Hall Caine - The Bondman - A New Saga

"Maybe where yours is, Bella," said Liza, with a toss of the head; "near enough, perhaps, but not visible to the naked eye."

The effects of going to church on Liza Killey were what they often are of a woman of base nature. With a man to work for her she became more idle than before, and with nothing to fear from scandal more reckless and sluttish. Having hidden her nakedness in the gown of marriage, she lost the last rag of womanly shame.

The effects on Stephen Orry were the deepening of his sloth, his gloom and his helplessness. What purpose in life he ever had was paralyzed. On his first coming to the island he had sailed to the mackerel fishing in the boats of Kane Wade – a shrewd Manxman, who found the big, dumb Icelander a skilful fisherman. Now he neglected his work, lost self-reliance, and lay about for hours, neither thinking nor feeling, but with a look of sheer stupidity. And so the two sat together in their ditch, sinking day by day deeper and yet deeper into the mire of idleness, moroseness, and mutual loathing. Nevertheless, they had their cheerful hours together.

The "king" of Nary's toast soon came. A child was born – a bonny, sunny boy as ever yet drew breath; but Liza looked on it as a check to her freedom, a drain on her energy, something helpless and looking to her for succor. So the unnatural mother neglected it, and Stephen, who was reminded by its coming that Rachel had been about to give birth to a child, turned his heart from it and ignored it.

Thus three spirit-breaking years dragged on, and Stephen Orry grew woe-begone and stone-eyed. Of old he had been slothful and spiritless indeed, but not a base man. Now his whole nature was all but gone to the gutter. He had once been a truth-teller, but living with a woman who assumed that he must be a liar, he had ended by becoming one. He had no company save her company, for his slow wit had found it hard to learn the English tongue, and she alone could rightly follow him; he had no desires save the petty ones of daily food and drink; he had no purpose save the degrading purpose of defeating the nightly wanderings of his drunken wife. Thus without any human eye upon him in the dark way he was going, Stephen Orry had grown coarse and base.

But the end was not yet, of all this than was to be and know. One night, after spending the day on the sea with the lines for cod, the year deepening to winter, the air muggy and cold, he went away home, hungry, and wet and cold, leaving his mates at the door of the "Plough," where there was good company within and the cheer of a busy fire! Home! On reaching Port-y-Vullin he found the door open, the hearth cold, the floor in a puddle from the driving rain, not a bite or sup in the cupboard, and his wife lying drunk across the bed, with the child in its grimy blueness creeping and crying about her head.

It was the beginning of the end. Once again he fumbled the haft of his seaman's knife, and then by a quick impulse he plucked up the child in his arms.

"Now God be praised for your poor face," he said, and while he dried the child's pitiful eyes, the hot drops started to his own.

He lit the fire, he cooked a cod he had brought home with him, he ate himself and fed the little one. Then he sat before the hearth with the child at his breast, as any mother might do, for at length it had come to him to know that, if it was not to be lost and worse than orphaned, he must henceforth be father and mother both to it.

And when the little eyes, wet no longer, but laughing like sunshine into the big seared face above them struggled in vain with sleep, he wrapped the child in his ragged guernsey and put it to lie like a bundle where the fire could warm it. Then all being done he sat again, and leaning his elbows on his knees covered his ears with his hands, so that they might shut out the sound of the woman's heavy breathing.

It was on that night, for the first time since he fled from Iceland, that he saw the full depth of his offence. Offence? Crime it was, and that of the blackest; and in the terror of his loneliness he trembled at the thought that some day his horrible dumb secret would become known, that something would happen to tell it – that he was married already when he married the woman who lay behind him.

At that he saw how low he had fallen – from her who once had been so pure and true beside him, and had loved him and given up father, and home, and fame for him; to this trull, who now dragged him through the slush, and trod on him and hated him. Then the bitter thought came that what she had suffered for him who had given him everything, he could never repay by one kind word or look. Lost she was to him forever and ever, and parted from him by a yet wider gulf than eight hundred miles of sea. Such was the agony of his shame, and through it all the snore of the sleeping woman went like iron through his head, so that at last he wrapped his arms about it and sobbed out to the dead fire at his feet, "Rachel! Rachel! Rachel!"

All at once he became conscious that the heavy breathing had ceased, that the house was silent, that something had touched him on the shoulder, and that a gaunt shadow stood beside him. It was the woman, who at the sound of his voice had arisen from her drunken sleep, and now gasped,

"Who is Rachel?"

At that word his blood ran cold, and shivering in his clothes, he crouched lower at the hearth, neither answering her nor looking up.

Then with eyes of hate she cried again,

"Who is Rachel?"

But the only voice that answered her was the voice that rang within him – "I'm a lost man, God help me."

"Who is Rachel?" the woman cried once more, and the sound of that name from her lips, hardening it, brutalizing it, befouling it, was the most awful thing by which his soul had yet been shaken out of its stupor.

"Who is she, I say? Answer me," she cried in a raging voice; but he crouched there still, with his haggard face and misty eyes turned down.

Then she laid her hand on his shoulder and shook him, and cried bitterly.

"Who is she, this light o' love – this baggage?"

At that he stiffened himself up, shuddered from head to foot, flung her from him and answered in a terrible voice.

"Woman, she is my wife."

That word, like a thunderbolt, left a heavy silence behind it. Liza stood looking in terror at Stephen's face, unable to utter a cry.

But next day she went to Parson Gell and told him all. She got small comfort. Parson Gell had himself had two wives; the first had deserted him, and after an interval of six years, in which he had not heard from her, he had married the second. So to Liza he said,

"He may have sinned against the law, but what proof have you? None."

Then she went to the Deemster at Ramsey. It was Deemster Lace – a bachelor much given to secret gallantries.

She got as little cheer from this source, but yet she came away with one drop of solace fermenting in the bitterness of her heart.

"Tut, woman, it's more common than you think for. And where's the harm? Och! it's happened to some of the best that's going. Now, if he'd beaten you, or struck you" – and the good man raised both hands and shook his head.

Then the thought leapt to her mind that she herself could punish Stephen a hundredfold worse than any law of bishop or deemster. If she could she would not now put him away. He should live on with her, husband or no husband, and she with him, wife or no wife.

On her way home she called at the house of Kane Wade, sat down with old Bridget, shed some crocodile tears, vowed she daren't have tould it on no occount to no other morthal sowl, but would the heart of woman belave it? her man had a wife in his own counthry!

Bridget, who had herself had four husbands, lifted her hands in horror, and next day when Stephen Orry went down to the boats Kane Wade, who had newly turned Methodist, was there already, and told him – whittling a stick as he spoke – that the fishing was wonderful lean living gettin', and if he didn't shorten hands it would be goin' begging on the houses they'd all be, sarten sure.