Complete works of hall c.., p.152
Complete Works of Hall Caine, page 152
“But your mother is fidgeting, and this is no place for a slip of a girl — come!”
“I’ll stay with him alone,” said Jason.
“No, no,” cried Greeba.
“It’s the lad’s right, for all,” said old Davy. “He fetched the poor chap out of the water. Come, let’s take the road for it.”
“Will no one stay instead of me?” said Greeba.
“Where’s the use?” said Davy. “He’s raelly past help. He’s outward bound, poor chap. Poor Orry! Poor ould Stephen!”
Then they drew Greeba away, and with a look of fear fixed on Jason’s face she passed out at the door.
Jason was now alone with Stephen Orry, and felt like a man who had stumbled into a hidden grave. He had set out over the seas to search for his father, and here, at his first setting foot on the land, his father lay at his feet. So this was Stephen Orry; this was he for whom his mother had given up all; this was he for whom she had taken a father’s curse; this was he for whom she had endured poverty and shame; this was he who had neglected her, struck her, forgotten her with another woman; this was he who had killed her — the poor, loving, loyal, passionate heart — not in a day, or an hour, or a moment, but in twenty long years. Jason stood over the bed and looked down. Surely the Lord God had heard his great vow and delivered the man into his hands. He would have hunted the world over to find him, but here at a stride he had him. It was Heaven’s own justice, and if he held back now the curse of his dead mother would follow him from the grave.
Yet a trembling shook his whole frame, and his heart beat as if it would break. Why did he wait? He remembered the tenderness that had crept upon him not many minutes ago, as he listened to the poor baby babble of the man’s delirium, and at that the gall in his throat seemed to choke him. He hated himself for yielding to it, for now he knew for whom it had been meant. It had been meant for his own father doating over the memory of another son. That son had supplanted himself; that son’s mother had supplanted his own mother; and yet he, in his ignorance, had all but wept for both of them. But no matter, he was now to be God’s own right hand of justice on this evil-doer.
Dawn was breaking, and its woolly light crept lazily in at the little window, past the lamp that still burned on the window board. The wind had fallen, and the sea lay gloomy and dark, as if with its own heavy memories of last night’s work. The gray light fell on the sick man’s face, and under Jason’s eyes it seemed to light up the poor, miserable, naked soul within. The delirium had now set in strong, and many were the wild words and frequent was the cry that rang through the little house.
“Not while he is like that,” thought Jason. “I will wait for the lull.”
He took up a pillow in both hands and stood by the bed and waited, never lifting his eyes off the face. But the lull did not come. Would it not come at all? What if the delirium were never to pass away? Could he still do the thing he intended? No, no, no! But Heaven had heard his vow and led him there. The delirium would yet pass; then he would accuse his father, face to face and eye to eye, and then —
The current of Jason’s thoughts was suddenly arrested by a cry from the sick man. It was “Rachel! Rachel! Rachel!” spoken in a voice of deep entreaty, and there came after it in disjointed words of the Icelandic tongue a pitiful appeal for forgiveness. At that a great fear seized upon Jason, and the pillow dropped from his hands to the ground. “Rachel! Rachel!” It was the old cry of the years that were gone, but working with how great a difference — then, to stir up evil passions — now, to break down the spirit of revenge.
“Rachel! Rachel!” came again in the same pitiful voice of supplication; and at the sound of that name so spoken, the bitterness of Jason’s heart went off like a wail of the wind. It was a cry of remorse; a cry for pardon; a cry for mercy. There could be no jugglery. In that hour of the mind’s awful vanquishment a human soul stood naked behind him as before its Maker.
Jason’s great resolve was shaken. Had it been only a blind tangle of passion and pain? If the Almighty had called him to be the instrument of His vengeance, would He have delivered his enemy into his hands like this — dying, delirious, with broken brain and broken heart?
Still his mother’s name came from his father’s lips, and then his mind went back to the words that had so lately passed between them. “Let me be your father, though I am a dying man.” Ah! sweet, beautiful, blind fallacy — could he not let it be?
The end was very near; the delirium passed away, and Stephen Orry opened his eyes. The great creature was as quiet as a child now, and as soft and gentle as a child’s was his deep hoarse voice. He knew that he had been wandering in his mind, and when he looked into Jason’s face a pale smile crossed his own.
“I thought I had found her,” he said, very simply, “my poor young wife that once was; it was she that I lost so long ago, and did such wrong by.”
Jason’s throat was choking him, but he stammered out, “Lie still, sir, lie still and rest.”
But Stephen Orry talked on in the same simple way: “Ah, how silly I am! I forgot you didn’t know.”
“Lie still and rest,” said Jason again.
“There was someone with her, too. I thought I was her son — her child and mine, that was to come when I left her. And, only think, I looked again, and it seemed to be you. Yes, you — for it was the face of him that fetched me out of the sea. I thought you were my son indeed.”
Then Jason could bear up no longer. He flung himself down on his knees by the bedside, and buried his face in the dying man’s breast.
“Father,” he sobbed, “I am your son.”
But Stephen Orry only smiled, and answered very quietly, “Ah, yes, I remember — that was part of our bargain, my good lad. Well, God bless you, my son. God bless and speed you.”
And that was the end of Orry.
The Book of Michael Sunlocks.
CHAPTER I.
Red Jason.
Now the facts of this history must stride on some four years, and come to a great crisis in the lives of Greeba and Jason. Every event of that time seemed to draw these two together, and the first of the circumstances that bound them came very close on the death of Stephen Orry. Only a few minutes after Greeba, at the bidding of her two brothers, Stean and Thurstan, had left Jason alone with the dying man, she had parted from them without word or warning, and fled back to the little hut in Port-y-Vullin. With a wild laboring of heart, panting for breath and full of dread, she had burst the door open, fearing to see what she dare not think of; but, instead of the evil work she looked for, she had found Jason on his knees by the bedside, sobbing as if his heart would break, and Stephen Orry passing away with a tender light in his eyes and a word of blessing on his lips. At that sight she had stood on the threshold like one who is transfixed, and how long that moment had lasted she never knew. But the thing she remembered next was that Jason had taken her by the hand and drawn her up, with all the fire of her spirit gone, to where the man lay dead before them, and had made her swear to him there and then never to speak of what she had seen, and to put away from her mind forever the vague things she had but partly guessed. After that he had told her, with a world of pain, that Stephen Orry had been his father; that his father had killed his mother by base neglect and cruelty; that to wipe out his mother’s wrongs he had vowed to slay his father; and that his father, not knowing him, save in the vision of his delirium, had died in the act of blessing him. Greeba had yielded to Jason, because she had been conquered by his stronger will, and was in fear of the passion which flashed in his face; but hearing all this, she remembered Michael Sunlocks, and how he must stand as the son of the other woman; and straightway she found her own reasons why she should be silent on all that she had that night seen and heard. This secret was the first of the bonds between them; and the second, though less obvious, was even more real.
Losing no time, Adam Fairbrother had written a letter to Michael Sunlocks, by that name, telling him of the death of his father, and how, so far as the facts were known, the poor man came by it in making the port in his boat after seeing his son away in the packet. This he had despatched to the only care known to him, that of the Lord Bishop Petersen, at his Latin School of Reykjavik; but after a time the letter had come back, with a note from the Bishop saying that no such name was known to him, and no such student was under his charge. Much afraid that the same storm that had led Stephen Orry to his end had overtaken Michael Sunlocks also, Adam Fairbrother had then promptly re-addressed his letter to the care of the Governor-General, who was also the Postmaster, and added a postscript asking if, after the sad event whereof he had thought it his task in love and duty to apprise him, there was the same necessity that his dear boy should remain in Iceland. “But, indite me a few lines without delay,” he wrote, “giving me assurance of your safe arrival, for what has happened of late days has haunted me with many fears of mishap.”
Then in due course an answer had come from Michael Sunlocks, saying he had landed safely, but there being no regular mails, he had been compelled to await the sailing of English ships to carry his letters; that by some error he had missed the first of these, and was now writing by the next; that many strange things had happened to him, and he was lodged in the house of the Governor-General; that his father’s death had touched him very deeply; being brought about by a mischance that so nearly affected himself; that the sad fact, so far from leaving him free to return home, seemed to make it the more necessary that he should remain where he was until he had done what he had been sent to do: and, finally, that what that work was he could not tell in a letter, but only by word of mouth, whenever it pleased God that they should meet again. This, with many words of affection for Adam himself, in thanks for his fatherly anxiety, and some mention of Greeba in tender but guarded terms, was the sum of the only letter that had come from Michael Sunlocks in the four years after Stephen Orry’s death to the first of the events that are now to be recorded.
And throughout these years Jason had lived at Lague, having been accepted as housemate by the six Fairbrothers, when the ship-broken men had gone their own ways on receiving from their Dublin owners the wages that were due to them. Though his relation to Stephen Orry had never become known, it had leaked out that he had come into Orry’s money. He had done little work. His chief characteristics had been love of liberty and laziness. In the summer he had fished on the sea and in the rivers and he had shot and hunted in the winter. He had followed these pursuits out of sheer love of an idle life; but if he had a hobby it was the collecting of birds. Of every species on the island, of land or seafowl, he had found a specimen. He stuffed his birds with some skill, and kept them in the little hut in Port-y-Vullin.
The four years had developed his superb physique, and he had grown to be a yet more magnificent creature than Stephen Orry himself. He was rounder, though his youth might have pardoned more angularity; broader, and more upright, with a proud poise of head, long wavy red hair, smooth cheeks, solid white teeth, face of broad lines, an intelligent expression, and a deep voice that made the mountain ring. His dress suited well his face and figure. He wore a skin cap with a peak, a red woollen shirt belted about the waist, breeches of leather, leggings and seaman’s boots. The cap was often awry, and a tuft of red hair tumbled over his bronzed forehead, his shirt was torn, his breeches were stained, and his leggings tied with rope; but rough, and even ragged, as his dress was, it sat upon him with a fine rude grace. With a knife in his sheath, a net or a decoy over his arm, a pouch for powder slung behind him, a fowling piece across his shoulder, and a dog at his heels, he would go away into the mountains as the evening fell. And in the early gleams of sunrise he would stride down again and into the “Hibernian,” scenting up the old tavern with tobacco smoke, and carrying many dead birds at his belt, with the blood still dripping from their heads hung down. Folks called him Red Jason, or sometimes Jason the Red.
He began to visit Government House. Greeba was there, but at first he seemed not to see her. Simple greetings he exchanged with her, and that was all the commerce between them. With the Governor, when work was over, he sat and smoked, telling of his own country and its laws, and the ways of its people, talking of his hunting and fishing, calling the mountains Jokulls, and the Tynwald the Löberg, and giving names of his own to the glens, the Chasm of Ravens for the Dhoon, and Broad Shield for Ballaglass. And Adam loved to learn how close was the bond between his own dear isle and the land of the great sea kings of old time, but most of all he listened to what Jason said, that he might thereby know what kind of world it was wherein his dear lad Michael Sunlocks had to live away from him.
“A fine lad,” Adam Fairbrother would say to Greeba; “a lad of fearless courage, and unflinching contempt of death, with a great horror of lying and treachery, and an inborn sense of justice. Not tender and gentle with his strength, as my own dear Sunlocks is, but of a high and serious nature, and having passions that may not be trifled with.” And hearing this, and the more deliberate warning of her brothers at Lague, Greeba would remember that she had herself the best reason to know that the passions of Jason could be terrible.
But nothing she recked of it all, for her heart was as light as her manners in those days, and if she thought twice of her relations with Jason she remembered that she was the daughter of the Governor, and he was only a poor sailor lad who had been wrecked off their coast.
Jason was a great favorite with Mrs. Fairbrother, notwithstanding that he did no work. Rumor had magnified the fortune that Stephen Orry had left him, and the two hundred pounds stood at two thousand in her eyes. With a woman’s quick instinct she saw how Jason stood towards Greeba, almost before he had himself become conscious of it, and she smiled on him and favored him. A whisper of this found its way from Lague to Government House, and old Adam shook his head. He had nothing against Jason, except that the lad was not fond of work, and whether Jason was poor or rich counted for very little, but he could not forget his boy Sunlocks.
Thus while Greeba remained with her father there was but little chance that she could wrong the promise she had made to Michael; but events seemed to force her into the arms of Jason. Her mother had never been of an unselfish spirit, and since parting from her husband she had shown a mean penuriousness. This affected her six sons chiefly, and they realized that when she had taken their side against their father she had taken the cream of their living also. Lague was now hers for her lifetime, and only theirs after she was done with it; and if they asked much more for their work than bed and board she reminded them of this, and bade them wait. Soon tiring of their Lenten entertainment, they trooped off, one after one, to their father, badly as they had dealt by him, and complained loudly of the great wrong he had done them when he made over the lands of Lague to their mother. What were they now, though sons of the Governor? No better than hinds on their mother’s farm, expected to work for her from light to dusk, and getting nothing for their labor but the house she kept over their heads. Grown men they all were now, and the elder of them close on their prime, yet none were free to marry, for none had the right to a penny for the living he earned; and all this came of their father’s unwise generosity.
Old Adam could not gainsay them, and he would not reproach them, so he did all that remained to him to do, and that was to exercise a little more of the same unwise generosity, and give them money. And finding this easy means of getting what they wanted, they came again and again, all six of them, from Asher to Gentleman Johnny, and as often as they came they went away satisfied, though old Adam shook his head when he saw how mean and small was the spirit of his sons. Greeba also shook her head, but from another cause, for though she grudged her brothers nothing she knew that her father was fast being impoverished. Once she hinted as much, but old Adam made light of her misgivings, saying that if the worst came to the worst he had still his salary, and what was the good of his money if he might not use it, and what was the virtue of charity if it must not begin at home?
But the evil was not ended there for the six lumbering men who objected to work without pay were nothing loth to take pay without work. Not long after the first of the visits to Government House, Lague began to be neglected.
Asher lay in the ingle and dozed; Thurstan lay about in the “Hibernian” and drank; Ross and Stean started a ring of gamecocks, Jacob formed a nest of private savings, and John developed his taste for dress and his appetite for gallantries. Mrs. Fairbrother soon discovered the source of the mischief, and railed at the name of her husband, who was ruining her boys and bringing herself to beggary.
Thus far had matters gone, during the four years following the death of Stephen Orry, and then a succession of untoward circumstances hastened a climax of grave consequence to all the persons concerned in this history. Two bad seasons had come, one on the end of the other. The herring fishing had failed, and the potato crop had suffered a blight. The fisher folk and the poor farming people were reduced to sore straits. The one class had to throw the meal bag across their shoulders and go round the houses begging, and the other class had to compound with their landlords or borrow from their neighbors.
Where few were rich and many were poor, the places of call for either class were not numerous. But two houses at least were always open to those who were in want — Lague and Government House; though their welcome at the one was very unlike their welcome at the other. Mrs. Fairbrother relieved their necessities by lending them money on mortgage on their lands or boats, and her interest was in proportion to their necessities. They had no choice but accept her terms, however rigid, and if in due course they could not meet them they had no resource but to yield up to her their little belongings. In less than half a year boat after boat, croft after croft, and even farm after farm had fallen into her hands. She grew rich, and the richer she grew the more penurious she became. There were no banks in the north of the island then, and the mistress of Lague was in effect the farmer’s banker.
