He staggered another pace forward, and would have fallen, but I, recovering in some measure my self-command, caught him in my arms, and put him to sit on the settle before the hearth.
Scarce had he gained this rest when his eyelids trembled and closed, and he became insensible. He was a large, swart, and bony man, bearing in his face the marks of life"s hard storms. His dress was plainly the dress of a priest, but of an order of priesthood quite unknown to me. A proud poverty sat upon the man, and before I yet knew wherefor, my heart went out to him in a strange, uncertain reverence.
Loosening the hard collar that bound his neck, I made bare his throat, and then moistened his lips with water. Some other offices I did for him, such as with difficulty removing his great boots, which were full of water, and stretching his feet toward the fire. I stirred the peats, too, and the glow was full and grateful. Then I looked for the mark of the blow he spoke of, and found it where most it was to be feared, on the hinder part of the head. Though there was no blood flowing, yet was the skull driven in upon the brain, leaving a hollow spot over a s.p.a.ce that might have been covered by a copper token.
He did not soon return to consciousness, but toiled hard at intervals to regain it, and then lapsed back to a breathless quiet. And I, not knowing what else to do, took a basin of water, lukewarm, and bathed the wound with it, damping the forehead with water that was cold. All this time the sea-mew, which I had cast from my hand when the priest stumbled, lay in one corner panting, its head down, its tail up, and its powerless wings stretched useless on either side.
Then the man, taking a long breath, opened his eyes, and seeing me he made some tender of grat.i.tude. He told me that in being put ash.o.r.e out of the brig "Bridget," from Cork, in Ireland, he had been struck on the head by the boom as it shifted with the wind, but that heeding not his injury, and thinking he could make Port-le-Mary to lie there that night, he had set out over the moor, while his late comrades of the brig put off from our perilous coast for England, whither they were bound.
So much had he said, speaking painfully, when again he fell in unconsciousness, and this time a strong delirium took hold of him. I tried not to hear what then he said, for it seemed to me an awful thing that in such an hour of reason"s vanquishment the eye of man might look into the heart, which only G.o.d"s eye should see. But hear him I must, or leave him alone in his present need. And he talked loudly of some great outrage wherein helpless women were thrown on the roads without shelter, and even the dead in their graves were desecrated. When he came to himself again he knew that his mind had wandered, and he told me that four years before he had been confessor at the convent of Port Royal in France. He said that in that place they had been men and women of the Order of Jansenists, teaching simple goodness and piety. But their convent had been suppressed by commission of the Jesuits, and being banished from France, he had fled to his native country of Ireland, where now he held the place of parish priest. More in this manner he said, but my mind was sorely perplexed, and I cannot recall his words faithfully, or rightly tell of the commerce of conversation between us, save that he put to me some broken questions in his moments of ease from pain, and muttered many times to himself after I had answered him briefly, or when I had answered him not at all.
For the sense that I was a man awakening out of a dream, a long dream of seven lonesome years, grew stronger as he told of what traffic the world had lately seen, and he himself been witness to. And my old creeping terror of the judgment upon me that forbade that any man should speak with me, or that I should speak with any man, struggled hard with the necessity now before me to make a swift choice whether I should turn away and leave this man, who had sought the shelter of my house, or break through the curse that bound me.
Choice of any kind I did not make with a conscious mind, but before I was yet aware I was talking with the priest, and he with me.
The Priest: He said, I am the Catholic priest that your good Bishop sent for out of Ireland, as you have heard I doubt not?
Myself: I answered No, that I had not heard.
The Priest: He asked me, did I live alone in this house, and how long I had been here?
Myself: I said, Yes, and that I had been seven years in this place come Christmas.
The Priest: He asked, What, and do you never go up to the towns?
Myself: I answered, No.
The Priest: Then, said the priest, thinking long before he spoke, you have not heard of the great sickness that has broken out among your people.
Myself: I told him I had heard nothing.
The Priest: He said it was the sweating sickness, and that vast numbers had fallen to it and many had died. I think he said--I can not be sure--that after fruitless efforts of his own to combat the disease, the Bishop of the island had sent to Ireland a message for him, having heard that the Almighty had blessed his efforts in a like terrible scourge that broke out two years before over the bogs of Western Ireland.
I listened with fear, and began to comprehend much that had of late been a puzzle to me. But before the priest had gone far his sickness overcame him afresh, and he fell in another long unconsciousness. While he lay thus, very silent or rambling afresh through the ways of the past, I know not what feelings possessed me, for my heart was in a great turmoil. But when he opened his eyes again, very peaceful in their quiet light, but with less than before of the power of life in them, he said he perceived that his errand had been fruitless, and that he had but come to my house to die. At that word I started to my feet with a cry, but he--thinking that my thoughts were of our poor people, who would lose a deliverer by his death--told me to have patience, for that G.o.d who had smitten him down would surely raise up in his stead a far mightier savior of my afflicted countrymen.
Then in the lapses of his pain he talked of the sickness that had befallen his own people; how it was due to long rains that soaked the soil, and was followed by the hot sun that drew out of the earth its foul sweat; how the sickness fell chiefly on such as had their houses on bogs and low-lying ground; and how the cure for it was to keep the body of the sick person closely wrapped in blankets, and to dry the air about him with many fires. He told me, too, that all medicines he had yet seen given for this disease were useless, and being oftenest of a cooling nature were sometimes deadly. He said that those of his own people who had lived on the mountains had escaped the malady. Much he also said of how men had fled from their wives, and women from their children in terror of the infection, but that, save only in the worst cases, contagion from the sweating sickness there could be none. More of this sort he said than I can well set down in this writing. Often he spoke with sore labor, as though a strong impulse prompted him. And I who listened eagerly heard what he said with a mighty fear, for well I knew that if death came to him as he foretold, I had now that knowledge which it must be sin to hide.
After he had said this the lapses into unconsciousness were more frequent than before, and the intervals of cool reason and sweet respite from pain were briefer. But a short while after midnight he came to himself with a smile on his meagre face and peace in his eyes. He asked me would I promise to do one thing for him, for that he was a dying man; and I told him yes, before I had heard what it was that he wished of me.
Then he asked did I know where the Bishop lived, and at first I made no answer.
Bishop"s Court they call his house, he said, and it lies to the northwest of this island by the land they have named the Curraghs. Do you know it?
I bent my head by way of a.s.sent.
The Priest: I would have you to go to him, he said, and say--The Catholic priest you sent for out of Ireland, Father Dalby, fulfilled his pledge to you and came to your island, but died by the visitation of G.o.d on the night of his landing on your sh.o.r.es. Will you deliver me this message?
I did not make him an answer, and he put the question again. Still my tongue clave to the roof of my mouth and I could not speak.
The Priest: You need not fear, he said, to go to the Bishop, for he is a holy man, as I have heard, without pride of worldly place, and the poor and outcast are his constant guests.
Even yet I answered nothing, but only held down my head while my heart surged within me.
The Priest: The fame of him as a righteous servant of G.o.d had gone far into other lands, and therefore it was I, who love Protestantism not at all, and hold no dalliance with it, came to your island at his call.
He took my hand in his hands and asked me again if I would go to the Bishop to say the words which he had given me, and I, with swimming eyes that saw nothing of the dying face before me, bowed my head, and answered, I will go.
Near three hours longer he lived, and much of that time he pa.s.sed in a feeble delirium. But just before the end came he awoke, and motioned to a small bag that hung about his waist. I guessed his meaning, and drawing out a crucifix I placed it in his hands.
Then he pa.s.sed silently away, and Death, the black camel that had knelt at the gate of my lone house these seven years of death-in-life, had entered it at last to take another man than me.
CHAPTER XLIII
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 p.r.o.nounced 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 G.o.d 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 G.o.d 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 pa.s.sed 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 G.o.d 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 G.o.d 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.