Complete works of hall c.., p.643
Complete Works of Hall Caine, page 643
On the day when I arrived at Tangier from Fez I had some two hours to wait for the French steamer from Malaga that was to take me to Cadiz. In order to beguile my mind of its impatience, I walked through the town as far as the outer Sôk — the Sôk de Barra.
It was market day, Thursday, and the place was the same animated and varied scene as I had looked upon before. Crushing my way through the throng, I came upon the saint’s house near the middle of the market. The sight of the little white structure with its white flag brought back the tragedy I saw enacted there, and the thought of that horror was now made hellish to my conscience by the memory of another tragedy at another saint’s house.
I turned quickly aside, and stepping up to the elevated causeway that runs in front of the tents of the brassworkers, I stood awhile and watched the Jewish workmen hammering the designs on their trays.
Presently I became aware of a little girl who was sitting on a bundle of rushes and plaiting them into a chain. She was a tiny thing, six years of age at the utmost, but with the sober look of a matron. Her sweet face was the color of copper, and her quiet eyes were deep blue. A yellow gown of some light fabric covered her body, but her feet were bare. She worked at her plaiting with steady industry, and as often as she stopped to draw a rush from the bundle beneath her she lifted her eyes and looked with a wistful gaze over the feeding-ground of the camels, and down the lane to the bridge, and up by the big house on the hillside to where the sandy road goes off to Fez.
The little demure figure, amid so many romping children, interested and touched me. This was noticed by a Jewish brassworker before whose open booth I stood and he smiled and nodded his head in the direction of the little woman.
“Dear little Sobersides,” I said; “does she never play with other children?”
“No,” said the Jew, “she sits here every day, and all day long — that is, when her father is away.”
“Whose child is she?” I asked. An awful thought had struck me.
“A great rascal’s,” the Jew answered, “though the little one is such an angel. He keeps a spice shop over yonder, but he is a guide as well as a merchant, and when he is out on a journey the child sits here and waits and watches for his coming home again. She can catch the first sight of travelers from this place and she knows her father at any distance. See! — do you know where she’s looking now? Over the road by El Minzah — that’s the way from Fez. Her father has gone there with a Christian.”
The sweat was bursting from my forehead.
“What’s his name?” I asked.
“The Moors call him Larby,” said the Jew, “and the Christians nickname him Ananias. They say he is a Spanish renegade, escaped from Ceuta, who witnessed to the Prophet and married a Moorish wife. But he’s everything to the little one — bless her innocent face! Look! do you see the tiny brown dish at her side? That’s for her drinking water. She brings it full every day, and also a little cake of bread for her dinner.
“She’s never tired of waiting, and if Larby does not come home to-night she’ll be here in the morning. I do believe that if anything happened to Larby she would wait until doomsday.”
My throat was choking me, and I could not speak. The Jew saw my emotion, but he showed no surprise. I stepped up to the little one and stroked her glossy black hair.
“Hoolia?” I said.
She smiled back into my face and answered, “Iyyeh” — yes.
I could say no more; I dare not look into her trustful eyes and think that he whom she waited for would never come again. I stooped and kissed the child, and then fled away.
God show me my duty. The Priest or the Man — which?
Listen! do you hear him? That’s the footstep of my boy overhead. My darling! He is well again now. My little sunny laddie! He came into my bedroom this morning with a hop, skip, and a jump — a gleam of sunshine. Poor innocent, thoughtless boy. They will take him into the country soon, and he will romp in the lanes and tear up the flowers in the garden.
My son, my son! He has drained my life away; he has taken all my strength. Do I wish that I had it back? Yes, but only — yes, only that I might give it him again. Hark! That’s his voice, that’s his laughter. How happy he is! When I think how soon — how very soon — when I think that I —
God sees all. He is looking down on little Hoolia waiting, waiting, waiting where the camels come over the hills, and on my little Noel laughing and prancing in the room above us.
Father, I have told you all at last. There are tears in your eyes, father. You are crying. Tell me, then, what hope is left? You know my sin, and you know my suffering. Did I do wrong? Did I do right?
My son, God’s law was made for man, not man for His law. If the spirit has been broken where the letter has been kept, the spirit may be kept where the letter has been broken. Your earthly father dare not judge you. To your Heavenly Father he must leave both the deed and the circumstance. It is for Him to justify or forgive. If you are innocent, He will place your hand in the hand of him who slew the Egyptian and yet looked on the burning bush. And if you are guilty, He will not shut His ears to the cry of your despair.
* * * * *
He has gone. I could not tell him. It would have embittered his parting hour; it would have poisoned the wine of the sacrament. O, Larby! Larby! flesh of my flesh, my sorrow, my shame, my prodigal — my son.
END OF “THE LAST CONFESSION”
CHARLIE THE COX
A LIFE POEM
A SHORT STORY PUBLISHED AS A PART OF ‘PRINCESS MARY’S GIFT BOOK’
Charlie was the cox of our Peel lifeboat. A braver spirit never sailed the sea.
Years ago, in a terrific gale, a ship from Norway, the St. George, came dead on for the wildest part of our coast, the fierce headland that lies back of the old Castle rock. The sound signal was fired, and Charlie and his brave comrades went out to her. She was reeling on the top of a tremendous sea, and there was no coming near to her side.
It was an awful task to get the crew aboard the lifeboat, but Charlie saved every soul, and lost not a hand of his own. When the “traveller” was rigged and the “breeches” were ready, and the crew of the doomed ship were at the bulwarks waiting to leave her, Charlie sang out over the clamour of the sea:
“How many are you?”
“Twenty-four,” came back as answer.
Then Charlie cried, “I can see only twenty-three.”
“The other man is hurt. He’s dying. No use saving him,” the Norseman shouted.
“You’ll bring the dying man on deck before a soul of you leaves the ship,” cried Charlie.
There was a woman among them, and when the carpenter came scudding down the rope he had a canvas bag on his back.
“No tools here,” shouted Charlie.
“It’s the child,” said the man.
The captain came next. He had left everything else behind him — his money, his instruments, his clothes, his ship — but out of his pocket there peeped the head of a baby’s doll.
It was a thrilling rescue, but to see it in all its splendour you must have a drop of our Manx blood in you. Our forefathers were from Norway, our first Norse king was named Gorry. He landed on this island, not far from this spot. And on that day of the wreck of the St. George his children’s children rescued from the sea the children’s children of the kinsmen he had left at home.
Most of our men had Norse names. One of them was a Gorry, lineal descendant beyond doubt of the old sea king. The Norwegian Government felt the touch of great things in this incident. It was not merely that the bravery of the rescue fired their gratitude. Something called to them from that deep place where blood answers to the cry of blood. They sent medals for Charlie and his crew, and the Governor of the island distributed them inside the roofless walls of the old castle of the “Black Dog.” It was like grasping hands with the past across the space of a thousand years.
The other day we had another great wind and another brave rescue. The sun had gone down overnight in a sullen red, very fierce and angry in his setting, and out of the black north-east the storm had come up while we slept. In the heavy grey of the dawn the sound-signal fired its double shot over our little town. A Welsh schooner, which had run in for shelter during the dark hours, was riding to an anchor in the bay and flying her ensign for help.
The sea was terrific — a slaty grey, streaked with white foam, like quartz veins. It was coming over the breakwater in sheets that hid it. Sometimes it was flying in clouds to the top of the round tower of the castle. The white sea-fowl were like dark specks darting through it, but no human ear could hear the cry of their thousand throats in the thunderous quake of the breakers on the cavernous rocks.
A crowd of men answered the call, and there was no shortness of hands to man the lifeboat. The big, slow-legged fellows who had been idling on the quay the day before when the sea was calm were struggling, chafing, and quarrelling to go out on it now that it was in storm, for the blood of the old Vikings is in our Manxmen still.
It was a splendid rescue. The crew of the Welshman were brought ashore. Then the abandoned schooner rode three hours longer in the gale, and a hundred men stood and watched her, talking of other winds and other wrecks, and of Peel boys who were out on the sea. At last the ship parted her cables and went rolling like a blinded porpoise dead on for the jagged coast.
Seven men took an open fishing-boat and went after her, and we climbed the Head to look at them. The wind smote us there like an invisible wing, sometimes swirling us out of our course, often bringing us to our knees, and whipping our ears with our hair like rods. Sheets of spray were coming up to us from below and running along the cliffs like driven rain. The sun, which had broken in fierce brilliance from a green rent in the sky, made rainbows in the flying foam.
From the heights we watched the seven men and the open boat. They rose and fell, appeared and disappeared, but they overtook the Welshman before she had drifted on to the coast, boarded her with difficulty, let go another anchor and made her tight. There was nothing else to do, for she was disabled, and her sails were torn to shreds. The new anchor held the ship an hour longer, and then there was no help left for her. She was within a hundred feet of the rocks, and she fell on them with the groan of a living creature.
The instant her head was down the white lions of the sea leapt over her, the water swirled through her bulwarks and plunged down her hatch; her helm was unshipped, her sails were torn from their gaskets, and the floating home wherein men had sailed and sung and slept and laughed and jested was a broken wreck in the heavy wallowings of the waves.
When it was over and we were coming back, drenched through and green with the drift of the sea foam caked thick on our faces, some of us began to think of Charlie. He had not been there that day. A year or more ago, in the prime of a splendid manhood, he was stricken by heart disease. He kept a good heart, nevertheless, and by indomitable will held on for some time. First a little work, then no work at all, only a sail now and then if the sea was calm, but of late hardly ever well enough to take the open air. The old hulk of his poor body had been anchored deep, but she was parting her cables at last.
Charlie lay dying while this second rescue was being made. He had not answered the signal for the lifeboat, but he had heard it in the fierce light of morning, and they could not keep him in bed. The soul of the old sea dog leapt to the call, but his ailing body held him down. He wanted to go out. Wasn’t he cox? Had the boat ever gone out without him?
His house is one of the little places like children’s Noah’s arks which dot the line of this hungry shore. He could hear everything and see a good deal. Often he could hardly keep himself from crying and shouting aloud. In spirit he was out on the boiling surf, dipping, rising, stooping, going over, righting again, clambering back, exulting, glorying, getting nearer the ship, standing off her, rigging the “traveller,” and fetching men aboard in the “breeches.” And then away from the rolling hulk, and sing ho, my lads, and haul through the white waves for home. But his poor dying body was down on the bed and his face was sickly scarlet.
Charlie’s volcanic soul did not go off to the deep of deeps on the big breakers and through the wild noises of the storm. He died later. After the great wind there came a great calm. The air was quiet and full of the odour of seaweed; banks of seaweed were on the shore, and the broken schooner was covered with brown wrack, like any rock of the coast; the sky was round as the inside of a shell, and pale pink like the shadow of flame; the water was smooth, and land and sea lay like a sleeping child. In this broad and steady weather our little town was startled by the double shot again. We went to the windows in surprise, and saw the red flag over the rocket house, which is the signal for the lifeboat.
Charlie was dead. He had just breathed his last, and his rugged comrades, who know nothing of poetry, but are poets nevertheless to the deepest grain of them, had run up the flag mast-high (not half-mast) as signal to the Great Cox of all that here was a soul in the troubled waters of death waiting for the everlasting lifeboat to bear him to the eternal shore.
The sea takes some of our bravest and best. Charlie it did not take. Not so sure is it that he who lives by the sword will perish by the sword, as that he who baulks the sea the sea will surely have for its prey. Charlie had battled with the giant time and again, but he has gone to sleep on the land.
We buried him to-day in the little cemetery looking on to the grey water that was more than half his element. The funeral was beautiful in its old simplicity. First a hymn at the door of the house in the little alley by the beach, “Safe in the arms of Jesus,” with the coffin on the ground and all standing round; the sea quiet, hardly a breeze as soft as human breath moving its tranquil surface; the deadly rival in its everlasting coming and going making no triumphant clamour now the sea-warrior was down. Then the companions of his dangers, the crew of his boat, a group of stalwart fellows who have never known what it is to be afraid, carrying him up the hill, shoulder high, each in his red stocking cap and his life-belt, emblems of how they had fought the sea and beaten it.
There were some of us whose eyes were wet, but if these brave boys wept at all, it was only for the helpless little ones left behind. For Charlie they did not weep. His spirit is not dead for them — it cannot die. When brave deeds have to be done, they will see its light, like a beacon that does not fail, over the mountains of the fiercest storm; they will hear its voice above the thunder of the loudest waves.
A full moon is shining to-night on the place of Charlie’s rest, and if the old Norse story is true, that while the body lies in sight of the sea the spirit lives in the winds above it, Charlie is not done with his old enemy yet. He will come back to this sea-bound land in warning whispers of the mighty and mysterious power that lures men to itself.
The Plays
Cheyne Walk, south-west London — in 1880 Caine first visited Dante Gabriel Rossetti in his home at Cheyne Walk, Chelsea, where he lived “in shabby splendour”. The following year Caine left his employment in Liverpool and went to live with Rossetti and stayed there until the artist’s death in April 1882.
THE ISLE OF BOY
First performed at Bolton’s Theatre Royal on 15 April 1903, this farce of mistaken identity addresses themes central to Caine’s more famous novels, including the injustices of class and sexual prejudices, as explored in The Christian. Although his novels were criticised for their lack of humour, The Isle of Boy is an amusing play, with surprising hilarity in places. The cast features a grasping Governor, a drunken judge, a corrupt Chief Constable and an irreligious Bishop. Considering these controversial characters, as well as the flippant pun in the title, it is easy to understand how unpopular Caine was becoming with his fellow Manx men and women.
CONTENTS
CHARACTERS
ACT I.
ACT II
ACT III.
ACT IV.
CHARACTERS
Governor
Bishop
Judge
Seneschal
Head Constable
Postmaster
The Mayor
“Bill” — The Governor’s Son.
Rubina — The Governor’s Wife.
Agatha — The Governor’s Daughter.
“Daddie”
“Mammie”
Lesta Lily
SCENE. — The Isle of Boy, a dependency of the British Crown.
Time. — Any time.
The Author desires to acknowledge his obligations to the celebrated Russian Comedy, “The Revisor,” but to say that the motif and construction of his comedy arc, to the best of his knowledge, original.
ACT I.
Scene: — A room in Government House. Doors right and left. Window and balcony at back. Table covered with blue-books, etc., usual appointments of an official department. Telephones, etc. Desk for Secretary. (Private Secretary sitting at desk.)
Enter Footman with letter on salver.
Footman. For His Excellency. (Goes out.)
Secretary (looking at letter). “Whitehall”! (Shrugs his shoulders.) More trouble for the Lieutenant-Governor. (Rises to put letter on table as Governor enters.) Letter, your Excellency.
Governor. “Treasury”! (Tears open letter and reads.) What’s this? “Dear friend and benefactor, having received so many and such particular proofs of your friendship” — (Mutters over letter.) Good Lord! Prince Henry — incognito! Here’s a pretty kettle of fish!
Secretary. Anything I can do, your Excellency?
Governor. No! Yes, that is to say — telephone instantly for that double-eyed dunce, the Head Constable. (Secretary takes up telephone.) Oh, wait! Talking into telephones is like whispering into the ear of a woman — you know what goes in, but the devil only knows what comes out. Take a sheet of paper and write — Quick, quick, quick!
