Complete works of hall c.., p.260
Complete Works of Hall Caine, page 260
How distant it all appeared to be! And was he flying from the island like this? The island that had honoured him, that had rewarded him beyond his deserts, and earlier than his dreams, that had suffered no jealousy to impede him, no rivalry to fret him, no disparity of age and service to hold him back — the little island that had seemed to open its arms to him, and to cry, “Philip Christian, son of your father, grandson of your grandfather, first of Manxmen, come up!”
Oh, for what might have been! Useless regrets! Pull, pull, and forget.
But the home of his childhood! Ballure — Auntie Nan — his father’s death brightened by one hope — the last, but ah! how vain! — Port Mooar — Pete, “The sea’s calling me.” Pull, pull! The sea was calling him indeed. Calling him to the deep womb that is death, not birth.
He was far out. The sun had gone, the island was like a bird of ashy grey stretched across the horizon; the great wing of night was coming down from the sky, and up out the mysterious depths of the sea came the profound hum, the mighty voice that is the organ of the world.
He took in the oars, and his tiny shell began to drift At that moment his eye caught something at the bottom of the boat. It was a flower, a broken stem, a torn rose, and a few scattered rose leaves. Only a relic of the last occupants, but it brought back the perfume of love, a sense of tenderness, of bright eyes, of a caress, a kiss. His mind went back to Sulby, to the Melliah, to the glen, to the days so full of tremulous love, when they hovered on the edge of the precipice. They had been hurled over it since then. It was some relief that between love and honour he would not have to struggle any longer.
And Kate? When all was over and word went round, “The Deemster is gone,” what would happen to Kate? She would still be at his house in Athol Street. That would be the beginning of evil! She would wait for him, and when hope of his return was lost, she would weep for him. That would be the key of discovery! The truth would become known. Though he might be at the bottom of the sea, yet the cloud that hung over his life would break. It was inevitable. And she would be there to bear the storm alone — alone with the island which had been deceived, alone with Pete, who had been lied to and betrayed. Was that just? Was that brave?
And then — what then? What would become of her? Openly shamed, charged, as she must be, with the whole weight of the crime from whose burden he had fled, accused of his downfall, a Delilah, a Jezebel, what fate should befall her? Where would she go? Down to what depths? He saw her sinking lower than ever man sinks; he heard her appeals, her supplications.
“Oh, what have I done,” he cried, “that I can neither live nor die?”
Then in that delirium of anguish in which the order of nature is reversed, and external objects no longer produce sensation, but sensation produces, as it were, external objects, he thought he saw something at the bottom of the boat where the broken rose had been. It was the figure of a man, stretched out, still and lifeless. His eyes went up to the face. The face was his own. It was ashy grey, and it stared up at the grey sky. The brain image was himself, and he was dead. He watched it, and it faded away. There was nothing left but the scattered rose-leaves and the torn flower on the broken stem.
The terrible shadow was gone; he felt that it was gone for ever. It was dead, and it would haunt him no longer. It had lived on an empire of evil-doing, and his evil-doing was at an end. He would “see his soul” no more. The tears gushed to his eyes and blinded him. They were the first he could remember since he was a boy. Alone between the two mirrors of sea and sky, the chain that he had dragged so long fell: away from him. He was a free man again.
“Go back! your place is by her side. Don’t sneak out of life, and leave another to pay. Suffering is a grand thing. It is the struggle of the soul to cast off its sin. Accept it, go through with it, come out of it purged. Go back to the island. Your life is not ended yet.”
XXIV.
“We were just going sending a lil yawl after you, Dempster, when we were seeing you a bit overside the head yonder coming back. ‘He’s drifting home on the flowing tide,’ says I, and so you were. Must have been a middling stiff pull for all. We were thinking you were lost one while there.”
“I was almost lost, but I’m here again, thank God,” said Philip.
He spoke cheerily, and went away with a light step. It was now full night; the town was lit up, and the musicians of the pavement were twanging their banjos and harps. Philip felt a sort of physical regeneration, a renewal of youth, a new birth of heart and hope. He was like a man coming out of some hideous Gehenna of delirious illness; he though he had never been so light, so buoyant, so happy in his life before. The future was vague. He did not yet know what he would do. It would be something radical, something that would go down to the heart of his condition. Oh, he would be strong, he would be resolute, he would pay the uttermost farthing, he would not wait to count the cost. And she — she would be with him. He could do nothing without her. The partner of his fault would share his redemption also. God bless her!
He let himself into the house and shut the door firmly behind him. The lights were still burning in the hall, so it was not very late. He mounted the stairs with a loud step and swung into his room. The lamp was on the table, and within the circle cast by its blue shade a letter was lying. He took it up with dismay. It was in Kate’s handwriting: —
“Forgive me! I am going away. It is all my fault. I have broken the heart of one man, and I am destroying the soul of another. If I stay here any longer you will be ruined and lost. I am only a millstone about your neck. I see it, I feel it. And yet I have loved you so, and wished to be so proud of you. Your heart is brave enough, though I have sunk it down so low. You will live to be strong and good and true, though that can never be while I am with you. I have been far below you from the first. All along I have only been thinking how much I loved you, but you have had so many other things to consider. My life seems to have been one long battle for love. I think it has been a cruel battle too. Anyway, I am beaten, and oh! so tired.
“Do not follow me. I pray of you do not try to find me. It is my last request. Think of me as on a long journey. I may be — the Great God of heaven knows.
“I am taking the little cracked medallion from the bottom of the oak box. It is the only picture I can find, and it will remind me of some one else as well — my little Katherine, my motherless baby.
“I have nothing to leave with you but this (it was a lock of her hair). At first I thought of the wedding-ring that you gave me when I came here, but it would not come off, and besides, I could not part with it.
“Good-bye! I ought to have done this long ago. But you will not hate me now? We could never be happy together again. Good-bye!”
PART VI. MAN AND GOD.
I.
The summer had gone, the gorse had dried up, the herring-fishing had ended, and Pete had become poor. His Nickey had done nothing, his last hundred pounds had been spent, and his creditors in scores, quiet as mice until then, were baying about him like bloodhounds. He sold his boat and satisfied everybody, but fell, nevertheless, to the position of a person of no credit and little consequence. On the lips of the people he descended from “Capt’n Pete” to Peter Bridget. When he saluted the rich with “How do!” they replied with a stare, a lift of the chin, and “You’ve the odds of me, my good man.” To this he replied, with a roll of the head and a peal of laughter, “Have I now? But you’ll die for all.”
Ballajora Chapel had been three months rehearsing a children’s cantata entitled “Under the Palms,” and building an arbour of palm branches on a platform for Pete’s rugged form to figure in; but Cæsar sat there instead.
Still, Pete had his six thousand pounds in mortgage on Ballawhaine. Only three other persons knew anything of that — Cæsar, who had his own reasons for saying nothing; Peter Christian himself, who was hardly likely to tell; and the High Bailiff, who was a bachelor and a miser, and kept all business revelations as sacred as are the secrets of another kind of confessional. When Pete’s evil day came and the world showed no pity, Cæsar became afraid.
“I wouldn’t sell out, sir,” said he. “Hould on till Martinmas, anyway. The first half year’s interest is due then. There’s no knowing what’ll happen before that. What’s it saying, ‘He shall give His angels charge concerning thee.’ The ould man has had a polatic stroke, they’re telling me. Aw, the Lord’s mercy endureth for ever.”
Pete began to sell his furniture. He cleared out the parlour as bare as a vault. “Time for it, too,” he said. “I’ve been wanting the room for a workshop.”
Martinmas came, and Cæsar returned in high feather. “No interest,” he said. “Give him the month’s grace, and hould hard till it’s over. The Lord will provide. Isn’t it written, ‘In the world ye shall have tribulation’? Things are doing wonderful, though. Last night going home from Ballajora, I saw the corpse-lights coming from the big house to Kirk Christ’s Churchyard, with the parson psalming in front of them. The ould man’s dying — I’ve seen his soul. To thy name, O Lord, be all the glory.”
Pete sold out a second room, and turned the key on it. “Mortal cosy and small this big, ugly mansion is getting, Nancy,” he said.
The month’s grace allowed by the deed of mortgage expired, and Cæsar came to Elm Cottage rubbing both hands. “Turn him out, neck and crop, sir. Not a penny left to the man, and six thousand goolden pounds paid into his hands seven months ago. But who’s wondering at that? There’s Ross back again, carrying half a ton of his friends over the island, and lashing out the silver like dust. Your silver, sir, yours. And here’s yourself, with the world darkening round you terrible. But no fear of you now. The meek shall inherit the earth. Aw, God is opening His word more and more, sir, more and more. There’s that Black Tom too. He was talking big a piece back, but this morning he was up before the High Bailiff for charming and cheating, and was put away for the Dempster. Lord keep him from the gallows and hell-fire! Oh, it’s a refreshing saison. It was God spaking to me by Providence when I tould you to put money on that mortgage. What’s the Scripture saying, ‘For brass I bring thee goold’? Turn him out, sir, turn him out.”
“Didn’t you tell me that ould Ballawhaine had a polatic stroke?” said Pete.
“I did; but he’s a big man; let him pay his way,” said Cæsar.
“Samson was a strong man, and Solomon was a wise one, but they couldn’t pay money when they hadn’t got it,” said Pete.
“Let him look to his son then,” said Cæsar”.
“That’s just what he’s going to do,” said Pete. “I’ll let him die in his bed, God forgive him.”
The winter came, and Pete began to think of buying a Dandie, which being smaller than a Nickey, and of yawl rig, he could sail of himself, and so earn a living by fishing the cod. To do this he had a further clearing of furniture, thereby reducing the size of the house to three rooms. The featherbed left his own bedstead, the watch came out of his pocket, and the walls of the hall-kitchen gaped and yawned in the places where the pictures had been.
“The bog-bane to the rushy curragh, say I, Nancy,” said Pete. “Not being used of such grandeur, I was taking it hard. Never could remember to wind that watch. And feathers, bless you! Don’t I remember the lil mother, with a sickle and a bag, going cutting the long grass on the steep brews for the cow, and drying a handful for myself for a bed. Sleeping on it? Never slept the like since at all.”
The result of Pete’s first week’s fishing was twenty cod and a gigantic ling. He packed the cod in boxes and sent them by Crow and the steam-packet to the market in Liverpool. The ling he swung on his back over his oilskin jacket and carried it home, the head at his shoulder and the tail dangling at his legs.
“There!” he cried, dropping it on the floor, “split it and salt it, and you’ve breakfas’es for a month.”
When the remittance came from Liverpool it was a postal order for seven-and-sixpence.
“Never mind,” said Pete; “we’re bating Dan Hommy anyway — the ould muff has only made seven-and-a-penny.”
The weather was rough, the fishing was bad, the tackle got broken, and Pete began to extol plain living.
“Gough bless me,” he said, “I don’t know in the world what’s coming to the ould island at all. When I was for a man-servant with Cæsar the farming boys were ateing potatoes and herrings three times a day. But now! butcher’s mate every dinner-time, if you plaze. And tay! the girls must be having it reg’lar — and taking no shame with them neither. My sake, I remember when the mother would be whispering, ‘Keep an eye on the road, boy, while I’m brewing myself a cup of tay.’ Truth enough, Nancy. An ounce a week and a pound of sugar, and people wondering at the woman for that.”
The mountains were taken from the people, and they were no longer allowed “to cut turf for fuel; coals were dear, the winter was cold, and Pete began to complain of a loss of appetite.
“My teeth must be getting bad, Nancy,” he whined. They were white as milk and faultless as a negro’s. “Don’t domesticate my food somehow. What’s the odds, though I Can’t ate suppers at all, and that’s some constilation. Nothing like going to bed hungry, Nancy, if you’re wanting to get up with an appetite for breakfast. Then the beautiful drames, woman! Gough bless me, the dinners and the feasts and the bankets you’re ateing in your sleep! Now, if you filled your skin like a High Bailiff afore going to bed, ten to one you’d have a buggane riding on your breast the night through and drame of dying for a drink of water. Aw, sleep’s a reg’lar Radical Good for levelling up, anyway.”
Christmas approached, servants boasted of the Christmas boxes they got from their masters, and Pete remembered Nancy.
“Nancy,” said he, “they’re telling me Liza Billy-ny-Clae is getting twenty pound per year per annum at her new situation in Douglas. She isn’t nothing to yourself at cooking. Mustn’t let the lil one stand in your way, woman. She’s getting a big girl now, and I’ll be taking her out in the Dandie with me and tying her down on the low deck there and giving her a pig’s bladder, and she’ll be playing away as nice as nice. See?”
Nancy looked at him, and he dropped his eyes before her.
“Is it wanting to get done with me, you are, Pete?” she said in a quavering voice. “There’s my black — I can sell it for something — it’s never been wore at me since I sat through the sarvice with Grannie the Sunday after we got news of Kirry. And I’m not a big eater, Pete — never was — you can clear me of that anyway. A bit of bread and cheese for my dinner when you are out at the fishing, and I’m asking no better — —”
“Hould your tongue, woman,” cried Pete. “Hould your tongue afore you break my heart I’ve seen my rich days and I’ve seen my poor days. I’ve tried both, and I’m content.”
II.
Meantime, Philip in Douglas was going from success to success, from rank to rank, from fame to fame. Everything he put his hand to counted to him for righteousness. When he came to himself after the disappearance of Kate, his heart was a wasted field of volcanic action, with ashes and scoriae of infernal blackness on the surface, but the wholesome soil beneath. In spite of her injunction, he set himself to look for her. More than love, more than pity, more than remorse prompted and supported him. She was necessary to his resurrection, to his new birth. So he scoured every poor quarter of the town, every rookery of old Douglas, and this was set down to an interest in the poor.
An epidemic broke out on the island, and during the scare that followed, wherein some of the wealthy left their homes for England, and many of the poor betook themselves to the mountains, and even certain of the doctors found refuge in flight, Philip won golden opinions for presence of mind and personal courage. He organised a system of registration, regulated quarantine, and caused the examination of everybody coming to the island or leaving it. From day to day he went from house to house, from hospital to hospital, from ward to ward. No dangers terrified him; he seemed to keep his eye on each case. He was only looking for Kate, only assuring himself that she had not fallen victim to the pest, only making certain that she had not come or gone. But the divine madness which seizes upon a crowd when its heart is touched laid hold of the island at the sight of Philip’s activities. He was worshipped, he was beloved, he was the idol of the poor, almost everybody else was forgotten in the splendour of his fame; no committee could proceed without him; no list was complete until it included his name.
Philip was ashamed of his glories, but he had no heart to repudiate them. When the epidemic subsided, he had convinced himself that Kate must be gone, that she must be dead. Gone, therefore, was his only hold on life, and dead was his hope of a moral resurrection. He could do nothing without her but go on as he was going. To pretend to a new birth now would be like a death-bed conversion; it would be like renouncing the joys of life after they have renounced the renouncer.
His colleague, the old Deemster, was stricken down by paralysis, and he was required to attend to both their duties. This made it necessary at first that all Deemster’s Courts should be held in Castletown, and hence Ramsey saw him rarely. He spent his days in the Court-house of the Castle and his nights at home. His fair hair became prematurely white, and his face grew more than ever like that of a man newly risen from a fever.
“Study,” said the world, and it bowed its head the lower.
Yet he was seen to be not only a studious man, but a melancholy one. To defeat curiosity, he began to enter a little into the life of the island, and, as time went on, to engage in some of the social duties of his official position. On Christmas Eve he gave a reception at his house in Athol Street. He had hardly realised how it would tear at the tenderest fibres of memory. The very rooms that had been Kate’s were given over to the ladies who were his guests. All afternoon the crush was great, and the host was the attraction. He was a fascinating figure — so young, yet already so high; so silent, yet able to speak so splendidly; and then so handsome with that whitening head, and that smile like vanishing sunshine.
