Complete works of hall c.., p.145
Complete Works of Hall Caine, page 145
“Father, where does the night go when we are asleep?”
“To the other world, little Sunlocks.”
“Oh, I know — heaven.”
Stephen stripped off his guernsey and wrapped it about the child. His eyes shone brightly, his mouth was parched, but he did not flinch. All thoughts, save one thought, had faded from his view.
As he came by Port Mooar the moon rose, and about the same time the light appeared on Point of Ayre. A little later he saw the twinkle of lesser lights to the south. They were the lights of Laxey, where many happy children gladdened many happy firesides. He looked around. There was not a sail in sight, and not a sound came to his ears over the low murmur of the sea’s gentle swell. “Now is the time,” he thought. He put in his oars and the boat began to drift.
But no, he could not look into the child’s eyes and do it. The little one would sleep soon and then it would be easier done. So he took him in his arms and wrapped him in a piece of sail-cloth.
“Shut your eyes and sleep, little Sunlocks.”
“I’m not sleepy, I’m not.”
Yet soon the little lids fell, opened again and fell once more, and then suddenly the child started up.
“But I haven’t said my p’ayers.”
“Say them now, little Sunlocks.”
“Gentle Jesus, meek and mild, Look upon a little child, Guard me while in sleep I lie, Take me to Thy home on — on—”
“Would you like to go to heaven, little Sunlocks?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“I want to keep with — with — my fath — —”
The little eyes were closed by this time, and the child was asleep on Stephen’s knees. Now was the time — now — now. But no, it was harder now than ever.
The little face — so silent, so peaceful — how formidable it was! The little soft hand in his own big hard palm — how strong and terrible!
Stephen looked down at the child and his bowels yearned over it. It cost him a struggle not to kiss it; but no, that would only make the task harder.
Suddenly a new thought smote him. What had this child done that he should take its life? Who was he that he should rob it of what he could never give it again? By what right did he dare to come between this living soul and heaven? When did the Almighty God tell him what the after life of this babe was to be? Stephen trembled at the thought. It was like a voice from the skies calling on him to stop, and a hand reaching out of them to snatch the child from his grasp.
What he had intended to do was not to be! Heaven had set its face against it! Little Sunlocks was not to die! Little Sunlocks was to live! Thank God! Oh! Thank God!
But late that night a group of people standing at their doors on the beach at Port Lague saw a tall man in his shirt sleeves go by in the darkness, with a sleeping child in his arms. The man was Stephen Orry, and he was sobbing like a woman whose heart is broken. The child was little Sunlocks, and he was being carried back to his mother’s home.
The people hailed Stephen and told him that a foreigner from a ship in the bay had been asking for him that evening. They had sent the man along to Port-y-Vullin.
Stephen hurried home with fear in his heart. In five minutes he was there, and then his life’s blood ran cold. He found the house empty, except for his wife, and she lay outstretched on the floor. She was cold — she was dead; and in clay on the wall above her head, these words were written in the Icelandic tongue, “So is Patricksen avenged — signed S. Patricksen.”
Avenged! Oh, powers of Heaven, that drive the petty passions of men like dust before you!
CHAPTER VI.
The Little World of Boy and Girl.
Three days later the bad lottery of Liza Killey’s life and death was played out and done. On the morning of the fourth day, some time before the dawn, though the mists were rolling in front of it, Stephen Orry rose in his silent hut in Port-y-Vullin, lit a fire, cooked a hasty meal, wakened, washed, dressed and fed little Sunlocks, then nailed up the door from the outside, lifted the child to his shoulders, and turned his face towards the south. When he passed through Laxey the sun stood high, and the dust of the roads was being driven in their faces. It was long past noon when he came to Douglas, and at a little shop by the harbor-bridge he bought a penny worth of barley cake, gave half to Sunlocks, put the other half into his pocket, and pushed on with longer strides. The twilight was deepening when he reached Castletown, and there he inquired for the house of the Governor. It was pointed out to him, and through heavy iron gates, up a winding carriage-way lined with elms and bordered with daffodils, he made towards the only door he saw.
It was the main entrance to Government House, a low broad porch, with a bench on either side and a cross-barred door of knotted oak. Stephen Orry paused before it, looked nervously around, and then knocked with his knuckles. He had walked six and twenty miles, carrying the child all the way. He was weary, footsore, hungry, and covered with dust. The child on his shoulder was begrimed and dirty, his little face smeared in streaks, his wavy hair loaded and unkempt. A footman in red and buff, powdered, starched, gartered and dainty, opened the door. Stephen Orry asked for the Governor. The footman looked out with surprise at the bedraggled man with the child, and asked who he was. Stephen told his name. The footman asked where he came from. Stephen answered. The footman asked what he came for. Stephen did not reply. Was it for meal? Stephen shook his head. Or money? Stephen said no. With another glance of surprise the footman shut the door, saying the Governor was at dinner.
Stephen Orry lowered the little one from his shoulder, sat on the bench in the porch, placed the child on his knee, and gave him the remainder of the barley cake. All the weary journey through he had been patient and cheerful, the brave little man, never once crying aloud at the pains of his long ride, never once whimpering at the dust that blinded him, or the heat that made him thirsty. Holding on at his father’s cap, he had laughed and sung even with the channels still wet on his cheeks where the big drops had rolled from his eyes to his chin.
Little Sunlocks munched at his barley cake in silence, and in the gathering darkness Stephen watched him as he ate. All at once a silvery peal of child’s laughter came from within the house, and little Sunlocks dropped the barley cake from his mouth to listen. Again it came; and the grimy face of little Sunlocks lightened to a smile, and that of Stephen Orry lowered and fell.
“Wouldn’t you like to live in a house like this, little Sunlocks?”
“Yes — with my father.”
Just then the dark door opened again, and the footman, with a taper in his hand, came out to light the lamp in the porch.
“What? Here still?” he said.
“I am; been waiting to see the Governor,” Stephen Orry answered.
Then the footman went in, and told the Governor that a big man and a child were sitting in the porch, talking some foreign lingo together, and refusing to go away without seeing His Excellency.
“Bring them in,” said the Governor.
Adam Fairbrother was at the dinner table, enveloped in tobacco clouds. His wife, Ruth, had drawn her chair aside that she might knit. Stephen Orry entered slowly with little Sunlocks by the hand.
“This is the person, your Excellency,” said the footman.
“Come in, Stephen Orry,” said the Governor.
Stephen Orry’s face softened at that word of welcome. The footman’s dropped and he disappeared.
Then Stephen told his errand. “I shall come to have give you something,” he said, trying to speak in English.
Adam’s wife raised her eyes and glanced over him. Adam himself laid down his pipe and held out his hand towards Sunlocks. But Stephen held the child back a moment and spoke again.
“It’s all I shall have got to give,” he said.
“What is it?” said Adam.
“The child,” said Stephen, and passed little Sunlocks to Adam’s outstretched hand.
At that Adam’s wife dropped her knitting to her lap, but Stephen, seeing nothing of the amazement written in her face, went on in his broken words to tell them all — of his wife’s life, her death, his own sore temptation, and the voice out of heaven that had called to him. And then with a moistened eye and a glance at Sunlocks, and in a lowered tone as if fearing the child might hear, he spoke of what he meant to do now — of how he would go back to the herrings, and maybe to sea, or perhaps down into the mines, but never again to Port-y-Vullin. And, because a lone man was no company for a child, and could not take a little one with him if he would, he had come to it at last that he must needs part with little Sunlocks, lending him, or maybe giving him, to someone he could trust.
“And so,” he said, huskily, “I shall say to me often and often, ‘The Governor is a good man and kind to me long, long ago, and I shall give little Sunlocks to him.’”
He had dropped his head into his breast as he spoke, and being now finished he stood fumbling his scraggy goatskin cap.
Then Adam’s wife, who had listened in mute surprise, drew herself up, took a long breath, looked first at Stephen, then at Adam, then back at Stephen, and said in a bated whisper —
“Well! Did any living soul ever hear the like in this island before?”
Not rightly understanding what this might mean, poor Stephen looked back at her, in his weak, dazed way, but made her no answer.
“Children might be scarce,” she said, and gave a little angry toss of her head.
Still the meaning of what she said had not worked its way through Stephen’s slow wit, and he mumbled in his poor blundering fashion:
“He is all I have, ma’am.”
“Lord-a-massy, man,” she cried, sharply, “but we might have every child in the parish at your price.”
Stephen’s fingers now clutched at his cap, his parted lips quivered, and again he floundered out, stammering like an idiot:
“But I love him, ma’am, more nor all the world.”
“Then I’ll thank you to keep him,” she answered, hotly; and after that there was dead silence for a moment.
In all Stephen’s reckoning never once had he counted on this — that after he had brought himself to that sore pass, at which he could part with Sunlocks and turn his back on him, never more to be cheered by his sunny face and merry tongue, never again to be wakened by him in the morning, never to listen for his gentle breathing in the night, never to feed him and wash him, never to carry him shoulder high, any human creature could say no to him from thought of the little food he would eat or the little trouble he would ask.
Stephen stood a moment, with his poor, bewildered, stupefied face hung down and the great lumps surging hot in his throat, and then, without a word more, he stretched out his hand towards the child.
But all this time Adam had looked on with swimming eyes, and now he drew little Sunlocks yet closer between his knees, and said, quietly:
“Ruth, we are going to keep the little one. Two faggots will burn better than one, and this sweet boy will be company for our little Greeba.”
“Adam,” she cried, “haven’t you children enough of your own, but you must needs take other folks’?”
“Ruth,” he answered, “I have six sons, and if they had been twelve, perhaps, I should have been better pleased, so they had all been as strong and hearty; and I have one daughter, and if there had been two it would have suited me as well.”
Now the rumor of Stephen Orry’s former marriage, which Liza had so zealously set afoot, had reached Government House by way of Lague, and while Stephen had spoken Adam had remembered the story, and thinking of it he had smoothed the head of little Sunlocks with a yet tenderer hand. But Adam’s wife, recalling it now, said warmly:
“Maybe you think it wise to bring up your daughter with the merry-begot of any ragabash that comes prowling along from goodness knows where.”
“Ruth,” said Adam, as quietly as before, “we are going to keep the little one,” and at that his wife rose and walked out of the room.
The look of bewilderment had not yet been driven from Stephen Orry’s face by the expression of joy that had followed it, and now he stood glancing from Adam to the door and from the door to Adam, as much as to say that if his coming had brought strife he was ready to go. But the Governor waved his hand, as though following his thought and dismissing it. Then lifting the child to his knee, he asked his name, whereupon the little man himself answered promptly that his name was Sunlocks.
“Michael,” said Stephen Orry; “but I call him Sunlocks.”
“Michael Sunlocks — a good name too. And what is his age?”
“Four years.”
“Just the age of my own darling,” said the Governor; and setting the child on his feet he rang the bell and said, “Bring little Greeba here.”
A minute later a little brown-haired lassie with ruddy cheeks and laughing lips and sparkling brown eyes, came racing into the room. She was in her nightgown, ready for bed, her feet were bare, and under one arm she carried a doll.
“Come here, Greeba veg,” said the Governor, and he brought the children face to face, and then stood aside to watch them.
They regarded each other for a moment with the solemn aloofness that only children know, twisting and curling aside, eyeing one another furtively, neither of them seeming so much as to see the other, yet neither seeing anything or anybody else. This little freak of child manners ran its course, and then Sunlocks, never heeding his dusty pinafore, or the little maiden’s white nightgown, but glancing down at her bare feet, and seeming to remember that when his own were shoeless someone carried him, stepped up to her, put his arms about her, and with lordly, masculine superiority of strength proceeded to lift her bodily in his arms. The attempt was a disastrous failure, and in another moment the two were rolling over each other on the floor; a result that provoked the little maiden’s direst wrath and the blank astonishment of little Sunlocks.
But before the tear-drop of vexation was yet dry on Greeba’s face, or the silent bewilderment had gone from the face of Sunlocks, she was holding out her doll in a sidelong way in his direction, as much as to say he might look at it if he liked, only he must not think that she was asking him; and he, nothing loth for her fierce reception of his gallant tender, was devouring the strange sight with eyes full of awe.
Then followed some short inarticulate chirps, and the doll was passed to Sunlocks, who turned the strange thing — such as eyes of his had never beheld — over and over and over, while the little woman brought out from dark corners of the room, and from curious recesses unknown save to her own hands and knees, a slate with a pencil and sponge tied to it by a string, a picture-book whereof the binding hung loose, some bits of ribbon, red and blue, and finally three tiny cups and saucers with all the accompanying wonder of cream jug and teapot. In three minutes more two little bodies were sitting on their haunches, two little tongues were cackling and gobbling, the room was rippling over with a merry twitter, the strange serious air was gone from the little faces, the little man and the little maid were far away already in the little world of childhood, and all the universe beside was gone, and lost, and forgotten.
Stephen Orry had looked down from his great height at the encounter on the floor, and his dull, slow eyes had filled, for in some way that he could not follow there had come to him at that sweet sight the same deep yearning that had pained him in the boat. And seeing how little Sunlocks was rapt, Stephen struggled hard with himself and said, turning to the Governor:
“Now’s the time for me to slip away.”
Then they left the room, unnoticed of the busy people on the floor.
Two hours later, after little Sunlocks, having first missed his father, his life’s friend and only companion, had cried a little, and soon ceased to cry out of joy of his new comradeship, and had then nestled down his sunny head on the pillow where little Greeba’s curly poll also lay, with the doll between him and her, and some marbles in his hand to comfort his heart, Stephen Orry, unable to drag himself away, was tramping the dark roads about the house. He went off at length, and was seen no more at Castletown for many years thereafter.
Now this adoption of Little Sunlocks into the family of the Governor was an incident that produced many effects, and the first of them was the serious estrangement of Adam and his wife. Never had two persons of temperaments so opposed lived so long in outward harmony. Her face, like some mountain country, revealed its before and after. Its spring must have been keen and eager, its summer was overcast, and its winter would be cold and frozen. She was not a Manxwoman, but came of a family of French refugees, settled as advocates on the north of the island. Always vain of show, she had married in her early womanhood, when Adam Fairbrother was newly returned from Barbary, and his adventures abroad were the common gossip and speculation. But Adam had disappointed her ambition at the outset by dropping into the ruts of a homely life. Only once had she lifted him out of them, and that was after twenty years, when the whim and wisdom of the Duke had led him to visit Lague; and then her impatience, her importunity, her fuss and flurry, and appeals in the name of their children, had made him Governor. Meantime, she had borne him six sons in rapid succession during the first ten years of marriage, and after an interval of ten other years she had borne a daughter. Four and twenty years the good man had lived at peace with her, drained of his serenity by her restlessness, and of his unselfishness by her self-seeking. With a wise contempt of trifles, he had kept peace over little things, and the island had long amused itself about his pliant disposition, but now that for the first time he proved unyielding, the island said he was wrong. To adopt a child against the wish of his wife, to take into his family the waif of a drunken woman and an idle foreigner, was an act of stubborn injustice and folly. But Adam held to his purpose, and Michael Sunlocks remained at Government House.
A year passed, and Sunlocks was transformed. No one would have recognized him. The day his father brought him he had been pale under the dust that covered him; he had been timid and had trembled, and his eyes had looked startled, as though he had already been beaten and cuffed and scolded. A child, like a flower, takes the color of the air it breathes, and Sunlocks had not been too young to feel the grimy cold of the atmosphere in which he had been born. But now he had opened like a rose to the sun, and his cheeks were ruddy and his eyes were bright. He had become plump and round and sturdy, and his hair had curled around his head and grown yet warmer of hue, like the plumes of a bird in the love season. And, like a bird, he chirruped the long day through, skipping and tripping and laughing and singing all over the house, idolized by some, beloved by many, caressed by all, even winning upon Mrs. Fairbrother herself, who, whatever her objection to his presence, had not yet steeled herself against his sweetness.
