Complete works of hall c.., p.266
Complete Works of Hall Caine, page 266
She gasped audibly, but did not answer, and he tried a second time.
“Does she belong to me, Kate?”
Her confusion increased. He tried a third time, speaking more gently than before.
“If I should lave the island, Kate, could I — must I — may I take the child along with me?”
At that her fear got the better of her shame, and she cried, “Don’t take her away. Oh, don’t, don’t!”
“Ah!”
He pressed his hand hard at his side again.
“But maybe that’s only mother’s love, and what mother — —”
He broke off and then began once more, in a voice so low that it was scarcely to be heard. “Tell me, when the time comes — and it will come, Kate, have no fear about that — —”
He was breaking down, he was struggling hard. “When the time comes for himself and you to be together, will you be afraid to have the little one with you — will it seem wrong, Kate — you two and little Katherine — one household — one family — no? — n — o?”
“No.”
“That’s enough.”
The words seemed to come out of the depths of his throat. “I’ve nothing more to think about. He must think of all the rest.”
“And you, Pete?”
“What matter about me? D’ye think there’s anything worse coming? D’ye think I’m caring what I ate, and what I drink, and what becomes of me?”
He was laughing again, and her sobs broke out afresh.
“God is good,” he said more quietly. “He’ll take care of the likes of me.”
His motionless eyes were on the crackling fire, and he stood in the light that flashed from it with a face like stone. “I’ve no child now,” he muttered, as though speaking to himself.
She slid to her knees at his feet, took the hand that hung by his side and began to cover it with kisses. “Forgive me,” she said; “I have been very weak and very guilty.”
“What’s the use of talking like that?” he answered. “What’s past is past,” and he drew his hand away. “No child now, no child now,” he muttered again, as though his dispair cried out to God.
He was feeling like a man wrecked in mid-ocean. A spar came floating towards him. It was all he could lay hold of from the foundering ship, in which he had sailed, and sung, and laughed, and slept. He had thought to save his life by it, but another man was clinging to it, and he had to drop it and go down.
She could not look into his face again; she could not touch his hand; she could not ask for his forgiveness. He stood over her for a moment without speaking, and then, with his hollow cheeks, and deep eyes, and ragged heard, he went away in the morning sunlight.
XII.
Phillip fell into a deep sleep. When he awoke, he saw, as in a mirror, a solution to the tumultuous drama of his life. It was a glorious solution, a liberating and redeeming end, an end bringing freedom from the bonds which had beset him. What matter if it was hard; if it was difficult; if it was bitter as Marah and steep as Calvary? He was ready, he was eager. Oh, blessed sleep! Oh, wise and soothing sleep I It had rent the dark cloud of his past and given the flash of light that illumined the path before him.
He opened his eyes and saw Auntie Nan seated by his side, reading a volume of sermons. At the change in his breathing the old dove looked round, dropped the book, and began to flutter about. “Hush, dearest, hush!” she whispered.
There was a heavy, monotonous sound, like the beating of a distant drum or the throb of an engine under the earth.
“Auntie!”— “Yes, dearest.”
“What day is it?”
“Sunday. Oh, you’ve had a long, long sleep, Philip. You slept all day yesterday.”
“Is that the church-bell ringing?”
“Yes, dear, and a fine morning, too — so soft and springlike. I’ll open the window.”
“Then my hearing must be injured.”
“Ah! they muffled the bell — that’s it. ‘The church is so near,’ they said, ‘it might trouble him.’”
A carriage was coming down the road. It rattled on the paved way; then the rattling ceased, and there was a dull rumble as of a cart sliding on to a wooden bridge. “That horse has fallen,” said Philip, trying to rise.
“It’s only the straw on the street,” said Auntie Nan. “The people brought it from all parts. ‘We must deaden the traffic by the house,’ they said. Oh, you couldn’t think how good they’ve been. Yesterday was market-day, but there was no business done. Couldn’t have been; they were coming and going the whole day long. ‘And how’s the Deemster now?’ ‘And how’s he now?’ It was fit to make you cry. I believe in my heart, Philip, nobody in Ramsey went to bed the first night at all. Everybody waiting and waiting to see if there wasn’t something to fetch, and the kettle kept boiling in every kitchen round about. But hush, dearest, hush! Not so much talking all at once. Hush, now!”
“Where is Pete?” asked Philip, his face to the wall.
“Oiling the hinges of the door, dearest. He was laying carpets on the stairs all day yesterday. But never the sound of a hammer. The man’s wonderful. He must have hands like iron. His heart’s soft enough, though. But then everybody is so kind — everybody, everybody! The doctor, and the vicar, and the newspapers — oh, it’s beautiful! It’s just as Pete was saying.”
“What was Pete saying, Auntie?”
“He was saying the angels must think there’s somebody sick in every house in the island.”
A sound of singing came through the open window, above the whisper of young leaves and the twitter of birds. It was the psalm that was being sung in church —
“Blessed is the man that considereth the poor and needy;
The Lord shall deliver him in time of trouble.”
“Listen, Philip. That must be a special psalm. I’m sure they’re singing it for you. How sweet of them! But we are talking too much, dear. The doctor will scold. I must leave you now, Philip. Only for a little, though, while I go back to Bal lure, and I’ll send up Cottier.”
“Yes, send up Cottier,” said Philip.
“My darling,” said the old soul, looking down as she tied her bonnet strings. “You’ll lie quiet now? You’re sure you’ll lie quiet? Well, good bye! good-bye!”
As Philip lay alone the soar and swell of the psalm filled the room. Oh, the irony of it all! The frantic, hideous, awful irony! He was lying there, he, the guilty one, with the whole island watching at his bedside, pitying him, sorrowing for him, holding its breath until he should breathe, and she, his partner, his victim, his innocent victim, was in jail, in disgrace, in a degradation more deep than death. Still the psalm soared and swelled. He tried to bury his head in the pillows that he might not hear.
Jem-y-Lord came in hurriedly and Philip beckoned him close. “Where is she?” he whispered.
“They removed her to Castle Rushen late last night, your Honour,” said Jemmy softly.
“Write immediately to the Clerk of the Bolls,” said Philip. “Say she must be lodged on the debtors’ side and have patients’ diet and every comfort. My Kate! my Kate!” he kept saying, “it shall not be for long, not for long, my love, not for long!”
The convalescence was slow and Philip was impatient. “I feel better to-day, doctor,” he would say, “don’t you think I may get out of bed?”
“Traa dy liooar (time enough), Deemster,” the doctor would answer. “Let us see what a few more days will do.”
“I have a great task before me, doctor,” he would say again. “I must begin immediately.”
“You have a life’s work before you, Deemster, and you must begin soon, but not just yet.”
“I have something particular to do, doctor,” he said at last. “I must lose no time.”
“You must lose no time indeed, that’s why you must stay where you are a little longer.”
One morning his impatience overcame him, and he got out of bed. But, being on his feet, his head reeled, his limbs trembled, he clutched at the bed-post, and had to clamber back. “Oh God, bear me witness, this delay is not my fault,” he murmured.
Throughout the day he longed for the night, that he might close his eyes in the darkness and think of Kate. He tried to think of her as she used to be — bright, happy, winsome, full of joy, of love, of passion, dangling her feet from the apple-tree, or tripping along the tree-trunk in the glen, teasing him? tempting him. It was impossible. He could only think of her in, the gloom of the prison. That filled his mind with terrors. Sometimes in the dark hours his enfeebled body beset his brain with fantastic hallucinations. Calling for paper and pens, he would make show of writing a letter, producing no words or intelligible signs, but only a mass of scrawls and blotches. This he would fold and refold with great elaboration, and give to Jem y-Lord with an air of gravity and mystery, saying in a whisper, “For her!” Thus night brought no solace, and the dawn found him waiting for the day, that he might open his eyes in the sunlight and think, “She is better where she is; God will comfort her.”
A fortnight went by and he saw nothing of Pete. At length he made a call on his courage and said, “Auntie, why does Pete never come?”
“He does, dearest. Only when you’re asleep, though. He stands there in the doorway in his stockings. I nod to him and he comes in and looks down at you. Then he goes away without a word.”
“What is he doing now?”
“Going to Douglas a good deal seemingly. Indeed, they’re saying — but then people are so fond of talking.”
“What are people saying, Auntie?”
“It’s about a divorce, dearest!”
Philip groaned and turned away his face.
He opened his eyes one day from a doze, and saw the plain face of Nancy Joe, framed in a red print handkerchief. The simple creature was talking with Auntie Nan, holding council, and making common cause with the dainty old lady as unmarried women and old maids both of them.
“‘Why don’t you keep your word true?’ says I. ‘Wasn’t you saying you’d take her back,’ says I, ‘whatever she’d done and whatever she was, so help you God?’ says I. ‘Isn’t she shamed enough already, poor thing, without you going shaming her more? Have you no bowels at all? Are you only another of the gutted herrings on a stick?’ says I. ‘Why don’t you keep your word true?’ ‘Because,’ says he, ‘I want to be even with the other one,’ says he, and then away he went wandering down by the tide.”
“It’s unchristian, Nancy,” said Auntie Nan, “but it’s human; for although he forgives the woman, he can hardly be expected to forgive the man, and he can’t punish one without punishing both.”
“Much good it’ll do to punish either, say I. What for should he put up his fins now the hook’s in his gizzard? But that’s the way with the men still. Talking and talking of love and love; but when trouble is coming, no better than a churn of sour cream on a thundery day. We’re best off that never had no truck with them — I don’t know what you think, Miss Christian, ma’am. They may talk about having no chances — I don’t mind if they do — do you? I had chance enough once, though — I don’t know what you’ve had, ma’am. I had one sweetheart, anyway — a sort of a sweetheart, as you might say; but he was sweeter on the money than on me. Always asking how much I had got saved in the stocking. And when he heard I had three new dresses done, ‘Nancy,’ says he, ‘we had better be putting a sight up on the parzon now, before they’re all wore out at you.’”
The Governor, who was still in London, wrote a letter full of tender solicitude and graceful compliment. The Clerk of the Rolls had arranged from the first that two telegrams should be sent to him daily, giving accounts of Philip’s condition. At last the Clerk came in person, and threw Auntie Nan into tremors of nervousness by his noise and robustious-ness. He roared as he came along the path, roared himself through the hall, up the stairs, and into the bedroom, roared again as he set eyes on Philip, protesting that the sick man was worth five hundred dead men yet, and vowing with an oath (and a tear trickling down his nose) that he would like to give “time” to the fools who frightened good people with bad reports. Then he cleared the room for a private consultation. “Out you go, Cottier. Look slippy, man!”
Auntie Nan fled in terror. When she had summoned resolution to invade afresh the place of the bear that had possession of her lamb, the Clerk of the Rolls was rising from the foot of the bed and saying —
“We’ll leave it at that then, Christian. These d —— — things will happen; but don’t you bother your head about it. I’ll make it all serene. Besides, it’s nothing — nothing in a lifetime. I’ll have to send you the summons, though. You needn’t trouble about that; just toss it into the fire.”
Philip’s head was down, his eyes were on the counterpane, and a faint tinge of colour overspread his wasted face.
“Ah! you’re back, Miss Christian? I must be going, though. Good-bye, old fellow! Take care of yourself — good men are scarce. Good-bye, Miss Christian! Good-bye, all! Good-bye, Phil! God bless you!”
With that he went roaring down the stairs, but came thunging up again in a moment, put his head round the doorpost, and said —
“Lord bless my soul, if I wasn’t forgetting an important bit of news — very important news, too! It hasn’t got into the papers yet, but I’ve had the official wrinkle. What d’ye think? — the Governor has resigned! True as gospel. Sent in his resignation to the Home Office the night before last. I saw it coming. He hasn’t been at home since Tynwald. Look sharp and get better now. Good-bye!”
Philip got up for the first time the day following. The weather was soft and full of whispers of spring; the window was open and Philip sat with his face in the direction of the sea. Auntie Nan was knitting by his side and running on with homely gossip. The familiar and genial talk was floating over the surface of his mind as a sea-bird floats over the surface of the sea, sometimes reflected in it, sometimes skimming it, sometimes dipping into it and being lost.
“Poor Pete! The good woman here thinks he’s hard. Perhaps he is; but I’m sure he is much to be pitied. Ross has behaved badly and deserves all that can come to him. ‘He’s the same to me as you are, dear — in blood, I mean — but somehow I can’t be sorry.... Ah! you’re too tender-hearted, Philip, indeed you are. You’d find excuses for anybody. The doctor says overwork, dearest; but I say the shock of seeing that poor creature in that awful position. And what a shock you gave me, too! To tell you the truth, Philip, I thought it was a fate. Never heard of it? No? Never heard that grandfather fainted on the bench? He did, though, and he didn’t recover either. How well I remember it! Word broke over the town like a clap of thunder, ‘The Deemster has fallen in the Court-house.’ Father heard it up at Ballure and ran down bareheaded. Grandfather’s carriage was at the Courthouse door, and they brought him up to Ballawhaine. I remember I was coming downstairs when I saw the carriage draw up at the gate. The next minute your father, with his wild eyes and his bare head, was lifting something out of the inside. Poor Tom! He had never set foot in the house since grandfather had driven him out of it. And little did grandfather think in whose arms he was to travel the last stage of his life’s journey.”
Philip had fallen asleep. Jem-y-Lord entered with a letter. It was in a large envelope and had come by the insular post.
“Shall I open it?” thought Auntie Nan. She had been opening and replying to Philip’s letters during the time of his illness, but this one bore an official seal, and so she hesitated. “Shall I?” she thought, with the knitting needle to her lip. “I will. I may save him some worry.”
She fixed her glasses and drew out the letter. It was a summons from the Chancery Division of the High Court of Justice — a petition for divorce. The petitioner’s name was Peter Quilliam; the respondent —— , the co respondent —— .
As Philip awoke from his doze, with the salt breath of the sea in his nostrils and the songs of spring in his ears, Auntie Nan was fumbling with the paper to get it back into the envelope. Her hands trembled, and when she spoke her voice quivered. Philip saw in a moment what had happened. She had stumbled into the pit where the secret of his life lay buried.
The doctor came in at that instant. He looked attentively at Auntie Nan, and said significantly, “You have been nursing too long, Miss Christian, you must go home for a while.”
“I will go home at once,” she faltered, in a feeble inward voice.
Philip’s head was on his breast. Such was the first step on the Calvary he intended to ascend. O God, help him! God support him! God bear up his sinking feet that he might not fall from weakness, or fear, or shame.
XIII.
Cæsar visited Kate at Castle Rushen. He found her lodged in a large and light apartment (once the dining-room of the Lords of Man), indulged with every comfort, and short of nothing but her liberty. As the turnkey pulled the door behind him, Cæsar lifted both hands and cried, “The Lord is my refuge and my strength; a very present help in trouble.” Then he inquired if Pete had been there before him, and being answered “No,” he said, “The children of this world are wiser in their generation than the children of light.” After that he fell to the praise of the Deemster, who had not only given Kate these mercies, comfortable to her carnal body, if dangerous to her soul, but had striven to lighten the burden of her people at the time when he had circulated the report of her death, knowing she was dead indeed, dead in trespasses and sins, and choosing rather that they should mourn her as one who was already dead in fact, than feel shame for her as one that was yet alive in iniquity.
Finally, he dropped his handkerchief on to the slate floor,-went down on one knee by the side of his tall hat, and called on her in prayer to cast in her lot afresh with the people of God. “May her lightness be rebuked, O Lord!” he cried. “Give her to know that until she repents she hath no place among Thy children. And, Lord, succour Thy servant in his hour of tribulation. Let him be well girt up with Christian armour. Help him to cry aloud, amid his tears and his lamentations, ‘Though my heart and hers should break, Thy name shall not be dishonoured, my Lord and my God!’”
