OF HIS GREAT LONELINESS
Back at my old moorings inside the rocks of Kitterland I knew full well
that the Almighty Majesty was on this side of me and on that, and I had
nothing to look for now or hereafter. But I think the extremity of my
condition gave me some false courage, and my good genius seemed to say,
What have you to lament? You have health and food and freedom, and you
live under no taskmaster's eye. Let the morning see you rise in content,
and let the night look on you lying down in thankfulness. And turn not
your face to the future to the unsettling of your spirit, so that when
your time comes you may not die with a pale face. Then did I laugh at my
old yearning for fellowship, and asked wherefore I should be lonely
since I lived in the same planet with other men, and had the same moon
and stars above my sleep as hung over the busy world of men. In such
wise did I comfort my torn heart, and shut it up from troubling me, but
well I knew that I was like to one who cries peace where there is no
peace, and that in all my empty sophistry concerning the moon and the
stars there was no blood of poor human neighborliness.
Nevertheless, I daily went about my businesses, in pursuance whereof I
walked up to the place over the Black Head where I had planted my corn
and potatoes. These in their course I reaped and delved, cutting the
barley and rye with my clasp-knife for sickle, and digging a burrow in
the earth for my potatoes. Little of either I had, but enough for my
frugal needs until more might grow.
When my work was done, and I had no longer any employment to take me
ashore, the autumn had sunk to winter, for in this island of Man the
cold and the mist come at a stride. Then sitting alone in my boat, with
no task save such as I could make for myself, and no companion but
little Veg-veen, the strength of the sophistry wherewith I had appeased
myself broke down pitifully. The nights were long and dark, and the sun
shone but rarely for many days together. Few were the ships that passed
the mouth of the sound, either to east or west of it, and since my
coming to moorage there no boat had crossed its water. Cold and bleak
and sullen it lay around my boat, reflecting no more the forehead of the
Calf, and lying now under the sunless sky like a dead man's face that is
moved neither to smiles nor tears. And an awful weariness of the sea
came to me then, such as the loneliest land never brought to the spirit
of a Christian man, for sitting on the deck of my little swaying craft,
with the beat of the sea on its timbers, and the sea-fowl jabbering on
Kitterland, and perhaps a wild colt racing the wind on the Calf, it came
into my mind to think that as far as eye could see or ear could hear
there was nothing around me but the hand of God. Then all was darkness
within me, and I did oft put the question to myself if it was possible
for man to be with God alone and live.
Now it chanced upon a day that I wanted potatoes out of my burrow over
the Black Head, and that returning therefrom toward nightfall, I made a
circuit of the stone circle above the Chasm, and the northernmost side
of it, midway to Cregneesh, came on a sight that arrested my breath.
This was a hut built against a steepness of rugged land from which
stones had sometimes been quarried. The walls were of turf; the roof was
of gorse and sticks, with a hole in it for chimney. Window there was
none, and the doorway was half closed by a broken gate whereof the bars
were intertwined with old straw.
Mean it was, and desolate it looked on the wild moorland, but, it was a
mark of the hand of man, and I, who had dwelt so long with God's hand
everywhere about me, was touched with a sense of human friendliness.
Hearing no voice within, I crept up and looked into the little place. A
bed of straw was in one corner, and facing it was a lump of freestone
hollowed out for the bed of a fire. A broken pipe lay near this rude
hearth, and the floor was of mountain turf worn bare and hard. Two
sacks, a kettle, a saucepan, and some potato-parings were the only other
things in the hut, and poor as it all was it touched me so that in
looking upon it I think my eyes were wet, because it was a man's
habitation. I remember that as I turned to go away the rain began to
fall, and the pattering drops on the roof seemed to my eye and ear to
make the place more human.
In going back to my boat that day I came nearer to Cregneesh than was my
wont in the daytime, and though the darkness was coming down from the
mountains, I could yet see into the streets from the knoll I passed
over. And there in the unpaved way, before a group of houses I saw a
witless man in coat and breeches, but no vest or shirt, and with a rope
about his waist, dancing and singing to a little noisy crowd gathered
about him.
After that I had come upon the hut my mind ran much on the thought of
it, and in three days or thereabouts I went back to look at it again,
and coming near to it from behind, saw sundry beehives of a rude
fashioning, made of straw and sticks. Veg-veen was with me, for he was
now my constant company, and in a moment he had bounced in at the
doorway and out again at yet more speed, with three of his kind close at
his tail. Before I could turn me about to go away a man followed the
dogs out of the hut, and he was the same witless being that I had seen
at his dancing in the streets of Cregnesh. His lip lagged low and his
eyes were dull as a rabbit's; on his head was a crownless hat through
which his hair was seen, and I saw that his breast, where his shirt
would be, was blackened as with soot. I would have gone about my own
employments, but he spoke, telling me not to fear him, for it was false
that he was possessed, as hard-spoken people said, with the spirit of
delusion. I answered nothing to this, but stood and listened with eyes
turned aside, while the broken brain of the poor creature rambled on.
"They call me Billy the Bees," he said, "because I catch them and rear
them--look," and he pointed to his hives. He talked of his three dogs
and named them, saying that they slept in a sack together, and that in
the same sack he slept with them. Something he said of the cold that had
been coming latterly, and pointed to the soot on his breast, saying that
it kept him warm. He told how he made a circuit of the farmhouses once a
week, dancing and singing at all of them, and how the people gave him
barley-meal and eggs. Much more he said, but because the method of
it--where method there was any--has gone from my memory I pass it. That
the world was night about its end he knew of a surety, because he saw
that if a man had money and great store of gear it mattered not what
else he wanted. These with other such words he spoke ramblingly, and I
stood aside and answered him nothing, neither did I look up into his
face. At last he said, timidly, "I know I have always been weak in my
intellects," and hearing that, I could bear to hear no more, but went
about my business with a great weight of trouble upon me. And "O God," I
cried that night in my agony, "I am an ignorant sot, without the grace
of human tenderness, or the gift of understanding. I am guilty before
Thee, and no man careth for my soul, but from this affliction, O
Almighty Master save me; save me from this degradation, for it threatens
me, and when death comes that stands at the foot of life's awful
account, I will pay its price with thankfulness."
Now, after this meeting with the witless man the weariness that I had
felt of my home on the sea lay the heavier on my spirits, and I
concluded with myself that I should forsake my boat and build me a home
on the land within sight of man's habitation. So I walked the cliffs
from the Mull Hills to the Noggin Head, and at last I lit on the place I
looked for. Near to the land where I had lately broken the fallows and
grown me a crop of corn and potatoes, there were four roofless walls.
Some time a house had stood there, but being built on the brink of the
great clefts in the earth that we call the Chasms, it had shrunken in
some settlement of the ground. This had affrighted the poor souls who
inhabited it, and they had left it to fall into ruins. Such was the tale
I heard long afterward, but none came near it then, and none have come
near to it since. Save the four bare walls, and a wall that crossed it
midway, nothing was left. Where the floor had been the grass was
growing; wormwood was in the settle nook, and whinberries had ripened
and rotted on the hearth. The door lintel was gone, and the sill of the
window was fallen off. There was a round patch of long grass where the
well had been, and near to where the porch once stood the trammon-tree
still grew; and thus, though the good people who had lived and died
there, been born and buried, were gone from it forever, the sign of
their faith, or their superstition, lived after them.
Better for me than this forsaken place it was hard for any place to be.
On a dangerous spot it stood, and therefore none would come anigh it.
Near to Cregneesh it was, and from the rising ground above it I could
look down on the homes of men. Truly it looked out on the sea, and had a
great steepness of shelving rocks going down to an awesome depth, where,
on the narrow beach of shingle, the tide beat with a woful moan; but
though the sea was so near, and the sea-fowl screamed of an evening from
the great rock like a cone that lifted its gaunt finger a cable's length
away, yet to me it was within the very pulse of human life.
So I set to work, and roofed it with driftwood and turf and gorse; and
then, with lime from a cliff at the Tubdale Creek in the Calf, I
whitened it within and without, walls and roof. A door I made in
somewise, and for a window I had a piece of transparent skin, having no
glass. And when all was made ready I moved my goods from the boat to my
house, taking all that seemed necessary--flour, and meat, and salt, and
my implements, as well as my bed and the spare clothes I had, which were
not many.
I had been in no haste with this work, being well content with such
employment, but it came to an end at last, and the day that I finished
my task was a day late in the first year after my cutting off. This I
knew because the nights were long, and I had been trying with my watch
to cast on the shortest day, and thereby recover my lost count of time.
On the night of my first sleeping in my new home there came a fierce
storm of wind and rain from the east. Four hours the gale lasted, and
often the gulls were dashed screaming at the walls wherein I sat by the
first fire I had yet kindled on my hearth. Toward midnight the wind fell
suddenly to a dead calm, and, looking out, I saw that the moon was
coming very bright in its rising from behind a heavy cloud over the sea.
So, wondering what chance had befallen my boat--for though I had left it
I had a tenderness for it and meant perchance to use it again--I set out
for the sound. When I got to the head of the cliff I could plainly see
the rocks of Kitterland, and the whole length of the Doon Creek, but
where my boat had been moored no boat could I see, nor any trace of one
from Fistard Head on the east to Half-Walk Rock on the west. Next
morning, under a bright winter's sun, I continued the search for my
boat, and with the rising tide at noon I saw her thrown up on to the
beach of the Doon, dismasted, without spar or boom, bilged below her
water-line, and altogether a hopeless hulk. I made some scabbling shift
to pull her above high-water mark, and then went my ways.
Now this loss, for so I considered it, did at first much to depress me,
thinking, with a bitter envy of my late past, that my future showed me a
far more unblessed condition, seeing that I was now forever imprisoned
on this island and could never leave it again whatsoever evil might
befall. But when I had thought twice upon it, my mind came to that point
that I was filled with gratitude; first, because the wrecking of my boat
on the very day of my leaving it seemed to give assurance that, in
making my home on the land, I had done that which was written for me to
do; and next, because I must inevitably have been swallowed up in the
storm if I had stayed on the sea a single night longer. And my terror of
death was such that to have escaped the peril of it seemed a greater
blessing than releasement from this island could ever be.
Every day thereafter, and oftenest at daybreak, I walked up to the crest
of the rising ground at the back of my house, and stood awhile looking
down on Cregneesh, and watching for the white smoke that lay like a low
cloud over the hollow place wherein Port Erin lay. After that I had done
this I felt strangely refreshed, as by a sense of companionship, and
went about my work, such as it was, with content. But on a bitter
morning, some time in December, as I thought, I came upon a sight that
wellnigh froze my heart within me; for, outstretched on the bare
moorland, under the bleak sky and in the lee of a thick gorse bush
tipped with yellow, I found the witless man, Billy the Bees, lying cold
and dead. His bare chest was blue, as with starvation, under the soot
wherewith in his simpleness he had blackened it, and his pinched face
told of privation and of pain. And now that he lay stretched out dead, I
saw that he had been a man of my own stature. In his hut, which was
farther away than my own house from the place where he lay, there was
neither bite nor sup, and his dogs seemed to have deserted him in his
poverty, for they were gone. The air had softened perceptibly for some
minutes while I went thither, and as I returned to the poor body
wondering what to do with it, the snow began to fall in big flakes. "It
will cover it," I said with myself. "The snow will bury it," I thought;
and casting a look back over my shoulder, I went home with a great
burden of trouble upon me.
All that day, and other two days, the snow continued to fall, until the
walls of my house were blocked up to the level of my window, and I had
to cut a deep trench to the gable where I piled my wood. And for more
than a week following, shut in from my accustomed walk I sat alone in
the great silence and tried to keep my mind away from the one fearful
thought that now followed it. Remembering those long hours and the sorry
employments I found for them--scrabbling on all-fours in play with
Millish-veg-veen, laughing loud, and barking back at the dog's shrill
bark, I could almost weep while here I write to think of the tragic
business that was at the same time lying heavy on my spirit. Christmas
Day fell while thus I was imprisoned, for near to midnight I heard the
church bells ring for Oiel Verree.
When the snow began to melt I saw that the dog put his muzzle to the
bottom of the door instantly, and as often as I drove him away he
returned to the same place. I will not say what awful thing came to my
mind, knowing a dog's nature, and how near to my door lay the body of
the witless man; only that I shuddered with a fear that was new to me
when I remembered that, by the curse I lived under, the time would come
when my unburied bones would lie on the bare face of the moor.
As soon as the snow had melted down to within a foot's depth of the
earth I went out of my house and turned toward where my poor neighbor
lay; but before I had come close to him I saw that three men were coming
over the hillside by way of Port-le-Mary, and, wishing not to be seen by
them, I crept back and lay by the hinder wall of my house to watch what
they did. Then I saw that they came up to the body of the witless man
and saw it, and stood over it some minutes talking earnestly, and then
passed along on their way. And as they walked they turned aside and came
close up by the front of my house, and looked in at the window, pushing
the skin away. Standing by the wall, holding Veg-veen by the throat lest
he should betray me, I heard some words the men said each to the other
before they went on again.
"Well, man, he's dead at last, poor craythur," said one, "and good-luck
too."
And the other answered, "Aw, dear, to think, to think! No man alive
could stand up agen it. Aw, ter'ble, ter'ble!"
"I was at the Tynwald myself yander day," said the first, "and I'll give
it a year, I was saying, to finish him, and behould ye, he's lying dead
in half the time."
Then both together said, "God bless me!" and passed on.
At that moment my eyes became dim, and a sound as of running water went
through my ears. I staggered into my house, and sat down by the cold
hearth, for in my eagerness to go forth on my errand at first awakening,
no fire had I kindled. I recalled the words that the men had spoken, and
repeated them aloud one by one, and very slowly, that I might be sure I
took their meaning rightly. This done, I said with myself, "This error
will go far, until the wide island will say that he who was cut off, he
who is nameless among men, is dead." Dead? What then? I had heard that
when death came and took away a bad man, its twin-angel, the angel of
mercy, bent over those who were left behind on the earth, and drew out
of their softened hearts all evil reports and all uncharity.
And a great awe slid over me at that thought, and the gracious dew of a
strange peace fell upon me. But close behind it came the other thought,
that this error would reach my father also--God preserve him!--and
Mona--God's holy grace be with her!--and bring them pain. And then it
came to me to think that when men said in their hearing, "He whom you
wot of is newly dead," they would take heart and answer, "No, he died
long ago; it was only his misery and God's wrath that died yesterday."
With this thought I rose up and went out, and put some shovels of earth
over the body of my poor neighbor, that his face might be hidden from
the sky.