The Deemster

by Sir Hall Caine

The day of Tynwald came, and the week before it had passed like a year. There was no sun, but the heat was stifling, the clouds hung low and dark and hot as the roof of an open oven, the air was sluggish, and the earth looked blue. Far across the sea to the northwest there was a thin streak of fiery cloud, and at some moments there was the smell of a thunder-storm in the heavy atmosphere. From north and south, from east and west, the people trooped to Tynwald Hill. Never before within the memory of living man had so vast a concourse been witnessed on that ancient ground of assembly. Throughout the island the mill-wheel was stopped, the smithy fire was raked over with ashes, the plow lay in the furrow, the sheep were turned out on to the mountains, and men and women, old men, old women, and young children, ten thousand in all, with tanned faces and white, in sun-bonnets, mutches, and capes, and some with cloaks in preparation for the storm that was coming, drove in their little springless carts, or rode on their small Manx ponies, or trudged on foot through the dusty roads, and over the bleached hillsides and the parched Curraghs.

At ten o'clock the open green that surrounds the hill of Tynwald was densely thronged. Carts were tipped up in corners, and their stores of food and drink were guarded by a boy or a woman, who sat on the sternboard. Horses were tethered to the wheels, or turned loose to browse on a common near at hand. Men lounged on the green and talked, their hands in their pockets, their pipes in their mouths, or stood round the Tynwald Inn, lifting pannikins to their lips, and laughing—for there was merriment among them though the work for which they had come together was not a merry one.

The mount itself was still empty, and twelve constables were stationed about the low wall that surrounded it, keeping the crowd back. And though, as the people met and mingled, the men talked of the crops and of the prospect for the fishing, and women of the wool and yarn, and boys tossed somersaults, and young girls betook themselves to girlish games, and girls of older growth in bright ribbons to ogling and giggling, and though there was some coarse banter and coarser singing, the excitement of the crowd, beneath all, was deep and strong. At intervals there was a movement of the people toward a church—St. John's Church, that stood a little to the east of Tynwald—and sometimes a general rush toward the gate that looked westward toward Peeltown and the sea. Earlier in the day some one had climbed a mountain beyond the chapel and put a light to the dry gorse at the top, and now the fire smoldered in the dense air, and set up a long sinuous trail of blue smoke to the empty vault of the sky. The mountain was called Greeba, which is the native word for grief.

Toward half-past ten old Paton Gorry, the sumner, went down the narrow, tortuous steps that led to the dungeon of Peel Castle. He carried fetters for the hands and legs of his prisoner, and fixed them in their places with nervous and fumbling fingers. His prisoner helped him as far as might be, and spoke cheerily in answer to his mumbled adieu.

"I'm not going to St. John's, sir. I couldn't give myself lave for it," the sumner muttered in a breaking voice. With a choking sensation in his throat Daniel Mylrea said, "God bless you, Paton," and laid hold of the old man's hand. Twenty times during the week the sumner had tried in vain to prevail on the prisoner to explain the circumstances attending his crime, and so earn the mitigation of punishment which had been partly promised. The prisoner had only shaken his head in silence.

A few minutes afterward Daniel Mylrea was handed over in the guard-room to the sergeant of the barony, and Paton Gorry's duties—the hardest that the world had yet given him to do—were done.

The sergeant and the prisoner went out of the castle and crossed the narrow harbor in a boat. On the wooden jetty, near the steps by which they landed, a small open cart was drawn up, and there was a crowd of gaping faces about it. The two men got into the cart and were driven down the quay toward the path by the river that led to Tynwald under the foot of Slieu Whallin. As they passed through the town the prisoner was dimly conscious that white faces looked out of windows and that small knots of people were gathered at the corners of the alleys. But all this was soon blotted out, and when he came to himself he was driving under the trees, and by the side of the rumbling water.

All the day preceding the prisoner had told himself that when his time came, his great hour of suffering and expiation, he must bear himself with fortitude, abating nothing of the whole bitterness of the atonement he was to make, asking no quarter, enduring all contumely, though men jeered as he passed or spat in his face. He thought he had counted the cost of that trial. Seven sleepless nights and seven days of torment had he given to try his spirit for that furnace, and he thought he could go through it and not shrink. In his solitary hours he had arranged his plans. While he drove from Peel to St. John's he was to think of nothing that would sap his resolution, and his mind was to be a blank. Then, as he approached the place, he was to lift his eyes without fear, and not let them drop though their gaze fell on the dread thing that must have been built there. And so, very calmly, silently, and firmly, he was to meet the end of all.

But now that he was no longer in the dungeon of the prison, where despair might breed bravery in a timid soul, but under the open sky, where hope and memory grow strong together, he knew, though he tried to shut his heart to it, that his courage was oozing away. He recognized this house and that gate, he knew every turn of the river—where the trout lurked and where the eels sported—and when he looked up at the dun sky he knew how long it might take for the lightning to break through the luminous dulness of the thunder-cloud that hung over the head of Slieu Whallin. Do what he would to keep his mind a blank, or to busy it with trifles of the way, he could not help reflecting that he was seeing these things for the last time.

Then there came a long interval in which the cart wherein he sat seemed to go wearily on, on, on, and nothing awakened his slumbering senses. When he recovered consciousness with a start he knew that his mind had been busy with many thoughts such as sap a man's resolution and bring his brave schemes to foolishness. He had been asking himself where his father was that day, where Mona would be then, and how deep their shame must be at the thought of the death he was to die. To him his death was his expiation, and little had he thought of the manner of it; but to them it was disgrace and horror. And so he shrunk within himself. He knew now that his great purpose was drifting away like a foolish voice that is emptied in the air. Groaning audibly, praying in broken snatches for strength of spirit, looking up and around with fearful eyes, he rode on and on, until at length, before he was yet near the end of his awful ride, the deep sound came floating to him through the air of the voices of the people gathered at the foot of Tynwald. It was like the sound the sea makes as its white breakers fall on some sharp reef a mile away: a deep, multitudinous hum of many tongues. When he lifted his head and heard it, his pallid face became ashy, his whitening lips trembled, his head dropped back to his breast, his fettered arms fell between his fettered legs, river and sky were blotted out of his eyes, and he knew that before the face of his death he was no better than a poor broken coward.