"Daniel Mylrea, you are not to die for your crime."
At that ill-omened word the prisoner staggered like a drunken man, and lifted his right hand mechanically above his head, as one who would avert a blow. And now it was easy to see in the wild light in the eyes of the Bishop, and to hear in his hollow, tense voice, that the heart of the father was wrestling with the soul of the priest, and that every word that condemned the guilty man made its sore wound on the spirit of him that uttered it.
"You have chosen death rather than life, but on this side of death's darkness you have yet, by God's awful will, to become a terror to yourself; you have water of gall to drink; toilfully you have to live in a waste land alone, where the sweet light of morning shall bring you pain, and the darkness of night have eyes to peer into your soul; and so on and on from year to weary year, until your step shall fail and there shall be never another to help you up; hopeless, accursed, finding death in life, looking only for life in death, and crying in the bitterness of your desolation, 'Cursed be the day wherein I was born; let not the day wherein my mother bare me be blessed! Cursed be the man that brought tidings to my father, saying, "A man-child is born unto thee," making his heart glad.'"
One hoarse cry as of physical pain burst from the prisoner before these awful words were yet fully uttered. The guilty man gripped his head between his hands, and like a beast that is smitten in the shambles he stood in a stupor, his body swaying slightly, a film upon his eyes, and his mind sullen and stunned. There was silence for a moment, and when the Bishop spoke again his tempest-beaten head, white with the flowers of the grave, trembled visibly. The terrified people were grasping each other's hands, and their hard-drawn breath went through the air like the hiss of the sea at its ebb. As they looked up at the Bishop they understood that an awful struggle of human love and spiritual duty was going on before them, and over all their terror they were moved to a deep compassion.
"Daniel Mylrea," said the Bishop again, and notwithstanding his efforts to uphold it, his voice softened and all but broke, "vengeance belongs to God, but we who are men and prone to fall are not to deny mercy. When your fetters are removed, and you leave this place, you will go to the Calf Sound that flows at the extreme south of the island. There you will find your fishing-boat, stored with such as may meet your immediate wants. With that offering we part from you while life shall last. Use it well, but henceforward look for no succor whence it has come. Though you loathe your life, be zealous to preserve it, and hasten not, I warn you, by one hour the great day of God's final reckoning. Most of all be mindful of the things of an eternal concernment, that we who part from you now may not part forever as from a soul given over to everlasting darkness."
The prisoner gave no further sign. Then the Bishop turned with a wild gesture to the right and to the left and lifted both his hands. "Men and women of Man," he said, in a voice that rose to the shrillness of a cry, "the sentence of the court of the barony of the island is that this man shall be cut off from his people. Henceforth let him have no name among us, nor family, nor kin. From now forever let no flesh touch his flesh. Let no tongue speak to him. Let no eye look on him. If he should be an-hungered, let none give him meat. When he shall be sick, let none minister to him. When his death shall come, let no man bury him. Alone let him live, alone let him die, and among the beasts of the field let him hide his unburied bones."
A great hoarse groan arose from the people, such as comes from the bosom of a sullen sea. The pathos of the awful struggle which they had looked upon was swallowed up in the horror of its tragedy. What they had come to see was as nothing to the awfulness of the thing they had witnessed. Death was terrible, but this was beyond death's terror. Somewhere in the dark chambers of the memory of their old men the like of it lived as a grim gorgon from old time. They looked up at the mount, and the gaunt figure standing there above the vast multitude of moving heads seemed to be something beyond nature. The trembling upraised hands, the eyes of fire, the white quivering lips, the fever in the face which consumed the grosser senses, appeared to transcend the natural man. And below was the prisoner, dazed, stunned, a beast smitten mortally and staggering to its fall.
The sergeant removed the fetters from the prisoner's hands and feet, and turned him about with his face toward the south. Not at first did the man seem to realize that he was no longer a prisoner, but an outcast, and free to go whither he would, save where other men might be. Then, recovering some partial consciousness, he moved a pace or two forward, and instantly the crowd opened for him and a long, wide way was made through the dense mass, and he walked through it, slow, yet strong of step, with head bent and eyes that looked into the eyes of no man. Thus he passed away from the Tynwald toward the foot of Slieu Whallin and the valley of Foxdale that runs southward. And the people looked after him, and the Bishop on the mount and the clergy below followed him with their eyes. A great wave of compassion swept over the crowd as the solitary figure crossed the river and began to ascend the mountain-path. The man was accursed, and none might look upon him with pity; but there were eyes that grew dim at that sight.
The smoke still rose in a long blue column from the side of Greeba, and the heavy cloud that had hung at poise over the head of Slieu Whallin had changed its shape to the outlines of a mighty bird, luminous as a sea-gull, but of a sickly saffron. Over the long line of sea and sky to the west the streak of red that had burned duskily had also changed to a dull phosphoric light that sent eastward over the sky's low roof a misty glow. And while the people watched the lonely man who moved away from them across the breast of the hill, a pale sheet of lightning, without noise of thunder, flashed twice or thrice before their faces. So still was the crowd, and so reverberant the air, that they could hear the man's footsteps on the stony hillside. When he reached the topmost point of the path, and was about to descend to the valley, he was seen to stop, and presently to turn his face, gazing backward for a moment. Against the dun sky his figure could be seen from head to foot. While he stood the people held their breath. When he was gone, and the mountain had hidden him, the crowd breathed audibly.
At the next moment all eyes were turned back to the mount. There the Bishop, a priest of God no longer, but only a poor human father now, had fallen to his knees, and lifted his two trembling arms. Then the pent-up anguish of the wretched heart that had steeled itself to a mighty sacrifice of duty burst forth in a prayer of great agony.
"O Father in Heaven, it is not for him who draws the sword of the Lord's vengeance among men to cry for mercy, but rather to smite and spare not, yea, though his own flesh be smitten; but, O Thou that fillest heaven and earth, from whom none can hide himself in any secret place that Thou shalt not see him, look with pity on the secret place of the heart of Thy servant and hear his cry. O Lord on High, whose anger goes forth as a whirlwind, and whose word is like as a fire, what am I but a feeble, broken, desolate old man? Thou knowest my weakness, and how my familiars watched for my halting, and how for a period my soul failed me, and how my earthly affections conquered my heavenly office, and how God's rule among this people was most in danger from the servant of God, who should be valiant for the Lord on the earth. And if through the trial of this day Thou hast been strength of my strength, woe is me now, aged and full of days, feeble of body and weak of faith, that Thou hast brought this heavy judgment upon me. God of Goodness and Righteous Judge of all the Earth, have mercy and forgive if we weep for him who goeth away and shall return no more, nor see his home and kindred. Follow him with Thy Spirit, touch him with Thy finger of fire, pour upon him the healing of Thy grace, so that after death's great asundering, when all shall stand for one judgment, it may not be said of Thy servant, 'Write ye this old man childless.'"
It was the cry of a great shattered soul, and the terrified people dropped to their knees while the voice pealed over their heads. When the Bishop was silent the clergy lifted him to his feet and helped him down the pathway to the chapel. There was then a dull murmur of distant thunder from across the sea. The people fell apart in confusion. Before the last of them had left the green the cloud of pale saffron over the head of Slieu Whallin had broken into lightning, and the rain was falling heavily.
THE BRIEF RELATION OF DANIEL MYLREA
WRITTEN BY HIMSELF
CHAPTER XXXVII
OF HIS OUTCAST STATE
I, Daniel Mylrea, the son (God forgive me!) of Gilcrist Mylrea, Bishop of Man – grace and peace be with that saintly soul! – do set me down in the year (as well as my reckoning serves me) 1712, the month September, the day somewhere between the twentieth and the thirtieth, to begin a brief relation of certain exceeding strange accidents of this life that have befallen me since, at the heavy judgment of God, I first turned my face from the company of men. Not, as the good Bunyan was, am I now impelled to such a narration – bear with me though I name myself with that holy man – by hope or thought that the goodness and bounty of God may thereby be the more advanced before the sons of men, though it is for me also to magnify the Heavenly Majesty, insomuch as that by this door of my outcast state He has brought me to partake of grace and life. Alone I sit to write what perchance no eye may read, but it is with hope, perhaps only vain, that she who is dear to me beyond words of appraisement may yet learn of the marvels which did oft occur, that I try in these my last days to put my memory under wardship. For it has fastened on me with conviction that God has chosen me for a vessel of mercy, and that very soon he will relieve me from the body of the death I live in. If I finish this writing before I go hence, and if when I am gone she reads it, methinks it will come to her as a deep solace that her prayer of long since was answered, and that, though so sorely separated, we twain have yet been one even in this world, and lived together by day and hour in the cheer of the spirit. But if the gracious end should come before I bring my task to a period, and she should know only of my forlorn condition and learn nothing of the grace wherein much of its desolation was lost, and never come to an understanding of such of those strange accidents as to her knowledge have befallen, then that were also well, for she must therein be spared many tears.
It was on May 29, 1705 – seven years and four months, as I reckon it, back from this present time – that in punishment of my great crime the heavy sentence fell on me that cut me off forever from the number of the people. What happened on that day and on the days soon following it I do partly remember with the vividness of horror, and partly recall with difficulty and mistrust from certain dark places of memory that seem to be clouded over and numb. When I came to myself as I was plodding over the side of Slieu Whallin, the thunder was loud in my ears, the lightning was flashing before my eyes, and the rain was swirling around me. I minded them not, but went on, hardly seeing what was about or above me, on and on, over mountain road and path, until the long day was almost done and the dusk began to deepen. Then the strength of the tempest was spent, and only the hinder part of it beat out from the west a thin, misty rain, and I found myself in Rushen, on the south brow of the glen below Carny-Gree. There I threw myself down on the turf with a great numbness and a great stupor upon me, both in body and in mind. How long I lay there I know not, whether a few minutes only, or, as I then surmised, near four-and-twenty hours; but the light of day was not wholly gone from the sky when I lifted my head from where it had rested on my hands, and saw that about me in a deep half-circle stood a drift of sheep, all still, save for their heavy breathing, and all gazing in their questioning silence down on me. I think in my heart, remembering my desolation, I drew solace from this strange fellowship on the lone mountain-side, but I lifted my hand and drove the sheep away, and I thought as they went they bleated, but I could hear nothing of their cry, and so surmised that under the sufferings of that day I had become deaf.
I fell back to the same stupor as before, and when I came to myself again the moon was up, and a white light was around the place where I sat. With the smell of the sheep in my nostrils I thought they might be standing about me again, but I could see nothing clearly, and so stretched out my hands either way. Then, from their confusion in scurrying away, I knew that the sheep had indeed been there, and that under the sufferings of that day I had also failed in my sight.
The tempest was over by this time, the mountain turf had run dry, and I lay me down at length and fell into a deep sleep without dreams; and so ended the first day of my solitary state.
When I awoke the sun was high, and the wheat-ear was singing on a stone very close above me, whereunder her pale-blue egg she had newly laid. I know not what wayward humor then possessed me, but it is true that I reached my hand to the little egg and looked at it, and crushed it between my finger and thumb, and cast its refuse away. My surmise of the night before I now found to be verified, that hearing and sight were both partly gone from me. No man ever mourned less at first knowledge of such infirmities, but in truth I was almost beyond the touch of pain, and a sorer calamity would have wanted strength to torture me. I rose and set my face southward, for it was in the Calf Sound, as I remembered, that I was to find my boat, and if any hope lived in my heart, so numb of torpor, it was that perchance I might set sail and get myself away.
I walked between Barrule and Dalby, and came down on the eastward of Cronk-na-Irey-Lhaa. Then I, who had never before known my strength to fail, grew suddenly weary, and would fain have cast me down to rest. So to succumb I could not brook, but I halted in my walking and looked back, and across the plain to the east, and down to the Bay of Fleswick to the west. Many times since have I stood there and looked on sea and sky, and mountain and dale, and asked myself was ever so fair a spot, and if the plains of heaven were fairer? But that day my dim eyes scoured the sea for a sail and the mountains for a man, and nothing did they see of either, and all else was then as nothing.
Yet, though I was so eager to keep within sight of my fellow-man, I was anxious not to come his way, and in choosing my path I walked where he was least likely to be. Thus, holding well to the west of Fleswick, I took the cliff-head toward Brada, and then came down between Port Erin and Port-le-Mary to the moors that stretch to the margin of the sound. Some few I met, chiefly shepherds and fishermen, but I lifted my eyes to none, and none gave me salutation. This was well, for my heart was bitter, and if any had spoken, not knowing me, I doubt not I should have answered ill. In my great heart-torpor, half-blind, half-deaf, I was that day like a wounded beast of the field, ranging the moorland with a wild abandonment and dangerous to its kind.
When I came to Cregneesh and saw it for the first time, a little disjointed gipsy encampment of mud-built tents pitched on the bare moor, the sky was reddening across the sea, and from that I knew how far advanced the day must be, how slow my course had been, and how low my strength. In half an hour more I had sighted my boat, the "Ben-my-Chree," where she lay in the Doon Creek of the sound, at the length of some fifty fathoms inside the rocks of Kitterland. When I came up to her I found her anchored in some five fathoms of water, with the small-boat lying dry on the shingly beach. Her cabin contained provisions enough for present needs, and more than that I was in no mood to think about. Since the morning of the day before I had not broken fast, but now I ate hungrily of oaten and barley cake. Later in the evening, when the stars were out and the moon, which was in its last quarter, was hanging over the Calf, I mixed myself some porridge of rye-meal and cold water, and ate it on the deck, and then went below to my bunk and lay me down alone. Between sleeping and waking I tried to think of my position and to realize it, but an owl was hooting somewhere on the land, and somewhere over the waters of the sound a diver was making his unearthly laugh. I could not think save of the hooting owl and the screaming diver, and when I thought of them, though their note was doleful and seemed to tell of suffering, or perhaps of demoniac delight, I could not thank God that I had been made a man. Thus, feeling how sore a thing it is to be a creature living under the wrath of God, I tossed on my bunk until I fell to sleep; and so ended the second day of my unblessed condition.
To follow closely all that befell on the next day, or the many days thereafter whereof I kept no reckoning, were to weary my spirit. One thing I know, that a sudden numbness of the spiritual life within me left me a worse man than I had been before the day of my cutting off, and that I did soon lose the little I had of human love and tenderness. My gun had been put in the boat, and with that I ranged the cliffs and the moor from the Mull Hills that lie to the west of Cregneesh to the Chasms that are to the east of it. Many puffins I shot, that much frequent these shores, but their flesh was rank and salt, and they were scarcely worth the powder I spent on them. Thus, it sometimes happened that, being in no straits for food, I cast the birds away, or did not put myself to the pains of lifting them up after they fell to my gun, but went on, nevertheless, to destroy them in my wanton humor. Rabbits I snared by a trick I learned when a boy, and sometimes cooked them in the stove and ate them like a Christian man, and at other times I sat me down on the hillside and rived them asunder as a wild creature of the hills might do. But whether I ate in my boat or on the cliff I took no religion to my table, and thought only that I liked my food or misliked it.
Many times in these first days I had to tear myself away from thinking of my condition, for to do so was like the stab of a knife to my brain, and I plainly saw that in that way madness itself would lie. If I told myself that other men had been cast alone ere now in desolate places where no foot of man was and no sound of a human voice, a great stroke would come upon my spirit with the thought that only their bodies had been cast away, but that my soul was so. The marooned seaman on an uninhabited island, when at length he set eyes on his fellow-man, might lift up his heart to God, but to me the company of men was not blessed. Free I was to go where men were, even to the towns wherein they herded together, but go where I would I must yet be alone.
With this thought, and doubting not that for me the day of grace was past and gone, since God had turned His face from the atonement I had erewhile been minded to make, I grew day by day more bitter in my heart, and found it easiest to shut my mind by living actively from hour to hour. Then, like a half-starved hound, I went abroad at daybreak and scoured the hills the day long, and returned to my bed at night. I knew I was a baser thing than I had been, and it brought some comfort then to know that I was alone and no eye saw me as I now was. Mine was a rank hold of life, and it gave me a savage delight unknown before to live by preying on other creatures. I shot and slew daily and hourly, and if for a moment I told myself that what I had killed held its life on the same tenure that I did, my humanity was not touched except to feel a strange wild thrill that it was not I that lay dead. Looking back over these seven years, it comes to me as an unnatural thing that this mood can ever have been mine; but mine it was, and from the like of it may God in His mercy keep all Christian men.
One day – I think it must have been somewhere toward the end of the first month of my outcast state – I was ranging the cliff-side above the gray rocks of the Black Head, when I chanced on a hare and shot it. On coming up with it I found it was lean and bony, and so turned aside and left it as it squeaked and bounced from my feet. This was in the morning, and toward nightfall I returned by the same way and saw the hare lying by a brookside, ragged and bleeding, but still alive. At sight of me the wee thing tried to move away, but its weakness and a clot of its blood kept it down, and, feeling its extremity, it lifted its two slender paws in the air, while its glistening eyes streamed visibly, and set up a piteous cry like the cry of a little child. I can not write what then I did, for it wounds me sore to think of it, but when it was done, and that piteous cry was no more in mine ears, suddenly I said with myself this awful word, "I am no longer a man, but a beast of the field; and the God of mercy and of tenderness has cast me forever out of the hollow of His hand."