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 passed 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 passed 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, lusty fellows who had
shown ruth for the first time, began to show gall for the hundreth, to
nudge, to snigger, and to mutter that blood was thicker than water, and
there was much between saying and doing, as the sayin' was.
The compassion that had been growing in secret began to struggle with
the ungentle impulses that came of superstitious 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 God's judgment on the guilty man.
The day of Tynwald came, and the week before it had passed 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 assembly. 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 coarse banter and coarser 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, "God 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 circumstances 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 passed 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 fortitude, abating nothing of the whole bitterness of the atonement
he was to make, asking no quarter, enduring all contumely, though men
jeered as he passed 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 snatches
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, multitudinous 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 mass 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 space 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 mass 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 circumstance 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
God who gave it guards it jealously. When man violates it, God calls for
vengeance, and if we who are His law-givers on earth shut our ears to
that cry of the voice of God, 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 God 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 God's worse
chastisement 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 hoarse, 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 God'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 hoarse 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 compassion.
"Daniel Mylrea," said the Bishop again, and notwithstanding his efforts
to uphold it, his voice softened and all but broke, "vengeance belongs
to God, but we who are men and prone 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 God'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 hoarse 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 multitude 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 mass, 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 passed 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 compassion 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.
At the next moment all eyes were turned back to the mount. There the
Bishop, a priest of God no longer, but only a poor human father now, had
fallen to his knees, and lifted his two trembling arms. Then the pent-up
anguish of the wretched heart that had steeled itself to a mighty
sacrifice of duty burst forth in a prayer of great agony.
"O Father in Heaven, it is not for him who draws the sword of the Lord's
vengeance among men to cry for mercy, but rather to smite and spare not,
yea, though his own flesh be smitten; but, O Thou that fillest heaven
and earth, from whom none can hide himself in any secret place that Thou
shalt not see him, look with pity on the secret place of the heart of
Thy servant and hear his cry. O Lord on High, whose anger goes forth as
a whirlwind, and whose word is like as a fire, what am I but a feeble,
broken, desolate old man? Thou knowest my weakness, and how my familiars
watched for my halting, and how for a period my soul failed me, and how
my earthly affections conquered my heavenly office, and how God's rule
among this people was most in danger from the servant of God, who should
be valiant for the Lord on the earth. And if through the trial of this
day Thou hast been strength of my strength, woe is me now, aged and full
of days, feeble of body and weak of faith, that Thou hast brought this
heavy judgment upon me. God of Goodness and Righteous Judge of all the
Earth, have mercy and forgive if we weep for him who goeth away and
shall return no more, nor see his home and kindred. Follow him with Thy
Spirit, touch him with Thy finger of fire, pour upon him the healing of
Thy grace, so that after death's great asundering, when all shall stand
for one judgment, it may not be said of Thy servant, 'Write ye this old
man childless.'"
It was the cry of a great shattered soul, and the terrified people
dropped to their knees while the voice pealed over their heads. When the
Bishop was silent the clergy lifted him to his feet and helped him down
the pathway to the chapel. There was then a dull murmur of distant
thunder from across the sea. The people fell apart in confusion. Before
the last of them had left the green the cloud of pale saffron over the
head of Slieu Whallin had broken into lightning, and the rain was
falling heavily.
THE BRIEF RELATION OF DANIEL MYLREA
WRITTEN BY HIMSELF