Читать книгу The Bondman: A New Saga - Sir Hall Caine - Страница 6

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The little island in the middle of the Irish Sea has through many centuries had its own language and laws, and its own judges and governors. Very, very long ago, it had also its own kings; and one of the greatest of them was the Icelandic seadog who bought it with blood in 1077. More recently it has had its own reigning lords, and one of the least of them was the Scottish nobleman who sold it for gold in 1765. After that act of truck and trade the English crown held the right of appointing the Governor-General. It chose the son of the Scottish nobleman. This was John, fourth Duke of Athol, and he held his office fifty-five bad years. In his day the island was not a scene of overmuch gaiety. If the memory of old men can be trusted, he contrived to keep a swashbuckler court there, but its festivities, like his own dignities, must have been maimed and lame. He did not care to see too much of it, and that he might be free to go where he would he appointed a deputy governor.

Now when he looked about him for this deputy he found just six and twenty persons ready to fall at his feet. He might have had either of the Deemsters, but he selected neither; he might have had any of the twenty-four Keys, but he selected none. It was then that he heard of a plain farmer in the north of the island, who was honored for his uprightness, beloved for his simplicity, and revered for his piety. "The very man for me," thought the lord of the swashbucklers, and he straightway set off to see him.

He found him living like a patriarch among his people, surrounded by his sons, and proud of them that they were many and strong. His name was Adam Fairbrother. In his youth he had run away to sea, been taken prisoner by the Algerines, kept twenty-eight months a slave in Barbary, had escaped and returned home captain of a Guineaman. This had been all his education and all his history. He had left the island a wild, headstrong, passionate lad; he had returned to it a sober, patient, gentle-hearted man.

Adam's house was Lague, a loose, straggling, featureless and irresolute old fabric, on five hundred hungry acres of the rocky headland of Maughold. When the Duke rode up to it Adam himself was ringing the bell above the door lintel that summoned his people to dinner. He was then in middle life, stout, yet flaccid and slack, with eyes and forehead of sweetest benevolence, mouth of softest tenderness, and hair already whitening over his ears and temples.

"The face of an angel in homespun," thought the Duke.

Adam received his visitor with the easy courtesy of an equal, first offering his hand. The Duke shook hands with him. He held the stirrup while the Duke alighted, took the horse to the stable, slackened its girths, and gave it a feed of oats, talking all the time. The Duke stepped after him and listened. Then he led the way to the house. The Duke followed. They went into the living room—an oblong kitchen with an oak table down the middle, and two rows of benches from end to end. The farming people were trooping in, bringing with them the odor of fresh peat and soil. Bowls of barley broth were being set in front of the big chair at the table end. Adam sat in this seat and motioned the Duke to the bench at his right. The Duke sat down. Then six words of grace and all were in their places—Adam himself, his wife, a shrewd-faced body, his six sons, big and shambling, his men, bare-armed and quiet, his maids, with skirts tucked up, plump and noisy, and the swashbuckler Duke, amused and silent, glancing down the long lines of the strangest company with whom he had ever yet been asked to sit at dinner. Suet pudding followed the broth, sheep's head and potatoes followed the pudding, then six words of thanks and all rose and trooped away except the Duke and Adam. That good man had not altered the habit of his life by so much as a plate of cheese for the fact that the "Lord of Mann" had sat at meat with him. "The manners of a prince," thought the Duke.

They took the armchairs at opposite sides of the ingle.

"You look cosy in your retreat, Mr. Fairbrother," said the Duke; "but since your days in Guinea have you never dreamt of a position of more power, and perhaps of more profit?"

"As for power," answered Adam, "I have observed that the name and the reality rarely go together."

"The experience of a statesman," thought the Duke.

"As for profit," he continued, "I have reflected that money has never yet since the world began tempted a happy man."

"The wisdom of a judge," thought the Duke.

"And as for myself I am a completely happy one."

"With more than a judge's integrity," thought the Duke.

At that the Duke told the purpose of his visit.

"And now," he said, with uplifted hands, "don't say I've gone far to fare worse. The post I offer requires but one qualification in the man who fills it, yet no one about me possesses the simple gift. It needs an honest man, and all the better if he's not a fool. Will you take it?"

"No," said Adam, short and blunt.

"The very man," thought the Duke.

Six months later the Duke had his way. Adam Fairbrother, of Lague, was made Governor of Mann (under the Duke himself as Governor-General) at a salary of five hundred pounds a year.

On the night of Midsummer Day, 1793, the town of Ramsey held high festival. The Royal George had dropped anchor in the bay, and the Prince of Wales, attended by the Duke of Athol, Captain Murray and Captain Cook, had come ashore to set the foot of an English Prince for the first time on Manx soil. Before dusk, the Royal ship had weighed anchor again, but when night fell in the festivities had only begun. Guns were fired, bands of music passed through the town, and bonfires were lighted on the top of the Sky Hill. The kitchens of the inns were crowded, and the streets were thronged with country people enveloped in dust. In the market place the girls were romping, the young men drinking, the children shouting at the top of their voices, the peddlers edging their barrows through the crowd and crying their wares. Over all the tumult of exuberant voices, the shouting, the laughter, the merry shrieks, the gay banter, the barking of sheep-dogs, the snarling of mongrel setters, the streaming and smoking of hawkers' torches across a thousand faces, there was the steady peal of the bell of Ballure.

In the midst of it all a strange man passed through the town. He was of colossal stature—stalwart, straight, and flaxen-haired, wearing a goatskin cap without brim, a gray woollen shirt open at the neck and belted with a leathern strap, breeches of untanned leather, long thick stockings, a second pair up to his ankles, and no shoes on his feet. His face was pale, his cheek bones stood high, and his eyes were like the eyes of a cormorant. The pretty girls stopped their chatter to look after him, but he strode on with long steps, and the people fell aside for him.

At the door of the Saddle Inn he stood a moment, but voices came from within and he passed on. Going by the Court House he came to the Plough Tavern, and there he stopped again, paused a moment, and then stepped in. After a time the children who had followed at his heels separated, and the girls who had looked after him began to dance with arms akimbo and skirts held up over their white ankles. He was forgotten.

An hour later, four men, armed with cutlasses, and carrying ship's irons, came hurrying from the harbor. They were blue-jackets from the revenue cutter lying in the bay, and they were in pursuit of a seaman who had escaped from the English brig at anchor outside. The runaway was a giant and a foreigner, and could not speak a word of English or Manx. Had anyone seen him? Yes, everyone. He had gone into the Plough. To the Plough the blue-jackets made their way. The good woman who kept it, Mother Beatty, had certainly seen such a man. "Aw, yes, the poor craythur, he came, so he did," but never a word could he speak to her, and never a word could she speak to him, so she gave him a bit of barley cake, and maybe a drop of something, and that was all. He was not in the house then? "Och, let them look for themselves." The blue-jackets searched the house, and came out as they had entered. Then they passed through every street, looked down every alley, peered into every archway, and went back to their ship empty-handed.

When they were gone Mother Beatty came to the door and looked out. At the next instant the big-limbed stranger stepped from behind her.

"That way," she whispered, and pointed to a dark alley opposite.

The man watched the direction of her finger in the darkness, doffed his cap, and strode away.

The alley led him by many a turn to the foot of a hill. It was Ballure. Behind him lay the town, with the throngs, the voices, and the bands of music. To his left was the fort, belching smoke and the roar of cannon. To his right were the bonfires on the hilltop, with little dark figures passing before them, and a glow above them embracing a third of the sky. In front of him was the gloom and silence of the country. He walked on; a fresh coolness came to him out of the darkness, and over him a dull murmur hovered in the air. He was going towards Kirk Maughold.

He passed two or three little houses by the wayside, but most of them were dark. He came by a tavern, but the door was shut, and no one answered when he knocked. At length, by the turn of a byroad, he saw a light through the trees, and making towards it he found a long shambling house under a clump of elms. He was at Lague.

The light he saw was from one window only, and he stepped up to it. A man was sitting alone by the hearth, with the glow of a gentle fire on his face—a beautiful face, soft and sweet and tender. It was Adam Fairbrother.

The stranger stood a moment in the darkness, looking into the quiet room. Then he tapped on the windowpane.

On this evening Governor Fairbrother was worn with toil and excitement. It had been Tynwald Day, and while sitting at St. John's he had been summoned to Ramsey to receive the Prince of Wales and the Duke of Athol. The royal party had already landed when he arrived, but not a word of apology had he offered for the delayed reception. He had taken the Prince to the top of the Sky Hill, talking as he went, answering many questions and asking not a few, naming the mountains, running through the island's history, explaining the three legs of its coat of arms, glancing at its ancient customs and giving a taste of its language. He had been simple, sincere, and natural from first to last, and when the time had come for the Prince to return to his ship he had presented his six sons to him with the quiet dignity of a patriarch, saying these were his gifts to his king that was to be. Then on the quay he had offered the Prince his hand, hoping he might see him again before long; for he was a great lover of a happy face, and the Prince, it was plain to see, was, like himself, a man of a cheerful spirit.

But when the Royal George had sailed out of the bay at the top of the tide, and the great folk who had held their breath in awe of so much majesty were preparing to celebrate the visit with the blazing of cannon and the beating of drums, Adam Fairbrother had silently slipped away. He lived at Government House, but had left his three elder boys at Lague, and thought this a happy chance of spending a night at home. Only his sons' housekeeper, a spinster aunt of his own, was there, and when she had given him a bite of supper he had sent her after the others to look at the sights of Ramsey. Then he had drawn up his chair before the fire, charged his long pipe, purred a song to himself, begun to smoke, to doze, and to dream.

His dreams that night had been woven with vision of his bad days in the slave factory at Barbary—of his wreck and capture, of his cruel tortures before his neck was yet bowed to the yoke of bondage, of the whip, before he knew the language of his masters to obey it quickly, of the fetters on his hands, the weights on his legs, the collar about his neck, of the raw flesh where the iron had torn the skin; and then of the dark wild night of his escape when he and three others, as luckless and as miserable, had run a raft into the sea, stripped off their shirts for a sail, and thrust their naked bodies together to keep them warm.

Such was the gray silt that came up to him that night from the deposits of his memory. The Tynwald, the Prince, the Duke, the guns, the music, the bonfires, were gone; bit by bit he pieced together the life he had lived in his youth, and at the thought of it, and that it was now over, he threw back his head and gave thanks where they were due.

At that moment he heard a tap at the windowpane, and turning about he saw a man's haggard face peering in at him from the darkness. Then he rose instantly, and threw open the door of the porch.

"Come in," he called.

The man entered.

He took one step into the house and stopped, seemed for a moment puzzled, dazed, sleepless, and then by a sudden impulse stepped quietly forward, pulled up the sleeve of his shirt and held out his arm. Around his wrist there was a circular abrasure where the loop of a fetter had worn away the skin, leaving the naked flesh raw and red.

He had been in irons.

With a word of welcome the Governor motioned the man to a seat. Some inarticulate sounds the man made and waved his hand.

He was a foreigner. What was his craft?

A tiny model of a full-rigged ship stood on the top of a corner cupboard. Adam pointed to it, and the man gave a quick nod of assent.

He was a seaman. Of what country?

"Shetlands?" asked the Governor.

The man shook his head.

"Sweden? Norway?—"

"Issland," said the man.

He was an Icelander.

Two rude portraits hung on the walls, one of a fair boy, the other of a woman in the early bloom of womanhood—Adam's young wife and first child. The Governor pointed to the boy, and the man shook his head.

He had no family.

The Governor pointed to the woman, and the man hesitated, seemed about to assent, and then, with the look of one who tries to banish an unwelcome thought, shook his head again.

He had no wife. What was his name?

The Governor took down from a shelf a Bible covered in green cloth, and opened at the writing on the fly-leaf between the Old and New Testaments. The writing ran:—"Adam Fairbrother, son of Jo: Fairbrother, and Mar: his wife, was born August the 11th, 1753, about 5 o'clock in the morning, half flood, wind at southwest, and christened August 18th." To this he pointed, then to himself, and finally to the stranger. An abrupt change came over the man's manner. He grew sullen and gave no sign. But his eyes wandered with a fierce eagerness to the table, where the remains of the Governor's supper were still lying.