The Deemster. Hall Sir Caine
away no gray blankets that winter, the itinerant poor who were "on the houses" often went empty from his door, and – most appalling change of all – he promptly stopped his tithe. When the parson's cart drove up to Ballamona, Thorkell turned the horse's head, and gave the flank a sharp cut with his whip. The parson came in white with wrath.
"Let every pig dig for herself," said Thorkell. "I'll daub grease on the rump of your fat pig no more."
Thorkell's new homestead rose rapidly, and when the walls were ready for the roof the masons and carpenters went up to Ballamona for the customary feast of cowree and jough and binjean.
"What! Is it true, then, as the saying is," Thorkell exclaimed at the sight of them, "that when the sport is the merriest it is time to give up?"
They ate no cowree at Ballamona that night and they drank no jough.
"We've been going to the goat's house for wool," grunted one of them as they trudged home.
"Aw, well, man, and what can you get of the cat but his skin?" growled another.
Next day they put on the first timbers of the roof, and the following night a great storm swept over the island, and the roof-timbers were torn away, not a spar or purlin being left in its place. Thorkell fumed at the storm and swore at the men, and when the wind subsided he had the work done afresh. The old homestead of Ballamona was thatched, but the new one must be slated, and slates were quarried at and carted to Slieu Dhoo, and run on to the new roof. A dead calm had prevailed during these operations, but it was the calm that lies in the heart of the storm, and the night after they were completed the other edge of the cyclone passed over the island, tearing up the trees by their roots, and shaking the old Ballamona to its foundations. Thorkell Mylrea slept not a wink, but tramped up and down his bedroom the long night through; and next morning, at daybreak, he drew the blind of his window, and peered through the haze of the dawn to where his new house stood on the breast of Slieu Dhoo. He could just descry its blue walls – it was roofless.
The people began to mutter beneath their breath.
"Aw, man, it's a judgment," said one.
"He has been middlin' hard on the widda and fatherless, and it's like enough that there's Them aloft as knows it."
"What's that they're saying?" said one old crone, "what comes with the wind goes with the water."
"Och, I knew his father – him and me were same as brothers – and a good ould man for all."
"Well, and many a good cow has a bad calf," said the old woman.
Thorkell went about like a cloud of thunder, and when he heard that the accidents to his new homestead were ascribed to supernatural agencies he flashed like forked lightning.
"Where there are geese there's dirt," he said, "and where there are women there's talking. Am I to be frightened if an old woman sneezes?"
But before Thorkell set to work again he paid his tithe. He paid it with a rick of discolored oats that had been cut in the wet and threshed before it was dry. Thorkell had often wondered whether his cows would eat it. The next Sunday morning the parson paused before his sermon to complain that certain of his parishioners, whom he would not name at present, appeared to think that what was too bad for the pigs was good enough for the priests. Let the Church of God have no more of their pig-swill. Thorkell in his pew chuckled audibly, and muttered something about paying for a dead horse.
It was spring when the second roof was blown down, and the new house stood roofless until early summer. Then Thorkell sent four lean pigs across to the Rectory, and got his carpenters together and set them to work. The roofing proceeded without interruption.
The primrose was not yet gone, the swallow had not yet come, and the young grass under the feet of the oxen was still small and sweet, when Thorkell's wife took to her bed. Then all Ballamona was astir. Hommy-beg, the deaf gardener of Ballamona, was sent in the hot haste of his best two miles an hour to the village, commonly known as the Street, to summon the midwife. This good woman was called Kerry Quayle; she was a spinster of forty, and she was all but blind.
"I'm thinking the woman-body is after going on the straw," said Hommy-beg, when he reached the Street, and this was the sum of the message that he delivered.
"Then we'd better be off, as the saying is," remarked Kerry, who never accepted responsibility for any syllable she ever uttered.
When they got to Ballamona, Thorkell Mylrea bustled Hommy-beg into the square springless car, and told him to drive to Andreas, and fetch the Archdeacon without an hour's delay. Hommy-beg set off at fine paces that carried him to the Archdeaconry a matter of four miles an hour.
Thorkell followed Kerry Quayle to the room above. When they stepped into the bedroom Thorkell drew the midwife aside to a table on which a large candle stood in a tall brass candlestick, with gruesome gargoyles carved on the base and upper flange. From this table he picked up a small Testament bound in shiny leather, with silver clasps.
"I'm as great a man as any in the island," said Thorkell, in his shrill whisper, "for laughing at the simpletons that talk about witches and boaganes and the like of that."
"So you are, as the saying is," said Kerry.
"I'd have the law on the lot of them, if I had my way," said Thorkell, still holding the book.
"Aw, and shockin' powerful luck it would be, as the old body said, if all the witches and boaganes in the island could be run into the sea," said Kerry.
"Pshaw! I'm talking of the simpletons that believe in them," said Thorkell, snappishly. "I'd clap them all in Castle Rushen."
"Aw, yes, and clean law and clean justice, too, as the Irishman said."
"So don't think I want the midwife to take her oath in my house," said Thorkell.
"Och, no, of course not. You wouldn't bemean yourself, as they say."
"But, then, you know what the saying is, Kerry. 'Custom must be indulged with custom, or custom will weep;'" and, saying this, Thorkell's voice took a most insinuating tone.
"Aw, now, and I'm as good as here and there one at standing up for custom, as the saying is," said the midwife.
The end of it all was that Kerry Quayle took there and then a solemn oath not to use sorcery or incantation of any kind in the time of travail, not to change the infant at the hour of its birth, not to leave it in the room for a week afterward without spreading the tongs over its crib, and much else of the like solemn purport.
The dusk deepened, and the Archdeacon had not yet arrived. Night came on and the room was dark, but Thorkell would not allow a lamp to be brought in, or a fire to be lighted. Some time later, say six hours after Hommy-beg had set out on his six-mile journey, a lumbrous, jolting sound of heavy wheels came from the road below the Curragh, and soon afterward the Archdeacon entered the room.
"So dark," he said, on stumbling across the threshold.
"Ah, Archdeacon," said Thorkell, with the unaccustomed greeting of an outstretched hand, "the Church shall bring light to the chamber here," and Thorkell handed the tinder-box to the Archdeacon and led him to the side of the table on which the candle stood.
In an instant the Archdeacon, laughing a little, or protesting meekly against his clerical honors, was striking the flint, when Thorkell laid a hand on his arm.
"Wait one moment; of course you know how I despise superstition?"
"Ah! of course, of course," said the Archdeacon.
"But, then, you know the old saying, Archdeacon, 'Custom must be indulged with custom,' you know it?" And Thorkell's face shut up like a nut-cracker.
"So I must bless the candle. Eh, is that it?" said the Archdeacon, with a low gurgle; and the next moment he was gabbling in a quick undertone through certain words that seemed to be all one word: "OLord-Jesus-Christ-bless-Thou-this-creature-of-a-waxen-taper-that-on- what-place-soever-it-be-lighted-or-set-the-devil-may-flee-from-that- habitation-and-no-more-disquiet-them-that-serve – Thee!"
After the penultimate word there was a short pause, and at the last word there was the sharp crack of the flint, and in an instant the candle