"OUR FATHER, WHICH ART IN HEAVEN"
Not many days after the events recorded in the foregoing chapter the
people of Man awoke to the joyful certainty that the sweating sickness
had disappeared. The solid wave of heat had gone; the ground had become
dry and the soil light; and no fetid vapors floated over the Curraghs at
midday. Also the air had grown keener, the nights had sharpened, and in
the morning the fronds of hoar-frost hung on the withering leaves of the
trammon.
Then the poor folk began to arrange their thoughts concerning the
strange things that had happened; to count up their losses by death; to
talk of children that were fatherless, and of old men left alone in the
world, like naked trunks, without bough or branch, flung on the bare
earth by yesterday's storm.
And in that first roll-call after the battle of life and death the
people suddenly became aware that, with the sweating sickness, the man
who had brought the cure for it had also disappeared. He was not on the
Curraghs, he was no longer in Michael, and further east he had not
traveled. None could tell what had become of him. When seen last he was
walking south through German toward Patrick. He was then alone, save for
the half-daft lad, Davy Fayle, who slouched at his heels like a dog. As
he passed up Creg Willey's Hill the people of St. John's followed him in
ones and twos and threes to offer him their simple thanks. But he pushed
along as one who hardly heard them. When he came by the Tynwald he
paused and turned partly toward Greeba, as though half minded to alter
his course. But, hesitating no longer, he followed the straight path
toward the village at the foot of Slieu Whallin. As he crossed the green
the people of St. John's, who followed him up the hill road, had grown
to a great number, being joined there by the people of Tynwald. And when
he passed under the ancient mount, walking with long, rapid steps, his
chin on his breast and his eyes kept steadfastly down, the gray-headed
men uncovered their heads, the young women thrust their young children
under his hands for his blessing, and all by one impulse shouted in one
voice, "God bless the priest!" "Heaven save the priest!"
There were spectators of that scene who were wont to say, when this
sequel had freshened their memories, that amid the wild tumult of the
gratitude of the island's poor people he who was the subject of it made
one quick glance of pain upward to the mount, now standing empty above
the green, and then, parting the crowds that encircled him, pushed
through them without word or glance or sign. Seeing at last that he
shrunk from their thanks, the people followed him no further, but
remained on the green, watching him as he passed on toward Slieu
Whallin, and then up by the mountain track. When he had reached the top
of the path, where it begins its descent to the valley beyond, he paused
again and turned about, glancing back. The people below saw his full
figure clearly outlined against the sky, and once more they sent up
their shout by one great impulse in one great voice that drowned the
distant rumble of the sea: "God bless the priest!" "Heaven save the
priest!" And he heard it, for instantly he faced about and disappeared.
When he was gone it seemed as if a spell had broken. The people looked
into one another's faces in bewilderment, as if vaguely conscious that
somewhere and some time, under conditions the same yet different, all
that they had then seen their eyes had seen before. And bit by bit the
memory came back to them, linked with a name that might not be spoken.
Then many things that had seemed strange became plain.
In a few days the whisper passed over Man, from north to south, from
east to west, from the sod cabins on the Curragh to the Castle at
Castletown, that he who had cured the people of the sickness, he who had
been mistaken for the priest out of Ireland, was none other than the
unblessed man long thought to be dead; and that he had lived to be the
savior of his people.
The great news was brought to Bishop's Court, and it was found to be
there already. Rumor said that from Castletown an inquiry had come
asking if the news were true, but none could tell what answer Bishop's
Court had made. The Bishop had shut himself up from all visits, even
those of his clergy. With Mona and the child, Ewan's little daughter, he
had passed the days since Thorkell's death, and not until the day of
Thorkell's funeral did he break in upon his solitude. Then he went down
to the little churchyard that stands over by the sea.
They buried the ex-Deemster near to his son Ewan, and with scarcely a
foot's space between them. Except Jarvis Kerruish, the Bishop was
Thorkell's sole mourner, and hardly had the service ended, or the second
shovel of earth fallen from old Will-as-Thorn's spade, when Jarvis
whipped about and walked away. Then the Bishop stood alone by his
brother's unhonored grave, trying to forget his malice and uncharity,
and his senseless superstitions that had led to many disasters, thinking
only with the pity that is nigh to love of the great ruin whereunto his
poor beliefs had tottered down. And when the Bishop had returned home
the roll-call of near kindred showed him pitiful gaps. "The island grows
very lonesome, Mona," he said.
That night Davy Fayle came to Bishop's Court with a book in his hand. He
told Mona how he had found the "Ben-my-Chree" a complete wreck on the
shingle of the Dhoon Creek in the Calf Sound, and the book in its
locker. Not a syllable could Davy read, but he knew that the book was
the fishing-log of the lugger, and that since he saw it last it had been
filled with writings.
Mona took the book into the library, and with the Bishop she examined
it. It was a small quarto, bound in sheepskin, with corners and back of
untanned leather. Longways on the back the words "Ben-my-Chree
Fishing-Log" were lettered, as with a soft quill in a bold hand. On the
front page there was this inscription:
Ben-my-Chree.
Owner, Daniel Mylrea, Bishop's Court,
Isle of Man.
Master, Illiam Quilleash.
Over page was the word "ACCOUNTS," and then followed the various items
of the earnings and expenditure of the boat. The handwriting was strong
and free, but the bookkeeping was not lucid.
Eight pages of faintly-tinted paper, much frayed, and with lines ruled
by hand one way of the sheet only, were filled with the accounts of the
herring season of 1705. At the bottom there was an attempt at picking
out the items of profit and loss, and at reckoning the shares of owner,
master, and man. The balance stood but too sadly on the wrong side.
There was a deficit of forty pounds four shillings and sixpence.
The Bishop glanced at the entries, and passed them over with a sigh. But
turning the leaves, he came upon other matter of more pathetic interest.
This was a long personal narrative from the owner's pen, covering some
two hundred of the pages. The Bishop looked it through, hurriedly,
nervously, and with eager eyes. Then he gave up the book to Mona.
"Read it aloud, child," he said, in a voice unlike his own, and with a
brave show of composure he settled himself to listen.
For two hours thereafter Mona read from the narrative that was written
in the book. What that narrative was does not need to be told.
Often the voice of the reader failed her, sometimes it could not support
itself. And in the lapses of her voice the silence was broken by her low
sobs.
The Bishop listened long with a great outer calmness, for the affections
of the father were struggling with a sense of the duty of the servant of
God. At some points of the narrative these seemed so to conflict as to
tear his old heart wofully. But he bore up very bravely, and tried to
think that in what he had done seven years before he had done well. At
an early stage of Mona's reading he stopped her to say:
"Men have been cast on desert islands beforetime, and too often they
have been adrift on unknown seas."
Again he stopped her to add, with a slow shake of the head:
"Men have been outlawed, and dragged out weary years in exile--men have
been oftentimes under the ban and chain of the law."
And once again he interrupted and said, in a trembling undertone, "It is
true--it has been what I looked for--it has been a death in life."
But as Mona went on to read of how the outcast man, kept back from
speech with every living soul, struggled to preserve the spiritual part
of him, the Bishop interrupted once more, and said, in a faltering
voice:
"This existence has been quite alone in its desolation."
As Mona went on again to read of how the unblessed creature said his
prayer in his solitude, not hoping that God would hear, but thinking
himself a man outside God's grace, though God's hand was upon
him--thinking himself a man doomed to everlasting death, though the
blessing of Heaven had already fallen over him like morning dew--then
all that remained of spiritual pride in the heart of the Bishop was
borne down by the love of the father, and his old head fell into his
breast, and the hot tears rained down his wrinkled cheeks.
Later the same night Mona sent for Davy Fayle. The lad was easily found;
he had been waiting in the darkness outside the house, struggling hard
with a desire to go in and tell Mistress Mona where Daniel Mylrea was to
be found.
"Davy," she said, "do you know where he is?"
"Sure," said Davy.
"And you could lead me to him?"
"I could."
"Then come here very early in the morning, and we will go together."
Next day when Mona, attired for her journey, went down for a hasty
breakfast, she found the Bishop fumbling a letter in his trembling
fingers.
"Read this, child," he said in a thick voice, and he handed the letter
to her.
She turned it over nervously. The superscription ran, "These to the Lord
Bishop of Man, at his Palace of Bishop's Court," and the seal on the
other face was that of the insular Government.
While the Bishop made pretense of wiping with his handkerchief the
horn-bridged spectacles on his nose Mona opened and read the letter.
It was from the Governor at Castletown, and said that the Lord of Man
and the Isles, in recognition of the great services done by Daniel
Mylrea to the people of the island during their recent affliction, would
be anxious to appoint him Deemster of Man, in succession to his late
uncle, Thorkell Mylrea (being satisfied that he was otherwise qualified
for the post), if the Steward of the Ecclesiastical Courts were willing
to remove the censure of the Church under which he now labored.
When she had finished reading, Mona cast one glance of nervous
supplication upward to the Bishop's face, and then with a quick cry of
joy, which was partly pain, she flung her arms about his neck.
The old Bishop was quite broken down.
"Man's judgments on man," he said, "are but as the anger of little
children--here to-day, gone to-morrow, and the Father's face is over
all."
* * * * *
What need to tell of one of the incidents of Mona's journey, or of the
brave hopes that buoyed her up on the long and toilsome way? Many a time
during these seven years past she had remembered that it was she who had
persuaded Dan to offer his life as an atonement for his sin. And often
the thought came back to her with the swiftness of remorse that it was
she who, in her blindness, had sent him to a doom that was worse than
death. But Heaven's ways had not been her ways, and all was well. The
atonement had been made, and the sin had been wiped out of the book of
life. Dan, her love, her beloved, had worked out his redemption. He had
proved himself the great man she had always known he must be. He was to
come back loaded with honor and gratitude, and surrounded by multitudes
of friends.
More than once, when the journey was heaviest, she put her hand to her
bosom and touched the paper that nestled so warmly there. Then in her
mind's eye she saw Dan in the seat of the Deemster, the righteous judge
of his own people. Oh, yes, he would be the Deemster, but he would be
Dan still, her Dan, the lively, cheerful, joyous, perhaps even
frolicsome Dan, once more. He would sport with her like Ailee; he would
play with her as he used to play long ago with another little girl that
she herself could remember--tickling her under her armpits, and under
her chin, and in twenty different cozy nests of her pretty body, where
whole broods of birdies sent up a chorus of squealing song-laughter.
The burden of Mona's long years of weary sorrow had been so suddenly
lifted away that she could not restrain her thoughts from childish
sportiveness. But sometimes she remembered Ewan, and then her heart
saddened, and sometimes she thought of herself, and then it flushed full
of quick, hot blood. And, oh, how delicious was the secret thing that
sometimes stole up between her visions of Dan and the high destiny that
was before him. It was a vision of herself, transfigured by his noble
love, resting upon and looking up to him, and thus passing on and on and
on to the end.
Once she remembered, with a chill passing through her, that in the
writing which she had read Dan had said he was ill? But what of that?
She was going to him, and would nurse him back to health.
And Davy Fayle, walking at her side, was full of his own big notions,
too. Mastha Dan would be Dempster, true; but he'd have a boat for his
pleasure, sarten sure. Davy Fayle would sail man in her, perhaps mate,
and maybe skipper some day--who knows? And then--lying aft and drifting
at the herrings, and smokin', and the stars out, and the moon makin' a
peep--aw, well, well, well!
They reached the end of their journey at last. It was in a small
gorse-covered house far over the wild moor, on the edge of the Chasms,
looking straight out on the hungry sea. In its one bare room (which was
without fire, and was cheerless with little light) there was a table, a
settle, a chair, a stool, and a sort of truckle-bed. Dan was there, the
same, yet, oh, how different! He lay on the bed unconscious, near to
death of the sickness--the last that the scourge was to slay.
* * * * *
Of this story of great love and great suffering what is left to tell?
There are moments when life seems like the blind swirl of a bat in the
dusk--blundering, irresponsible, not to be counted with, the swift
creature of evil chance. We see a little child's white face at a
hospital window, a strong man toiling hopelessly against wrong, the
innocent suffering with the guilty, good instincts thwarted and base
purposes promoted, and we ask ourselves, with a thrill of the heart,
What, after all, is God doing in this His world? And from such blind
laboring of chance the tired and beaten generations of men seem to find
it reward enough to drop one after one to the hushed realms of rest.
Shall we marvel very much if such a moment came to this pure and noble
woman as she stood in the death-chamber of her beloved, with whom, after
years of longing, she was at last brought face to face?
But again, there are other moments, higher and better, when there is
such a thing in this so bewildering world as the victory of
vanquishment, when the true man crushed by evil chance is yet the true
man undestroyed by it and destroying it, when Job on his dunghill is
more to be envied than Pharaoh on his throne, and death is as good as
life.
And such a higher moment came to Mona in that death-chamber. She sat
many hours by Dan's side, waiting for the breaking of his delirium and
the brief space of consciousness and of peace which would be the
beginning of the end. It came at long, long length, and, ah, how soon it
came!
The night had come and gone while she sat and watched. When the sunrise
shot red through the skin-covered window it fell on Dan and awakened
him. Opening his eyes, he saw Mona, and his soul smiled over his wasted
face. He could not speak, nor could he lift his worn hands. She knew
that the time was near, and holding back her grief, like wild creatures
held by the leash, she dropped to her knees, and clasped her hands
together to pray. And while she prayed the dying man repeated some of
the words after her. "Our Father--"
"Our--Father--"
"Which art in heaven, hallowed be Thy name--"
"Hallowed--be--Thy--name--"
"Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven; give
us this day our daily bread; and forgive us our trespasses, as we
forgive them that trespass against us; and lead us not into temptation,
but deliver us from evil--"
"But deliver us from evil--"
"Amen."
"Amen."