Hall Caine

“ Yet not to know what strange risks he ran, and how in the end he overcame all dangers, by God's grace and his own extreme labour, is not to know this story of how two good men with a good woman between them pursued each other over the earth with vows of vengeance, and came together at length in Heaven's good time and way. So not to weary the spirit with much speaking, yet to leave nothing unsaid that shall carry us onward to that great hour when Red Jason and Michael Sunlocks stood face to face, let us begin where Adam's peril began, and hasten forward to where it ended. ”

“ They brought bad stories of his father, Stephen Orry, now a name of tenor to good people from north to south of the island, a secret trader running between the revenue cutters in the ports and the smugglers outside, perhaps a wrecker haunting the rough channels of the Calf, an outlaw growing rich by crime, and maybe by blood. The evil rumours made no impression on old Adam, but they produced a powerful effect where no effect had been expected. Bit by bit, as his heart went out to the Governor, there grew upon Michael Sunlocks a deep loathing of the very name and thought of his father. ”

“ He had once been a truth-teller, but living with a woman who assumed that he must be a liar, he had ended by becoming one. He had no company save her company, for his slow wit had found it hard to learn the English tongue, and she alone could rightly follow him; he had no desires save the petty ones of daily food and drink; he had no purpose save the degrading purpose of defeating the nightly wanderings of his drunken wife. Thus, without any human eye upon him in the dark way he was going, Stephen Orry had grown coarse and base. ”

“ Then Stephen Orry, with a depth of languor in his slow grey eyes, made one step towards Michael Sunlocks, and half opened his arms as if to embrace him. But a pitiful look of shame crossed his face at that moment, and his arms fell again. At the same instant Michael Sunlocks, growing very pale and dizzy, drew slightly back, and they stood apart, with Adam between them.
"He has come for you to go away into his own country," Adam said falteringly.
It was Easter-Day, nineteen years after Stephen Orry had fled from Iceland. ”

“ The morning was fresh and sweet, with the earth full of gladness and the air of song, though Michael Sunlocks was little touched by its beauty, and thought it the heaviest he had yet seen. But Adam told how the spring was toward, and the lambs in fold, and the heifers thriving, and how the April rain would bring potatoes down to sixpence a kishen, and fetch up the grass in such a crop that the old island would rise—why not? ”

“ When the tumult was over, and all lives appeared to be saved, and nothing seemed lost save the two vessels—the schooner and the yawl, which still rose and fell on the Carick and the forked reef of the Head—and the people separated, and the three old net-weavers straggled back to their home, the crew of the Peveril went off with the Fairbrothers to Lague. Great preparations were already afoot there, for Asher had sent on a message ahead of them, and the maids were bustling about, the fire was rekindled in the kitchen, and the kettle was singing merrily. ”

“ But Michael Sunlocks soon won for himself the caresses that were once due merely to pity of his loneliness, and Adam's heart went out to him with the strong affection of a father. He throve, he grew—a tall, lithe, round-limbed lad, with a smack of the man in his speech and ways, and all the strong beauty of a vigorous woman in his face. ”

“ Stephen was staying away in fear of the brother of Patriksen. When that man was dead, or out of the way, he would return. Then he would see their boy, and remember his duty towards him; and if the lad ever again spoke bitterly of one whom he had never yet seen, she on her part would chide him, and the light of revenge that had sometimes flashed in his brilliant blue eyes would fade away, and in uplooking and affection he would walk as a son with his father's hand. ”

“ It was the main entrance to Government House, a low broad porch, with a bench on either side and a cross-barred door of knotted oak. Stephen Orry paused before it, looked nervously around, and then knocked with his knuckles. He had walked six-and-twenty miles, carrying the child all the way. He was weary, footsore, hungry, and covered with dust. The child on his shoulder was begrimed and dirty, his little face smeared in streaks, his wavy hair loaded and unkempt. A footman in red and buff, powdered, starched, gartered and dainty, opened the door. ”

“ Never had two persons of temperaments so opposed lived so long in outward harmony. Her face, like some mountain country, revealed its before and after. Its spring must have been keen and eager, its summer was overcast, and its winter would be cold and frozen. She was not a Manx woman, but came of a family of French refugees settled in the north of the island. Always vain of show, she had married in her early womanhood, when Adam Fairbrother was newly returned from Barbary, and his adventures abroad were the common gossip. ”

“ Red Jason and Michael Sunlocks were together at last, within the narrow stockade of a penal settlement. These two, who had followed each other from land to land, the one on his errand of vengeance, the other on his mission of mercy, both now nourishing hatred and lust of blood, were thrown as prisoners into the sulphur-mines of Krisuvik. There they met, they spoke, they lived and worked side by side, yet neither knew the other for the man he had sought so long and never found. ”

“ Now old Adam saw but too plainly what mad strife was in the lad's heart to be wroth with him for all the ingratitude of his thought, so, his wrinkled face working hard with many passions—sorrow and tenderness, yearning for the lad and desire to keep him, pity for the father robbed of the love of his son, who felt an open shame of him—the good man twisted about from the fire and said, "Listen, and you shall hear what your father has done for you." ”

“ His double voyage covered more than six weeks, though there was a strong fair wind from the coast of Scotland to the coast of Denmark, and again from Denmark to Iceland. The delay fretted him, for his heart was afire; but there was no help for it, and he had to submit. He did so with no cheer of spirit, or he might have learned something from the yarns of the seamen. All the gossip that came his way was a chance remark of the master, a Dane, who one day stopped in front of him as he lay by the hatches, and asked if he was an Icelander born. He answered that he was. Was he a sea-going man? Yes. ”

“ Then the thought leapt to her mind that she herself could punish Stephen a hundredfold worse than any law of Bishop or Deemster. If she could she would not now put him away. He should live on with her, husband or no husband, and she with him, wife or no wife.
On her way home she called at the house of Kane Wade, sat down with old Bridget, shed some crocodile tears, vowed she daren't have tould it on no account to no other morthal sowl, but would the heart of woman belave it? her man had a wife in his own counthry! ”

“ Then followed some short inarticulate chirps, and the doll was passed to Sunlocks, who turned the strange thing—such as eyes of his had never beheld—over and over and over, while the little woman brought out from dark corners of the room, and from curious recesses unknown save to her own hands and knees, a slate with a pencil and sponge tied to it by a string, a picture-book whereof the binding hung loose, some bits of ribbon, red and blue, and finally three tiny cups and saucers with all the accompanying wonder of cream-jug and tea-pot. ”

“ Something in the glance arrested Patriksen, and he stopped.
"This seems to be a lump of a lad," he said. "Let us see what we can do with him."
And at that he threw his long arms about the stalwart fellow, squared his broad hips before him, thrust down his head into his breast until his red neck was as thick as a bullock's, and threw all the strength of his body into his arms that he might lift the man out of his seat. But he moved him not an inch. With feet that held the earth like the hoofs of an ox, the young man sat unmoved. ”

“ A man may be bad, but he doesn't like his son to feel ashamed of him. And I was afraid to see it in your face, Michael. That's why I stayed away. But many a time I felt hungry after my little lad, that I loved so dear and nursed so long, like any mother might. And hearing of him sometimes, and how well he looked and how tall he grew, maybe I didn't think the less about him for not coming down upon him to shame him."
"Stop, father, stop," said Michael Sunlocks.
"My son," said Stephen Orry," you are going back to your father's country. ”

“ But Michael Sunlocks rode heavily along, for he was troubled by many misgivings. He was asking himself for the hundredth time whether it was a true man's part to suffer himself to stand between Adam Fairbrother and his family. The sad breach being made, all that he could do to heal it was to take himself away, whether Adam favoured that course or not. And he had concluded that, painful as the remedy would be, yet he must needs take it, and that very speedily, when he came up to the gate of Government House, and turned Goldie down the path to the left that led to the stables. ”

“ The Westmann islander had rolled to his legs by this time, and now he came shambling up, with the belt in his hand and his sullen eyes on the ground.
"Keep it," he said, and flung the belt at the girl's feet, between her and his adversary. Then he strode away through the throng, with curses on his white lips and the veins of his squat forehead swollen and dark. ”

“ There bit by bit the strange and solemn idea of unrequited love was borne in upon him. It was very hard to understand. For one short day the image of a happy love had stood up before his mind, but already that day was dead. That he should never again clasp her hand whom he loved, that all was over between them—it was painful, it was crushing.
And oh! it was very cruel. His life seemed as much ended as if he had taken his death-warrant, for life without hope was nothing worth. ”

“ He is noble, and simple, and true. His brave heart is above all suspicion. God pity him, and forgive me!"
Then for the first time that day since the six Fairbrothers had left the house, the calmness of Michael Sunlocks forsook him, and in a stern voice, with a look of fierce passion in his face, he cried, "Let me never, never meet that man." ”

“ And having no one now to stand to her, or seem to stand, in the place of breadwinner, she set herself to such poor work as she could do and earn a scanty living by. This was cleaning the down of the eider-duck, by passing it through a sieve made of yarn stretched over a hoop. By a deft hand, with extreme labour, something equal to sixpence a day could be made in this way from the English traders. With such earnings Rachel lived in content, and if Jorgen Jorgensen had any knowledge of his daughter's necessities, he made no effort to relieve them. ”

“ She had been the illegitimate child of an insolvent English debtor and the daughter of a neighbouring vicar, had been ignored by her father, put out to nurse by her mother, bred in ignorance and reared in impurity.
By what arts, what hints, what appeals, what allurements, this trollop got possession of Stephen Orry it is not hard to guess. First, he was a hunted man, and only one who dared do anything dare open doors to him. Next, he was a foreigner, dumb for speech and deaf for scandal, and therefore unable to learn more than his eyes could tell him of the woman who had given him shelter. ”

“ Rachel had reached the place at the first impulse of her thought, but being there her heart misgave her, and she paused on the outskirts of the crowd. To go in among these girls and sell her hair to the Jew, was to make herself one with the lowest and meanest of the town, but that was not the fear that held her back. Suddenly the thought had come to her that what she had intended to do was meant to win her husband back to her, yet that she could not say what it was that had won him for her at the first. ”

“ One night, after spending the day on the sea with the lines for cod, the year deepening to winter, the air muggy and chill, he went away home, hungry and wet and cold, leaving his mates at the door of the "Plough," where there was good company within and the cheer of a busy fire. Home! On reaching Port-y-Vullin he found the door open, the hearth cold, the floor in a puddle from the driving rain, not a bite or sup in the cupboard, and his wife lying drunk across the bed, with the child in its grimy blueness creeping and crying about her head. ”

“ Red Jason and Michael Sunlocks, now lashed together, were driven back to their work like beasts of the field. They knew well what their punishment meant to them—that in every hour of life henceforward, in every act, through every thought, each man should drag a human carcass by his side. ”

“ In the dim light of an hour later, when the hills of Thingvellir slept under the cloud-shadow that was their only night, Stephen Orry stood with the Governor's daughter by the door of the Thingvellir parsonage, for Jorgen's company were the parson's guests. He held out the champion's belt to her and said, "Take it back, for if I keep it the man and his kinsmen will follow me all the days of my life." ”

“ With a man to work for her she became more idle than before, and with nothing to fear from scandal she grew more reckless and sluttish. Having hidden her nakedness in the gown of marriage, she lost the last rag of womanly shame.
The effects on Stephen Orry were the deepening of his sloth, his gloom, and his helplessness. What purpose in life he ever had was paralysed. On his first coming to the island he had sailed to the mackerel-fishing in the boats of Kane Wade, who found the big, dumb Icelander a skilful fisherman. ”

“ His father, an honest thrall, was dead; his mother lived by splitting and drying stock-fish for English traders. He was the foolish old woman's pride, and she kept him. Such was the man whom the daughter of the Governor had chosen before the Minister for Iceland.
At that Jorgen's hard face grew livid and white by turns. They were sitting at supper in Government House, and, with an oath, the Governor brought his fist down on the table. It was a lie; his daughter knew no more of the man than he did. ”

“ One day, when Michael Sunlocks was eighteen years old, a man came to him from Kirk Maughold with an air of wondrous mystery. It was Nary Crowe, the innkeeper, now bald, bottle-nosed, and in a bad state of preservation. His story, intended for Michael's ear alone, was that Stephen Orry, flying from the officers of the revenue cutters, was on the point of leaving the island for ever, and must see his son before going. If the son would not go to the father, then the father must come to the son. ”