It will be seen that to carry out such a plot as this, with its almost miraculous crises, needs a high standard of literary skill. That the writer has succeeded there can be no doubt, for Naomi stands out, a creature of living flesh and blood, in whom nature and circumstance work to perfection through suffering. Israel’s character is followed in its development, with convincing truth: the sudden rush of joy that elates the man, the reaction that depresses him, the acts of mercy that soften him—all lead irrevocably to the final scene of a soul reconciled to its God. In this novel, as in all the best work of Mr Caine, the keynote is suffering, but suffering that of itself ennobles and purifies.
Whilst writing The Scapegoat, Mr Caine suffered severely from neurasthenia; his illness, of course, had effect upon his work, making it more sombre and gloomy than it might otherwise have been. When the work was published he received an urgent request from the Chief Rabbi asking him to visit Russia and write about the persecutions of the Jews in that country. He went in 1892, armed with signed documents from Lord Salisbury and the Chief Rabbi which were calculated to gain his admittance wherever he sought to go. The novelist was most warmly received wherever he went; but he was never able to make use of his experiences in the form of a novel. The subject, he felt, was altogether too vast for his experience: it would require years of study which he could not give. On his return to London, he lectured before the Jewish Workmen’s Club in the East End, “in a hall crammed to suffocation. I shall never forget that audience, the tears, the laughter, the applause, the wild embraces to which I was subjected by some of those poor exiles of humanity.”
CHAPTER IX
THE MANXMAN
In The Manxman, Hall Caine sounds the depths of humanity, and brings up the cry of living men and women to our ears. The sacred powerfulness of Love is his theme, the depths of spiritual degradation in which Love, twisted, distorted, makes its own punishment—the ennobling beauty of carrying out its great Unselfishness in simple fearlessness. And this is shown in the three characters, Kate, Pete and Philip, which, as they develop, touch every chord of sympathy in the reader’s gamut of sensibility.
Kate and Pete are children of one generation. Life is theirs and the light of the sun; yesterday has no hold over them, neither has to-morrow. Philip is the aristocrat, knowing his father’s, and his father’s father, heavy with the knowledge of their follies and sins; the world calls to him, for him there is a great To-morrow. Into the complexity of his nature comes love—love for a girl who is “of the people”—Kate; and the alternate yielding to and resisting his love makes the tragedy of the three lives.
The scene is laid entirely in the Isle of Man. Manx characteristics, humours, eccentricities and pathos making up the atmosphere so exclusively that when we are introduced for the moment to an assemblage chiefly English, we feel ourselves to be in a foreign element.
Philip Christian is brought up by his aunt, who in dread lest the principal weakness of their house should appear in him, makes it her task to keep in his remembrance the misery of his father’s life, who, in marrying beneath him, ruined his career and lost his self-respect. We are carried through Philip’s childhood with its love for little peasant Pete, until, with Pete’s child-sweetheart, Kate, the miller’s daughter, the three stand together on the borderland of the mystery of manhood and womanhood. Then Pete, leaving Manxland to seek a fortune which shall make him acceptable in the eyes of Kate’s parents, commits his sweetheart to Philip’s care and toils his youth away in South Africa. Philip in his rôle of protector and letter-carrier, visits the inn of Sulby, Kate’s home, now frequently, now infrequently, as his hidden love for Kate or the thought of treason to his friend surges uppermost. And Kate’s child-love for Pete fades, passes into woman’s passion for Philip. Understanding nothing of Philip’s feelings, but knowing his love for her, and caring for nothing else, she rebels at his silence and sometimes consciously, sometimes unconsciously, uses all her power to tempt him to break it.
After the lapse of some months, in which Philip had not been seen at Sulby, she wrote him a letter. It was to say how anxious she had been at the length of time since she had last heard from Pete, and to ask if he had any news to relieve her fears. The poor little lie was written in a trembling hand which shook honestly enough, but from the torment of other feelings.