OF HOW HE KEPT HIS MANHOOD
The great snow lay long on the mountains, and died off in its silence
like one who passes away in sleep. And the spring came, the summer and
the winter yet again, and to set down in this writing all that befell
would be a weariness, for I feel as I write that the pulse of my life is
low; and neither am I one who can paint his words with wit. My way of
life has now grown straight and even, and at my simple employments I
wrought early and late, that by much bodily toil I might keep in check
the distempers of my mind.
With my fishing-boat, my gun, which I had left behind me of design, had
been carried to the bottom of the sound, and when the hulk of the lugger
drifted up with the tide the gun was no longer within her. This I took
for a direction to me that I should hunt no more. Nevertheless, for some
while I went on to fish with a line from my small-boat, which, being on
the beach, the storm had spared. But soon it was gotten into my head
that, if to shoot a hare was an ill deed, to take a cod was but a poor
business. Well I knew that there was some touch of insanity in such
fancies, and that for man to kill and eat was the law of life, and the
rather because it was enjoined of God that so he should do. But being a
man like as I was, cut off from the land of the living, never more to
have footing there for the great crime committed of spilling blood, I
think it was not an ungentle madness that made me fear to take life,
whether wantonly or of hunger's need. This dread lay close to me, and
got to extremities whereat one of healthy mind might smile. For, being
awakened some nights in succession by the nibble of a mouse, I arose
from my bed in the dawn, and saw the wee mite, and struck it with an
iron rod and killed it, and then suffered many foolish twitches, not
from pity for the mouse, for of humanity I had none left, but from the
sudden thought that the spirit of its life, which I had driven from its
harmless body, was now about me as an invisible thing. Though I had
fallen into such a weakness, yet I think that where choice was none for
one like me between the weakness of a man and the strength of a beast, I
did least injury to my own nature and disposition by yielding with
childish indulgence toward the gentler side.
And truly, it is a beautiful thing to mark how the creatures of earth
and air will answer with confidence to man's tenderness, whether, as
with my saintly father, it comes of the love of them, or, as with me, of
the love of myself. The sea-fowl flew in at my door and pecked up the
morsels that fell at my feet; the wild duck on the moor would not rise
though I walked within a stride of it; a fat hare nested in a hole under
my house and came out at dusk to nibble the parings of potatoes that I
threw at the door, and, but for Millish-veg-veen and his sly
treacheries, with the rabbits of the Black Head I might have sported as
with a kitten.
I could fill this account with the shifts I was put to by want of many
things that even a lone man may need for his comfort or his cheer. Thus,
I was at pains to devise a substitute for tinder, having lost much of
all I had in the wrecking of my boat; and to find leather for the soles
of my shoes when they were worn to the welt was long a search.
Yet herein my case was but that of many another man who has told of his
privation, and the less painful was my position for that I had much to
begin my battle of life with. In this first year of my unblessed
condition my senses not only recovered their wonted strength, but grew
keener than before my cutting off. Oft did my body seem to act without
help of my intelligence, and, with a mind on other matters, I would find
my way over the trackless moor back to my home in the pitch of darkness,
and never so much as stumble by a stone. When the wind was from the
north, or when the air lay still, I could hear the church bells that
rang in the market square at Castletown, and thereby I knew what the day
of the week was. None came nigh to my dwelling, but if a man passed it
by at the space of two furlongs, I seemed to feel his tread on the turf.
And now, as I hold the pen for these writings, my hand is loth and my
spirit is not fain to tell of the strange humors of these times. So
ridiculous and yet so tragic do they look as they come back to me in the
grave-clothes of memory, that my imagination, being no longer turned
wayward, shrinks from them as sorry things that none shall see to be of
nature save he who has lived in an outcast state. But if the eyes I look
for should ever read these lines, the tender soul behind them will bring
me no laughter for my pains, and I ask no tears. Only for my weakness
let it be remembered that the terror of my life was, that the spirit of
madness and of the beast of the field waited and watched to fall upon me
and to destroy the spirit of the man within me.
It is not to be expressed with what eagerness I strove to live in my
solitude as a man should live in the company of his fellows. Down to the
pettiest detail of personal manners, I tried to do as other men must be
doing. Whatsoever seemed to be the habit of a Christian man that I
practised, and (though all alone and having no man's eye to see me) with
a grim and awesome earnestness. Thus before food, I not only washed but
dressed afresh, taking off the sea-boots or the curranes I worked in,
and putting on my shoes with silver buckles. My seaman's jacket I
removed for a long coat of blue, and I was careful that my shirt was
spotless. In this wise I also never failed to attire myself in the
evening of the day for the short hours of rest between my work and my
bed. That my cheeks should be kept clean of hair, and that the hair of
my head should never outgrow itself, was a constant care, for I stood in
fear of the creeping consciousness which my face in the glass might
bring me, that I was other than other men. But I am loth to set down my
little foolish formalities on sitting to meat and rising from it, and
the silly ceremonies wherewith I indulged myself at going abroad and
coming home. Inexpressibly comic and ridiculous some of them would seem
to me now, but for the tragic meaning that in my terror underlay them.
And remembering how much a defaulter I had been in all such courtesies
of life when most they were called for, I could almost laugh to think
how scrupulous I was in their observance when I was quite alone, with
never an eye to see me, what I did or how I was clad, or in what sorry
fashion I in my solitude acquitted myself like a man.
But though I could be well disposed to laugh at my notions of how to
keep my manhood while compelled to live the life of a beast, alone like
a wolf and useless for any purposes of man or the world, it is not with
laughter that I recall another form of the insanity that in these times
possessed me. This was the conviction that I was visited by Ewan, Mona,
and my father. Madness, I call it, but never did my pulse beat more
temperately or my brain seem clearer than when conscious of these
visitations. If I had spent the long day delving, or gathering limestone
on the beach of the sound, and returned to my house at twilight, I would
perhaps be suddenly aware as I lifted the latch--having thought only of
my work until then--that within my kitchen these three sat together, and
that they turned their eyes to me as I entered. Nothing would be more
convincing to my intelligence than that I actually saw what I say, and
yet I always seemed to know that it was not with my bodily eyes that I
was seeing. These indeed were open, and I was broad awake, with plain
power of common sight on common things--my stool, my table, the settle I
had made myself, and perhaps the fire of turf that burned red on the
hearth. But over this bodily vision there was a spiritual vision more
stable than that of a dream, more soft and variable than that of
material reality, in which I clearly beheld Ewan and Mona and my father,
and saw their eyes turned toward me. Madness it may have been, but I
could say it at the foot of the White Throne that what I speak of I have
seen not once or twice, but many times.
And well I remember how these visitations affected me: first as a
terror, for when on a sudden they came to me as I lifted the latch I
would shrink back and go away again, and return to my house with
trembling; and then as a strange comfort, for they were a sort of silent
company in my desolation. More than once, in these days of great
loneliness, did I verily believe that I had sat me down in the midst of
the three to spend a long hour in thinking of the brave good things that
might have been for all of us but for my headstrong passion, helped out
by the cruel tangle of our fate.
One thing I noted that even yet seems strange in the hours when my
imagination is least given to waywardness. Throughout the period wherein
I lived in the boat, and for some time after I removed me to my house,
the three I have named seemed to visit me together; but after that I had
found my witless neighbor lying dead on the moor, and after that I had
heard the converse of the men who mistook his poor body for my own, the
visitations of Mona and my father ceased altogether, and Ewan alone did
I afterward seem to see. This I pondered long, and at length it fastened
on me with a solemn conviction that what I had looked for had come
about, and that the error that I was a dead man had reached the ears of
my father and of Mona. With Ewan I sat alone when he came to me, and oft
did it appear that we were loving company, for in his eyes were looks of
deep pity, and I on my part had ceased to rail at the blind passion that
had parted us flesh from flesh.
These my writings are not for men who will look at such words as I have
here set down with a cold indifference, or my hand would have kept me
back from this revelation. But that I saw apparently what I have
described is as sure before God as that I was a man cut off from the
land of the living.
A more material sequel came of the finding of the body on the moor. I
was so closely followed by dread of a time that was coming when I must
die, and stretch out my body on the bare ground with no man to give it
Christian burial in the earth, that I could take no rest until I had
devised a means whereby this terror might not haunt me in my last hours.
In front of my house there were, as I have said, the places we call the
Chasms, wherein the rock of this hungry coast is honeycombed into a
hundred deep gullies by the sea. One of these gullies I descended by
means of a cradle of rope swung overthwart a strong log of driftwood,
and there I found a long shelf of stone, a deep fissure in the earth, a
tomb of shelving rock coated with fungus and mold, whereto no dog could
come, and wherein no bird of prey could lift its wing. To this place I
resolved that I would descend when the power of life was on the point of
ebbing away. Having lowered myself by my cradle of rope, I meant to draw
the cordage after me, and then, being already near my end, to lie down
in this close gully under the earth, that was to serve me for grave and
death-bed.
But I was still a strong man, and, ungracious as my condition was, I
shrank from the thought of death, and did what I could to put by the
fear of it. Never a day did I fail to walk to the crest of the rising
ground behind me and look down to where in the valley lay the
habitations of men. Life, life, life, was now the constant cry of the
voice of my heart, and a right goodly thing it seemed to me to be alive,
though I might be said not to live, but only to exist.
Whether, from the day whereon I heard the converse of the two men who
went by my house, I was ever seen of any man for a twelvemonth or more,
I scarce can tell. Great was my care to keep out of the ways wherein
even the shepherds walked, and never a foot seemed to come within two
furlongs of these abandoned parts from the bleak Black Head to the
margin of the sound. But it happened, upon a day toward winter,
beginning the second year since my cutting off, that I turned toward
Port-le-Mary, and walking on with absent mind, came nearer than I had
purposed to the village over the Kallow Point. There I was suddenly
encountered by four or five men who, much in liquor, were playing at
leap-frog among the gorse. English seamen they seemed to be, and perhaps
from the brig that some time before I had noted where she lay anchored
to the lee of the Carrick Rock, in the Poolvash below. At sight of them
I was for turning quickly aside, but they raised such a cry and shot out
such a volley of levities and blasphemies that, try how I would to go
on, I could not but stop on the instant and turn my face to them.
Then I saw that of me the men took no note whatever, and that all their
eyes were on my dog Millish-veg-veen, who was with me, and was now
creeping between my feet with his stump of a tail under his belly, and
his little cunning face full of terror. "Why, here's the dog that killed
our monkey," said one, and another shouted, "It's my old cur, sure
enough," and a third laughed and said he had kept a rod in pickle for
more than a year, and the first cried again, "I'll teach the beast to
kill no more Jackeys." Then, before I was yet fully conscious of what
was being done, one of the brawny swaggerers made toward us, and kicked
at the dog with the fierce lunge of a heavy seaman's boot. The dog
yelped and would have made off, but another of the blusterers kicked him
back, and then a third kicked him, and whatever way he tried to escape
between them, one of them lifted his foot and kicked again.
While they were doing this I felt myself struggling to cry out to them
to stop, but not a syllable could I utter, and, like a man paralyzed, I
stood stock-still, and did nothing to save my housemate and only
companion in life. At length one of the men, laughing a great roistering
laugh, stooped and seized the dog by the nape of the neck and swung him
round in the air. Then I saw the poor cur's piteous look toward me, and
heard its bitter cry; but at the next instant it was flying ten feet
above our heads, and when it fell to the ground it was killed on the
instant.
At that sight I heard an awful groan burst from my mouth, and I saw a
cloud of fire flash before my eyes. When next I knew what I was doing I
was holding one of the men by a fierce grip about the waist, and was
swinging him high above my shoulders.
Now, if the good God had not given me back my consciousness at that
moment, I know full well that at the next he who was then in my power
would have drawn no more the breath of a living man. But I felt on a
sudden the same ghostly hand upon me that I have written of before, and
heard the same ghostly voice in mine ear. So, dropping the man gently to
his feet, as gently as a mother might slip her babe to its cot, I lifted
up my poor mangled beast by its hinder legs and turned away with it. And
as I went the other men fell apart from me with looks of terror, for
they saw that God had willed it that, with an awful strength, should I,
a man of great passions, go through life in peril.
When I had found coolness to think of this that had happened, I mourned
for the loss of the only companion that had ever shared with me my
desolate state; but more than my grief for the dog was my fear for
myself, remembering with horror that when I would have called on the men
to desist I could not utter one word. Truly, it may have been the swift
access of anger that then tied my tongue, but I could not question that
my sudden speechlessness told me I was losing the faculty of speech.
This conclusion fastened upon me with great pain, and I saw that for a
twelvemonth or more I had been zealously preserving the minor qualities
of humanity, while this its greatest faculty, speech, that distinguishes
man from the brute, had been silently slipping from me. Preserve my
power of speech also I resolved I would, and though an evil spirit
within me seemed to make a mock at me, and to say, "Wherefore this
anxiety to keep your speech, seeing that you will never require it,
being a man cut off forever from all intercourse with other men?" yet I
held to my purpose.
Then I asked myself how I was to preserve my speech, save by much and
frequent speaking, and how I was to speak, having none--not even my dog
now--to speak to. For, to speak constantly with myself was a practise I
shrank from as leading perchance to madness, since I had noted that men
of broken wit were much given to mumbling vain words to themselves. At
last I concluded that there was but one way for me, and that was to
pray. Having lighted on this thought I had still some misgivings, for
the evil spirit within me again made a mock at me, asking why I should
speak to God, being a man outside God's grace, and why I should waste
myself in the misspent desire of prayer, seeing that the Heavenly
Majesty had set His face from me in rejecting the atonement of my life,
which I had offered for my crime. But after great inward strivings I
came back to my old form of selfishness, and was convinced that, though
when I prayed God would not hear me, yet that the yearning and uplooking
of prayer might be a good thing for the spiritual part of my nature as a
man--for when was the beast known to pray?
At this I tried to recall a few good words such as my father used, and
at length, after much beating of the wings of my memory, I remembered
some that were the words of Bishop Jeremy Taylor, and did betake myself
to prayer in this manner: "O most gracious God, I tremble to come into
Thy presence, so polluted and dishonored as I am by my foul stain of sin
which I have contracted; but I must come or I perish. I am useless to
any purposes of God and man, and, like one that is dead, unconcerned in
the changes and necessities of the world, living only to spend my time,
and, like a vermin, eat of the fruits of the earth. O my God, I can not
help it now; miserable man that I am, to reduce myself to so sad a state
that I neither am worthy to come to Thee nor dare I stay from Thee. The
greatness of my crime brings me to my remedy; and now I humbly pray Thee
to be merciful to my sin, for it is great."
And this prayer I spoke aloud twice daily thenceforward, at the rising
and the setting of the sun, going out of my house and kneeling on the
turf on the top of the Black Head. And when I had prayed I sang what I
could remember of the psalm that runs, "It is good for me that I have
been in trouble, that I may learn Thy statutes."
In my mind's eye I see myself, a solitary man in that lone place, with
the sea stretching wide below me, and only the sound of its heavy beat
on the rocks rising over me in the quiet air.