Sir Hall Caine

“ Will you drive a girl to shame herself again? I want you, Philip! I want your eyes that I may see them every day; and your hair, that I may feel it with my hands; and your lips—can I help it?—yes, and your lips, that I may kiss and kiss them!”
“Kate! Kate! Turn your eyes away. Don't look at me like that!” She was fighting for her life. It was to be now or never.
“If you won't come to me, I'll go to you!” she cried; and then she sprang upon him, and all grew confused, the berries of the nightshade whipped his forehead, and the moon and the stars went out. ”

“ Kate trembled at the possibility of such a disaster coming through her. She saw herself being driven from house and home. Where could she fly? And though she fled away, would she not still be the cause of sorrow and disgrace to all whom she left behind—her mother, her father, Pete, everybody?
If she could only tear out the past, at least she could stop this marriage. Or if she had been a man she could stop it, for a man may sin and still look to the future with a firm face. But she was a woman, and a woman's acts may be her own, but their consequences are beyond her. ”

“ Auntie Nan looked up with her needle at poise above the sampler, and said in a nervous voice, “The real mischief of your father's life, Philip, was love—what they call love. But love is not that. Love is peace and virtue, and right living, and that is only madness and frenzy, and when people wake up from it they wake up as from a nightmare. Men talk of it as a holy thing—it is unholy. Books are written in praise of it—I would have such books burnt. When anybody falls to it, he is like a blind man who has lost his guide, tottering straight to the precipice. Women fall to it too. ”

“ Philip trembled and felt sick. He tried to speak, but could utter nothing except an inarticulate noise. As Pete went off, an owl screeched in the glen. Philip drew down the sash, pulled the blind, tugged the curtains across, stumbled into the middle of the floor, and leaned against the bed.
“Such is the beginning of the end,” he thought.
The duplicity, the deceit, the daily torment which Kate had left behind, were henceforward to be his own! At one flash, as of lightning, he saw the path before him. It was over cliffs and chasms and quagmires, where his foot might slip at any step. ”

“ There have been hours of my life when I have been deserving of pity. But they have been the hours, the dark hours, when, in the prodigality of your gratitude, you have loaded me with distinctions, and a shadow has haunted me, saying, 'Philip Christian, they think you a just judge—you are not a just judge; they think you an upright man—you are not an upright man.' Do not pity me now, when the dark hours are passed, when the new life has begun, when I am listening at length to the voice of my heart, which has all along been the voice of God. ”

“ What a glorious thing it was to be a woman after all! What a powerful thing! What a lovely and beloved thing! To rule the king, being the slave, was sweeter than to be the king himself. That was woman's place. It was where heaven itself had put her from the beginning until now. What weapons had it given her! Beauty! Charm! Love! The joy of it! To be the weak and overcome the strong! To be nothing in the battle of life, and yet conqueror of all the world!
Kate vowed that, come what would, Philip should never leave her. ”

“ Then she saw a light moving on the landing, and heard a soft step on the stairs. It was Pete, with a candle, coming up in his stockinged feet. He stopped midway, as if he heard the click of the latch, and then went noiselessly down again.
Kate closed the door. She would not go. If she left the house that night she would cover Pete with suspicion and disgrace. The true secret would never be known; the real offender would never suffer; but the finger of scorn would be raised at the one man who had sheltered and shielded her, and he would die of humiliation and blind self-reproach. ”

“ With an astonishment near to terror, Philip gripped the saddle with his quaking knees, and broke his horse into a trot.
When the hard ride had brought warmth to his blood and a glow to his cheeks, he told himself he had been the victim of fancy. It was nothing; it was a delusion of the sight; a mere shadow cast off by his distempered brain. He was passing at a walking pace through Laxey by this time, and as the horse's feet beat up the echoes of the sleeping town, his heart grew brave.
Next day, at noon, he was talking with his servant, Jem-y-Lord, in his rooms in Athol Street. ”

“ Then quickly, with panting breath, came, “Kate! Kate! Kate!” again and again repeated, beginning in a loud beseeching cry and dying down to a long wail, as if shouted over a gloomy waste wherein the voice was lost.
Jem-y-Lord had been beating round towards the door, wringing his white hands like a woman, and praying to God that the Deemster might never come out of his unconsciousness. “He has told him everything,” thought Jem. “The man will take his life.”
“I came between them,” thought Pete. “She was not for me. She was not mine. She was Philip's. It was God's doings.” ”

“ The time is long with me sometimes, Philip, and I could play with her all the day. And then at night, when she would be in the cot, I could make her little stock of clothes—her frocks and her little pinafores, and——”
“Impossible, Kate, impossible!” said Philip.
She turned to the window. “Yes,” she said, in a choking voice, “I suppose it would even be stealing to fetch her away now. Only think! A mother stealing her own child! O gracious heaven, have I sinned myself so far from my innocent baby! My child, my child! My little Katherine!” ”

“ How's Philip?” shouted Pete.
“Mr. Christian? Well and hearty, and doing wonders, sir.”
“I knew it,” cried Pete, with a resounding laugh.
“Going like a flood, and sweeping everything before him,” said Cæsar.
“The rising day with him, is it?” said Pete. “I always said he'd be the first man in the island, and he's not going to deceave me neither.”
“The young man's been over putting a sight on us times and times—he was up at my Melliah only a week come Wednesday,” said Cæsar.
“Man alive!” cried Pete; “him and me are same as brothers.” ”

“ The rain continued to pour down on the roofs and on the tombs with a monotonous plash. “But what is to be done?” she said.
“God knows,” he answered.
“What is to become of us, Philip? Are we never to smile on each other again? We cannot carry a burden like this for ever. To-day, to-morrow, the next day, the next year—is it to go on like this for a lifetime? Is this life? Is there nothing that will end it?”
“Yes, Kate, yes; there is one thing that will end it—one thing only.” ”

“ Philip was certain of it now. Some one had been prying upon him at Sulby. He was angry, and his anger spent itself on Auntie Nan in a torrent of words. “You are wrong, Aunt Anne, quite wrong. Love is the one lovely thing in life. It is beauty, it is poetry. Call it passion if you will—what would the world be like without it? A place where every human heart would be an island standing alone; a place without children, without joy, without merriment, without laughter. No, no; Heaven has given us love, and we are wrong when we try to put it away. ”

“ Philip sank back with a look of fear. “Water,” he cried feebly.
“Here it is,” said Jem-y-Lord, lifting from the dressing-table the jug out of which he had moistened the sponge.
“Tut!” cried Pete, and he tipped the jug so that half the water spilled. “Brandy for a man when he's in bed, you goosey gander. Hould, hard, boy; I've a taste of the rael stuff in the cupboard. Half a minute, mate. A drop will be doing no harm at all,” and away he went down the stairs like a flood, almost sweeping over Nancy, who had come creeping up in her stockings at the sound of voices. ”

“ By this time Philip's love, which, in spite of himself, had grown cool since the Melliah, and in his fierce battle with his worldly aims, suddenly awakened to fresh violence at the approach of another man. But his ambition fought with his love, and he began to ask himself if it made, any difference after all in this matter of Kate whether he took the Deemstership or left it. Kate was recovering; he had nothing to reproach himself with, and it would be folly to sacrifice the ambition of a lifetime to the love of a woman who could never be his, a woman he could never marry. ”

“ The sun was still shining. On reaching the top of the brow, she began to skip and run where the road descends by Folieu. Thus, with a light heart and a light step, thinking ill of no one, in love with all the world, she went hurrying to her doom.
The sea below lay very calm and blue. Nothing was to be seen on the water but a line of black smoke from the funnel of a steamship which had not yet risen above the horizon.
VI.
Philip put up his horse at the Hibernian, a mile farther on the high-road, and the tongue of the landlady, Mistress Looney went like a mill-race while he ate his dinner. ”

“ He has dragged you down a dale—but tell me, do you love him still?”
She shuddered and crept closer to the wall.
“Don't be freckened. It's a woman's way to love the man that's done wrong by her. Being good to her is nothing—sarvice is nothing—kindness is nothing. Maybe there's some ones that cry shame on her for that—but not me. Giving herself, body and soul, and thinking nothing what she gets for it—that's the glory of a woman when she cares for anybody. Spake up, Kate—do you love him in spite of all?”
The answer came in a whisper that was like a breath—“Yes.”
“That'll do,” said Pete. ”

“ The woman ought to marry beneath herself, and the man above himself; then as much as the woman descends, the man rises, and so——-don't you see?”
She faltered and stopped, and Philip said, “Aren't you talking nonsense,' Kate?”
“Indeed, sir!”
Kate pretended to be angry at the rebuff, and pouted her lips, but her eyes were beaming.
“There is neither above nor below where there is real liking,” said Philip. “If you like any one, and she is necessary to your life, that is the sign of your natural equality. It is God's sign, and all the rest is only man's book-keeping.” ”