Hall Caine, the Man and the Novelist

by C. Fred Kenyon

Meantime Bishop’s Court was musical with children’s voices, and with the patter of tiny feet that ferreted out every nook and cranny of the old place. There was Ewan, the Deemster’s son, a slight, sensitive boy, who listened to you with head aslant, and with absent looks. There was wee Mona, Ewan’s meek sister, with the big eyes and the quiet ways, who liked to be fondled, and would cry sometimes when no one knew why. And there was Daniel—Danny—Dan, the Bishop’s boy, a braw little rogue, with a slice of the man in him, as broad as he was long, with tousled fair head and face usually smudged, laughing a good deal, and not crying over much, loving a good tug or a delightful bit of a fight, and always feeling high disdain at being kissed. And the Bishop, God bless him! was father and mother both to the motherless brood, though Kerry Quayle was kept as nurse. He would tell a story, or perhaps sing one, while Mona sat on his knee with her pretty head resting on his breast, and Ewan held on to his chair with his shy head hanging on his own shoulder, and his eyes looking out at the window, listening intently in his queer little absent way. And when Dan, in lordly contempt of such doings, would break in on song or story, and tear his way up the back of the chair to the back of the Bishop, Mona would be set on her feet, and the biggest baby of the four there present would slide down on to his hands and knees and creep along the floor with the great little man astride him, and whinny like a horse, or perhaps bark like a dog, and pretend to leap the four-bar gate of the baby’s chair tumbled down on its side. And when Dan would slide from his saddle, and the restless horseman would turn coachman and tug the mane of his steed, and all the Bishop’s long hair would tumble over his face, what shrieks of laughter, what rolling on the ground and tossing up of bare legs! And then when supper-time came, and the porridge would be brought in, and little Mona would begin to whimper because she had to eat it, and Ewan to fret because it was barley porridge and not oaten cake, and Dan to devour his share with silent industry, and then bellow for more than was good for him, what schemes the good Bishop resorted to, what promises he made, what crafty tricks he learned, what an artful old pate his simple head suddenly became! And then, when Kerry came with the tub and the towels, and three little naked bodies had to be bathed, and the Bishop stole away to his unfinished sermon, and little Mona’s wet hands clung to Kerry’s dress, and Ewan, standing bolt upright in the three inches of water, blubbered while he rubbed the sponge over an inch and a half of one cheek, and Dan sat on his haunches in the bottom of the tub splashing the water on every side, and shrieking at every splash; then the fearful commotion would bring the Bishop back from the dusky room upstairs, where the shaded lamp burned on a table that was littered with papers. And at last, when the day’s big battle was done, and night’s bigger battle begun; and three night-dresses were popped over three weary heads that dodged them when they could, the Bishop would carry three sleepless, squealing piggies to bed—Mona at his breast because she was little, Ewan at his back because he was big, and Dan across his shoulders because he could not get to any loftier perch. Presently there would be three little pairs of knees by the crib side, and then three little flaxen polls on the pillow, tumbling and tossing, and with the great dark head of the Bishop shaking gravely at them from over the counterpane, and then a hush broken by a question lisped drowsily, or a baby rhyme that ran a line or two and stopped, and at length the long deep quiet and the silence of sleep, and the Bishop going off on tiptoe to the dusky room with the shaded lamp, and to-morrow’s sermon lying half-written beneath it.

Can you not see them?—the four innocent children playing their games as though they were the whole world. But their happiness was soon cut short. Thorkell Mylrea, the Deemster and the father of Ewan and Mona, and the evil genius of the book, calls at Bishop’s Court, and takes his children away. “Let a father treat his children as the world will treat them when they have nothing but the world for their father,” he says, and henceforth the children’s joy is taken away. But Dan lives on with his father, the Bishop, laughing, playing his pranks, and making of the Court one huge nursery. The years pass, and a friendship like that of David and Jonathan springs up between Dan and Ewan. But Dan is headstrong, wilful and impetuous. He runs almost wild, and his great strength and love of sport lead him into the companionship of good-for-noughts. He quarrels with Ewan, and, in a scene of great beauty and tenderness, a reconciliation is effected. But again they quarrel, and Dan strikes Ewan a terrible blow which has far-reaching consequences. Dan is covered with shame, and feels abased in his very soul. And then, assailed by the most subtle temptation, Dan commits forgery, and Ewan, by now a priest, tells a lie to save him. And so Dan, the noble-hearted, pure-minded soul, sinks deeper and deeper into petty sins. He wastes his substance, idles, drinks—does all that a tortured weak soul will do when it has begun to step on the downward path. The end of it all is that in fair fight Dan kills his cousin, and goes to Mona to tell her of his sin.

“Yes, yes, our Ewan is dead,” he repeated in a murmur that came up from his heart. “The truest friend, the fondest brother, the whitest soul, the dearest, bravest, purest, noblest—O God! O God! dead, dead! Worse, a hundredfold worse—Mona, he is murdered.”

At that she raised herself up, and a bewildered look was in her eyes.

“Murdered? No, that is not possible. He was beloved by all. There is no one who would kill him—there is no one alive with a heart so black.”

“Yes, Mona, but there is,” he said; “there is one man with a heart so black.”

“Who is he?”

“Who! He is the foulest creature on God’s earth. Oh, God in heaven! Why was he born?”

“Who is he?”

He bowed his head where he stood before her, and beads of sweat started from his brow.