Complete works of hall c.., p.254
Complete Works of Hall Caine, page 254
“Is anything the matter?” called the man-servant.
“There’s somebody coming downstairs, isn’t there?” said Philip.
“Somebody coming downstairs?” repeated the man-servant, and the light shifted as if he were lifting the lamp.
“Is it you coming down, Jem?”
“Me coming down? I’m here, holding the lamp, your Honour.”
“Another of my fancies,” thought Philip; and he laid hold of the handrail, and started afresh. The step came on. He knew it now; it was his own step. “An echo,” he told himself. “A dream,” he thought, “a mirage of the mind;” and he compelled himself to go up. The step came down. It passed him on the stairs, going by the wall as he went by the rail, with an irresistible down-drive, headlong, heavily.
Then came one of those moments of partial unconsciousness in which the sensation of a sound takes shape. It seemed to Philip that the figure of a man had passed him. He remembered it instantly. It was the same that he had seen in the lobby to the Council Chamber, his own figure, but wrapped in a cloak like the one he was then wearing, and with the hood drawn over the head. The body had been half turned aside, the face had been hidden, and the whole form had expressed contempt, repugnance, and loathing.
“Not well to-night, your Honour?” said the far-off voice of Jem-y-Lord. He was holding the dazzling lamp up to the Deemster’s face.
“A little faint — that’s all. Go to bed.”
Then Philip was alone in his room. “Conscience!” he thought. “Pete may go, but this will be with me to the end. Which, O God? — which?”
He poured out half a tumbler from the bottle on the table, and gulped it down at a draught. At the same moment he heard a light foot overhead. It was a woman’s foot; it crossed the floor, and then ceased.
IX.
Next morning the Deemster was still sleeping while the sun was shining into his room. He was awakened by a thunderous clamour, which came as from a nail driven into the back of his head. Opening his eyes, he realised that somebody was knocking at his door, and shouting in a robustious bass —
“Christian, I say! Ever going to get up at all?”
It was the Clerk of the Rolls. Under one of his heavy poundings the catch of the door gave way, and he stepped into the room.
“Degenerate Manxman!” he roared. “In bed on Tynwald morning. Pooh! this room smells of dead sleep, dead spirits, and dead everything. Let me get at that window — you pitch your clothes all over the floor. Ah! that’s fresher! Headache? I should think so. Get up, then, and I’ll drive you to St. John’s.”
“Don’t think I’ll go to-day, sir,” said Philip in a feeble whimper.
“Not go? Holy saints! Judge of his island and not go to Tynwald! What will the Governor say?”
“He said last night he would excuse my absence.”
“Excuse your fiddlesticks! The air will do you good. I’ve got the carriage below. Listen! it’s striking ten by the church. I’ll give you fifteen minutes, and step into your breakfast-room and look over the Times.”
The Clerk rolled out, and then Philip heard his loud voice through the door in conversation with Jem-y-Lord.
“And how’s Mrs. Cottier to-day?”
“Middling, sir, thank you, sir.’’
“You don’t let us see too much of her, Jemmy.”
“Not been well since coming to Douglas, sir.”
Cups and saucers rattled, the newspaper creaked, the Clerk cleared his throat, and there was silence.
Philip rose with a heavy heart, still in the torment of his great temptation. He remembered the vision of the night before, and, broad morning as it was, he trembled. In the Isle of Man such visions are understood to foretell death, and the man who sees them is said to “see his soul.” But Philip had no superstitions. He knew what the vision was: he knew what the vision meant.
Jem-y-Lord came in with hot water, and Philip, without looking round, said in a low tone as the door closed, “How now, my lad?”
“Fretting again, your Honour,” said the man, in a half whisper. He busied himself in the room a moment, and then added, “Somehow she gets to know things. Yesterday evening now — I was taking down some of the bottles, and I met her on the stairs. Next time I saw her she was crying.”
Philip said in a confused way, fumbling the razor. “Tell her I intend to see her after Tynwald.”
“I have, your Honour. ‘It’s not that, Mr. Cottier,’ she answered me.”
“My wig and gown to-day, Jemmy,” said Philip, and he went out in his robes as Deemster.
The day was bright, and the streets were thronged with vehicles. Brakes, wagonettes, omnibuses, private carriages, and cadger’s carts all loaded to their utmost, were climbing out of Douglas by way of the road to Peel. The town seemed to shout; the old island rock itself seemed to laugh.
“Bless me, Christian,” said the Clerk of the Rolls, looking at his watch, “do you know it’s half-past ten? Service begins at eleven. Drive on, coachman. You’ve eight miles to do in half an hour.”
“Can’t go any faster with this traffic on the road, sir,” said the coachman over his shoulder.
“I got so absorbed in the newspaper,” said the Clerk, “that —— Well, if we’re late, we’re late, that’s all.”
Philip folded his arms across his breast and hung his head. He was fighting a great battle.
“No idea that the fisherman affair was going to be so serious,” said the Clerk. “It seems the Governor has ordered out every soldier and pensioner. If I know my countrymen, they’ll not stand much of that.”
Philip drew a long breath: there was a cloud of dust; the women in the brakes were laughing.
“I hear a whisper that the ringleader is a friend of yours, Christian— ‘an irregular relative of a high official,’ as the reporter says.”
“He is my cousin, sir,” said Philip.
“What? The big, curly-pated fellow you took home in the carriage?... I say, coachman, no need to drive quite so fast.”
Philip’s head was still down. The Clerk of the Rolls sat watching him with an anxious face.
“Christian, I am not so sure the Governor wasn’t right after all. Is this what’s been troubling you for a month? You’re the deuce for a secret. If there’s anything good to tell, you’re up like the sun; but if there’s bad news going, an owl is a poll-parrot compared with you for talking.”
Philip made some feeble effort to laugh, and to say his head was still aching. They were on the breast of the steep hill going up to Greeba. The road ahead was like a funnel of dust; the road behind was like the tail of a comet.
“Pity a fine lad like that should get into trouble,” said the Clerk. “I like the rascal. He got round an old man’s heart like a rope round a capstan. One of the big, hearty dogs that make you say, ‘By Jove, and I’m a Manxman, too.’ He’s in the right in this affair, whatever the Governor may say. And the Governor knows it, Christian — that’s why he’s so anxious to excuse you. He can overawe the Keys; and as for the Council, we’re paid our wages, God bless us, and are so many stuffed snipes on his stick. But you — you’re different. Then the man is your kinsman, and blood is thicker than water, if it’s only —— Why, what’s this?”
There was some whooping behind; the line of carriages swirled like a long serpent half a yard near the hedge, and through the grey dust a large covered car shot by at the gallop of a fire-engine. The Clerk-sat bolt upright.
“Now, what in the name of — —”
“It’s an ambulance waggon,” said Philip between his set teeth.
A moment later a second waggon went galloping past, then a third, and finally a fourth.
“Well, upon my —— Ah! good day. Doctor! Good day, good day!”
The Clerk had recognised friends on the waggons, and was returning their salutations. When they were gone, he first looked at Philip, and then shouted, “Coachman, right about face. We’re going home again — and chance it.”
“We can’t be turning here, sir,” said the coachman. “The vehicles are coming up like bees going a-swarming. We’ll have to go as far as Tynwald, anyway.”
“Go on,” said Philip in a determined voice.
After a while the Clerk said, “Christian, it isn’t worth while getting into trouble over this affair. After all, the Governor is the Governor. Besides, he’s been a good friend to you.”
Philip was passing through a purgatorial fire, and his old master was feeding it with fuel on every side. They were nearing Tynwald, and could see the flags, the tents, and the crowd as of a vast encampment, and hear the deep hum of a multitude, like the murmur of a distant sea.
X.
Tynwald Hill is the ancient Parliament ground of Man. It is an open green in the midst of the island, with hills on three of its sides, and on the fourth a broad plain dipping to the coast. This green is of the shape of a guitar. Down the middle of the guitar there is a walled enclosure of the shape of a banjo. At the end stands a church. The round drum is the mount, which has four circles, the topmost being some six paces across.
The carriage containing the Deemster and the Clerk of the Bolls had drawn up at the west gate of the church, and a policeman had opened the door. There came the sound of singing from the porch.
“A quarter late,” said the Clerk of the Rolls, consulting his watch. “Shall we go in, your Honor?”
“Let us take a turn round the fair instead,” said Philip.
The carriage door was shut back, and they began to move over the green. The open part of it was covered with booths, barrows, stands, and show-tents. There were cheap jacks with shoddy watches, phrenologists with two chairs, fat women, dwarfs, wandering minstrels, itinerant hawkers of toffee in tin hat-boxes, and other shiny and slimy creatures with the air and grease of the towns. There were a few oxen and horses also, tethered and lanketted, and kicking up the dust under the dry turf.
The crowd was dense already, and increasing at every moment. As the brakes arrived, they drove up with a swing that sent the people surging on either side. Some brought well-behaved visitors, others brought an eruption of ruffians.
Down the neck of the enclosure, and round the circular end of it, stood a regiment of soldiers with rifles and bayonets. The steps to the mount were laid down with rushes. Two armchairs were on the top, under a canopy hung from a flagstaff that stood in the centre. These chairs were still empty, and the mount and its approaches were kept clear.
The sun was overhead, the heat was great, the odour was oppressive. Now and again the sound of the service within the church mingled with the crack of the toy rifle-ranges and the jabber of the cheap jacks. At length there was another sound — a more portentous sound — the sound of bands playing in the distance. It came from both south and west, from the direction of Peel, and from that of Port St. Mary.
“They’re coming,” said the Clerk, and Philip’s face, when he turned his head to listen, quivered and grew yet more pale.
As the bands approached they ceased to play. Presently a vast procession of men from the west came up in silence to the skirt of the hill, and turned off in the direction from which the men from the south were seen to be coming. They were in jerseys and sea-boots, marching four deep, and carrying nothing in their brawny hands. One stalwart fellow walked firmly at the head of them.. It was Pete.
Philip could support the strain no longer. He got out of the carriage. The Clerk of the Rolls got out also, and followed him as he walked with wavering, irregular steps.
Under a great tree at the junction of three roads, the two companies of fishermen met and fell into a general throng. There was a low wall around the tree-trunk, and, standing on this, Pete’s head was clear above the rest.
“Boys,” he was saying, “there’s three hundred armed soldiers on the hill yonder, with twenty rounds of ball-cartridge apiece. You’re going to the Coort because you’ve a right to go. You’re going up peaceable, and, when you’re getting there, you’re going to mix among the soldiers, three to every man, two on either side and one behind. Then your spokesmen are going to spake out your complaint. If they’re listened to, you’re wanting no better. But if they’re not, and if the word is given to fire on them, then, before there’s time to do it, you’re going to stretch every man of the three hundred on his back and take his weapon. Don’t hurt the soldiers — the poor soldiers are only doing what they’re tould. But don’t let the soldiers hurt you neither. You’re going there for justice. You’re not going there to fight. But if anybody fights you, let him never forget the day he done it. Break up every taffy stand in the fair, if you can’t find anything better. And if blood is shed, lave the man that orders it to me. And now go up, boys, like men and like Manxmen.”
There was no cheering, no shouting, no clapping of hands. Only broken exclamations and a sort of confused murmur. “Come,” whispered the Clerk of the Rolls, putting his hand through Philip’s quivering arm. “Little does the poor devil think that, if blood is shed, he will be the first to fall.” “God in heaven!” muttered Philip.
XI.
The crowd on Tynwald had now gathered thick down the neck of the enclosure and dense round the mount. To the strains of the National Anthem, played by the band of the regiment, the Governor had come out of the church. He was in cocked hat and with sword, and the sword of state was carried upright before him. With his Keys, Council, and clergy, he walked to the hill-top. There he took one of the two chairs under the canopy; the other, was taken by the Bishop in his lawn. Their followers came behind, and broke up on the hill into an indiscriminate mass. A number of ladies were admitted to the space on the topmost round. They stood behind the chairs, with their parasols still open.
There are men that the densest crowd will part and make way for. The crowd had parted and made way for Philip. As the court was being “fenced,” he appeared with his companion at the foot of the mount. There he was recognised by many, but he scarcely answered their salutations. The Governor made a deferential bow, smiled, and beckoned to him to come up to his side. He went up slowly, pausing at every other step, like a man who was in doubt if he ought to go higher. At length he stood at the Governor’s right hand, with all eyes upon him, for the favourite of the great is favoured. He was then the highest figure on the mount, the Governor and the Bishop being seated. The people could see him from end to side of the Tynwald, and he could see the people as they stood closely packed on the green below.
The business of the Court began. It was that of promulgating the laws. Philip’s senior colleague, the old Deemster of the happy face, read the titles of the laws in English.
Then the Coroner of the premier sheading began to recite the same titles in Manx. Nobody heard them; hardly anybody listened. The ladies on the mount chatted among themselves, the Keys and the clergy intermingled and talked, the officials of the Council looked at the crowd, and the crowd itself, having nothing to hear, no more to see, indifferent to doings they could not understand, resumed their amusements among the frivolities of the fair.
There were three persons in that assembly of fifteen thousand who were following the course of events with feverish interest. The first of these was the Governor, whose restless eyes were rolling from side to side with almost savage light; the second was the captain of the regiment, who was watching the Governor’s face for a signal; the third was Philip, who was looking down at the crowd and seeing something that had meaning for himself alone.
The fishermen came up quietly, three thousand strong. Half a hundred of them lounged around the magazine — the ammunition was at their command. The rest pushed, edged, and elbowed their way through the people until they came to the line of the guard. Wherever there was a red coat, behind it there were three jerseys and stocking-caps, Philip saw it all from his elevation on the mount. His face was deadly pale, his eyelids wavered, his lower lip trembled, his hand twitched; when he was spoken to, he hardly answered; he was like a man holding counsel with himself, and half in fear that everybody could read his hidden thoughts. He was in the last throes of his temptation. The decisive moment was near. It was heavy with the fate of his after life. He thought of Pete and the torture of his company; of Kate and the unending misery of her existence; of himself and the deep duplicity to which he was committed. From all this he could be freed for ever — by what? By doing nothing, having already done his duty? Only let him command himself, and then — relief from an existence enthralled by torment — from constant alarm and watchfulness — peace — sleep — love — Kate!
Somebody was speaking to him over his shoulder. It was nothing — only the quip of a witty fellow, descendant of a Spanish freebooter. Ladies caught his eye, smiled and bowed to him. A little man, whose swarthy face showed African blood, reached up and quoted something about the bounds of freedom wide and wider.
The Coroner had finished, the proceedings were at an end — there was a movement — something had happened — the Governor had half risen from his chair. Twelve men in sea-boots and blue jerseys had passed the line of the guard, and were standing midway across the steps of the mount. One of them was beginning to speak. It was Pete.
“Governor,” he said; but the captain of the regiment was abreast of him in a moment, and a score of the soldiers were about his companions at the next breath. The fishermen stood their ground like a wall, and the soldiers fell back. There was hardly any scuffle.
“Governor,” said Pete again, touching his cap.
The Governor was twisting in his seat. Looking first at Pete, and then at the captain, he was in the act of lifting his hand when suddenly it was held by another hand at his side, and a low voice whispered at his ear, “No, sir; for God’s sake, no!”
It was Philip. The Governor looked at him with amazement. “What do you mean?”
“I mean,” said Philip, still whispering over him hotly and impetuously, “that there’s only one way back to Government House, but if you lift your hand it will be one too many; I mean that if blood is shed you’ll never live to leave this mount; I mean that your three hundred soldiers are only as three hundred rabbits in the claws of three thousand crows.”
