The two might have passed unknown, for Habeebah was veiled, but that Naomi had forgotten her blanket and was uncovered. In another moment the poor frightened girl, with all her brave bearing gone, was weeping on the black woman’s breast.
“Whither are you going?” said Habeebah.
“To my father,” Naomi began. “He is in prison; they say he is starving; I was taking food to him, but I am lost, I don’t know my way, and besides—”
“The very thing!” cried Habeebah.
Habeebah had her own little scheme. It was meant to win emancipation at the hands of her master, and paradise for her soul when she died. Naomi, who was a Jewess, was to turn Muslima. That was all. Then her troubles would end, and wondrous fortune would descend upon her, and her father who was in prison would be set free.
Now, religion was nothing to Naomi; she hardly understood what it meant. The differences of faith were less than nothing, but her father was everything, and so she clutched at Habeebah’s bold promises like a drowning soul at the froth of a breaker.
“My father will be let out of prison? You are sure—quite sure?” she asked.
“Quite sure,” answered Habeebah stoutly.
Naomi’s hopes of ever reaching her father were now faint, and her poor little stock of eggs and bread looked like folly to her new-born worldliness.
“Very well,” she said. “I will turn Muslima.”
The two go together to the Kaid, who, seeing Naomi’s beauty, resolves to ward off the threatened displeasure of the Sultan by making a gift of her at the coming royal feast But in the interim, Naomi’s former nurse has found her and told her, that to embrace Mahometanism would mean separation from her father. The girl halts long in her distress. She is sent to the harem, and from the harem to the prison. She is given her choice of Mahometanism or death, and is finally overborne by the Jews of Tetuan, who, coming to her prison bars, entreat her to renounce her religion.
That night the place under the narrow window in the dark lane was occupied by a group of Jews. “Sister,” they whispered, “sister of our people, listen. The Basha is a hard man. This day he has robbed us of all we had that he may pay for the Sultan’s visit. Listen! We have heard something. We want Israel ben Oliel back among us. He was our father, he was our brother. Save his life for the sake of our children, for the Basha has taken their bread. Save him, sister, we beg, we entreat, we pray.”
Thus it comes to pass that Israel is released from prison, and hastens in his ignorance to the place where he had left Naomi, only to find it empty. He is told that she is in the women’s apartments at the Kaid’s palace, and the news breaks down his reason; he stays, in the childishness of insanity, in the home of his former happiness.
The Sultan enters Tetuan amid much outward pomp, but there is an undercurrent of treachery. A rumour of the coming of the Mahdi, Mohammed of Mequinez, is in the air, and beneath that, a feeling of something more—of the revolt which shall abet the Spaniards in their expected siege of the town. The Mahdi comes, and demands the freedom of Naomi, but without success. Leaving the palace, he decides to follow the plan at which he had before hesitated, the plan of co-operation with the Spaniards. This plot has been contrived by Ali, the boy whom Israel had trained from childhood; and he has gained the promise of support from all the principal townspeople.
Ali’s stout heart stuck at nothing. He was for having the Spaniards brought up to the gates of the town on the very night when the whole majesty and iniquity of Barbary would be gathered in one room; then, locking the entire kennel of dogs in the banqueting hall, firing the Kasbah and burning it to the ground, with all the Moorish tyrants inside of it like rats in a trap.
One danger attended this bold adventure, for Naomi’s person was within the Kasbah walls. To meet this peril Ali was himself to find his way into the dungeon, deliver Naomi, lock the Kasbah gate, and deliver up to another the key that should serve as a signal for the beginning of the great night’s work.
Also one difficulty attended it, for while Ali would be at the Kasbah there would be no one to bring up the Spaniards at the proper moment for the siege—no one in Tetuan on whom the strangers could rely not to lead them blindfold into a trap. To meet this difficulty Ali had gone in search of the Mahdi, revealed to him his plan, and asked him to help in the downfall of his master’s enemies by leading the Spaniards at the right moment to the gates that should be thrown open to receive them.
Evening falls, and Ali proceeds to carry out his plans. He passes into the palace, finds Naomi, and leads her to the Mahdi. Then he joins the Spaniards, but forgets to lock the doors of the banqueting hall; and when the town gates open to the enemy, news is carried to the palace and the guests scatter, most of them escaping. Ali, in his hatred, hunts the deserted palace for the Kaid, and in so doing meets with his death. The Kaid, having stayed behind to secure his money-bags, finds himself entrapped, and is stoned to death by the enraged townspeople.
Meanwhile the Mahdi has taken Naomi to her dying father; and over the deathbed of Israel they are betrothed. So ends The Scapegoat.
It will be seen that to carry out such a plot as this, with its almost miraculous crises, needs a high standard of literary skill. That the writer has succeeded there can be no doubt, for Naomi stands out, a creature of living flesh and blood, in whom nature and circumstance work to perfection through suffering. Israel’s character is followed in its development, with convincing truth: the sudden rush of joy that elates the man, the reaction that depresses him, the acts of mercy that soften him—all lead irrevocably to the final scene of a soul reconciled to its God. In this novel, as in all the best work of Mr Caine, the keynote is suffering, but suffering that of itself ennobles and purifies.
Whilst writing The Scapegoat, Mr Caine suffered severely from neurasthenia; his illness, of course, had effect upon his work, making it more sombre and gloomy than it might otherwise have been. When the work was published he received an urgent request from the Chief Rabbi asking him to visit Russia and write about the persecutions of the Jews in that country. He went in 1892, armed with signed documents from Lord Salisbury and the Chief Rabbi which were calculated to gain his admittance wherever he sought to go. The novelist was most warmly received wherever he went; but he was never able to make use of his experiences in the form of a novel. The subject, he felt, was altogether too vast for his experience: it would require years of study which he could not give. On his return to London, he lectured before the Jewish Workmen’s Club in the East End, “in a hall crammed to suffocation. I shall never forget that audience, the tears, the laughter, the applause, the wild embraces to which I was subjected by some of those poor exiles of humanity.”
In The Manxman, Hall Caine sounds the depths of humanity, and brings up the cry of living men and women to our ears. The sacred powerfulness of Love is his theme, the depths of spiritual degradation in which Love, twisted, distorted, makes its own punishment—the ennobling beauty of carrying out its great Unselfishness in simple fearlessness. And this is shown in the three characters, Kate, Pete and Philip, which, as they develop, touch every chord of sympathy in the reader’s gamut of sensibility.
Kate and Pete are children of one generation. Life is theirs and the light of the sun; yesterday has no hold over them, neither has to-morrow. Philip is the aristocrat, knowing his father’s, and his father’s father, heavy with the knowledge of their follies and sins; the world calls to him, for him there is a great To-morrow. Into the complexity of his nature comes love—love for a girl who is “of the people”—Kate; and the alternate yielding to and resisting his love makes the tragedy of the three lives.
The scene is laid entirely in the Isle of Man. Manx characteristics, humours, eccentricities and pathos making up the atmosphere so exclusively that when we are introduced for the moment to an assemblage chiefly English, we feel ourselves to be in a foreign element.
Philip Christian is brought up by his aunt, who in dread lest the principal weakness of their house should appear in him, makes it her task to keep in his remembrance the misery of his father’s life, who, in marrying beneath him, ruined his career and lost his self-respect. We are carried through Philip’s childhood with its love for little peasant Pete, until, with Pete’s child-sweetheart, Kate, the miller’s daughter, the three stand together on the borderland of the mystery of manhood and womanhood. Then Pete, leaving Manxland to seek a fortune which shall make him acceptable in the eyes of Kate’s parents, commits his sweetheart to Philip’s care and toils his youth away in South Africa. Philip in his rôle of protector and letter-carrier, visits the inn of Sulby, Kate’s home, now frequently, now infrequently, as his hidden love for Kate or the thought of treason to his friend surges uppermost. And Kate’s child-love for Pete fades, passes into woman’s passion for Philip. Understanding nothing of Philip’s feelings, but knowing his love for her, and caring for nothing else, she rebels at his silence and sometimes consciously, sometimes unconsciously, uses all her power to tempt him to break it.
After the lapse of some months, in which Philip had not been seen at Sulby, she wrote him a letter. It was to say how anxious she had been at the length of time since she had last heard from Pete, and to ask if he had any news to relieve her fears. The poor little lie was written in a trembling hand which shook honestly enough, but from the torment of other feelings.
Philip answered the letter in person. Something had been speaking to him day and night, like the humming of a top, finding him pretexts on which to go; but now he had to make excuses for staying so long away. It was evening. Kate was milking, and he went out to her in the cowhouse.
“We began to think we were to see no more of you,” she said, over the rattle of the milk in the pail.
“I’ve—I’ve been ill,” said Philip.
The rattle died to a thin hiss. “Very ill?” she asked.
“Well, no—not seriously,” he answered.
“I never once thought of that,” she said. “Something ought to have told me. I’ve been reproaching you, too.”
Philip felt ashamed of his subterfuge, but yet more ashamed of the truth; so he leaned against the door and watched in silence. The smell of hay floated down from the loft, and the odour of the cow’s breath came in gusts as she turned her face about. Kate sat on the milking-stool close by the ewer, and her head, on which she wore a sun-bonnet, she leaned against the cow’s side.
“No news of Pete, then? No?” she said.
“No,” said Philip.
Kate dug her head deeper in the cow, and muttered, “Dear Pete! So simple, so natural.”
“He is,” said Philip.
“So good-hearted, too.”
“Yes.”
“And such a manly fellow—any girl might like him,” said Kate.
“Indeed, yes,” said Philip.
There was silence again, and two pigs which had been snoring on the manure heap outside began to snort their way home. Kate turned her head so that the crown of the sun-bonnet was toward Philip, and said,—
“Oh, dear! Can there be anything so terrible as marrying somebody you don’t care for?”
“Nothing so bad,” said Philip.
The mouth of the sun-bonnet came round. “Yes, there’s one thing worse, Philip.”
“No?”
“Not having married somebody you do,” said Kate, and the milk rattled like hail.
Kate began to hate the very name of Pete. She grew angry with Philip also. Why couldn’t he guess? Concealment was eating her heart out. The next time she saw Philip, he passed her in the market-place on the market-day, as she stood by the tipped-up gig, selling her butter. There was a chatter of girls all round as he bowed and went on. This vexed her, and she sold out at a penny a pound less, got the horse from the “Saddle,” and drove home early.
On the way to Sulby she overtook Philip and drew up. He was walking to Kirk Michael to visit the old Deemster, who was ill. Would he not take a lift? He hesitated, half declined, and then got into the gig. As she settled herself comfortably after this change, he trod on the edge of her dress. At that he drew quickly away as if he had trodden on her foot.
She laughed, but she was vexed; and when he got down at “The Manx Fairy,” saying he might call on his way back in the evening, she had no doubt Grannie would be glad to see him.
News comes of Pete’s death, and Kate, knowing nothing of the world’s share in Philip’s heart, thinks the only barrier removed. And, for a few hot, passionate hours Philip does give way, only to be dragged back at the heels of his ambition, under the shield of Pete’s home-coming and the falsity of the rumour of his death. He tells Kate that marriage with her would be treasonable to Pete, more than that, that neither he nor she can in honour marry either each other or anyone else. In her despair, Kate falls back upon stratagem. She sees Pete, allows herself to be considered his betrothed, and encourages rather than prevents the wedding preparations. Still Philip gives no sign, and Kate is married without fully realising what she is doing; but, on awakening to her new life, she sets herself the easy though bitter task of keeping Pete happy and ignorant. Philip absents himself for some months, and then, returning to his native island and the career he had laid out for himself, becomes, on Pete’s happy insistence, an occasional inmate of the latter’s cottage. A child is born, and Kate finds it impossible to keep from Philip the knowledge that it is his. She tells him, and thence ensues the tragedy of Pete’s life.
“You are right,” he said, with his head bent down. “You cannot live here any longer. This life of deception must end.”
“Then you will take me away, Philip?”
“I must, God forgive me, I must. I thought it would be sin. But that was long ago. It will be punishment. If I had known before—and I have been coming here time and again—looking on his happiness—but if I had once dreamt—and then only an hour ago—the oath at its baptism—O God!”
Her tears were flowing again, but a sort of serenity had fallen on her now.
“Forgive me,” she whispered. “I tried to keep it to myself—”
“You could not keep it; you ought never to have kept it so long; the finger of God Himself ought to have burnt it out of you.”
He spoke harshly, and she felt pain; but there was a secret joy as well.
“I am ruining you, Philip,” she said, leaning over him.
“We are both drifting to ruin, Katherine,” he answered hoarsely. He was an abandoned hulk, with anchorage gone and no hand at the helm—broken, blind, rolling to destruction.
“I can offer you nothing, Kate, nothing but a hidden life, a life in the dark. If you come to me you will leave a husband who worships you for one to whom your life can never be joined. You will exchange a life of respect by the side of a good man for a life of humiliation, a life of shame. How can it be otherwise now? It is too late, too late!”
Kate goes, and Pete crushes his grief to defend her honour. The lies he invents, that she has gone to visit his uncle in Liverpool, the letters he writes to himself, purporting to have come from her, the wiles he practises to deceive the neighbours—all intensify his terrible sorrow.
“A letter for you, Mr Quilliam.”
Hearing these words, Pete, his eyes half shut as if dozing in the sunset, wakened himself with a look of astonishment.
“What? For me, is it? A letter, you say? Aw, I see,” taking it and turning it in his hand, “just a line from the mistress, it’s like. Well, well! A letter for me, if you plaze,” and he laughed like a man much tickled.
He was in no hurry. He rammed his dead pipe with his finger, lit it again, sucked it, made it quack, drew a long breath, and then said quietly, “Let’s see what’s her news at all.”
He opened the letter leisurely, and read bits of it aloud, as if reading to himself, but holding the postman while he did so in idle talk on the other side of the gate. “And how are you living to-day, Mr Kelly? Aw, h’m—getting that much better it’s extraordinary—Yes, a nice evenin’, very, Mr Kelly, nice, nice—that happy and comfortable and Uncle Joe is that good—heavy bag at you to-night, you say? Aw, heavy, yes, heavy—love to Grannie and all inquiring friends—nothing, Mr Kelly, nothing—just a scribe of a line, thinking a man might be getting unaisy. She needn’t, though—she needn’t. But chut! It’s nothing. Writing a letter is nothing to her at all. Why, she’d be knocking that off, bless you,” holding out half a sheet of paper, “in less than an hour and a half. Truth enough, sir.” Then, looking at the letter again, “What’s this, though? P.N. They’re always putting a P.N. at the bottom of a letter, Mr Kelly. P.N.—I was expecting to be home before, but I wouldn’t get away for Uncle Joe taking me to the theaytres. Ha, ha, ha! A mighty boy is Uncle Joe. But, Mr Kelly, Mr Kelly,” with a solemn look, “not a word of this to Cæsar!”
Pete must write back, and orthography not being his strong point, Philip must be his secretary.
“Then maybe you’ll write me a letter?”
Philip nodded his head and returned, his mouth tightly closed, sat down at the table, and took up the pen.
“What is it?” he asked.
“Am I to give you the words, Phil? Yes? Well, if you won’t be thinking mane—”
Pete charged his pipe out of his waistcoat pocket, and began to dictate: “Dear wife.”
At that Philip gave an involuntary cry.
“Aw, best to begin proper, you know. ‘Dear wife,’” said Pete again.
Philip made a call on his resolution, and put the words down. His hand felt cold; his heart felt frozen to the core. Pete lit up, and walked to and fro as he dictated his letter.
The letter is finished, and Philip in his misery returns to Kate, who persuades him to lead Pete to believe her dead. After doing this, Philip’s moral degradation seems to be complete, and Kate, feeling herself to have been the cause of his ruin, leaves him. To outward appearance he climbs higher and higher in his professional career, while Pete sinks into poverty. Still the two men are friends. The child is ill; between them they nurse it, and Pete begins to see its resemblance to Philip. Little by little the truth comes to him—from the lips of a drunkard, he hears that Kate has been seen in London. Returning to his now poverty-stricken cottage, he finds the wanderer bending over the cradle of her child. In his stupefaction he watches her as she leaves the house to end her misery, only to be rescued and brought face to face with Philip in his office of Deemster. Burning for vengeance, Pete seeks Philip—to meet him as he is borne home unconscious from the courthouse, and the sight wipes out all feelings but those of love and friendship in the great-hearted man. All his thought is for the happiness of Philip and Kate—to restore Philip to health, to resign Kate, to leave the island, after giving up the child that he has tended with so much love. And all that is best in Philip’s nature rises, strengthened by its suffering. As the crown of his brilliant youth, he is offered the Governorship of the island; before the assembled court he refuses it, and quitting the post of honour to which he has already climbed, acknowledges Kate, setting out with her, there among the people that have known them from childhood, to build up a new life on the ruins of the old.
Although the story of The Manxman throbs with sadness, yet the unconscious humour of the minor characters, depicted as they are with tender appreciation, gives to the book a completeness which is perhaps lacking in Hall Caine’s earlier novels. The quaintnesses of Grannie, of Cæsar, of Pete himself, do much to sustain the spirit of optimism, that, rising triumphant in the end, gives to the story its undying beauty. To the hearts of all who read, the Manx people must come closer, the hope of all humanity shine brighter, because of the evident faithfulness of this picture of human life.
The first part of The Manxman was written in Greeba Castle, Isle of Man, where Mr Caine temporarily resided. He afterwards removed to Peel, and did not return to Greeba Castle until it was his own property.
In 1895 he visited America, where he was enthusiastically received. He was fêted, interviewed, bombarded at his hotel, and entertained almost to the point of extinction. It was said in one American journal that the American public had not been so deeply interested by the visit of an English author since the visit of Dickens many years before. He always speaks of his visits to America with the deepest gratitude, for the distinguished attention and overflowing kindness always shown to him. There is no warmer admirer of America and American institutions.
His visit to America was undertaken on behalf of the Authors’ Society, in connection with difficulties that had arisen with regard to Canadian copyright. His mission was highly successful, and on his return to the Isle of Man his greeting was as hearty as that which he had enjoyed in America. He received the following characteristic letter from “T. E. B.”
“Here’s a health to thee, Hall Caine! I suppose you are by this time in Peel, and this most interesting episode in your life attains its close.
“You must be fearfully tired, and I will not weary you with a long letter. I hope Mrs Caine has thoroughly enjoyed the busy, exciting weeks. What you both need now is REST. Take it, and plenty of it! Of course, I long to see you. But I can wait, and only write this to bid you a hearty welcome, and assure you of the great happiness with which I have heard of your return.—Ever yours,
“T. E. Brown.”
“Ramsey, December 13, ’95.”
This seems to me the fitting place in which to insert a hitherto unpublished article written by Mr Hall Caine on hearing of Mr Brown’s death. Mr Caine was on his way to Rome when the news reached him that his friend had died suddenly at Clifton.
Three or four lines in a Paris newspaper, meagre in their details, full of errors, but nevertheless only too obviously authentic, bring me the saddest news that has come my way these many years. I ought to have been prepared for it by the long illness he passed through, by the manifest lessening of his vitality month by month, and even week by week, by the partial eclipse of certain faculties (such as memory) once so vigorous, and above all by his frequent and touching warnings. But the end has come upon me, at least, with startling, terrible and overwhelming suddenness, and it adds something to the pain of this first moment of grief that while the devoted friend and comrade of many years is being taken home I am myself far away from it, confined by a passing indisposition to a little room in a foreign city.
But the splendid soul who has gone from us will have troops of still older friends to stand about his grave. The Isle of Man will be in mourning now for one who loved her and her people with a love that was almost more deep and disinterested than that of any other of her sons. This is no little thing to say, but there is no Manxman or Manxwoman who will question it. Without any material interest in the welfare and prosperity of his native land, with few (alas, how few!) intellectual associates there, parting from the friends and the ways of life when the burden of his work was done, he returned to the Isle of Man because he loved it, because his affections were wrapped up in it, because it was linked with the tenderest memories of childhood and the fondest recollections of youth, because the graves of his kindred were there, and he had heard the mysterious call that comes to a man’s heart from the sire that gave him birth. Five years only were given him in which to indulge this love of home, but how much he got into them! How he spent himself for the people, without a thought of himself, without a suspicion of the difference between them. If only a handful of his countrymen called to him he came. He was at everybody’s service, everybody’s command. Distance was as nothing even to his failing strength, time was as nothing, labour was as nothing, and the penalties he paid he did not count.
The time has been when his friends have thought that the island did not appreciate all this, did not realise it to the full, did not rightly apprehend the sacrifices that were being made, or the generous disproportion of the man and the work, but there can be no question of that kind now. Manxmen and Manxwomen know to-day that the island has lost the greatest man who was ever born to it, the finest brain, the noblest heart, the grandest nature that we can yet call Manx! We do not point to his scholarship, though that was splendid, or to the place he won in life, though it was high and distinguished, or yet to his books, though they were full of the fire of genius, racy of the soil he loved the best. None of these answers entirely to the idea we have of the man we knew and love so well. But the sparkling, brilliant soul, so tender, so strong, so humorous, so easily touched to sympathy, so gloriously gifted, this is the ideal that answers to our recollections of the first Manxman of this or any age.
When I pass from the island’s loss to my own, I must be one of a little group who, though not within the circle of his family, can hardly trust themselves to speak. Sitting here, in this foreign city, while my countrymen, for all I know, are doing the last offices for the truest friend man ever had, I feel how much the island has lost for me in losing him. The little paragraph in Le Figaro fell on me this morning like a thundercloud from a cloudless sky, but more than once or twice or thrice during the past few months the thought has come over me of what the island would be without him. It came to me at the moment before I left home, and the last letter I wrote there was written to him, saying Good-bye and God bless you, and such other words of farewell as one sends to one’s friend on the eve of a long journey. But he has taken the longer journey of the two, and when the time comes to return home and I see our beautiful mountains from the sea, I don’t know what it will be to remember he is there no longer. During the past ten years I have leaned on him as on an elder brother, a wiser, stronger, purer, serener nature, on whom I could rely for solace and counsel and support. I did nothing without consulting him, and took no serious step without his sanction. My stories were told to him first, and he knew all my plans and intentions. If I have done anything that deserves to be remembered it is only myself that can know how much that is good in it is but a reflection from the light of his genius. He was the ablest appreciator, the most enthusiastic admirer, and the most inspiring of critics. To my moods of depression he brought the buoyancy of hope, to my weakness of heart the strength of his spirit, sustaining me amid the despondency of failure, and the no less real penalties of success. It was a familiar thought to me at Greeba that I could take the train to Ramsey four or five times a day, and within an hour I could be with him. And now he is gone, and I can go to him no more.
Mr Caine received the following letter from the late W. E. Gladstone shortly after the publication of The Manxman.
“Dollis Hill, N.W.,
“July 18, 1894.
“My Dear Sir,—I thank you very much for the gift of your work and I hope the time will not be long before the condition of my eyes will permit me to peruse it.
“It is very pleasant to me to find that you have again applied your great talents to illustrating the history and character of that interesting people the Manxmen.—I remain, my dear sir, faithfully yours,
“W. E. Gladstone.”
He followed this letter up by another, written on December 4, 1894, from Hawarden Castle, Chester, in which he says: “Though I am no believer in divorce, I have read your Manxman with great admiration of the power which gives such true life to Manx character and tradition.”
With the publication of The Christian began a new episode in Hall Caine’s career. Hitherto he had been welcomed on all sides; praise was literally heaped upon him. The critics had repeated these eulogies each time a new book of Hall Caine’s was put into their hands. First, The Deemster; next The Bondman; then The Scapegoat. But The Christian changed all this. The critics had grown tired of praise. Besides, Mr Caine had dared to criticise the hypocrisies of modern society. So the critics turned about, and flatly contradicted nearly everything they had said before. One pointed out that Mr Caine had described a certain garment as red, instead of, say, green; another was highly indignant because he chose to think the novelist had said a deacon could be made bishop without passing through the intermediate state of priesthood; and another cried out because the character of a purely fictitious nurse was described as being not particularly moral. I have far more respect for the reviewer of books than the average literary person has, but I must confess his methods are sometimes inexplicable. This change of attitude, amusing as it was in many ways, must have been a matter of some surprise to Mr Caine. But there were explanations—the novelist had deserted the Isle of Man and come to London; he had brought Glory Quayle, fearless, healthy, beautiful, ambitious, from Manxland and put her down in a London hospital. By contact with the metropolis she is, in many ways, spoiled—vulgarised. And not only that: London was shown as a terrible place, the rich trampling on the poor, the immoral living on the moral, and the strong placing their feet on the necks of the weak. This fearless attack of Mr Caine’s was the chief cause of the change of attitude of the critics. He had stated his case, and in the opinion of his admirers proved it up to the hilt; and certain of the reviewers, imagining that the cap was made for them, wore it, at the same time declaring that it was ten sizes too large.
Glory Quayle has not been long in London when she is taken to the theatre by her friends Drake and Lord Robert Ure. The play was Much Ado About Nothing, and the actors Henry Irving and Ellen Terry. It is Glory’s first visit to the theatre, and her imagination runs riot in utter bewilderment.
But the fourth act witnessed Glory’s final vanquishment. When she found the scene was the inside of a church, and they were to be present at a wedding, she could not keep still on her seat for delight; but when the marriage was stopped, and Claudio uttered his denunciation of Hero, she said it was just like him, and it would serve him right if nobody believed him.
“Hush!” said somebody near them.
“But they are believing him,” said Glory, quite audibly.
“Hush! hush!” came from many parts of the theatre.
“Well, that’s shameful—her father, too—” began Glory.
“Hush, Glory!” whispered Drake; but she had risen to her feet, and when Hero fainted and fell she uttered a cry.
“What a girl!” whispered Polly. “Sit down—everybody’s looking!”
“It’s only a play, you know,” whispered Drake; and Glory sat down and said,—
“Well, yes, of course, it’s only a play. Did you suppose—”
But she was lost in a moment. Beatrice and Benedick were alone in the church now; and when Beatrice said, “Kill Claudio,” Glory leapt up again and clapped her hands. But Benedick would not kill Claudio, and it was the last straw of all. That wasn’t what she called being a great actor, and it was shameful to sit and listen to such plays. Lots of disgraceful scenes happened in life, but people didn’t come to the theatre to see such things, and she would go.
“How ridiculous you are!” said Polly; but Glory was out in the corridor, and Drake was going after her.
She came back at the beginning of the fifth act with red eyes and confused smiles, looking very much ashamed. From that moment onward she cried a good deal, but gave no other sign until the green curtain came down at the end, when she said,—
“It’s a wonderful thing! To make people forget it’s not true is the most wonderful thing in the world!”
But Drake and Lord Robert are merely friends; it is the Reverend John Storm whom she loves. He has “a well-formed nose, a powerful chin, and full lips. … His complexion is dark, almost swarthy, and there is a certain look of the gipsy in his big golden-brown eyes with their long black lashes.” Her love is returned, but he has forsworn the world, and she is longing to become an actress, to have the world at her feet, applauding her, and showering on her all the praise and glory at their command. Which is it to be?—Love without the World?—or the World without Love? She cannot decide. Meanwhile she has left the hospital, and John Storm has entered a Brotherhood in the heart of London, and taken the necessary vows. Meanwhile, Glory is passing through strange vicissitudes, keeping body and soul together by different occupations, serving in a tobacconist’s shop, and selling programmes at a theatre. But she writes cheery letters to the old people at home in the Isle of Man, making them believe that she is happy and well, and that the world is a very beautiful place to live in. Here is one of her letters:—
“But it isn’t nonsense, my dear grandfather, and I really have left the hospital. I don’t know if it was the holiday and the liberty or what, but I felt like that young hawk at Glenfaba—do you remember it?—the one that was partly snared, and came dragging the trap on to the lawn by a string caught round its leg. I had to cut it away—I had to, I had to! But you mustn’t feel one single moment’s uneasiness about me. An able-bodied woman like Glory Quayle doesn’t starve in a place like London. Besides, I am provided for already, so you see my bow abides in strength. … You mustn’t pay too much attention to my lamentations about being compelled by Nature to wear a petticoat. Things being so arranged in this world, I’ll make them do. But it does make one’s head swim and one’s wings droop to see how hard Nature is on a woman compared to a man. Unless she is a genius or a jellyfish, there seems to be only one career open to her, and that is a lottery, with marriage for the prizes, and for the blanks—oh dear, oh dear! Not that I have anything to complain of, and I hate to be so sensitive. Life is wonderfully interesting, and the world is such an amusing place that I have no patience with people who run away from it, and if I were a man… But wait, only wait, good people.”
This is but one out of many delicious letters that Glory writes to her grandfather and aunts. Meanwhile she makes a beginning, singing at a music-hall, and then in society drawing-rooms. But she is rarely happy; she is hampered by being only a woman. Difficulties are placed in her way, and vice lurks at every unsuspected corner waiting to pounce out upon her. But eventually she succeeds. She becomes a famous music-hall star, and John Storm has left the monastery. He is consumed with love for Glory—and she, she cannot give up the world she is just beginning to conquer. He visits the music-hall at which she is performing, and a day or two after he visits Glory.
“Glory,” he said, “if you are ashamed of this life, believe me it is not a right one.”
“Ashamed? Why should I be ashamed? Everybody is saying how proud I should be.”
She spoke feverishly, and by a sudden impulse she plucked up the paper, but as suddenly let it drop again, for, looking at his grave face, her little fame seemed to shrivel up. “But give a dog a bad name, you know… You were there on Monday night. Did you see anything, now—anything in the performance—”
“I saw the audience, Glory; that was enough for me. It is impossible for a girl to live long in an atmosphere like that and be a good woman. Yes, my child, impossible! God forbid that I should sit in judgment on any man, still less on any woman; but the women of the music-hall, do they remain good women? Poor souls! they are placed in a position so false that it would require extraordinary virtue not to become false along with it! And the whiter the soul that is dragged through that—that mire, the more the defilement. The audiences at such places don’t want the white soul, they don’t want the good woman; they want the woman who has tasted of the tree of good and evil. You can see it in their faces, and hear it in their laughter, and measure it in their applause. Oh, I’m only a priest, but I’ve seen these places all the world over, and I know what I’m saying, and I know it’s true, and you know it’s true, Glory—”
Glory leapt up from the table, and her eyes seemed to emit fire. “I know it’s hard and cruel and pitiless, and since you were there on Monday, and saw how kind the audience was to me, it’s personal and untrue as well.”
But her voice broke, and she sat down again, and said in another tone, “But, John, it’s nearly a year, you know, since we saw each other last, and isn’t it a pity? Tell me, where are you living now? Have you made your plans for the future?…”
But it is of no use. Glory cannot give up her nights of applause; her increasing fame is the very breath of her nostrils, and though love calls in a clear, compelling voice, yet she pays it no heed, but devotes all her energy to her profession, and so the tale progresses. In the course of time, John Storm goes to live in the heart of the slums, to work among the poorest of the poor. His mind and soul are in his work, but his heart is ever with Glory. She becomes more and more successful, and once, on a visit to the races, she meets John Storm. She is driving with friends, he walking by the roadside. She is flushed with joy—radiant with happiness, but he is torn and bleeding with love. His Glory is in danger; success and love of the world are destroying her soul. What can he do to save her? Nothing, nothing! Yes, but there is one thing he can do. He imagines himself called by God to kill her, for only by that means can her soul be saved from everlasting damnation.
She laughed, though there was nothing to laugh at, and down at the bottom of her heart she was afraid. But she began moving about, trying to make herself easy, and pretending not to be alarmed.
“Well, won’t you help me off with my cloak? No? Then I must do it for myself, I suppose.”
Throwing off her outer things, she walked across the room and sat down on the sofa near to where he stood.
“How tired I am! It’s been such a day! Once is enough for that sort of thing, though. Now, where do you think I’ve been?”
“I know where you’ve been, Glory—I saw you there.”
“You? Really? Then, perhaps, it was you who … Was it you in the hollow?”
“Yes.”
He had moved to avoid contact with her… Then the wave of tenderness came sweeping over him again, and he felt as if the ground were slipping beneath his feet.
“Will you say your prayers to-night, Glory?” he said.
“Why not?” she answered, trying to laugh.
“Then why not say them now, my child?”
“But why?”
He had made her tremble all over; but she got up, walked straight across to him, looked intently into his face a moment, and then said, “What is the matter? Why are you so pale? You are not well, John!”
“No; I am not well either,” he answered.
“John, John, what does it all mean? What are you thinking of? Why have you come here to-night?”
“To save your soul, my child. It is in great, great peril…”
“Am I, then, so very wicked? Surely heaven doesn’t want me yet, John. Some day, I trust … I hope—”
“To-night, to-night, now!”
Then her cheeks turned pale and her lips became white and bloodless.
Trembling from head to foot, she stepped up to him again, and began softly and sweetly, trying to explain herself. “John, dear John, if you see me with certain people and in certain places, you must not think from that—”
But he broke in upon her with a torrent of words… Out of a dry and husky throat John Storm answered, “I would rather die a thousand, thousand deaths than touch a hair of your head, Glory… But God’s will is His will,” he added, quivering and trembling.
“We are of different natures, John, that is the real trouble between us now, and always has been. But, whether we like it or not, our lives are wrapped up together for all that. We can’t do without each other. God makes men and women like that sometimes.”
There was a piteous smile on his face. “I never doubted your feeling for me, Glory—no, not even when you hurt me most.”
“And if God makes us so—”
“I shall never forgive myself, Glory, though heaven itself forgives me!”
“If God makes us love each other in spite of every barrier that divides us—”
“I shall never know another happy hour in this life, Glory, never!”
“Then why should we struggle? It is our fate, and we cannot conquer it. You can’t give up your life, John, and I can’t give up mine, but our hearts are one.”
Her voice sang like music in his ears… She was fighting for her life. He started to his feet and came to her with his teeth set and his pupils fixed. “This is only the devil tempting me. Say your prayers, child!”
He grasped her left hand with his right. His grip almost overtaxed her strength and she felt faint. In an explosion of emotion the insane frenzy for destroying had come upon him again. He longed to give his feeling physical expression.
“Say them, say them!” he cried. “God sent me to kill you, Glory.”
A sensation of terror and of triumph came over her at once. She half closed her eyes and threw her other arm around his neck. “No, but to love me… Kiss me, John.”
Then a cry came from him like that of a man flinging himself over a precipice. He threw his arms about her, and her disordered hair fell over his face.
But these two unhappy lovers are only married when John is on his deathbed. He is fatally injured in a riot, and though “they could not come together in this world,” yet they are “united for all eternity on the threshold of the next.” So ends one of the most enthralling of Hall Caine’s books—a book that will be read as long as men and women care to hear about the love of a noble-hearted, fearless woman for a pure and high-minded man.
This last great novel of Hall Caine’s is not a picture of Life; it is Life. His characters are more real than those with whom we meet and talk to every day of our lives; for not only do we hear them speak, but we see into the thoughts of their hearts, and sometimes catch a glimpse of their very souls. It may be urged that real men and women are not so passionately pure and self-sacrificing as David Rossi and Roma, but they who speak thus forget that the world has produced as many saints, martyrs and heroes, as blackguards and criminals. David Rossi is a hero for the sake of his country, for the sake of the poor and oppressed; Roma, purified, ennobled, and uplifted by Love, is a martyr for the sake of her betrothed. They are as passionate as Romeo and Juliet, Paolo and Francesca; and as pure as Dante and Beatrice.
The mise-en-scène of the story is, of course, Rome—Rome with its grandeur side by side with its misery; its ambitious men and fallen women; its Vatican, its theatres, its ruins and its shame. The time is the first months of the present century. The City is made to live; we breathe its air and walk its streets. David Rossi is a member of the Chamber of Deputies, a friend of the people, a conspirator, a hero; all his actions are for the material and spiritual elevation of the down-trodden and oppressed, and this book is the story of the martyrdom he has to undergo, and of his eventual success. This is his charter, a framed manuscript copy of which he keeps hanging by his bedside:—