Complete works of hall c.., p.642
Complete Works of Hall Caine, page 642
The letters, like those that came to Fez, were one from my wife and one from Wenman. I could not wait till I was alone, but broke open the envelopes and read my letters where I stood. A little crowd of Moors had gathered about me — men, youths, boys, and children — the ragged inhabitants of the streets of the holy city. They seemed to be chaffing and laughing at my expense, but I paid no heed to them.
Just as before, so now, and for the same reason I read Wenman’s letter first. I remember every word of it, for every word seemed to burn into my brain like flame.
“My dear fellow,” wrote Wenman, “I think it my duty to tell you that your little son is seriously ill.”
I knew it — I knew it; who knew it so well as I, though I was more than a thousand miles away?
“It is a strange fact that he is down with the very disease of the throat which you have for so long a time made your especial study. Such, at least, is our diagnosis, assisted by your own discoveries. The case has now reached that stage where we must contemplate the possibility of the operation which you have performed with such amazing results. Our only uneasiness arises from the circumstance that this operation has hitherto been done by no one except yourself. We have, however, your explanations and your diagrams, and on these we must rely. And, even if you were here, his is not a case in which your own hand should be engaged. Therefore, rest assured, my dear fellow,” etc., etc.
Blockheads! If they had not done it already they must not do it at all. I would telegraph from Tangier that I was coming. Not a case for my hand! Fools, fools! It was a case for my hand only.
I did not stop to read the friendly part of Wenman’s letter, the good soul’s expression of sympathy and solicitude, but in the fever of my impatience, sweating at every pore and breaking into loud exclamations, I tore open the letter from my wife. My eyes swam over the sheet, and I missed much at that first reading, but the essential part of the message stood out before me as if written in red:
“We ... so delighted ... your letters.... Glad you are having warm, beautiful weather.... Trust ... make you strong and well.... We are having blizzards here ... snowing to-day.... I am sorry to tell you, dearest, that our darling is very ill. It is his throat again. This is Friday, and he has grown worse every day since I wrote on Monday. When he can speak he is always calling for you. He thinks if you were here he would soon be well. He is very weak, for he can take no nourishment, and he has grown so thin, poor little fellow. But he looks very lovely, and every night he says in his prayers, ‘God bless papa, and bring him safely home’....”
I could bear no more, the page in my hands was blotted out, and for the first time since I became a man I broke into a flood of tears.
O Omnipotent Lord of Heaven and earth, to think that this child is as life of my life and soul of my soul, that he is dying, that I alone of all men living can save him, and that we are twelve hundred miles apart! Wipe them out, O Lord — wipe out this accursed space dividing us; annihilate it. Thou canst do all, thou canst remove mountains, and this is but a little thing to Thee. Give me my darling under my hands, and I will snatch him out of the arms of death itself.
Did I utter such words aloud out of the great tempest of my trouble? I can not say; I do not know. Only when I had lifted my eyes from my wife’s letter did I become conscious of where I was and what was going on around me. I was still in the midst of the crowd of idlers, and they were grinning, and laughing, and jeering, and mocking at the sight of tears — weak, womanish, stupid tears — on the face of a strong man.
I was ashamed, but I was yet more angry, and to escape from the danger of an outbreak of my wrath I turned quickly aside, and walked rapidly down a narrow alley.
As I did so a second paper dropped to the ground from the sheet of my wife’s letter. Before I had picked it up I saw what it was. It was a message from my boy himself, in the handwriting of his nurse.
“He is brighter to-night,” the good creature herself wrote at the top of the page, “and he would insist on dictating this letter.”
“My dear, dear papa—”
When I had read thus far I was conscious again that the yelling, barking, bleating mob behind were looking after me. To avoid the torment of their gaze I hurried on, passed down a second alley, and then turned into a narrow opening which seemed to be the mouth of a third. But I paid small heed to my footsteps, for all my mind was with the paper which I wished to read.
Finding myself in a quiet place at length, I read it. The words were my little darling’s own, and I could hear his voice as if he were speaking them:
* * * * *
“My dear, dear papa, I am ill with my throat, and sometimes I can’t speak. Last night the ceiling was falling down on me, and the fire was coming up to the bed. But I’m werry nearly all right now. We are going to have a Thanksgiving party soon — me, and Jumbo, and Scotty, the puppy. When are you coming home? Do you live in a tent in Morocco? I have a fire in my bedroom: do you? Write and send me some foreign stamps from Tangier. Are the little boys black in Morocco? Nurse showed me a picture of a lady who lives there, and she’s all black except her lips, and her mouth stands out. Have you got a black servant? Have you got a horse to ride on? Is he black? I am tired now. Good-night. Mama says I must not tell you to come home quick. Jumbo’s all right. He grunts when you shove him along. So good-night, papa. x x x x. These kisses are all for you. I am so thin.
“From your little boy,
“NOEL.”
* * * * *
Come home! Yes, my darling, I will come home. Nothing shall stop me now — nothing, nothing! The sun is almost set. Everything is ready. The men must be saddling the horses again. In less than half an hour I shall have started afresh. I will ride all night to-night and all day to-morrow, and in a week I shall be standing by your side. A week! How long! how long! Lord of life and death, keep my boy alive until then!
I became conscious that I was speaking hot words such as these aloud. Even agony like mine has its lucidities of that kind. At the same moment I heard footsteps somewhere behind me. They were slow and steady footsteps, but I knew them too well. The blood rushed to my head and back to my heart. I looked up and around. Where was I? Where? Where?
I was in a little court, surrounded by low, white-washed walls. Before me there was an inner compartment roofed by a rude dome. From the apex of this dome there floated a tiny white flag. I was in a saint’s house. In the confusion of my mind, and the agonizing disarray of all my senses, I had stumbled into the sacred place unawares.
The footsteps came nearer. They seemed to be sounding on the back of my neck. I struggled forward a few paces. By a last mechanical resource of despair I tried to conceal myself in the inner chamber. I was too late. A face appeared in the opening at which I had entered. It was Larby’s face, contracted into a grimacing expression.
I read the thought of the man’s face as by a flash of light. “Good, Sidi, good! You have done my work as well as my master’s. You are a dead man; no one will know, and I need never to lift my hand to you.”
At the next instant the face was gone. In the moment following I lived a lifetime. My brain did not think; it lightened. I remembered the death of the American in the streets of Fez. I recalled the jeering crowd at the top of the alley. I reflected that Larby was gone to tell the mob that I had dishonored one of their sanctuaries. I saw myself dragged out, trampled under foot, torn to pieces, and then smuggled away in the dusk on a donkey’s back under panniers of filth. My horses ready, my men waiting, my boy dying for want of me, and myself dead in a dunghill.
“Great Jehovah, lend me Thy strength!” I cried, as I rushed out into the alley. Larby was stealing away with rapid steps. I overtook him; I laid hold of him by the hood of his jellab. He turned upon me. All my soul was roused to uncontrollable fury. I took the man in both my arms, I threw him off his feet, I lifted him by one mighty effort high above my shoulders and flung him to the ground.
He began to cry out, and I sprang upon him again and laid hold of his throat. I knew where to grip, and not a sound could he utter. We were still in the alley, and I put my left hand into the neck of his kaftan and dragged him back into the saint’s house. He drew his dagger and lunged at me. I parried the thrust with my foot and broke his arm with my heel. Then there was a moment of horrible bedazzlement. Red flames flashed before me. My head grew dizzy. The whole universe seemed to reel beneath my feet. The man was doubled backward across my knee. I had drawn my knife — I knew where to strike — and “For my boy, my boy!” I cried in my heart.
It was done. The man died without a groan. His body collapsed in my hands, rolled from my knee, and fell at my feet — doubled up, the head under the neck, the broken arm under the trunk in a heap, a heap.
Oh! oh! Larby! Larby!
Then came an awful revulsion of feeling. For a moment I stood looking down, overwhelmed with the horror of my act. In a sort of drunken stupor I gazed at the wide-open eyes, and the grimacing face fixed in its hideousness by the convulsion of death. O God! O God! what had I done! what had I done!
But I did not cry out. In that awful moment an instinct of self-preservation saved me. The fatal weapon dropped from my hand, and I crept out of the place. My great strength was all gone now. I staggered along, and at every step my limbs grew more numb and stiff.
But in the alley I looked around. I knew no way back to my people except that way by which I came. Down the other alley and through the crowd of idlers I must go. Would they be there still? If so, would they see in my face what I had done?
I was no criminal to mask my crime. In a dull, stupid, drowsy, comatose state I tottered down the alley and through the crowd. They saw me; they recognized me; I knew that they were jeering at me, but I knew no more.
“Skaïrî!” shouted one, and “Shaïrî!” shouted another, and as I staggered away they all shouted “Skaïrî!” together.
Father, they called me a drunkard. I was a drunkard indeed, but I was drunk with blood.
The sun had set by this time. Its last rays were rising off the gilded top of the highest minaret in a golden mist that looked like flame leaping out of a kiln. I saw that, as I saw everything, through a palpitating haze.
When at length I reached the place where I had left my people I found the horses saddled, the mules with their burdens packed on their panniers, the men waiting, and everything ready. Full well I knew that I ought to leap to my seat instantly and be gone without delay; but I seemed to have lost all power of prompt action. I was thinking of what I wanted to do, but I could not do it. The men spoke to me, and I know that I looked vacantly into their faces and did not answer. One said to another, “Sidi is growing deaf.”
The other touched his forehead and grinned.
I was fumbling with the stirrup of my saddle when the English Consul came up and hailed me with cheerful spirits. By an effort that was like a spasm I replied.
“Allow me, doctor,” he said, and he offered his knee that I might mount.
“Ah, no, no,” I stammered, and I scrambled to my seat.
While I was fumbling with my double rein I saw that he was looking at my hand.
“You’ve cut your fingers, doctor,” he said.
There was blood on them. The blood was not mine, but a sort of mechanical cunning came to my relief. I took out my handkerchief and made a pretense to bind it about my hand.
Alee, the guide, was at my right side settling my lumbering foot in my stirrup. I felt him touch the sheath of my knife, and then I remembered that it must be empty.
“Sidi has lost his dagger,” he said. “Look!”
The Consul, who had been on my left, wheeled round by the horse’s head, glanced at the useless sheath that was stuck in the belt of my jacket, and then looked back into my stupid face.
“Sidi is ill,” he said quietly; “ride quickly, my men, lose no time, get him out of the country without delay!”
I heard Alee answer, “Right — all right!”
Then the Consul’s servant rode up — he was a Berber — and took his place at the head of our caravan.
“All ready?” asked the Consul, in Arabic.
“Ready,” the men answered.
“Then away, as if you were flying for your lives!”
The men put spurs to their mules, Alee gave the lash to my horse, and we started.
“Good-by, doctor,” cried the Consul; “may you find your little son better when you reach home!”
I shouted some incoherent answers in a thick, loud voice, and in a few minutes more we were galloping across the plain outside the town.
The next two hours are a blank in my memory. In a kind of drunken stupor I rode on and on. The gray light deepened into the darkness of night, and the stars came out. Still we rode and rode. The moon appeared in the southern sky and rose into the broad whiteness of the stars overhead. Then consciousness came back to me, and with it came the first pangs of remorse. Through the long hours of that night ride one awful sight stood up constantly before my eyes. It was the sight of that dead body, stark and cold, lying within that little sanctuary behind me, white now with the moonlight, and silent with the night.
O Larby, Larby! You shamed me. You drove me from the world. You brought down your mother to the grave. And yet, and yet — must I absolve your murderer?
Father, I reached my home at last. At Gibraltar I telegraphed that I was coming, and at Dover I received a telegram in reply. Four days had intervened between the despatch of my message and the receipt of my wife’s. Anything might have happened in that time, and my anxiety was feverish. Stepping on to the Admiralty Pier, I saw a telegraph boy bustling about among the passengers from the packet with a telegram in his hand.
“What name?” I asked.
He gave one that was not my own and yet sounded like it.
I looked at the envelope. Clearly the name was intended for mine. I snatched the telegram out of the boy’s hand. It ran: “Welcome home; boy very weak, but not beyond hope.”
I think I read the words aloud, amid all the people, so tremendous was my relief, and so overwhelming my joy. The messenger got a gold coin for himself and I leaped into the train.
At Charing Cross I did not wait for my luggage, but gave a foolish tip to a porter and told him to send my things after me. Within half a minute of my arrival I was driving out of the station.
What I suffered during those last moments of waiting before I reached my house no tongue of man could tell. I read my wife’s telegram again, and observed for the first time that it was now six hours old. Six hours! They were like six days to my tortured mind.
From the moment when we turned out of Oxford Street until we drew up at my own door in Wimpole Street I did not once draw breath. And being here I dared hardly lift my eyes to the window lest the blinds should be down.
I had my latch-key with me, and I let myself in without ringing. A moment afterward I was in my darling’s room. My beloved wife was with our boy, and he was unconscious. That did not trouble me at all, for I saw at a glance that I was not too late.
Throwing off my coat, I sent to the surgery for my case, dismissed my dear girl with scant embraces, drew my darling’s cot up to the window, and tore down the curtains that kept out the light, for the spring day was far spent.
Then, being alone with my darling, I did my work. I had trembled like an aspen leaf until I entered his room, but when the time came my hand was as firm as a rock and my pulse beat like a child’s.
I knew I could do it, and I did it. God had spared me to come home, and I had kept my vow. I had traveled ten days and nights to tackle the work, but it was a short task when once begun.
After I had finished I opened the door to call my wife back to the room. The poor soul was crouching with the boy’s nurse on the threshold, and they were doing their utmost to choke their sobs.
“There!” I cried, “there’s your boy! He’ll be all right now.”
The mischief was removed, and I had never a doubt of the child’s recovery.
My wife flung herself on my breast, and then I realized the price I had paid for so much nervous tension. All the nerves of organic life seemed to collapse in an instant.
“I’m dizzy; lead me to my room,” I said.
My wife brought me brandy, but my hand could not lift the tumbler to my mouth, and when my dear girl’s arms had raised my own, the glass rattled against my teeth. They put me to bed; I was done — done.
God will forgive him. Why should not I?
Father, that was a month ago, and I am lying here still. It is not neurasthenia of the body that is killing me, but neurasthenia of the soul. No doctor’s drug will ever purge me of that. It is here like fire in my brain, and here like ice in my heart. Was my awful act justifiable before God? Was it right in the eyes of Him who has written in the tables of His law, Thou shalt do no murder? Was it murder? Was it crime? If I outraged the letter of the holy edict, did I also wrong its spirit?
Speak, speak, for pity’s sake, speak. Have mercy upon me, as you hope for mercy. Think where I was and what fate was before me. Would I do it again in spite of all? Yes, yes, a thousand, thousand times, yes. I will go to God with that word on my lips, and He shall judge me.
And yet I suffer these agonies of doubt. Life was always a sacred thing to me. God gave it, and only God should take it away. He who spilt the blood of his fellow-man took the government of the world out of God’s hands. And then — and then — father, have I not told you all?
Yes, yes, the Father of all fathers will pardon him.
