The Christian by Hall Caine

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THE CHRISTIAN

_A STORY_

BY HALL CAINE

_Author of The Manxman_

* * * * *

_The period of the story is the last quarter of the nineteenth century.
No particular years are intended. The time occupied by the incidents of
the first Book is about six months, of the Second Book about six months,
of the Third Book about six months; then there is an interval of half a
year, and the time occupied by the incidents of the Fourth Book is about
six weeks. An Author's Note will be found at the end._

* * * * *

THE CHRISTIAN.

FIRST BOOK.

_THE OUTER WORLD_.

I.

On the morning of the 9th of May, 18--, three persons important to this
story stood among the passengers on the deck of the Isle of Man steamship
_Tynwald_ as she lay by the pier at Douglas getting up steam for the
passage to Liverpool. One of these was an old clergyman of seventy, with
a sweet, mellow, childlike face; another was a young man of thirty, also
a clergyman; the third was a girl of twenty. The older clergyman wore a
white neckcloth about his throat, and was dressed in rather threadbare
black of a cut that had been more common twenty years before; the younger
clergyman wore a Roman collar, a long clerical coat, and a stiff,
broad-brimmed hat with a cord and tassel. They stood amidships, and the
captain, coming out of his room to mount the bridge, saluted them as he
passed.

"Good morning, Mr. Storm."

The young clergyman returned the salutation with a slight bow and the
lifting of his hat.

"Morning to you, Parson Quayle."

The old clergyman answered cheerily, "Oh, good morning, captain; good
morning."

There was the usual inquiry about the weather outside, and drawing up to
answer it, the captain came eye to eye with the girl.

"So this is the granddaughter, is it?"

"Yes, this is Glory," said Parson Quayle. "She's leaving the old
grandfather at last, captain, and I'm over from Peel to set her off, you
see."

"Well, the young lady has got the world before her--at her feet, I ought
to say.--You're looking as bright and fresh as the morning, Miss Quayle."

The captain carried off his compliment with a breezy laugh, and went
along to the bridge. The girl had heard him only in a momentary flash of
consciousness, and she replied merely with a side glance and a smile.
Both eyes and ears, and every sense and every faculty, seemed occupied
with the scene before her.

It was a beautiful spring morning, not yet nine o'clock, but the sun
stood high over Douglas Head, and the sunlight was glancing in the
harbour from the little waves of the flowing tide. Oars were rattling up
the pier, passengers were trooping down the gangways, and the decks fore
and aft were becoming thronged.

"It's beautiful!" she was saying, not so much to her companions as to
herself, and the old parson was laughing at her bursts of rapture over
the commonplace scene, and dropping out in reply little driblets of
simple talk--sweet, pure nothings--the innocent babble as of a mountain
stream.

She was taller than the common, and had golden-red hair, and magnificent
dark-gray eyes of great size. One of her eyes had a brown spot, which
gave at the first glance the effect of a squint, at the next glance a
coquettish expression, and ever after a sense of tremendous power and
passion. But her most noticeable feature was her mouth, which was
somewhat too large for beauty, and was always moving nervously. When she
spoke, her voice startled you with its depth, which was a kind of soft
hoarseness, but capable of every shade of colour. There was a playful and
impetuous raillery in nearly all she said, and everything seemed to be
expressed by mind and body at the same time. She moved her body
restlessly, and while standing in the same place her feet were always
shuffling. Her dress was homely--almost poor--and perhaps a little
careless. She appeared to smile and laugh continually, and yet there were
tears in her eyes sometimes.

The young clergyman was of a good average height, but he looked taller
from a certain distinction of figure. When he raised his hat at the
captain's greeting he showed a forehead like an arched wall, and a large,
close-cropped head. He had a well-formed nose, a powerful chin, and full
lips--all very strong and set for one so young. His complexion was
dark--almost swarthy--and there was a certain look of the gipsy in his
big golden-brown eyes with their long black lashes. He was clean shaven,
and the lower part of his face seemed heavy under the splendid fire of
the eyes above it. His manner had a sort of diffident restraint; he stood
on the same spot without moving, and almost without raising his drooping
head; his speech was grave and usually slow and laboured; his voice was
bold and full.

The second bell had rung, and the old parson was making ready to go
ashore.

"You'll take care of this runaway, Mr. Storm, and deliver her safely at
the door of the hospital?"

"I will."

"And you'll keep an eye on her in that big Babylon over there?"

"If she'll let me, sir."

"Yes, indeed, yes; I know she's as unstable as water and as hard to hold
as a puff of wind."

The girl was laughing again. "You might as well call me a tempest and
have done with it, or," with a glance at the younger man, "say a
storm--Glory St---- Oh!"

With a little catch of the breath she arrested the name before it was
uttered by her impetuous tongue, and laughed again to cover her
confusion. The young man smiled faintly and rather painfully, but the old
parson was conscious of nothing.

"Well, and why not? A good name for you too, and you richly deserve
it.--But the Lord is lenient with such natures, John. He never tries them
beyond their strength. She hasn't much leaning to religion, you know."

The girl recalled herself from the busy scene around and broke in again
with a tone of humour and pathos mixed.

"There, call me an infidel at once, grandfather. I know what you mean.
But just to show you that I haven't exactly registered a vow in heaven
never to go to church in London because you've given me such a dose of it
in the Isle of Man, I'll promise to send you a full and particular report
of Mr. Storm's first sermon. Isn't that charming of me?"

The third bell was ringing, the blast of the steam whistle was echoing
across the bay, and the steamer was only waiting for the mails. Taking a
step nearer to the gangway, the old parson talked faster.

"Did Aunt Anna give you money enough, child?"

"Enough for my boat fare and my train."

"No more! Now Anna is so----"

"Don't trouble, grandfather. Woman wants but little here below--Aunt Anna
excepted. And then a hospital nurse----"

"I'm afraid you'll feel lonely in that great wilderness."

"Lonely with five millions of neighbours?"

"You'll be longing for the old island, Glory, and I half repent me
already----"

"If ever I have the blue-devils, grandpa, I'll just whip on my cape and
fly home again."

"To-morrow morning I'll be searching all over the house for my runaway."

Glory tried to laugh gaily. "Upstairs, downstairs, and in my lady's
chamber."

"'Glory,' I'll be crying, 'Where's the girl gone at all? I haven't heard
her voice in the house to-day. What's come over the old place to strike
it so dead?'"

The girl's eyes were running over, but in a tone of gentle raillery and
heart's love she said severely: "Nonsense, grandfather, you'll forget all
about Glory going to London before the day after to-morrow. Every morning
you'll be making rubbings of your old runes, and every night you'll be
playing chess with Aunt Rachel, and every Sunday you'll be scolding old
Neilus for falling asleep in the reading desk, and--and everything will
go on just the same as ever."

The mails had come aboard, one of the gangways had been drawn ashore, and
the old parson, holding his big watch in his left hand, was diving into
his fob-pocket with the fingers of the right.

"Here"--panting audibly, as if he had been running hard--"is your
mother's little pearl ring."

The girl drew off her slack, soiled glove and took the ring in her
nervous fingers.

"A wonderful talisman is the relic of a good mother, sir," said the old
parson.

The young clergyman bent his head.

"You're like Glory herself in that though--you don't remember your mother
either."

"No-no."

"I'll keep in touch with your father, John, trust me for that. You and he
shall be good friends yet. A man can't hold out against his son for
nothing worse than choosing the Church against the world. The old man
didn't mean all he said; and then it isn't the thunder that strikes
people dead, you know. So leave him to me; and if that foolish old Chalse
hasn't been putting notions into his head----"

The throbbing in the steam funnel had ceased and in the sudden hush a
voice from the bridge cried, "All ashore!"

"Good-bye, Glory! Good-bye, John! Good-bye both!"

"Good-bye, sir," said the young clergyman with a long hand-clasp.

But the girl's arms were about the old man's neck. "Good-bye, you dear
old grandpa, and I'm ashamed I--I'm sorry I--I mean it's a shame of me
to--good-bye!"

"Good-bye, my wandering gipsy, my witch, my runaway!"

"If you call me names I'll have to stop your mouth, sir.
Again--another----"

A voice cried, "Stand back there!"

The young clergyman drew the girl back from the bulwarks, and the steamer
moved slowly away.

"I'll go below--no, I won't; I'll stay on deck. I'll go ashore--I can't
bear it; it's not too late yet. No, I'll go to the stern and see the
water in the wake."

The pier was cleared and the harbour was empty. Over the white churning
water the sea gulls were wheeling, and Douglas Head was gliding slowly
back. Down the long line of the quay the friends of the passengers were
waving adieus.

"There he is, on the end of the pier! That's grandpa waving his
handkerchief! Don't you see it? The red-and-white cotton one! God bless
him! How _wae_ his little present made me! He has been keeping it all
these years. But my silk handkerchief is too damp--it won't float at all.
Will you lend me----Ah, thank you! Good-bye! good-bye! good----"

The girl hung over the stern rail, leaning her breast upon it and waving
the handkerchief as long as the pier and its people were in sight, and
when they were gone from recognition she watched the line of the land
until it began to fade into the clouds, and there was no more to be seen
of what she had looked upon every day of her life until to-day.

"The dear little island! I never thought it was so beautiful! Perhaps I
might have been happy even there, if I had tried. Now, if I had only had
somebody for company! How silly of me! I've been five years wishing and
praying to get away, and now! ... It _is_ lovely, though, isn't it? Just
like a bird on the water! And when you've been born in a place ... the
dear little island! And the old folks, too! How lonely they'll be, after
all! I wonder if I shall ever.... I'll go below. The wind's freshening,
and this water in the wake is making my eyes... Good-bye, little birdie!
I'll come back--I'll.... Yes, never fear, I'll----"

The laughter and impetuous talking, the gentle humour and pathos, had
broken at length into a sob, and the girl had wheeled about and
disappeared down the cabin stairs. John Storm stood looking after her. He
had hardly spoken, but his great brown eyes were moist.

II.

Her father had been the only son of Parson Quayle, and chaplain to the
bishop at Bishopscourt. It was there he had met her mother, who was
lady's maid to the bishop's wife. The maid was a bright young
Frenchwoman, daughter of a French actress, famous in her day, and of an
officer under the Empire, who had never been told of her existence.
Shortly after their marriage the chaplain was offered a big mission
station in Africa, and, being a devotee, he clutched at it without fear
of the fevers of the coast. But his young French wife was about to become
a mother, and she shrank from the perils of his life abroad, so he took
her to his father's house at Peel, and bade her farewell for five years.

He lived four, and during that time they exchanged some letters. His
final instructions were sent from Southampton: "If it's a boy, call him
John (after the Evangelist); and if it's a girl, call her Glory." At the
end of the first year she wrote: "I have shortened our darling, and you
never saw anything so lovely! Oh, the sweetness of her little bare arms,
and her neck, and her little round shoulders! You know she's red--I've
really got a red one--a curly red one! Such big beaming eyes, too! And
then her mouth, and her chin, and her tiny red toes! I don't know how you
can live without seeing her!" Near the end of the fourth year he sent his
last answer: "Dear Wife--This separation is bitter; but God has willed
it, and we must not forget that the probabilities are that we may pass
our lives apart." The next letter was from the English consul on the
Gaboon River, announcing the death of the devoted missionary.

Parson Quayle's household consisted only of himself and two maiden
daughters, but that was too much for the lively young Frenchwoman. While
her husband lived, she suffocated under the old-maid _régime_; and when
he was gone she made no more fight with destiny, but took some simple
ailment, and died suddenly.

A bare hillside frowned down on the place where Glory was born; but the
sun rose over it, and a beautiful river hugged its sides. A quarter of a
mile down the river there was a harbour, and beyond the harbour a bay,
with the ruins of an old castle standing out on an islet rock, and then
the broad sweep of the Irish Sea-the last in those latitudes to "parley
with the setting sun." The vicarage was called Glenfaba, and it was half
a mile outside the fishing town of Peel.

Glory was a little red-headed witch from the first, with an air of
general uncanniness in everything she did and said. Until after she was
six there was no believing a word she uttered. Her conversation was
bravely indifferent to considerations of truth or falsehood, fear or
favour, reward or punishment. The parson used to say, "I'm really afraid
the child has no moral conscience--she doesn't seem to know right from
wrong." This troubled his religion, but it tickled his humour, and it did
not disturb his love. "She's a perfect pagan--God bless her innocent
heart!"

She had more than a child's genius for make-believe. In her hunger for
child company, before the days when she found it for herself, she made
believe that various versions of herself lived all over the place, and
she would call them out to play. There was Glory in the river, under the
pool where the perches swam, and Glory down the well, and Glory up in the
hills, and they answered when she spoke to them. All her dolls were kings
and queens, and she had a gift for making up in strange and grand
disguises. It was almost as if her actress grandmother had bestowed on
her from her birth the right to life and luxury and love.

She was a born mimic, and could hit off to a hair an eccentricity or an
affectation. The frown of Aunt Anna, who was severe, the smile of Aunt
Rachel, who was sentimental, and the yawn of Cornelius Kewley, the clerk
who was always sleepy, lived again in the roguish, rippling face. She
remembered some of her mother's French songs, and seeing a street-singer
one day, she established herself in the market-place in that character,
with grown people on their knees around her, ready to fall on her and
kiss her and call her Phonodoree, the fairy. But she did not forget to go
round for the ha'pennies either.

At ten she was a tomboy, and marched through the town at the head of an
army of boys, playing on a comb between her teeth and flying the vicar's
handkerchief at the end of his walking-stick. In these days she climbed
trees and robbed orchards (generally her own) and imitated boys' voices,
and thought it tyranny that she might not wear trousers. But she wore a
sailor's blue stocking-cap, and it brightened existence when, for
economy's sake and for the sake of general tidiness, she was allowed to
wear a white woollen jersey. Then somebody who had a dinghy that he did
not want asked her if she would like to have a boat. Would she like to
have paradise, or pastry cakes, or anything that was heavenly! After that
she wore a sailor's jacket and a sou'wester when she was on the sea, and
tumbled about the water like a duck.

At twelve she fell in love--with love. It was a vague passion interwoven
with dreams of grandeur. The parson being too poor to send her to the
girls' college at Douglas, and his daughters being too proud to send her
to the dame's school at Peel, she was taught at home by Aunt Rachel, who
read the poetry of Thomas Moore, knew the birthdays of all the royal
family, and was otherwise meekly romantic. From this source she gathered
much curious sentiment relating to some visionary world where young girls
were held aloft in the sunshine of luxury and love and happiness. One day
she was lying on her back on the heather of the Peel hill, with her head
on her arms, thinking of a story that Aunt Rachel had told her. It was of
a mermaid who had only to slip up out of the sea and say to any man,
"Come," and he came--he left everything and followed her. Suddenly the
cold nose of a pointer rubbed against her forehead, a strong voice cried,
"Down, sir!" and a young man of two and twenty, in leggings and a
shooting-jacket, strode between her and the cliffs. She knew him by
sight. He was John Storm, the son of Lord Storm, who had lately come to
live in the mansion house at Knockaloe, a mile up the hill from Glenfaba.

For three weeks thereafter she talked of nobody else, and even began to
comb her hair. She watched him in church, and told Aunt Rachel she was
sure he could see quite well in the dark, for his big eyes seemed to have
the light inside of them. After that she became ashamed, and if anybody
happened to mention his name in her hearing she flushed up to the
forehead and fled out of the room. He never once looked at her, and after
a while he went away to Canada. She set the clock on the back landing to
Canadian time, so that she might always know what he was doing abroad,
and then straightway forgot all about him. Her moods followed each other
rapidly, and were all of them overpowering and all sincere, but it was
not until a year afterward that she fell in love, in the church vestry,
with the pretty boy who stood opposite to her in the catechism class.

He was an English boy of her own age, and he was only staying in the
island for his holidays. The second time she saw him it was in the
grounds at Glenfaba, while his mother was returning a call indoors. She
gave him a little tap on the arm and he had to run after her--down a bank
and up a tree, where she laughed and said. "Isn't it nice?" and he could
see nothing but her big white teeth.

His name was Francis Horatio Nelson Drake, and he was full of great
accounts of the goings-on in the outer world, where his school was, and
where lived the only "men" worth talking about. Of course he spoke of all
this familiarly and with a convincing reality which wrapped Glory in the
plumage of dreams. He was a wonderful being, altogether, and in due time
(about three days) she proposed to him. True, he did not jump at her
offer with quite proper alacrity, but when she mentioned that it didn't
matter to her in the least whether he wanted her or not, and that plenty
would be glad of the chance, he saw things differently, and they agreed
to elope. There was no particular reason for this drastic measure, but as
Glory had a boat, it seemed the right thing to do.

She dressed herself in all her Confirmation finery, and stole out to meet
him under the bridge where her boat lay moored. He kept her half an hour
waiting, having sisters and other disadvantages, but "once aboard her
lugger," he was safe. She was breathless, and he was anxious, and neither
thought it necessary to waste any time in kissing.

They slipped down the harbour and out into the bay, and then ran up the
sail and stood off for Scotland. Being more easy in mind when this was
done, they had time to talk of the future. Francis Horatio was for
work--he was going to make a name for himself. Glory did not see it quite
in that light. A name, yes, and lots of triumphal processions, but she
was for travel--there were such lots of things people could see if they
didn't waste so much time working.

"What a girl you are!" he said derisively; whereupon she bit her lip, for
she didn't quite like it. But they were nearly half an hour out before he
spoiled himself utterly. He had brought his dog, a she-terrier, and he
began to call her by her kennel name and to say what a fine little thing
she was, and what a deal of money they would make by her pups. That was
too much for Glory. She couldn't think of eloping with a person who used
such low expressions.

"What a girl you are!" he said again; but she did not mind it in the
least. With a sweep of her bare arm she had put the tiller hard aport,
intending to tack back to Peel, but the wind had freshened and the sea
was rising, and by the swift leap of the boat the boom was snapped, and
the helpless sail came napping down upon the mast. Then they tumbled into
the trough, and Glory had not strength to pull them out of it, and the
boy was of no more use than a tripper. She was in her white muslin dress,
and he was nursing his dog, and the night was closing down on them, and
they were wobbling about under a pole and a tattered rag. But all at once
a great black yacht came heaving up in the darkness, and a grown-up voice
cried, "Trust yourself to me, dear."

It was John Storm. He had already awakened the young girl in her, and
thereafter he awakened the young woman as well. She clung to him like a
child that night, and during the four years following she seemed always
to be doing the same. He was her big brother, her master, her lord, her
sovereign. She placed him on a dizzy height above her, amid a halo of
goodness and grandeur. If he smiled on her she flushed, and if he frowned
she fretted and was afraid. Thinking to please him, she tried to dress
herself up in all the colours of the rainbow, but he reproved her and
bade her return to her jersey. She struggled to comb out her red curls
until he told her that the highest ladies in the land would give both
ears for them, and then she fondled them in her fingers and admired them
in a glass.

He was a serious person, but she could make him laugh until he screamed.
Excepting Byron and "Sir Charles Grandison," out of the vicar's library,
the only literature she knew was the Bible, the Catechism, and the Church
Service, and she used these in common talk with appalling freedom and
audacity. The favourite butt of her mimicry was the parish clerk saying
responses when he was sleepy.

The parson: "O Lord, open thou our lips" (no response). "Where are you,
Neilus?"

The clerk (awakening suddenly in the desk below): "Here I am, your
reverence--and our mouth shall show forth thy praise."

When John Storm did laugh he laughed beyond all control, and then Glory
was entirely happy. But he went away again, his father having sent him to
Australia, and all the light of her world went out.

It was of no use bothering with the clock on the back landing, because
things were different by this time. She was sixteen, and the only tree
she climbed now was the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, and that
tore her terribly. John Storm was the son of a lord, and he would be Lord
Something himself some day. Glory Quayle was an orphan, and her
grandfather was a poor country clergyman. Their poverty was sweet, but
there was gall in it, nevertheless. The little forced economies in dress,
the frocks that had to be turned, the bonnets that were beauties when
they were bought, but had to be worn until the changes of fashion made
them frights, and then the mysterious parcels of left-off clothing from
goodness knows where--how the independence of the girl's spirit rebelled
against such humiliations!

The blood of her mother was beginning to boil over, and the old-maid
_régime_, which had crushed the life out of the Frenchwoman, was
suffocating the Manx girl with its formalism. She was always forgetting
the meal times regulated by the sun, and she could sleep at any time and
keep awake until any hour. It tired her to sit demurely like a young
lady, and she had a trick of lying down on the floor. She often laughed
in order not to cry, but she would not even smile at a great lady's silly
story, and she did not care a jot about the birthdays of the royal
family. The old aunts loved her body and soul, but they often said,
"Whatever is going to happen to the girl when the grandfather is gone?"

And the grandfather--good man--would have laid down his life to save her
a pain in her toe, but he had not a notion of the stuff she was made of.
His hobby was the study of the runic crosses with which the Isle of Man
abounds, and when she helped him with his rubbings and his casts he was
as merry as an old sand-boy. Though they occupied the same house, and her
bedroom that faced the harbour was next to his little musty study that
looked over the scullery slates, he lived always in the tenth century and
she lived somewhere in the twentieth.