Then both together said, "God bless me!" and passed on.
At that moment my eyes became dim, and a sound as of running water went through my ears. I staggered into my house, and sat down by the cold hearth, for in my eagerness to go forth on my errand at first awakening, no fire had I kindled. I recalled the words that the men had spoken, and repeated them aloud one by one, and very slowly, that I might be sure I took their meaning rightly. This done, I said with myself, "This error will go far, until the wide island will say that he who was cut off, he who is nameless among men, is dead." Dead? What then? I had heard that when death came and took away a bad man, its twin-angel, the angel of mercy, bent over those who were left behind on the earth, and drew out of their softened hearts all evil reports and all uncharity.
And a great awe slid over me at that thought, and the gracious dew of a strange peace fell upon me. But close behind it came the other thought, that this error would reach my father also—God preserve him!—and Mona—God's holy grace be with her!—and bring them pain. And then it came to me to think that when men said in their hearing, "He whom you wot of is newly dead," they would take heart and answer, "No, he died long ago; it was only his misery and God's wrath that died yesterday."
With this thought I rose up and went out, and put some shovels of earth over the body of my poor neighbor, that his face might be hidden from the sky.
CHAPTER XLI
OF HOW HE KEPT HIS MANHOOD
The great snow lay long on the mountains, and died off in its silence like one who passes away in sleep. And the spring came, the summer and the winter yet again, and to set down in this writing all that befell would be a weariness, for I feel as I write that the pulse of my life is low; and neither am I one who can paint his words with wit. My way of life has now grown straight and even, and at my simple employments I wrought early and late, that by much bodily toil I might keep in check the distempers of my mind.
With my fishing-boat, my gun, which I had left behind me of design, had been carried to the bottom of the sound, and when the hulk of the lugger drifted up with the tide the gun was no longer within her. This I took for a direction to me that I should hunt no more. Nevertheless, for some while I went on to fish with a line from my small-boat, which, being on the beach, the storm had spared. But soon it was gotten into my head that, if to shoot a hare was an ill deed, to take a cod was but a poor business. Well I knew that there was some touch of insanity in such fancies, and that for man to kill and eat was the law of life, and the rather because it was enjoined of God that so he should do. But being a man like as I was, cut off from the land of the living, never more to have footing there for the great crime committed of spilling blood, I think it was not an ungentle madness that made me fear to take life, whether wantonly or of hunger's need. This dread lay close to me, and got to extremities whereat one of healthy mind might smile. For, being awakened some nights in succession by the nibble of a mouse, I arose from my bed in the dawn, and saw the wee mite, and struck it with an iron rod and killed it, and then suffered many foolish twitches, not from pity for the mouse, for of humanity I had none left, but from the sudden thought that the spirit of its life, which I had driven from its harmless body, was now about me as an invisible thing. Though I had fallen into such a weakness, yet I think that where choice was none for one like me between the weakness of a man and the strength of a beast, I did least injury to my own nature and disposition by yielding with childish indulgence toward the gentler side.
And truly, it is a beautiful thing to mark how the creatures of earth and air will answer with confidence to man's tenderness, whether, as with my saintly father, it comes of the love of them, or, as with me, of the love of myself. The sea-fowl flew in at my door and pecked up the morsels that fell at my feet; the wild duck on the moor would not rise though I walked within a stride of it; a fat hare nested in a hole under my house and came out at dusk to nibble the parings of potatoes that I threw at the door, and, but for Millish-veg-veen and his sly treacheries, with the rabbits of the Black Head I might have sported as with a kitten.