Complete works of hall c.., p.146
Complete Works of Hall Caine, page 146
Another year passed, and the children grew together — Sunlocks and Greeba, boy and girl, brother and sister — in the innocent communion of healthy childhood, with their little whims, their little ways, their little tiffs, and with the little sorrows that overcast existence. And Sunlocks picked up his English words as fast as he picked shells on the beach, gathering them on his tongue as he gathered the shells into his pinafore, dropping them and picking them up again.
Yet another year went by, and then over the luminous innocence of the children there crept the strange trail of sex, revealing already their little differences of character, and showing what they were to be in days to come — the little maid, quick, urgent, impulsive and vain; the little man, quiet, unselfish and patient, but liable to outbursts of temper.
A fourth year passed, and then the little people were parted. The Duchess came from London, where her nights had no repose and her days no freshness, to get back a little of the color of the sun into her pallid cheeks, and driving one day from Mount Murray to Government House she lit on Greeba in the road outside Castletown. It was summer, and the little maid of eight, bright as the sunlight that glistened on her head, her cheeks all pink and white, her eyes sparkling under her dark lashes, her brown hair rippling behind her, her frock tucked up in fishwife fashion, her legs bare, and her white linen sunbonnet swinging in her hand, was chasing a butterfly amid the yellow-tipped gorse that grew by the roadside. That vision of beauty and health awakened a memory of less charm and freshness. The Duchess remembered a little maiden of her own who was also eight years old, dainty and pretty, but pale and sickly, peaked up in a chill stone house in London, playing alone with bows and ribbons, talking to herself, and having no companion except a fidgety French governess, who was wrinkled and had lost some of her teeth.
A few days later the Duchess came again to Government House, bought a gay new hat for Greeba, and proposed that the little maid should go home with her as playfellow for her only child. Adam promptly said “No” to her proposal, with what emphasis his courtesy would permit, urging that Greeba, being so much younger than her brothers, was like an only child in the family, and that she was in any case an only daughter. But Adam’s wife, thinking she saw her opportunity, found many reasons why Greeba should be allowed to go. For would it be right to cross the wish of so great a lady? — and one, too, who was in a sense their mistress also. And then who could say what the Duchess might do for the child some day? — and in any event wasn’t it a chance for which any body else in the island would give both his ears to have his daughter brought up in London, and at the great house of the Duke of Athol?
The end of it was that Adam yielded to his wife now, as he had often yielded before. “But I’ll sadly miss my little lassie,” he said, “and I much misdoubt but I’ll repent me of letting her go.”
Yet, while Adam shook his head and looked troubled, the little maid herself was in an ecstasy of delight.
“And would you really like to go to London, Greeba ven?”
“But should I see the carriages, and the ladies on horseback, and the shops, and the little girls in velvet — should I, eh?”
“Maybe so, my ven, maybe so.”
“Oh!”
The little maid gave one glance at the infinite splendor of her new bow and feather, and her dark eyes sparkled, while the eyes of her father filled.
“But not Michael Sunlocks, you know, Greeba ven; no, nor mother, nor father.”
At that word there was a pretty downward curve of the little lip; but life had no real sorrow for one with such a hat and such a prospect, and the next instant the bright eyes leapt again to the leaping heart.
“Then run away, Greeba ven — run.”
The little maiden took her father at his word, though it was but sadly spoken, and bounded off in chase of Michael Sunlocks, that she might tell him the great news. She found him by the old wooden bridge of the Silver Burn near the Malew Church.
Michael Sunlocks had lately struck up a fast friendship with the carrier, old crazy Chalse A’Killey, who sometimes lent him his donkey for a ride. Bareheaded, barefooted, with breeches rolled up above the knees, his shoes and stockings swung about his neck, and his wavy yellow hair rough and tangled, Michael Sunlocks was now seated bareback on this donkey, tugging the rope that served it for curb and snaffle, and persuading it, by help of a blackthorn stick, to cross the river to the meadow opposite. And it was just when the donkey, a creature of becoming meekness and most venerable age, was reflecting on these arguments, and contemplating the water at his shoes with a pensive eye, that Greeba, radiant in the happiness of her marvellous hat, came skipping on to the bridge.
In a moment she blurted out her news between many gusts of breath, and Michael Sunlocks, pausing from his labors, sat on his docile beast and looked up at her with great wonder in his wide blue eyes.
“And I shall see the carriages, and the ladies on horseback, and the ships, and the waxworks, and the wild beasts.”
The eyes of Sunlocks grew hazy and wet, but the little maiden rattled on, cocking her eye down as she spoke at her reflection in the smooth river, for it took a world of glances to grow familiar with the marvel that sat on her head.
“And I shall wear velvet frocks, and have new hats often and lots of goodies and things; and — and didn’t I always say a good fairy would come for me some day?”
“What are you talking of, you silly?” said Michael Sunlocks.
“I’m not a silly, and I’m going away, and you are not; and I’ll have girls to play with now, not boys — there!”
Michael Sunlocks could bear no more. His eyes overflowed, but his cheeks reddened, and he said —
“What do I care, you stupid? You can go if you like,” and then down came his stick with a sounding thwack on the donkey’s flank.
Now startled out of all composure by such sudden and summary address, the beast threw up his hinder legs and ducked down his head, and tumbled his rider into the water. Michael Sunlocks scrambled to his feet, all dripping wet, but with eyes aflame and his little lips set hard, and then laid hold of the rope bridle and tugged with one hand, while with the stick in the other he cudgelled the donkey until he had forced it to cross the river.
While this tough work was going forward, Greeba, who had shrieked at Michael’s fall, stood trembling with clasped hands on the bridge, and, when all was over, the little man turned to her with high disdain, and said, after a mighty toss of his glistening wet head:
“Did you think I was drowned, you silly? Why don’t you go, if you’re going?”
Not all the splendor of bow and feather could help the little maiden to withstand indifference like this, so her lip fell, and she said:
“Well, you needn’t say so, if you are glad I’m going.”
And Sunlocks answered, “Who says I’m glad? Not that I say I’m not, neither,” he added quickly, leaping astride his beast again.
Whereupon Greeba said, “If you had been going away I should have cried,” and then, to save herself from bursting out in his very face, she turned about quickly and fled.
“But I’m not such a silly, I’m not,” Michael Sunlocks shouted after her, and down came another thwack on the donkey, and away he sped across the meadow. But before he had ridden far he drew rein and twisted about, and now his blue eyes were swimming once more.
“Greeba,” he called, and his little voice broke, but no answer came back to him.
“Greeba,” he called again, more loudly, but Greeba did not stop.
“Greeba!” he shouted with all his strength. “Greeba! Greeba!”
But the little maid had gone, and there was no response. The bees were humming in the gold of the gorse, and the fireflies were buzzing about the donkey’s ears, while the mountains were fading away into a dim wet haze.
Half an hour later the carriage of the Duchess drove out through the iron gates of Government House, and the little maiden seated in it by the side of the stately lady, was crying in a voice of childlike grief —
“Sunlocks! Sunlocks! Little Sunlocks!”
The advantage which the Governor’s wife proposed to herself in parting with her daughter she never gained, and one of the secret ends of her life was thereby not only disappointed but defeated; for while the Duchess did nothing for Greeba, the girl’s absence from home led Adam to do the more for Michael Sunlocks. Deprived of his immediate object of affection, his own little maiden, Adam lavished his love on the stranger whom chance had brought to his door; being first prompted thereto by the thought, which came only when it was too late, that in sending Greeba away to be company to some other child he had left poor little Sunlocks at home to be sole company to himself.
But Michael Sunlocks soon won for himself the caresses that were once due merely to pity of his loneliness, and Adam’s heart went out to him with the strong affection of a father. He throve, he grew — a tall, lithe, round-limbed lad, with a smack of the man in his speech and ways, and all the strong beauty of a vigorous woman in his face. Year followed year, his school days came and went, he became more and yet more the Governor’s quick right hand, his pen and his memory, even his judgment, and the staff he leaned on. It was “Michael Sunlocks” here, and “Michael Sunlocks” there, and “Michael Sunlocks will see to that,” and “You may safely leave it to Michael Sunlocks;” and meantime the comely and winsome lad, with man’s sturdy independence of spirit, but a woman’s yearning for love, having long found where this account lay in the house of Governor Fairbrother, clung to that good man with more than the affection, because less than the confidence, of a son, and like a son he stood to him.
Now, for one who found this relation sweet and beautiful, there were many who found it false and unjust, implying an unnatural preference of a father for a stranger before his own children; and foremost among those who took this unfavorable view were Mrs. Fairbrother and her sons. She blamed her husband, and they blamed Michael Sunlocks.
The six sons of Adam Fairbrother had grown into six rude men, all big, lusty fellows, rough and hungry, seared and scarred like the land they lived on, but differing much at many points. Asher, the eldest, three-and-thirty when Sunlocks was fifteen, was fair, with gray eyes, flabby face, and no chin to speak of, good-hearted, but unstable as water. He was for letting the old man and the lad alone. “Aisy, man, aisy, what’s the odds?” he would say, in his drawling way of speaking. But Ross, the second son, and Stean, the third, both cruel and hot-blooded men, reproached Asher with not objecting from the first, for “Och,” they would say, “one of these fine days the ship will be wrecked and scuttled before yer very eyes, and not a pound of cargo left at her; and all along of that cursed young imp that’s after sniffin’ and sniffin’ abaft of the ould man,” — a figure of speech which meant that Adam would will his belongings to Michael Sunlocks. And at that conjecture, Thurstan, the fourth son, a black-bearded fellow in top boots, always red-eyed with much drinking, but strong of will and the ruler of his brethren, would say, “Aw, well, let the little beachcomber keep his weather eye liftin’;” and Jacob, the fifth son, sandy as a fox, and as sly and watchful, and John, the youngest, known as Gentleman Johnny, out of tribute to his love of dress, would shake their heads together, and hint that they would yet find a way to cook the goose of any smooth-faced hypocrite shamming Abraham.
Many a device they tried to get Michael Sunlocks turned away. They brought bad stories of his father, Stephen Orry, now a name of terror to good people from north to south of the island, a secret trader running between the revenue cutters in the ports and the smugglers outside, perhaps a wrecker haunting the rough channels of the Calf, an outlaw growing rich by crime, and, maybe, by blood. The evil rumors made no impression on old Adam, but they produced a powerful effect where no effect had been expected. Bit by it, as his heart went out to the Governor, there grew upon Michael Sunlocks a deep loathing of the very name and thought of his father. The memory of his father was now a thing of the mind, not the affections; and the chain of the two emotions, love for his foster father and dread of his natural one, slowly but surely tightened about him, so that his strongest hope was that he might never again set eyes on Stephen Orry. By this weakness he fell at length into the hands of the six Fairbrothers, and led the way to a total rupture of old Adam’s family.
One day when Michael Sunlocks was eighteen years old a man came to him from Kirk Maughold with an air of wondrous mystery. It was Nary Crowe, the innkeeper, now bald, bottled-nosed, and in a bad state of preservation. His story, intended for Michael’s ear alone, was that Stephen Orry, flying from the officers of the revenue cutters, was on the point of leaving the island forever, and must see his son before going. If the son would not go to the father, then the father must come to the son. The meeting place proposed was a schooner lying outside the Calf Sound, and the hour midnight of the day following.
It was as base a plot as the heart of an enemy ever concocted, for the schooner was a smuggler, and the men of the revenue cutter were in hiding under the Black Head to watch her movements. The lad, in fear of his father, fell into the trap, and was taken prisoner on suspicion in a gig making for the ship. He confessed all to the Governor, and Nary Crowe was arrested. To save his own carcase Nary gave up his employers. They were Ross and Stean Fairbrother, and Ross and Stean being questioned pointed to their brothers Jacob and Gentleman Johnny as the instigators of the scheme.
When the revelation was complete, and the Governor saw that all but his whole family was implicated, and that the stain on his house was so black that the island would ever remember it against him, his placid spirit forsook him and his wrath knew no bounds. But the evil was not ended there, for Mrs. Fairbrother took sides with her sons, and straightway vowed to live no longer under the same roof with an unnatural father, who found water thicker than blood.
At that Adam was shaken to his depths. The taunt passed him by, but the threat touched him sorely.
“It would be but a poor business,” he said, “to part now after so many years of life together, with seven children that should be as bonds between us, in our age and looking to a longer parting.”
But Mrs. Fairbrother was resolved to go with her sons, and never again to darken her husband’s doors.
“You have been a true wife to me and led a good life,” said Adam, “and have holpen me through many troubles, and we have had cheerful hours together despite some crosses.”
But Mrs. Fairbrother was not to be pacified.
“Then let us not part in anger,” said Adam, “and though I will not do your bidding, and send away the lad — no, nor let him go of himself, now that for sake of peace he asks it — yet to show you that I mean no wrong by my own flesh and blood, this is what I will do: I have my few hundreds for my office, but all I hold that I can call my own is Lague. Take it — it shall be yours for your lifetime, and our sons’ and their sister’s after you.”
At these terms the bad bargain was concluded, and Mrs. Fairbrother went away to Lague, leaving Adam with Michael Sunlocks at Government House.
And the old man, being now alone with the lad, though his heart never wavered or rued the price he had paid for him, often turned yearningly towards thoughts of his daughter Greeba, so that at length he said, speaking of her as the child he had parted from, “I can live no longer without my little lass, and will go and fetch her.”
Then he wrote to the Duchess at her house in London, and a few days afterwards he followed his letter.
He had been a week gone when Michael Sunlocks, having now the Governor’s routine work to do, was sent for out of the north of the island to see to the light on the Point of Ayre, where there was then no lighthouse, but only a flase stuck out from a pole at the end of a sandstone jetty, a poor proxy, involving much risk to ships. Two days he was away, and returning home he slept a night at Douglas, rising at sunrise to make the last stage of his journey to Castletown. He was riding Goldie, the Governor’s little roan; the season was spring, and the morning, fresh from its long draught of dew, was sweet and beautiful. But Michael Sunlocks rode heavily along, for he was troubled by many misgivings. He was asking himself for the hundredth time whether it was right of him, and a true man’s part, to suffer himself to stand between Adam Fairbrother and his family. The sad breach being made, all that he could do to heal it was to take himself away, whether Adam favored that course or not. And he had concluded that, painful as the remedy would be, yet he must needs take it, and that very speedily, when he came up to the gate of Government House, and turned Goldie down the path to the left that led to the stables.
He had not gone far when over the lowing of the cattle in the byres, and the steady munching of the sheep on the other side of the hedge, and through the smell of the early grass there came to him the sweetest sounds he had ever heard, and some of the queerest and craziest. Without knowing what he did, or why he did it, but taking himself at his first impulse, he drew rein, and Goldie came to a stand on the mossgrown pathway. Then he knew that two were talking together a little in front of him, but partly hidden by a turn of the path and the thick trammon that bordered it. Rising in his stirrups he could see one of them, and it was his old friend, Chalse A’Killey, the carrier, a shambling figure in a guernsey and blue seaman’s cap, with tousled hair and a simple vacant face, and lagging lower lip, but eyes of a strange brightness.
