CHAPTER XLII
OF THE BREAKING OF THE CURSE
Thus far have I written these four days past, amid pain and the quick lessening of the powers of life. In sleepless hours of the night I have made this writing, sitting oftenest by the light of my feeble candles until the day has been blue over the sea. And now that I glance back and see my own heart in the mirror I have made for it, I am like to one who has been brought through a fearsome sickness, that has left its marks upon him, to look for the first time at his altered face in the glass. And can it be that I, who have penned these words, am the man of seven years ago? Ah, now I see how profound has been the change that my great punishment has made in me, and perceive the end of God in refusing my poor atonement of life for life, and cutting me off from among men.
I will not say that what I have already written has not cost me some pangs, and perhaps some tears. But now I am come to that place where I must tell of the great turning-point in my sad state, and though the strength fails me wherewith I hold the pen to write of it, my spirit rises before it like as the lark awakened by the dawn.
This year—surely the darkest within the memory of our poor people of Man—began with more than its share of a winter of heavy rains. The spring that followed was also rainy, and when I looked for the summer to begin, the rains were still incessant. Heavy and sodden was the ground even of the moor whereon I lived, so that my feet sank into it as into a morass, and much of the seed I sowed was washed from it and wasted. When at length the long rains ceased to fall the year was far worn into June, and then the sun came quick and hot. My house stood on a brow descending to the cliffs of the coast, and beneath me were less than two feet of mold above the rock; but when the great heat came after the great rain, out of the ground there arose a thick miasmic mist that filled the air, obscured the light, lay heavy in sweat upon my hair and flesh, and made the walls and floor, the furniture, and the bed of my home, damp and dripping with constant dew.
Quickly I set myself to the digging of deep trenches that went vertically down the brow to the cliff head, and soon the ground about me across many acres was drained dry. But though I lived in a clear air, and could now see the sun as well as feel it, yet I perceived that the mists stood in a wide half-circle around me like walls of rain seen afar, while the spot whereon you stand is fair and in the sunshine. In my daily walks to the top of the moor I could no longer see the houses of Cregneesh for the cloud of vapor that lay over it, and when I walked to the Kallow Head for the first time since the day I lost my dog, the basin below, where Port-le-Mary stands, was even as a vast vaporous sea, without one islet of house or hill.
My health suffered little from this unaccustomed humidity, for my bodily strength was ever wonderful; but my spirits sank to a deep depression, and oft did I wonder how the poor souls must fare who lived on the low, wet Curraghs near to where my own home once lay. From day to day, and week to week, the mist continued to rise from the dank ground under the hot sun, and still the earth came up in thick clods to the spade.
The nights alone were clear, and toward midsummer I was witness to strange sights in the heavens. Thus I saw a comet pass close across the island from coast to coast, with a visible motion as of quivering flame. What this visitation could foretell I pondered long and sadly, and much I hungered for knowledge of what was being done in the world of men. But therein it seemed to my wayward mind that I was like a man buried in the churchyard while he is yet alive, who hears the bell in the tower that peals and tolls, but has no window in his tomb from which to see who comes to rejoice, and who to mourn.
When the fleet of fishing-boats should have put out from Port Erin for the ground that lies south of the Calf, scarce a sail could I see, and not a boat had I noted coming from the Poolvash, where Port-le-Mary stands above the bay. From the top of the Mull Hills I could faintly descry the road to Castletown, but never a cart on market-day seemed to pass over it. Groups of people I vaguely saw standing together, and once, at midday, from the middle of a field of new-mown hay, there came to me the sounds of singing and prayer. Oftener than at any period during my solitary life, I saw men on the mountains or felt their presence near me, for my senses were grown very keen. Oftener, also, than ever before, the sound of church bells seemed to come through the air. And going to the beach where my shattered boat lay, I one day came upon another boat beating idly down the waters of the sound, her sails flapping in the wind, and no hand at her tiller. I stood to watch while the little craft came drifting on with the flow of the tide. She ran head on to the cliff at Fistard, and then I went down to her, and found never a living soul aboard of her.