Kitabı oku: «The Bondman: A New Saga», sayfa 5

CHAPTER VI.
The Little World of Boy and Girl

Three days later the bad lottery of Liza Killey's life and death was played out and done. On the morning of the fourth day, some time before the dawn, though the mists were rolling in front of it, Stephen Orry rose in his silent hut in Port-y-Vullin, lit a fire, cooked a hasty meal, wakened, washed, dressed and fed little Sunlocks, then nailed up the door from the outside, lifted the child to his shoulders, and turned his face towards the south. When he passed through Laxey the sun stood high, and the dust of the roads was being driven in their faces. It was long past noon when he came to Douglas, and at a little shop by the harbor-bridge he bought a penny worth of barley cake, gave half to Sunlocks, put the other half into his pocket, and pushed on with longer strides. The twilight was deepening when he reached Castletown, and there he inquired for the house of the Governor. It was pointed out to him, and through heavy iron gates, up a winding carriage-way lined with elms and bordered with daffodils, he made towards the only door he saw.

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. Stephen Orry asked for the Governor. The footman looked out with surprise at the bedraggled man with the child, and asked who he was. Stephen told his name. The footman asked where he came from. Stephen answered. The footman asked what he came for. Stephen did not reply. Was it for meal? Stephen shook his head. Or money? Stephen said no. With another glance of surprise the footman shut the door, saying the Governor was at dinner.

Stephen Orry lowered the little one from his shoulder, sat on the bench in the porch, placed the child on his knee, and gave him the remainder of the barley cake. All the weary journey through he had been patient and cheerful, the brave little man, never once crying aloud at the pains of his long ride, never once whimpering at the dust that blinded him, or the heat that made him thirsty. Holding on at his father's cap, he had laughed and sung even with the channels still wet on his cheeks where the big drops had rolled from his eyes to his chin.

Little Sunlocks munched at his barley cake in silence, and in the gathering darkness Stephen watched him as he ate. All at once a silvery peal of child's laughter came from within the house, and little Sunlocks dropped the barley cake from his mouth to listen. Again it came; and the grimy face of little Sunlocks lightened to a smile, and that of Stephen Orry lowered and fell.

"Wouldn't you like to live in a house like this, little Sunlocks?"

"Yes – with my father."

Just then the dark door opened again, and the footman, with a taper in his hand, came out to light the lamp in the porch.

"What? Here still?" he said.

"I am; been waiting to see the Governor," Stephen Orry answered.

Then the footman went in, and told the Governor that a big man and a child were sitting in the porch, talking some foreign lingo together, and refusing to go away without seeing His Excellency.

"Bring them in," said the Governor.

Adam Fairbrother was at the dinner table, enveloped in tobacco clouds. His wife, Ruth, had drawn her chair aside that she might knit. Stephen Orry entered slowly with little Sunlocks by the hand.

"This is the person, your Excellency," said the footman.

"Come in, Stephen Orry," said the Governor.

Stephen Orry's face softened at that word of welcome. The footman's dropped and he disappeared.

Then Stephen told his errand. "I shall come to have give you something," he said, trying to speak in English.

Adam's wife raised her eyes and glanced over him. Adam himself laid down his pipe and held out his hand towards Sunlocks. But Stephen held the child back a moment and spoke again.

"It's all I shall have got to give," he said.

"What is it?" said Adam.

"The child," said Stephen, and passed little Sunlocks to Adam's outstretched hand.

At that Adam's wife dropped her knitting to her lap, but Stephen, seeing nothing of the amazement written in her face, went on in his broken words to tell them all – of his wife's life, her death, his own sore temptation, and the voice out of heaven that had called to him. And then with a moistened eye and a glance at Sunlocks, and in a lowered tone as if fearing the child might hear, he spoke of what he meant to do now – of how he would go back to the herrings, and maybe to sea, or perhaps down into the mines, but never again to Port-y-Vullin. And, because a lone man was no company for a child, and could not take a little one with him if he would, he had come to it at last that he must needs part with little Sunlocks, lending him, or maybe giving him, to someone he could trust.

"And so," he said, huskily, "I shall say to me often and often, 'The Governor is a good man and kind to me long, long ago, and I shall give little Sunlocks to him.'"

He had dropped his head into his breast as he spoke, and being now finished he stood fumbling his scraggy goatskin cap.

Then Adam's wife, who had listened in mute surprise, drew herself up, took a long breath, looked first at Stephen, then at Adam, then back at Stephen, and said in a bated whisper —

"Well! Did any living soul ever hear the like in this island before?"

Not rightly understanding what this might mean, poor Stephen looked back at her, in his weak, dazed way, but made her no answer.

"Children might be scarce," she said, and gave a little angry toss of her head.

Still the meaning of what she said had not worked its way through Stephen's slow wit, and he mumbled in his poor blundering fashion:

"He is all I have, ma'am."

"Lord-a-massy, man," she cried, sharply, "but we might have every child in the parish at your price."

Stephen's fingers now clutched at his cap, his parted lips quivered, and again he floundered out, stammering like an idiot:

"But I love him, ma'am, more nor all the world."

"Then I'll thank you to keep him," she answered, hotly; and after that there was dead silence for a moment.

In all Stephen's reckoning never once had he counted on this – that after he had brought himself to that sore pass, at which he could part with Sunlocks and turn his back on him, never more to be cheered by his sunny face and merry tongue, never again to be wakened by him in the morning, never to listen for his gentle breathing in the night, never to feed him and wash him, never to carry him shoulder high, any human creature could say no to him from thought of the little food he would eat or the little trouble he would ask.

Stephen stood a moment, with his poor, bewildered, stupefied face hung down and the great lumps surging hot in his throat, and then, without a word more, he stretched out his hand towards the child.

But all this time Adam had looked on with swimming eyes, and now he drew little Sunlocks yet closer between his knees, and said, quietly:

"Ruth, we are going to keep the little one. Two faggots will burn better than one, and this sweet boy will be company for our little Greeba."

"Adam," she cried, "haven't you children enough of your own, but you must needs take other folks'?"

"Ruth," he answered, "I have six sons, and if they had been twelve, perhaps, I should have been better pleased, so they had all been as strong and hearty; and I have one daughter, and if there had been two it would have suited me as well."

Now the rumor of Stephen Orry's former marriage, which Liza had so zealously set afoot, had reached Government House by way of Lague, and while Stephen had spoken Adam had remembered the story, and thinking of it he had smoothed the head of little Sunlocks with a yet tenderer hand. But Adam's wife, recalling it now, said warmly:

"Maybe you think it wise to bring up your daughter with the merry-begot of any ragabash that comes prowling along from goodness knows where."

"Ruth," said Adam, as quietly as before, "we are going to keep the little one," and at that his wife rose and walked out of the room.

The look of bewilderment had not yet been driven from Stephen Orry's face by the expression of joy that had followed it, and now he stood glancing from Adam to the door and from the door to Adam, as much as to say that if his coming had brought strife he was ready to go. But the Governor waved his hand, as though following his thought and dismissing it. Then lifting the child to his knee, he asked his name, whereupon the little man himself answered promptly that his name was Sunlocks.

"Michael," said Stephen Orry; "but I call him Sunlocks."

"Michael Sunlocks – a good name too. And what is his age?"

"Four years."

"Just the age of my own darling," said the Governor; and setting the child on his feet he rang the bell and said, "Bring little Greeba here."

A minute later a little brown-haired lassie with ruddy cheeks and laughing lips and sparkling brown eyes, came racing into the room. She was in her nightgown, ready for bed, her feet were bare, and under one arm she carried a doll.

"Come here, Greeba veg," said the Governor, and he brought the children face to face, and then stood aside to watch them.

They regarded each other for a moment with the solemn aloofness that only children know, twisting and curling aside, eyeing one another furtively, neither of them seeming so much as to see the other, yet neither seeing anything or anybody else. This little freak of child manners ran its course, and then Sunlocks, never heeding his dusty pinafore, or the little maiden's white nightgown, but glancing down at her bare feet, and seeming to remember that when his own were shoeless someone carried him, stepped up to her, put his arms about her, and with lordly, masculine superiority of strength proceeded to lift her bodily in his arms. The attempt was a disastrous failure, and in another moment the two were rolling over each other on the floor; a result that provoked the little maiden's direst wrath and the blank astonishment of little Sunlocks.

But before the tear-drop of vexation was yet dry on Greeba's face, or the silent bewilderment had gone from the face of Sunlocks, she was holding out her doll in a sidelong way in his direction, as much as to say he might look at it if he liked, only he must not think that she was asking him; and he, nothing loth for her fierce reception of his gallant tender, was devouring the strange sight with eyes full of awe.

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 teapot. In three minutes more two little bodies were sitting on their haunches, two little tongues were cackling and gobbling, the room was rippling over with a merry twitter, the strange serious air was gone from the little faces, the little man and the little maid were far away already in the little world of childhood, and all the universe beside was gone, and lost, and forgotten.

Stephen Orry had looked down from his great height at the encounter on the floor, and his dull, slow eyes had filled, for in some way that he could not follow there had come to him at that sweet sight the same deep yearning that had pained him in the boat. And seeing how little Sunlocks was rapt, Stephen struggled hard with himself and said, turning to the Governor:

"Now's the time for me to slip away."

Then they left the room, unnoticed of the busy people on the floor.

Two hours later, after little Sunlocks, having first missed his father, his life's friend and only companion, had cried a little, and soon ceased to cry out of joy of his new comradeship, and had then nestled down his sunny head on the pillow where little Greeba's curly poll also lay, with the doll between him and her, and some marbles in his hand to comfort his heart, Stephen Orry, unable to drag himself away, was tramping the dark roads about the house. He went off at length, and was seen no more at Castletown for many years thereafter.

Now this adoption of Little Sunlocks into the family of the Governor was an incident that produced many effects, and the first of them was the serious estrangement of Adam and his wife. 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 Manxwoman, but came of a family of French refugees, settled as advocates on 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 and speculation. But Adam had disappointed her ambition at the outset by dropping into the ruts of a homely life. Only once had she lifted him out of them, and that was after twenty years, when the whim and wisdom of the Duke had led him to visit Lague; and then her impatience, her importunity, her fuss and flurry, and appeals in the name of their children, had made him Governor. Meantime, she had borne him six sons in rapid succession during the first ten years of marriage, and after an interval of ten other years she had borne a daughter. Four and twenty years the good man had lived at peace with her, drained of his serenity by her restlessness, and of his unselfishness by her self-seeking. With a wise contempt of trifles, he had kept peace over little things, and the island had long amused itself about his pliant disposition, but now that for the first time he proved unyielding, the island said he was wrong. To adopt a child against the wish of his wife, to take into his family the waif of a drunken woman and an idle foreigner, was an act of stubborn injustice and folly. But Adam held to his purpose, and Michael Sunlocks remained at Government House.

A year passed, and Sunlocks was transformed. No one would have recognized him. The day his father brought him he had been pale under the dust that covered him; he had been timid and had trembled, and his eyes had looked startled, as though he had already been beaten and cuffed and scolded. A child, like a flower, takes the color of the air it breathes, and Sunlocks had not been too young to feel the grimy cold of the atmosphere in which he had been born. But now he had opened like a rose to the sun, and his cheeks were ruddy and his eyes were bright. He had become plump and round and sturdy, and his hair had curled around his head and grown yet warmer of hue, like the plumes of a bird in the love season. And, like a bird, he chirruped the long day through, skipping and tripping and laughing and singing all over the house, idolized by some, beloved by many, caressed by all, even winning upon Mrs. Fairbrother herself, who, whatever her objection to his presence, had not yet steeled herself against his sweetness.

Another year passed, and the children grew together – Sunlocks and Greeba, boy and girl, brother and sister – in the innocent communion of healthy childhood, with their little whims, their little ways, their little tiffs, and with the little sorrows that overcast existence. And Sunlocks picked up his English words as fast as he picked shells on the beach, gathering them on his tongue as he gathered the shells into his pinafore, dropping them and picking them up again.

Yet another year went by, and then over the luminous innocence of the children there crept the strange trail of sex, revealing already their little differences of character, and showing what they were to be in days to come – the little maid, quick, urgent, impulsive and vain; the little man, quiet, unselfish and patient, but liable to outbursts of temper.

A fourth year passed, and then the little people were parted. The Duchess came from London, where her nights had no repose and her days no freshness, to get back a little of the color of the sun into her pallid cheeks, and driving one day from Mount Murray to Government House she lit on Greeba in the road outside Castletown. It was summer, and the little maid of eight, bright as the sunlight that glistened on her head, her cheeks all pink and white, her eyes sparkling under her dark lashes, her brown hair rippling behind her, her frock tucked up in fishwife fashion, her legs bare, and her white linen sunbonnet swinging in her hand, was chasing a butterfly amid the yellow-tipped gorse that grew by the roadside. That vision of beauty and health awakened a memory of less charm and freshness. The Duchess remembered a little maiden of her own who was also eight years old, dainty and pretty, but pale and sickly, peaked up in a chill stone house in London, playing alone with bows and ribbons, talking to herself, and having no companion except a fidgety French governess, who was wrinkled and had lost some of her teeth.

A few days later the Duchess came again to Government House, bought a gay new hat for Greeba, and proposed that the little maid should go home with her as playfellow for her only child. Adam promptly said "No" to her proposal, with what emphasis his courtesy would permit, urging that Greeba, being so much younger than her brothers, was like an only child in the family, and that she was in any case an only daughter. But Adam's wife, thinking she saw her opportunity, found many reasons why Greeba should be allowed to go. For would it be right to cross the wish of so great a lady? – and one, too, who was in a sense their mistress also. And then who could say what the Duchess might do for the child some day? – and in any event wasn't it a chance for which any body else in the island would give both his ears to have his daughter brought up in London, and at the great house of the Duke of Athol?

The end of it was that Adam yielded to his wife now, as he had often yielded before. "But I'll sadly miss my little lassie," he said, "and I much misdoubt but I'll repent me of letting her go."

Yet, while Adam shook his head and looked troubled, the little maid herself was in an ecstasy of delight.

"And would you really like to go to London, Greeba ven?"

"But should I see the carriages, and the ladies on horseback, and the shops, and the little girls in velvet – should I, eh?"

"Maybe so, my ven, maybe so."

"Oh!"

The little maid gave one glance at the infinite splendor of her new bow and feather, and her dark eyes sparkled, while the eyes of her father filled.

"But not Michael Sunlocks, you know, Greeba ven; no, nor mother, nor father."

At that word there was a pretty downward curve of the little lip; but life had no real sorrow for one with such a hat and such a prospect, and the next instant the bright eyes leapt again to the leaping heart.

"Then run away, Greeba ven – run."

The little maiden took her father at his word, though it was but sadly spoken, and bounded off in chase of Michael Sunlocks, that she might tell him the great news. She found him by the old wooden bridge of the Silver Burn near the Malew Church.

Michael Sunlocks had lately struck up a fast friendship with the carrier, old crazy Chalse A'Killey, who sometimes lent him his donkey for a ride. Bareheaded, barefooted, with breeches rolled up above the knees, his shoes and stockings swung about his neck, and his wavy yellow hair rough and tangled, Michael Sunlocks was now seated bareback on this donkey, tugging the rope that served it for curb and snaffle, and persuading it, by help of a blackthorn stick, to cross the river to the meadow opposite. And it was just when the donkey, a creature of becoming meekness and most venerable age, was reflecting on these arguments, and contemplating the water at his shoes with a pensive eye, that Greeba, radiant in the happiness of her marvellous hat, came skipping on to the bridge.

In a moment she blurted out her news between many gusts of breath, and Michael Sunlocks, pausing from his labors, sat on his docile beast and looked up at her with great wonder in his wide blue eyes.

"And I shall see the carriages, and the ladies on horseback, and the ships, and the waxworks, and the wild beasts."

The eyes of Sunlocks grew hazy and wet, but the little maiden rattled on, cocking her eye down as she spoke at her reflection in the smooth river, for it took a world of glances to grow familiar with the marvel that sat on her head.

"And I shall wear velvet frocks, and have new hats often and lots of goodies and things; and – and didn't I always say a good fairy would come for me some day?"

"What are you talking of, you silly?" said Michael Sunlocks.

"I'm not a silly, and I'm going away, and you are not; and I'll have girls to play with now, not boys – there!"

Michael Sunlocks could bear no more. His eyes overflowed, but his cheeks reddened, and he said —

"What do I care, you stupid? You can go if you like," and then down came his stick with a sounding thwack on the donkey's flank.

Now startled out of all composure by such sudden and summary address, the beast threw up his hinder legs and ducked down his head, and tumbled his rider into the water. Michael Sunlocks scrambled to his feet, all dripping wet, but with eyes aflame and his little lips set hard, and then laid hold of the rope bridle and tugged with one hand, while with the stick in the other he cudgelled the donkey until he had forced it to cross the river.

While this tough work was going forward, Greeba, who had shrieked at Michael's fall, stood trembling with clasped hands on the bridge, and, when all was over, the little man turned to her with high disdain, and said, after a mighty toss of his glistening wet head:

"Did you think I was drowned, you silly? Why don't you go, if you're going?"

Not all the splendor of bow and feather could help the little maiden to withstand indifference like this, so her lip fell, and she said:

"Well, you needn't say so, if you are glad I'm going."

And Sunlocks answered, "Who says I'm glad? Not that I say I'm not, neither," he added quickly, leaping astride his beast again.

Whereupon Greeba said, "If you had been going away I should have cried," and then, to save herself from bursting out in his very face, she turned about quickly and fled.

"But I'm not such a silly, I'm not," Michael Sunlocks shouted after her, and down came another thwack on the donkey, and away he sped across the meadow. But before he had ridden far he drew rein and twisted about, and now his blue eyes were swimming once more.

"Greeba," he called, and his little voice broke, but no answer came back to him.

"Greeba," he called again, more loudly, but Greeba did not stop.

"Greeba!" he shouted with all his strength. "Greeba! Greeba!"

But the little maid had gone, and there was no response. The bees were humming in the gold of the gorse, and the fireflies were buzzing about the donkey's ears, while the mountains were fading away into a dim wet haze.

Half an hour later the carriage of the Duchess drove out through the iron gates of Government House, and the little maiden seated in it by the side of the stately lady, was crying in a voice of childlike grief —

"Sunlocks! Sunlocks! Little Sunlocks!"

The advantage which the Governor's wife proposed to herself in parting with her daughter she never gained, and one of the secret ends of her life was thereby not only disappointed but defeated; for while the Duchess did nothing for Greeba, the girl's absence from home led Adam to do the more for Michael Sunlocks. Deprived of his immediate object of affection, his own little maiden, Adam lavished his love on the stranger whom chance had brought to his door; being first prompted thereto by the thought, which came only when it was too late, that in sending Greeba away to be company to some other child he had left poor little Sunlocks at home to be sole company to himself.

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. Year followed year, his school days came and went, he became more and yet more the Governor's quick right hand, his pen and his memory, even his judgment, and the staff he leaned on. It was "Michael Sunlocks" here, and "Michael Sunlocks" there, and "Michael Sunlocks will see to that," and "You may safely leave it to Michael Sunlocks;" and meantime the comely and winsome lad, with man's sturdy independence of spirit, but a woman's yearning for love, having long found where this account lay in the house of Governor Fairbrother, clung to that good man with more than the affection, because less than the confidence, of a son, and like a son he stood to him.

Now, for one who found this relation sweet and beautiful, there were many who found it false and unjust, implying an unnatural preference of a father for a stranger before his own children; and foremost among those who took this unfavorable view were Mrs. Fairbrother and her sons. She blamed her husband, and they blamed Michael Sunlocks.

The six sons of Adam Fairbrother had grown into six rude men, all big, lusty fellows, rough and hungry, seared and scarred like the land they lived on, but differing much at many points. Asher, the eldest, three-and-thirty when Sunlocks was fifteen, was fair, with gray eyes, flabby face, and no chin to speak of, good-hearted, but unstable as water. He was for letting the old man and the lad alone. "Aisy, man, aisy, what's the odds?" he would say, in his drawling way of speaking. But Ross, the second son, and Stean, the third, both cruel and hot-blooded men, reproached Asher with not objecting from the first, for "Och," they would say, "one of these fine days the ship will be wrecked and scuttled before yer very eyes, and not a pound of cargo left at her; and all along of that cursed young imp that's after sniffin' and sniffin' abaft of the ould man," – a figure of speech which meant that Adam would will his belongings to Michael Sunlocks. And at that conjecture, Thurstan, the fourth son, a black-bearded fellow in top boots, always red-eyed with much drinking, but strong of will and the ruler of his brethren, would say, "Aw, well, let the little beachcomber keep his weather eye liftin';" and Jacob, the fifth son, sandy as a fox, and as sly and watchful, and John, the youngest, known as Gentleman Johnny, out of tribute to his love of dress, would shake their heads together, and hint that they would yet find a way to cook the goose of any smooth-faced hypocrite shamming Abraham.

Many a device they tried to get Michael Sunlocks turned away. They brought bad stories of his father, Stephen Orry, now a name of terror 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 rumors made no impression on old Adam, but they produced a powerful effect where no effect had been expected. Bit by it, 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. The memory of his father was now a thing of the mind, not the affections; and the chain of the two emotions, love for his foster father and dread of his natural one, slowly but surely tightened about him, so that his strongest hope was that he might never again set eyes on Stephen Orry. By this weakness he fell at length into the hands of the six Fairbrothers, and led the way to a total rupture of old Adam's family.

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, bottled-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 forever, and must see his son before going. If the son would not go to the father, then the father must come to the son. The meeting place proposed was a schooner lying outside the Calf Sound, and the hour midnight of the day following.

It was as base a plot as the heart of an enemy ever concocted, for the schooner was a smuggler, and the men of the revenue cutter were in hiding under the Black Head to watch her movements. The lad, in fear of his father, fell into the trap, and was taken prisoner on suspicion in a gig making for the ship. He confessed all to the Governor, and Nary Crowe was arrested. To save his own carcase Nary gave up his employers. They were Ross and Stean Fairbrother, and Ross and Stean being questioned pointed to their brothers Jacob and Gentleman Johnny as the instigators of the scheme.

When the revelation was complete, and the Governor saw that all but his whole family was implicated, and that the stain on his house was so black that the island would ever remember it against him, his placid spirit forsook him and his wrath knew no bounds. But the evil was not ended there, for Mrs. Fairbrother took sides with her sons, and straightway vowed to live no longer under the same roof with an unnatural father, who found water thicker than blood.