OF HIS GREAT RESOLVE
When he had ceased to breathe, the air of my house became suddenly void
and empty. With a great awe upon me I rose and stretched him out on the
settle, and covered his white face with a cloth. Then in the silence I
sat and tried to think of the strange accident that had that night
befallen. One thing I saw with a fearful certainty, that a great burden
of responsibility had fallen upon me. I thought of the people of this
island perishing in their sickness, and I remembered that I alone of all
men here knew how to succor and save them. I alone, and who was I? The
one man accursed among men; the one man cut off forever from the company
of the living; the man without family or kin or name among the people;
whose flesh no man might touch with his flesh; whose eye no other eye
might look upon.
And thus with the burden of responsibility came a yet more terrible
burden of doubt. Was it for me to break through the dread judgment
pronounced upon me, and go down among the people to heal them? And if I
went would the people receive me, even in this their last extreme?
Before the face of death would all other fears sink out of their sight?
Or, fearing death itself less than the curse, would they rise up and
drive me from them?
Long I sat in the anguish of black misgivings, and then rose and ranged
my room from side to side, if perchance I might find some light in my
darkness. And oft did the strangeness of that night's accidents so far
bewilder me that for an instant it would seem that I must be in a dream.
Once I lifted the face-cloth from the face on the settle that I might be
sure that I was awake.
At length it fixed itself on my mind that whatsoever the judgment upon
me, and whatsoever the people's terror of it, I had no choice but to
bear the burden that was now mine own. Go down among my sick countrymen
I should and must, let the end be what it would! Accursed man though I
was, yet to fulfil the dead priest's mission was a mission wherewith God
Himself seemed to charge me!
And now I scarce can say how it escaped me that my first duty was to
take the body of the priest who had died in my house to one of the
churchyards for Christian burial. There must have been some end of
Providence in my strange forgetfulness, for if this thing had but come
into my wild thoughts, and I had indeed done what it was fitting that I
should do, then must certain wonderful consequences have fallen short of
the blessing with which God has blessed them.
What I did, thinking no evil, was to pick up my spade and go out on the
moor and delve for the dead man a shallow grave. As I turned to the door
I stumbled over something that lay on the floor. Stooping to look at it,
I found it to be the poor sea-mew. It was dead and stiff, and had still
its wings outstretched as if in the act of flight.
I had not noted until now, when with a fearful glance backward I stepped
out into the night, that the storm had gone. A thick dew-cloud lay deep
over the land, and the round moon was shining through it. I chose a spot
a little to the south of the stone circle on the Black Head, and there
by the moon's light I howket a barrow of earth. The better part of an
hour I wrought, and when my work was done I went back to my house, and
then the dead man was cold. I took a piece of old canvas, and put it
about the body, from head to feet, wrapping it over the clothes, and
covering the face. This done, I lifted the dead in my arms and carried
it out.
Very hollow and heavy was the thud of my feet on the turf in that
uncertain light. As I toiled along I recalled the promise that I had
given to the priest to see my father and speak with him. This memory
brought me the sore pain of a wounded tenderness, but it strengthened my
resolve. When I had reached the grave which I had made the night was
near to morning, the dew-cloud had lifted away, and out of the unseen,
murmuring sea that lay far and wide in front of me a gray streak, like
an arrow's barb, was shooting up into the darkness of the sky.
One glance more I took at the dead man's face in that vague foredawn,
and its swart meagreness seemed to have passed off under death's
composing hand.
I covered the body with the earth, and then I said my prayer, for it was
nigh to my accustomed hour. Also I sang my psalm, kneeling with my face
toward the sea. And while I sang in that dank air the sky lightened and
the sun rose out of the deep.
I know not what touched me then, if it was not the finger of God
Himself; but suddenly a great burden seemed to fall from me, and my
heart grew full of a blessed joy. And, O Father, I cried, I am delivered
from the body of the death I lived in! I have lived, I have died, and I
live again!
I saw apparently that the night of my long imprisonment was past, that
the doors of my dungeon were broken open, and that its air was to be the
breath of my nostrils no more.
Then the tears gushed from mine eyes and rained down my bony cheeks, for
well I knew that God had seen that I, even I, had suffered enough.
And when I rose to my feet from beside the dead man's grave I felt of a
certainty that the curse had fallen away.
* * * * *
HIS LAST WORDS
Three days have gone since last I put my hand to this writing, and now I
know that though the curse has fallen from me yet must its earthly
penalties be mine to the end. Sorely weary, and more sorely ashamed, I
have, within these three hours past, escaped from the tumult of the
people. How their wild huzzas ring in my ears! "God bless the priest!"
"Heaven save the priest!" Their loud cries of a blind gratitude, how
they follow me! Oh, that I could fly from the memory of them, and wipe
them out of my mind! There were those that appeared to know me among the
many that knew me not. The tear-stained faces, the faces hard and stony,
the faces abashed and confused--how they live before my eyes! And at the
Tynwald, how the children were thrust under my hand for my blessing! My
blessing--mine! and at the Tynwald! Thank God, it is all over! I am away
from it forever. Home I am at last, and for the last time.
Better than three weeks have passed since the priest died in my house
and I buried him on the moor. What strange events have since befallen,
and in what a strange, new world! The Deemster's terrible end, and my
own going with the priest's message to the Bishop, my father. But I
shall not live to set it down. Nor is it needful so to do, for she whom
I write for knows all that should be written henceforward. Everything
she knows save one thing only, and if this writing should yet come to
her hand that also she will then learn.
God's holy grace be with her! I have not seen her. The Deemster I have
seen, the Bishop I have spoken with, and a living vision of our Ewan,
his sweet child-daughter, have I held to my knee. But not once these
many days has she who is dearest of all to me passed before my eyes. It
is better so. I shunned her. Where she was, there I would not go. Yet,
through all these heavy years I have borne her upon my heart. Day and
night she has been with me. Oh, Mona, Mona, my Mona, apart forever are
our paths in this dim world, and my tarnished name is your reproach. My
love, my lost love, as a man I yearned for you to hold you to my breast.
But I was dead to you, and I would not break in with an earthly love
that must be brief and might not be blessed on a memory that death has
purified of its stains. Adieu, adieu, my love, my own Mona; though we
are never to clasp hands again, yet do I know that you will be with me
as an unseen presence when the hour comes--ah! how soon--of death's
asundering.
For the power of life is low in me. I have taken the sickness. It is
from the Deemster that I have taken it. No longer do I fear death. Yet I
hesitate to do with myself what I have long thought that I would do when
the end should come. "To-morrow," and "to-morrow," and "to-morrow," I
say in my heart, and still I am here.