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The Manxman: A Novel, a novel by Hall Caine |
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Part 4. Man And Wife - Chapter 9 |
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_ PART IV. MAN AND WIFE CHAPTER IX The more Kate realised that she was in the position of a bad woman, the more she struggled to be a good one. She flew to religion as a refuge. There was no belief in her religion, no faith, no creed, no mystical transports, but only fear, and shame, and contrition. It was fervent enough, nevertheless. On Sunday morning she went to The Christians, on Sunday afternoon to church, on Sunday evening to the Wesleyan chapel, and on Wednesday night to the mission-house of the Primitives. Her catholicity did not please her father. He looked into her quivering face, and asked if she had broken any commandment in secret. She turned pale, and answered "No." Pete followed her wherever she went, and, seeing this, some of the baser sort among the religious people began to follow him. They abused each other badly in their efforts to lay hold of his money-bags. "You'll never go over to yonder lot," said one. "They're holding to election--a soul-destroying doctrine." "A respectable man can't join himself to Cowley's gang," said another. "They're denying original sin, and aren't a ha'p'orth better than infidels." Pete took the measure of them all, down to the watch-pockets of their waistcoats. "You remind me," said he, "when you're a-gate on your doctrines, of the Kaffirs out at Kimberley. If one of them found an ould hat in the compound that some white man had thrown away, they'd light a camp-fire after dark, and hould a reg'lar Tynwald Coort on it. There they'd be squatting round on their haunches, with nothing to be seen of them but their eyes and their teeth, and there'd be as many questions as the Catechism. '_Who_ found it!' says one. '_Where_ did he find it?' says another. 'If _he_ hadn't found it, who else would have found it?' That's how they'd be going till two in the morning, and the fire dead out, and the lot of them squealing away same as monkeys in the dark. And all about an ould hat with a hole in it, not worth a ha'penny piece." "Blasphemy," they cried. "But still and for all, you give to the widow and lend to the Lord--you practise the religion you don't believe in, Cap'n Quilliam." "There's a pair of us, then." said Pete, "for you believe in the religion you don't practise." But Caesar got Pete at last, in spite of his scepticism. The time came for the annual camp-meeting. Kate went off to it, and Pete followed like a big dog at her heels. The company assembled at Sulby Bridge, and marched through the village to a revival chorus. They stopped at a field of Caesar's in the glen--it was last year's Melliah field--and Caesar mounted a cart which had been left there to serve as a pulpit. Then they sang again, and, breaking up into many companies, went off into little circles that were like gorse rings on the mountains. After that they reassembled to the strains of another chorus, and gathered afresh about the cart for Caesar's sermon. It dealt with the duty of sinless perfection. There were evil men and happy sinners in the island these days, who were telling them it was not good to be faultless in this life, because virtue begot pride, and pride was a deadly sin. There were others who were saying that because a man must repent in order to be saved, to repent he had to sin. Doctrines of the devil--don't listen to them. Could a man in the household of faith live one second without committing sin? Of course he could. One minute? Certainly. One hour? No doubt of it. Then, if a man could live one hour without sin, he could live one day, one week, one month, one year--nay, a whole lifetime. In getting thus far, Caesar had worked himself into a perspiration, and he took off his coat, hung it over the cartwheel, and went on in his shirt-sleeves. Let them make no excuses for backsliders. It was a trick of the devil to deal with you, and forget to pay strap (the price). It was an old rule and a good one that, if any were guilty of the sins of the flesh, they should be openly punished in this world, that their sins might not be counted against them in the day of the Lord. Caesar threw off his waistcoat and finished with a passionate exhortation, calling upon his hearers to deliver themselves of secret sins. If oratory is to be judged of by its effects, Caesar's sermon was a great oration. It began amid the silence of his own followers, and the _tschts_ and _pshaws_ of a little group of his enemies, who lounged on the outside of the crowd to cast ridicule on the "swaddler" and the "publican preacher." But it ended amid loud exclamations of praise and supplications from all his hearers, sighing and groaning, and the bodily clutching of one another by the arm in paroxysms of fear and rapture. When Caesar's voice died down like a wave of the sea, somebody leapt up from the grass to pray. And before the first prayer had ended, a second was begun. Meantime the penitents had begun to move inward through the throng, and they fell weeping and moaning on their knees about the cart. Kate was among them, and, when she took her place, Pete still held by her side A strong shuddering passed over her shoulders, and her wet eyes were on the grass. Pete took her hand, and feeling how it trembled, his own eyes also filled. Above their heads Caesar was towering with fiery eyes and face aflame. In a momentary pause between two prayers, he tossed his voice up in a hymn. The people joined him at the second bar, and then the wailing of the penitents was drowned in a general shout of the revival tune--
As the penitents grew calmer, they rose one by one to give their experience of Satan and salvation. At length Caesar seized his opportunity and said, "And now Brother Quilliam will give us his experience." Pete rose from Kate's side with tearful eyes amid a babel of jubilation, most of it facetious. "Be of good cheer, Peter, be not afraid." "I've not much to tell," said Pete--"only a story of backsliding. Before I earned enough to carry me up country, I worked a month at Cape Town with the boats. My master was a pious old Dutchman getting the name of Jan. One Saturday night a big ship lost her anchor outside, and on Sunday morning forty pounds was offered for finding it. All the boatmen went out except Jan. 'Six days shalt thou labour,' says he, 'but the seventh is the Sabbath.'" Pete's address was here punctuated by loud cries of thanksgiving. "All day long he was seeing the boats beating up the bay, so, to keep out of temptation, he was going up to the bedroom and pulling the blind and getting down on his knees and wrastling like mad. And something out of heaven was saying to him, 'It's the Lord's day, Jannie; they'll not get a ha'p'orth.' Neither did they; but when Jan's watch said twelve o'clock midnight the pair of us were going off like rockets. Well, we hadn't been ten minutes on the water before our grapplings had hould of that anchor." There were loud cries of "Glory!" "Jan was shouting, 'The Lord has put us atop of it as straight as the lid of a taypot!'" Great cries of "Hallelujah!" "But when we came ashore we found Jan's watch was twenty minutes fast, and that was the end of the ould man's religion." That day the word went round that both Pete and Kate had been converted. Their names were entered in Class, and they received their quarterly tickets. _ |
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