The contrary winds continued, and the corn began to heat and spoil. The hungry populace, enraged by famine, called on the master to sell. He was powerless. Then the Bishop walked over his "Pyrenees,"

and saw that the food for which his people hungered was perishing before their eyes. When the master said "No" to him, as to others, he remembered how in old time David, being an hungered, did that which was not lawful in eating of the s...o...b..ead, and straightway he went up to Castle Rushen, got a company of musketeers, returned with them to the ship's side, boarded the ship, put the master and crew in irons, and took possession of the corn.

What wild joy among the people! What shouts were heard; what tears rolled down the stony cheeks of stern men!

"Patience!" cried the Bishop. "Bring the market weights and scales."

The scales and weights were brought down to the quay and every bushel of the cargo was exactly weighed, and paid for at the prime price according to the master's report. Then the master and crew were liberated, and the Bishop paid the ship's freight out of his own purse. When he pa.s.sed through the market-place on his way back to the Bishop's Court the people followed with eyes that were almost too dim to see, and they blessed in cheers that were sobs.