Complete works of hall c.., p.624
Complete Works of Hall Caine, page 624
“When they look for me in the morning I shall be gone.... Don’t you understand me now? — gone! So I’ve come to-night to say farewell. We are meeting for the last time, Mona.”
He looks at her, thinking she will cry out, perhaps scream, but her eyes are shining. All the pain in the thought of their parting has passed away with a mighty rushing.
“Oskar,” she says, “don’t you think it would be just as hard for me... to stay here after you were... gone?”
The tears are in Oskar’s eyes now, for flesh is weak and his wild heart is softening.
“What would become of me without you, Oskar?”
“Don’t say that, Mona.”
“But if... if it’s inevitable that you should go, if there is nothing else for it, can’t we... can’t we go together?”
“Together?” He is looking searchingly into her shining face. “Do you mean...?” She takes his hand. It is trembling. Her own is trembling also.
“Oskar, do you remember the fight of the bulls on the cliff-head?”
“When the old ones wouldn’t let the young one live, and he had to...”
She bows her head. He is breathing rapidly. She lifts her eyes and looks at him. They are silent for a moment, then he says:
“My God, Mona! Do you mean that?... Really mean it?”
“Yes.”
And then she tells him everything — all her great, divine, delirious project.
He gasps, and then his face also shines, as little by little her dream rises before them.
“Do you think that vain and foolish, Oskar... that we should do as He did, of our own free will, to save the world from all this hatred and bitterness?”
Oskar throws up his head; his eyes are streaming.
“No! No! For God’s in His heaven, Mona.”
And then, these two poor creatures whom the world has cast out, clasped hand in hand, and seeing no difference in the wild confusion and delirium of their whirling thoughts, talk together in whispers of how they are going to save the world from war, and the bitter results of war, by doing as He did who was the great Vanquisher of death and Redeemer of the soul from sin — give up their lives in love and sacrifice.
“So even if the churches are all you say, there’s Jesus still....”
“Yes, yes, there’s Jesus still, Mona.”
SIXTEENTH CHAPTER
AT five o’clock next morning a young man and a young woman are climbing the hill that stands between the camp and the sea.
There is only a pale grey light in the sky; the last stars are dying out; the morning is very quiet. Sometimes a cock crows in the closed-up hen houses of the neighbouring farms; sometimes a dog barks through the half-darkness. Save for these there is no sound except that of the soft breeze which passes over the earth before daybreak.
The two walk side by side. They can hardly see each other’s faces, and are holding hands to keep together. Partly because of the darkness and partly for reasons obscure even to themselves, they are walking slowly, and pausing at every few steps to take breath. They are trying to make their journey as long as possible. It is to be their last.
“Forgive me, Oskar,” says Mona.
“There is nothing to forgive, Mona. It had to be.”
“Yes, it had to be. There was no other way, was there?”
“No, there was no other way, Mona.”
What remained of the internment camp had not been stirring when they passed through the lane that led from the farm to the grazing land, but by the time they are half-way up the hill there are sounds from the black ground below them. Looking back, they see groups of vague figures moving about in the Third Compound. A little later they hear the call of a bugle — the last batch of prisoners is being gathered up. Still later, when the light is better, there is the sharp ringing of a bell — the roll has been called and Oskar is missing.
“It’s for me,” he says, and they stop.
By this time they are near to the wall of the little cemetery that surrounds the tower, and to avoid being seen they wait under its dark shelter.
There is a period of suspense in which neither speaks, but after a while they see the black coated prisoners form into file, with their yellow-clothed guard on either side, and march out of their compound.
“They’ve given me up,” says Oskar, and they both breathe freely.
They hear the word of command, deadened by distance. Then they see the procession of men pass down the avenue and through the big outer gates into the high road. At first there is only the dull thud of many feet on the hard ground, but as the guards close the gates behind them, and the sharp clang of the iron hasps comes up through the still air, the prisoners break into a cheer.
It is wild, broken, irregular cheering, as of fierce disdain, and it is followed by defiant singing —
“Glo-ry to the brave men of old, Their sons will copy their virtues bold, Courage in heart and a sword in hand...”
A few minutes later the dark figures are hidden by trees, and as they turn the corner of the road by Kirk Patrick their voices die away.
They are gone — back to their own country, which wants them not. The camp that has been their prison for four years is empty. It lies, in the quickening daylight, like a vast black scar on the green face of the mountain.
Suddenly a new thought comes to Mona. They may still avoid death. Life may yet be open to them.
“Oskar,” she says, speaking in a rapid whisper, “now that the officers and the guard have gone, isn’t it possible that we could escape to somewhere... where we should be unknown...”
“Impossible! Quite impossible, Mona.”
“Ah yes, I suppose it is,” she says, and they rise to resume their journey.
But just then, in the first rays of morning, from a cottage that is between them and the sea, she hears the voice of a woman singing. She knows who the woman is — one of her former maids, who has lately been married to a farm labourer. Perhaps her husband has gone to his work in the fields, and she is out in their little garden, gathering up the eggs of the hens that are clucking. How happy she must be!
For a moment Mona’s heart fails her. She forgets the great thoughts of yesterday, and regrets the loss of the simple joys that are reserved for other women.
“It seems a pity, though, doesn’t it?” she says.
“Do you regret it, Mona?” says Oskar, looking round at her. But at the next moment her soul has regained its strength.
“No! Oh, no! It had to be.... And then there is our great hope, our wonderful idea!”
“Yes, our great hope, our wonderful idea.”
They continue their climbing, still holding each other’s hands, but rarely speaking. Sometimes she stumbles, but he holds her up. The larks are singing now, and the young lambs on John Corlett’s farm are bleating. Far down, on the seaward side, sheltering in the arms of its red cliffs, is the little white town of Peel. It is beginning to smoke for breakfast.
“Oskar, do you still think that when all this is over, and the hatred and bitterness have died out of people’s hearts, they will make war on each other no longer?”
“Yes, in the years to come, perhaps — or they must wipe themselves off the earth, Mona.”
“And do you think that God will accept our sacrifice?”
“I’m sure He will — because we shall have died for love and given up all.”
“Yes, we shall have died for love and given up all,” says Mona, and after that she liberates her hand and walks on firmly.
As they approach the crest of the hill the deep murmur of the sea comes over to them, and when they reach the top its salt breath smites their faces. There it lies in a broad half-circle, stretching from east to west, cold and grey and cruel.
Mona trembles, and the revulsion which comes to the strongest souls at the first sight of death seizes her for an instant. In a faltering voice she says:
“It won’t be long, will it, Oskar?”
“No, it won’t be long, Mona.”
“Only a few moments?”
“Yes, only a few moments.”
“And then we shall be together again for ever?”
“For ever.”
“Oh, I shan’t care if at the cost of a few moments of suffering I can be happy with you for ever.”
She is not afraid now. In front of them are the heather-clad slopes that go down to the precipitous cliffs. They clasp hands again and walk forward. Tears are in their eyes, but the light of heaven is there also.
In a few minutes more they are on the cliff head. It overhangs the sea, which is heaving and singing in its many voices, seventy feet below. The sun is rising, and the sky to the east is flecked with crimson. There is nothing else in sight anywhere, and no other sound except the cry of the sea fowl on the rocks beneath.
“This is the place, isn’t it?”
“This is the place, Mona.”
“Shall we do as we intended?”
“Yes, let us do as we intended.”
And then these two children of the universal Father, cast out of the company of men, separated in life and about to be united in death, go through the burial service which they have appointed for themselves.
First, they kneel on the cliff edge, as close as they can get to it, and repeat their prayer:
“Our Father, who art in Heaven...
Geheiligt wird dein name...
Forgive its our trespasses...
As we forgive them that trespass against us..
Then they rise, and, standing hand in hand, with their heads up and their faces to the sea, they sing their hymn:
“Jesu, lover of my soul...
Lass mir an dein brust liegen...”
Then Oskar unfastens his coat, and taking off the long belt he is wearing he straps it about both of them. They are now eye to eye, breast to breast, heart to heart.
“The time has come, hasn’t it, Oskar?”
“Yes, the time has come, Mona.”
“I can kiss you now, can’t I?”
He puts his arms tenderly about her and kisses her on the lips. She kisses him. It is their first kiss and their last.
“God bless you for loving me, Oskar.”
“And God bless you, too, Mona. And now good-bye!”
“No, not good-bye. Only — until then.”
“Until then.”
The sun rises above the horizon in a blaze of glory. The broad sea sings her everlasting song. The cliff head is empty.
After a while, when the sky is blue and the morning sunlight is dancing on the waters, a steamer, decked with flags from stem to stern, comes round the headland on the south. It is crowded with soldiers, who are crushing to starboard to catch their first sight of the town which lies behind the headland to the north.
There is the sharp crack of a rocket from the lifeboat house at Peel, and then a band on the steamer begins to play, and the soldiers to sing in rapturous chorus:
“Keep the home-fires burning...
Till the boys come home...”
A little later the church bells begin to ring. They ring louder and louder and faster and faster every moment, as if pealing their joyous message up to the cloudless sky: “PEACE! PEACE! PEACE!”
CONCLUSION
QUEENSTOWN, April, 1919. — Rather more than a week ago the bodies of a young man and a young woman, tightly strapped together, closely clasped in each other’s arms, and floating out towards the ocean, were picked up by Kinsale fishermen as they were returning to harbour in the early hours of morning. Inquiries into identity appear to show that the young man was a German of good family and superior education, who, until recently, was a prisoner at Knockaloe, the well-known internment camp for alien civilians in the Isle of Man, and that the young woman was a native of the island, a girl of fine character, the owner of a farm which is connected with the camp and called by the same name.
It is known that, in spite of the difference of race and notwithstanding the difficulties of their position, they became strongly attached, and that when, shortly after the Armistice, the order was given that prisoners of war should he returned to the countries of their origin, the young German tried, first, to remain in England with the girl, whom he wished to marry, and afterwards to be allowed to take her back with him to Germany. Failing in both efforts, he fell into a deep melancholy, which seems to have communicated itself to the young woman, and to have resulted in a death-pact.
When the time came for the camp to be closed the young man had disappeared, and later it was discovered that the young woman was also missing. How they escaped is unknown, but it is assumed that they threw themselves into the sea from the cliffs of Contrary, the most westerly headland in Man, and, being caught in the Gulf Stream, which flows close to the island at that point, were carried down to the waters in which they were found.
The mackerel fishers of Kinsale (simple, but imaginative and often religious men, belonging to many nationalities — Irish, Scotch, French, and even German) have been deeply touched by the fate of the young lovers who, finding their love doomed by the hatred between their races, and nothing left to them in life, preferred death to separation. A few days ago they asked permission to bury the bodies, and yesterday they did so, choosing as the place of rest the summit of Cape Clear, which looks out on the Atlantic. To-day they have built over the spot a broad and lofty cairn, which will henceforth be the first thing seen by the passengers on the great liners who are coming in from the New World to the Old, and the last by those who are going out from the Old World to the New. — The Times.
“Love is strong as death; jealousy is cruel as the grave..... Many waters cannot quench love, neither can the floods drown it.”
The Shorter Fiction
Brantwood House, the former home of John Ruskin — in the 1870’s Caine was a frequent visitor to Brantwood and a keen member of his local Ruskin Society.
THE PROPHET
“Lord, they have killed thy prophets, and digged down thine altars; and I am left alone and they seek my life.”
THE work is divided into five books, and is described, not as a romance or novel, but as a parable.
There is a King in England, and he has a childless Queen. The succession is hereditary, and if he dies without issue, the crown goes to a brother whom he hates. He wants to put away his barren wife. She is a pure woman, and he can find no flaw in her, set spies as many as he may. At length he appeals to Parliament. May he not exercise a royal prerogative? Parliament agrees that sentiment is to make way for expedience. If in a year from a given day the Queen gives the nation no heir to the crown, the King is to be free to divorce her. Henceforward follows the pathetic interest of the childless woman, who loves her husband. He loves her too as far as love can exist in such a nature as his. She persuades herself that she is pregnant. He consults doctors, who say she is not. She insists that she is. He laughs, and sends her to his palace in Scotland — a remote part of the Highlands — perhaps Ireland or Wales or the Channel Islands. A small retinue of servants accompanies her. She realizes her great mistake, and, in view of her approaching divorce, falls sick. While she is in bed news go to London that her story has been true, the doctors have been wrong, and she is in labour. Then a servant of the Queen’s household sees her alone. He is her doctor. He tells her that that very night in that house a woman is in labour. Tomorrow morning at latest her child will be born. There are reasons enough why the birth should be kept a secret. The Queen clutches at the temptation. The telegraph flashes the news to London that the doctors of the royal House, the Ministers and others required to be present at a royal birth, should set out immediately. They do set out, but before they reach the palace they are met by messengers coming from it. The child is born; the doctor attests the royal birth. God has heard the cry of Rachel. The nation rejoices, for the sentiment of the people is with the Queen. The husband King rejoices also. All is well. The succession is assured. The child is a boy. It grows and becomes beautiful with the beauty of a girl, and shows extraordinary gifts. He is nursed by a woman of the Queen’s household. This woman is his own mother. She is an Englishwoman. The child’s true father (unknown) is a Jew. He (the child) is being trained as a soldier. As he grows up she shows some discontent with his surroundings. His sympathies are not with the persons of his order. He is a prince, but his heart is with the people. He is against the King in his heart. He is against the spirit of the government over which he is destined to reign. The age is one of unbelief and “materialism.” The Christian faith has been for years going back and back, not only in England, but over the whole of the Western world. Christianity is being laughed at as the last of the superstitions. The Church is disestablished. The distinctions of Church and Dissent do not exist, or are no longer observed. On the one side is an overwhelming and governing public in whom reason dominates emotion, and on the other a small and suffering public who still hold to the faith of spiritual things.
The King, his Court, his Parliament, and a vast body of mixed subjects, half German, French, Russian, &c., and one half English, are on the side of unbelief. On the other side are the whole Jewish people (who, as a body, have never wavered from the faith in an unseen God) and the remnant of Christendom. These two — the Hebrew and Christian peoples — are now one by virtue of their oppression and the common enemy without.
A crisis comes. Christendom is adjudged a disgrace to modern civilization — the progress of man. It is standing in the way. It must be swept down. A bitter crusade against it is set afoot. The populace loses its head and takes the law in its own hands; sacks the churches, despoils the homes of the richer Christians, and reduces them to the condition of paupers, if not of slaves.
Through all this the young Prince is against the governing powers, but can do nothing. If there is one man more active against the believers than all others, it is the Czar of Russia, and the Prince is in love with the Czars daughter. What can he do?
