Chapter 1

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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.