The Deemster Part 60

V

It happened that after service the next morning the Bishop and Thorkell walked out of the chapel side by side.

"We are old men now, Gilcrist," said Thorkell, "and should be good friends together."

"That is so," the Bishop answered.

"We've both lost a son, and can feel for each other."

The Bishop made no reply.

"We're childless men, in fact."

"There's Mona, G.o.d bless her!" the Bishop said, very softly.

"True, true," said Thorkell, and there was silence for a moment.

"It was partly her fault when she left me--partly, I say;--don't you think so, Gilcrist?" said Thorkell, nervously.

"She's a dear, sweet soul," the Bishop said.

"It's true."

They stepped on a few paces, and pa.s.sed by the spot whereon the two fishermen laid down their dread burden from the Mooragh seven years before. Then Thorkell spoke again and in a feverish voice.

"D'ye know, Gilcrist, I sometimes awake in the night crying 'Ewan!

Ewan!'"

The Bishop did not answer, and Thorkell, in another tone, asked when the Irish priest was to reach Michael.

"He may be here to-morrow," the Bishop said.

Thorkell shuddered.

"It must be that G.o.d is revenging himself upon us with this fearful scourge."

"It dishonors G.o.d to say so," the Bishop replied. "He is calling upon us to repent."

There was another pause, and then Thorkell asked what a man should do to set things right in this world if perchance he had taken a little more in usury than was fair and honest.

"Give back whatever was more than justice," said the Bishop promptly.

"But that is often impossible, Gilcrist."

"If he has robbed the widow, and she is dead, let him repay the fatherless."

"It is impossible--I tell you, Gilcrist, it is impossible--impossible."

As they were entering the house Thorkell asked if there was truth in the rumor that the wells had been charmed.

"To believe such stories is to be drawn off from a trust in G.o.d and a dependence on his good providence," said the Bishop.

"But I must say, brother, that strange things are known to happen. Now I myself have witnessed extraordinary fulfilments."

"Superst.i.tion is a forsaking of G.o.d, whom we have most need to fly to in trouble and distress," the Bishop answered.

"True--very true--I loathe it; but still it's a sort of religion, isn't it, Gilcrist?"

"So the wise man says--as the ape is a sort of a man."

VI

Three days later the word went round that he who had been looked for was come to Michael, and many went out to meet him. He was a stalwart man, straight and tall, bony and muscular. His dress was poverty's own livery: a gray shapeless sack-coat, reaching below his knees, curranes on his feet of untanned skin with open clocks, and a cap of cloth, half helmet and half hood, drawn closely down over his head. His cheeks were shaven and deeply bronzed. The expression of his face was of a strange commingling of strength and tenderness. His gestures were few, slow, and gentle. His measured step was a rhythmic stride--the stride of a man who has learned in the long endurance of solitude to walk alone in the ways of the world. He spoke little, and scarcely answered the questions which were put to him. "Aw, but I seem to have seen the good man in my drames," said one; and some said "Ay" to that, and some laughed at it.

Within six hours of his coming he had set the whole parish to work. Half of the men he sent up into the mountains to cut gorse and drag it down to the Curraghs in piles of ten feet high, tied about with long sheep lankets of twisted straw. The other half he set to dig trenches in the marshy places. He made the women to kindle a turf fire in every room with a chimney-flue, and when night came he had great fires of gorse, peat, withered vegetation, and dried sea-wrack built on the open s.p.a.ces about the houses in which the sickness had broken out. He seemed neither to rest nor eat. From sick house to sick house, from trench to trench, and fire to fire, he moved on with his strong step. And behind him, at all times, having never a word from him and never a look, but trudging along at his heels like a dog, was the man-lad, Davy Fayle.

Many of the affrighted people who had taken refuge in the mountains returned to their homes at his coming, but others, husbands and fathers chiefly, remained on the hills, leaving their wives and families to fend for themselves. Seeing this, he went up and found some of them in their hiding-places, and shaming them out of their cowardice, brought them back behind him, more docile than sheep behind a shepherd. When the ex-town-watch, Billy-by-Nite, next appeared on the Curraghs in the round of his prophetic itineration, the strange man said not a word, but he cut short the vehement jeremiad by taking the Quaker prophet by legs and neck, and throwing him headlong into one of the drain-troughs newly dug in the dampest places.

But the strength of this silent man was no more conspicuous than his tenderness. When in the frenzy of their fever the sufferers would cast off their clothes, and try to rise from their beds and rush into the cooler air from the heat by which he had surrounded them, his big h.o.r.n.y hands would restrain them with a great gentleness.

Before he had been five days in Michael and on the Curraghs the sickness began to abate. The deaths were fewer, and some of the sick rose from their beds. Then the people plied him with many questions, and would have overwhelmed him with their rude grat.i.tude. To their questions he gave few answers, and when they thanked him he turned and left them.

They said that their Bishop, who was grown feeble, the good ould angel, thought it strange that he had not yet visited him. To this he answered briefly that before leaving the parish he would go to Bishop's Court.

They told him that Mistress Mona, daughter of the Deemster that was, bad cess to him, had been seeking him high and low. At this his lip trembled, and he bent his head.

"The good man's face plagues me mortal," said old Billy-the-Gawk.

"Whiles I know it, and other whiles I don't."

VII

Only another day did the stranger remain in Michael, but the brief times was full of strange events. The night closed in before seven o'clock. It was then very dark across the mountains, and the sea lay black beyond the cliffs, but the Curraghs were dotted over with the many fires which had been kindled about the infected houses.

Within one of these houses, the home of Jabez Gawne, the stranger stood beside the bed of a sick woman, the tailor's wife. Behind him there were anxious faces. Davy Fayle, always near him, leaned against the door-jamb by the porch.

And while the stranger wrapped the sweltering sufferer in hot blankets, other sufferers sent to him to pray of him to come to them. First there came an old man to tell of his grandchild, who had been smitten down that day, and she was the last of his kin whom the Sweat had left alive.

Then a woman, to say that her husband, who had started again with the boats but yesterday, had been brought home to her that night with the sickness. He listened to all who came, and answered quietly, "I will go."

At length a young man ran in and said, "The Dempster's down. He's shouting for you, sir. He sent me hot-foot to fetch you."

The stranger listened as before, and seemed to think rapidly for a moment, for his under lip trembled, and was drawn painfully inward. Then he answered as briefly as ever, and with as calm a voice, "I will go."

The man ran back with his answer, but presently returned, saying, with panting breath, "He's rambling, sir; raving mad, sir; and shouting that he must be coming after you if you're not for coming to him."

"We will go together," the stranger said, and they went out immediately.