The Bondman: A New Saga

The end was very near; the delirium passed away, and Stephen Orry opened his eyes. The great creature was as quiet as a child now, and as soft and gentle as a child's was his deep hoarse voice. He knew that he had been wandering in his mind, and when he looked into Jason's face a pale smile crossed his own.

"I thought I had found her," he said, very simply, "my poor young wife that once was; it was she that I lost so long ago, and did such wrong by."

Jason's throat was choking him, but he stammered out, "Lie still, sir, lie still and rest."

But Stephen Orry talked on in the same simple way: "Ah, how silly I am! I forgot you didn't know."

"Lie still and rest," said Jason again.

"There was someone with her, too. I thought I was her son – her child and mine, that was to come when I left her. And, only think, I looked again, and it seemed to be you. Yes, you – for it was the face of him that fetched me out of the sea. I thought you were my son indeed."

Then Jason could bear up no longer. He flung himself down on his knees by the bedside, and buried his face in the dying man's breast.

"Father," he sobbed, "I am your son."

But Stephen Orry only smiled, and answered very quietly, "Ah, yes, I remember – that was part of our bargain, my good lad. Well, God bless you, my son. God bless and speed you."

And that was the end of Orry.

The Book of Michael Sunlocks

CHAPTER I.
Red Jason

Now the facts of this history must stride on some four years, and come to a great crisis in the lives of Greeba and Jason. Every event of that time seemed to draw these two together, and the first of the circumstances that bound them came very close on the death of Stephen Orry. Only a few minutes after Greeba, at the bidding of her two brothers, Stean and Thurstan, had left Jason alone with the dying man, she had parted from them without word or warning, and fled back to the little hut in Port-y-Vullin. With a wild laboring of heart, panting for breath and full of dread, she had burst the door open, fearing to see what she dare not think of; but, instead of the evil work she looked for, she had found Jason on his knees by the bedside, sobbing as if his heart would break, and Stephen Orry passing away with a tender light in his eyes and a word of blessing on his lips. At that sight she had stood on the threshold like one who is transfixed, and how long that moment had lasted she never knew. But the thing she remembered next was that Jason had taken her by the hand and drawn her up, with all the fire of her spirit gone, to where the man lay dead before them, and had made her swear to him there and then never to speak of what she had seen, and to put away from her mind forever the vague things she had but partly guessed. After that he had told her, with a world of pain, that Stephen Orry had been his father; that his father had killed his mother by base neglect and cruelty; that to wipe out his mother's wrongs he had vowed to slay his father; and that his father, not knowing him, save in the vision of his delirium, had died in the act of blessing him. Greeba had yielded to Jason, because she had been conquered by his stronger will, and was in fear of the passion which flashed in his face; but hearing all this, she remembered Michael Sunlocks, and how he must stand as the son of the other woman; and straightway she found her own reasons why she should be silent on all that she had that night seen and heard. This secret was the first of the bonds between them; and the second, though less obvious, was even more real.

Losing no time, Adam Fairbrother had written a letter to Michael Sunlocks, by that name, telling him of the death of his father, and how, so far as the facts were known, the poor man came by it in making the port in his boat after seeing his son away in the packet. This he had despatched to the only care known to him, that of the Lord Bishop Petersen, at his Latin School of Reykjavik; but after a time the letter had come back, with a note from the Bishop saying that no such name was known to him, and no such student was under his charge. Much afraid that the same storm that had led Stephen Orry to his end had overtaken Michael Sunlocks also, Adam Fairbrother had then promptly re-addressed his letter to the care of the Governor-General, who was also the Postmaster, and added a postscript asking if, after the sad event whereof he had thought it his task in love and duty to apprise him, there was the same necessity that his dear boy should remain in Iceland. "But, indite me a few lines without delay," he wrote, "giving me assurance of your safe arrival, for what has happened of late days has haunted me with many fears of mishap."

Then in due course an answer had come from Michael Sunlocks, saying he had landed safely, but there being no regular mails, he had been compelled to await the sailing of English ships to carry his letters; that by some error he had missed the first of these, and was now writing by the next; that many strange things had happened to him, and he was lodged in the house of the Governor-General; that his father's death had touched him very deeply; being brought about by a mischance that so nearly affected himself; that the sad fact, so far from leaving him free to return home, seemed to make it the more necessary that he should remain where he was until he had done what he had been sent to do: and, finally, that what that work was he could not tell in a letter, but only by word of mouth, whenever it pleased God that they should meet again. This, with many words of affection for Adam himself, in thanks for his fatherly anxiety, and some mention of Greeba in tender but guarded terms, was the sum of the only letter that had come from Michael Sunlocks in the four years after Stephen Orry's death to the first of the events that are now to be recorded.

And throughout these years Jason had lived at Lague, having been accepted as housemate by the six Fairbrothers, when the ship-broken men had gone their own ways on receiving from their Dublin owners the wages that were due to them. Though his relation to Stephen Orry had never become known, it had leaked out that he had come into Orry's money. He had done little work. His chief characteristics had been love of liberty and laziness. In the summer he had fished on the sea and in the rivers and he had shot and hunted in the winter. He had followed these pursuits out of sheer love of an idle life; but if he had a hobby it was the collecting of birds. Of every species on the island, of land or seafowl, he had found a specimen. He stuffed his birds with some skill, and kept them in the little hut in Port-y-Vullin.

The four years had developed his superb physique, and he had grown to be a yet more magnificent creature than Stephen Orry himself. He was rounder, though his youth might have pardoned more angularity; broader, and more upright, with a proud poise of head, long wavy red hair, smooth cheeks, solid white teeth, face of broad lines, an intelligent expression, and a deep voice that made the mountain ring. His dress suited well his face and figure. He wore a skin cap with a peak, a red woollen shirt belted about the waist, breeches of leather, leggings and seaman's boots. The cap was often awry, and a tuft of red hair tumbled over his bronzed forehead, his shirt was torn, his breeches were stained, and his leggings tied with rope; but rough, and even ragged, as his dress was, it sat upon him with a fine rude grace. With a knife in his sheath, a net or a decoy over his arm, a pouch for powder slung behind him, a fowling piece across his shoulder, and a dog at his heels, he would go away into the mountains as the evening fell. And in the early gleams of sunrise he would stride down again and into the "Hibernian," scenting up the old tavern with tobacco smoke, and carrying many dead birds at his belt, with the blood still dripping from their heads hung down. Folks called him Red Jason, or sometimes Jason the Red.

He began to visit Government House. Greeba was there, but at first he seemed not to see her. Simple greetings he exchanged with her, and that was all the commerce between them. With the Governor, when work was over, he sat and smoked, telling of his own country and its laws, and the ways of its people, talking of his hunting and fishing, calling the mountains Jokulls, and the Tynwald the Löberg, and giving names of his own to the glens, the Chasm of Ravens for the Dhoon, and Broad Shield for Ballaglass. And Adam loved to learn how close was the bond between his own dear isle and the land of the great sea kings of old time, but most of all he listened to what Jason said, that he might thereby know what kind of world it was wherein his dear lad Michael Sunlocks had to live away from him.

"A fine lad," Adam Fairbrother would say to Greeba; "a lad of fearless courage, and unflinching contempt of death, with a great horror of lying and treachery, and an inborn sense of justice. Not tender and gentle with his strength, as my own dear Sunlocks is, but of a high and serious nature, and having passions that may not be trifled with." And hearing this, and the more deliberate warning of her brothers at Lague, Greeba would remember that she had herself the best reason to know that the passions of Jason could be terrible.

But nothing she recked of it all, for her heart was as light as her manners in those days, and if she thought twice of her relations with Jason she remembered that she was the daughter of the Governor, and he was only a poor sailor lad who had been wrecked off their coast.

Jason was a great favorite with Mrs. Fairbrother, notwithstanding that he did no work. Rumor had magnified the fortune that Stephen Orry had left him, and the two hundred pounds stood at two thousand in her eyes. With a woman's quick instinct she saw how Jason stood towards Greeba, almost before he had himself become conscious of it, and she smiled on him and favored him. A whisper of this found its way from Lague to Government House, and old Adam shook his head. He had nothing against Jason, except that the lad was not fond of work, and whether Jason was poor or rich counted for very little, but he could not forget his boy Sunlocks.

Thus while Greeba remained with her father there was but little chance that she could wrong the promise she had made to Michael; but events seemed to force her into the arms of Jason. Her mother had never been of an unselfish spirit, and since parting from her husband she had shown a mean penuriousness. This affected her six sons chiefly, and they realized that when she had taken their side against their father she had taken the cream of their living also. Lague was now hers for her lifetime, and only theirs after she was done with it; and if they asked much more for their work than bed and board she reminded them of this, and bade them wait. Soon tiring of their Lenten entertainment, they trooped off, one after one, to their father, badly as they had dealt by him, and complained loudly of the great wrong he had done them when he made over the lands of Lague to their mother. What were they now, though sons of the Governor? No better than hinds on their mother's farm, expected to work for her from light to dusk, and getting nothing for their labor but the house she kept over their heads. Grown men they all were now, and the elder of them close on their prime, yet none were free to marry, for none had the right to a penny for the living he earned; and all this came of their father's unwise generosity.

Old Adam could not gainsay them, and he would not reproach them, so he did all that remained to him to do, and that was to exercise a little more of the same unwise generosity, and give them money. And finding this easy means of getting what they wanted, they came again and again, all six of them, from Asher to Gentleman Johnny, and as often as they came they went away satisfied, though old Adam shook his head when he saw how mean and small was the spirit of his sons. Greeba also shook her head, but from another cause, for though she grudged her brothers nothing she knew that her father was fast being impoverished. Once she hinted as much, but old Adam made light of her misgivings, saying that if the worst came to the worst he had still his salary, and what was the good of his money if he might not use it, and what was the virtue of charity if it must not begin at home?

But the evil was not ended there for the six lumbering men who objected to work without pay were nothing loth to take pay without work. Not long after the first of the visits to Government House, Lague began to be neglected.

Asher lay in the ingle and dozed; Thurstan lay about in the "Hibernian" and drank; Ross and Stean started a ring of gamecocks, Jacob formed a nest of private savings, and John developed his taste for dress and his appetite for gallantries. Mrs. Fairbrother soon discovered the source of the mischief, and railed at the name of her husband, who was ruining her boys and bringing herself to beggary.

Thus far had matters gone, during the four years following the death of Stephen Orry, and then a succession of untoward circumstances hastened a climax of grave consequence to all the persons concerned in this history. Two bad seasons had come, one on the end of the other. The herring fishing had failed, and the potato crop had suffered a blight. The fisher folk and the poor farming people were reduced to sore straits. The one class had to throw the meal bag across their shoulders and go round the houses begging, and the other class had to compound with their landlords or borrow from their neighbors.

Where few were rich and many were poor, the places of call for either class were not numerous. But two houses at least were always open to those who were in want – Lague and Government House; though their welcome at the one was very unlike their welcome at the other. Mrs. Fairbrother relieved their necessities by lending them money on mortgage on their lands or boats, and her interest was in proportion to their necessities. They had no choice but accept her terms, however rigid, and if in due course they could not meet them they had no resource but to yield up to her their little belongings. In less than half a year boat after boat, croft after croft, and even farm after farm had fallen into her hands. She grew rich, and the richer she grew the more penurious she became. There were no banks in the north of the island then, and the mistress of Lague was in effect the farmer's banker.

Government House, in the south of the island, had yet more applicants; but what the Governor had he gave, and when his money was gone he served out orders on the millers for meal and the weavers for cloth. It soon became known that he kept open house to the poor, and from north and south, east and west, the needy came to him in troops, and with them came the idle and the dissolute. He knew the one class from the other, yet railed at both in threatening words, reproaching their improvidence and predicting his own ruin, but he ended by giving to all alike. They found out his quarter-day and came in throngs to meet it, knowing that, bluster as he would, while the good man had money he was sure to give it to all who asked. The sorry troop, good and bad, worthy and unworthy, soon left him without a pound. He fumed at this when Greeba cast up his reckoning, but comforted himself with the thought that he had still his stipend of five hundred pounds a year coming in to him, however deeply it might be condemned beforehand.

At the first pinch of his necessity his footman deserted him and after the footman went the groom.

"They say the wind is tempered to the shorn sheep, Greeba," said he, and laughed.

He had always stood somewhat in awe of these great persons, and his spirits rose visibly at the loss of them, for he had never yet reconciled himself to the dignity of his state.

"It's wonderful how much a man may do for himself when he's put to it," he said, as he groomed his own horse next morning. His sons were not so easily appeased, and muttered hard words at his folly, for their own supplies had by this time suffered curtailment. He was ruining himself at a breakneck pace, and if he came to die in the gutter, who should say that it had not served him right? The man who threw away his substance with his eyes open deserved to know by bitter proof that it had gone. Jason heard all this at the fireside at Lague, and though he could not answer it, he felt his palms itch sorely, and his fists tighten like ribs of steel, and his whole body stiffen up and silently measure its weight against that of Thurstan Fairbrother, the biggest and heaviest and hardest-spoken of the brothers. Greeba heard it, too, but took it with a gay lightsomeness, knowing all yet fearing nothing.

"What matter?" she said, and laughed.

But strange and silly enough were some of the shifts that her father's open-handedness put her to in these bad days of the bitter need of the island's poor people.

It was the winter season, when things were at their worst, and on Christmas Eve Greeba had a goose killed for their Christmas dinner. The bird was hung in one of the out-houses, to drain and cool before being plucked, and while it was there Greeba went out, leaving her father at home. Then came three of the many who had never yet been turned empty from the Governor's door. Adam blustered at all of them, but he emptied his pockets to one, gave the goose to another, and smuggled something out of the pantry for the third.

The goose was missed by the maid whose work it was to pluck it, and its disappearance was made known to Greeba on her return. Guessing at the way it had gone, she went into the room where her father sat placidly smoking, and trying to look wondrous, serene and innocent.

"What do you think, father?" she said; "someone has stolen the goose."

"I'm afraid, my dear," he answered, meekly, "I gave it away to poor Kinrade, the parish clerk. Would you believe it, he and his good old wife hadn't a bit or a sup for their Christmas dinner?"

"Well," said Greeba, "you'll have to be content with bread and cheese for your own, for we have nothing else in the house now."

"I'm afraid, my dear," he stammered, "I gave away the cheese too. Poor daft Gelling, who lives on the mountains, had nothing to eat but a loaf of bread, poor fellow."

Now the rapid impoverishment of the Governor was forcing Greeba into the arms of Jason, though they had yet no idea that this was so; and when the crisis came that loosened the ties which held Greeba to her father, it came as a surprise to all three of them.

The one man in the island who had thus far shown a complete indifference to the sufferings of the poor in their hour of tribulation was the Bishop of Sodor and Man. This person was a fashionable ecclesiastic – not a Manxman – a Murray, and a near kinsman of the Lord of the Island, who had kept the See four years vacant that the sole place of profit in the island might thereby be retained for his own family. Many years the Bishop had drawn his stipend, tithe and glebe rents, which were very large in proportion to the diocese, and almost equal in amount to the emoluments of the whole body of the native clergy. He held small commerce with his people, and the bad seasons troubled him little until he felt the pinch of them himself. But when he found it hard to gather his tithe he began to realize that the island was passing through sore straits. Then he sold his tithe charges by auction in England, and they were knocked down to a Scotch factor – a hard man, untroubled by sentiment, and not too proud to get his own by means that might be thought to soil the cloth of a Bishop.

When news of this transfer reached the island the Manx clergy looked black, though they dared say nothing; but the poor people grumbled audibly, for they knew what was coming. It soon came, in the shape of writs from the Bishop's seneschal, served by the Bishop's sumner. Then the cry of the poor reached the Governor at Castletown. No powers had he to stay the seizure of goods and stock, for arrears that were forfeit to the Church Courts, but he wrote to the Bishop, asking him to stay execution at such a moment of the island's necessity. The Bishop answered him curtly that the matter was now outside his control. At that the Governor inquired into the legality of the sale, and found good reason to question it. He wrote again to the Bishop, hinting at his doubts, and then the Bishop told him to mind his own business. "My business is the welfare of the people," the Governor answered, "and be you Bishop or Lord, or both, be sure that while I am here I will see to it."

"Such is the penalty of setting a beggar on horseback," the Bishop rejoined.

Meantime the Scotch factor went on with his work, and notices were served that if arrears of tithe rent were not paid by a given date, cattle or crop to the value of them would then be seized in the Bishop's name. When the word came to Government House, the Governor announced to Greeba his intention to be present at the first seizure. She tried to restrain him, fearing trouble; but he was fully resolved. Then she sent word by old Chalse A'Killey to her brothers at Lague, begging them to go with their father and see him through, but one and all refused. There was mischief brewing, and if the Governor had a right to interfere, he had a right to have the civil forces at the back of him. If he had no right to the help of Castle Rushen he had no right to stop the execution. In any case, they had no wish to meddle.

When old Chalse brought back this answer, Red Jason chanced to be at Castletown. He had been at Government House oftener than usual since the clouds had begun to hang on it. Coming down from the mountains, with his pipe in his mouth, his fowling piece over his shoulder, and his birds hanging from his belt, he would sometimes contrive to get up into the yard at the back, fling down a brace of pheasants on to the kitchen floor, and go off again without speaking to anyone. Greeba had been too smart for him this time, and he was standing before her with a look of guilt when Chalse came up on his errand. Then Jason heard all, and straightway offered to go with the Governor, and never let wit of his intention.

"Oh, thank you, thank you!" said Greeba, and she looked up into his bronzed face and smiled proudly, and her long lashes blinked over her beautiful eyes. Her glance seemed to go through him. It seemed to go through all nature; and fill the whole world with a new, glad light.

The evil day came, and the Governor was as good as his word. He went away to Peel, where the first seizure was to be made. There a great crowd had already gathered, and at sight of Adam's face a great shout went up. The factor heard it, as he came on from Bishop's Court with a troop of his people about him. "I'll mak' short shrift of a' that, the noo," he said. When he came up he ordered that a cow house door should be opened and the cattle brought out for instant sale, for he had an auctioneer by his side. But the door was found to be locked, and he shouted to his men to leap on to the roof and strip off the thatch. Then the Governor cried "Stop," and called on the factor to desist, for though he might seize the cattle there would be no sale that day, since no man there present would take the bread out of the mouths of the poor.

"Then they shall try the milk," said the factor, with a hoarse laugh, and at the same moment the Bishop's seneschal, a briefless advocate, stepped out, pushed his hot face into Adam's, and said that, Governor as he was, if he encouraged the people to resist, the sumner should there and then summon him to appear before the Church Courts for contempt.

At that insult the crowd surged around, muttering deep oaths, and factor and seneschal were both much hustled. In another moment there was a general struggle; people were shouting, the Governor was on the ground and in danger of being trodden under foot, the factor had drawn a pistol, and some of his men were flourishing hangers.

By this time Red Jason had lounged up, as if by chance, to the outskirts of the crowd, and now he pushed through with great strides, lifted the Governor to his feet, laid the factor on the broad of his back, and clapped his pistol hand under one heavy heel. Then the hangers flashed round Jason's face, and he stretched his arms and laid out about him. In two minutes he had made a wide circle where he stood, and in two minutes more the factor and his men, with seneschal, sumner, auctioneer, and all the riffraff of the Church Courts, were going off up the road with best foot foremost, and a troop of the people, like a pack of hounds at full cry, behind.

Then the remnant of the crowd compared notes and bruises.

"Man alive, what a boy to fight," said one.

"Who was it?" said another.

"Och, Jason the Red, of coorse," said a third.

Jason was the only man badly injured. He had a deep cut over the right brow, and though the wound bled freely he made light of it. But Adam was much troubled at the sight.

"I much misdoubt me but we'll rue the day," he said.

Jason laughed at that, and they went back to Castletown together. Greeba saw them coming, and all but fainted at the white bandage that gleamed across Jason's forehead; but he bade her have no fear, for his wound was nothing. Nevertheless she must needs dress it afresh, though her deft fingers trembled woefully, and, seeing how near the knife had come to the eye, all her heart was in her mouth. But he only laughed at the bad gash, and thought with what cheer he would take such another just to have the same tender hands bathe it, and stitch it, and to see the troubled heaving of the round bosom that was before him while his head was held down.

"Aren't you very proud of yourself, Jason?" she whispered softly, as she finished.

"Why proud?" said he.

"It's the second time you have done as I have bidden you, and suffered for doing so," she said.

He knew not what reply to make, scarcely realizing which way her question tended. So, feeling very stupid, he said again,

"But why proud?"

"Aren't you, then?" she said. "Because I am proud of you."

They were alone, and he saw her breast heave and her great eyes gleam, and he felt dizzy. At the next instant their hands touched, and then his blood boiled, and before he knew what he was doing he had clasped the beautiful girl in his arms, and kissed her on the lips and cheek. She sprang away from him, blushing deeply, but he knew that she was not angry, for she smiled through her deep rich color, as she fled out of the room on tiptoe. From that hour he troubled his soul no more with fears that he was unworthy of Greeba's love, for he looked at his wound in the glass, and remembered her words, and laughed in his heart.

The Governor was right that there would be no sale for arrears of tithe charges. After a scene at Bishop's Court the factor went back to England, and no more was heard of the writs served by the sumner. But wise folks predicted a storm for Adam Fairbrother, and the great people were agreed that his conduct had been the maddest folly.

"He'll have to take the horns with the hide," said Deemster Lace.

"He's a fool that doesn't know which side his bread is buttered," said Mrs. Fairbrother.

The storm came quickly, but not from the quarter expected.

Since the father of the Duke of Athol had sold his fiscal rights to the English Crown the son had rued the bargain. All the interest in the island that remained to him lay in his title, his patronage of the Bishopric, and his Governor-Generalship. His title counted for little, for it was unknown at the English Court, and the salary of his Governor-Generalship counted for less, for, not being resident in the island, he had to pay a local Governor. The patronage of the Bishopric was the one tangible item of his interest, and when the profits of that office were imperilled he determined to part with his truncated honors. Straightway he sold them bag and baggage to the Crown, for nearly six times as much as his father had got for the insular revenues. When this neat act of truck and trade was complete he needed his deputy no more, and sent Adam Fairbrother an instant warning, with half-a-year's salary for smart money.

The blow came with a shock on Greeba and her father, but there was no leisure to sigh over it. Government House and its furniture belonged to the Government, and the new Governor might take possession of it at any moment. But the stock on its lands was Adam's and as it was necessary to dispose of it, he called a swift sale. Half the island came to it, and many a brave brag came then from many a vain stomach. Adam was rightly served! What was there to expect when jacks were set in office? With five hundred a year coming in for twenty years he was as poor as a church mouse? Aw, money in the hands of some men was like water in a sieve!

Adam's six sons were there, looking on with sneering lips, as much as to say, "Let nobody blame us for a mess like this." Red Jason was there, too, glooming as black as a thundercloud, and itching to do battle with somebody if only a fit case would offer.

Adam himself did not show his face. He was ashamed – he was crushed – he was humiliated – but not for the reason attributed to him by common report. Alone he sat, and smoked and smoked, in the room at the back, from whence he had seen Greeba and Michael Sunlocks that day when they walked side by side into the paved yard, and when he said within himself, "Now, God grant that this may be the end of all parting between them and me." He was thinking of that day now: that it was very, very far away. He heard the clatter of feet below, and the laughter of the bidders and the wondrous jests of the facetious auctioneer.

When the work was over, and the house felt quiet and so, so empty, Greeba came in to him, with eyes large and red, and kissed him without saying a word. Then he became mighty cheerful all at once, and bade her fetch out her account books, for they had their own reckoning yet to make, and now was the time to make it. She did as she was bidden, and counted up her father's debts, with many a tear dropping over them as if trying to blot them out forever. And meanwhile he counted up his half-year's smart money, and the pile of silver and gold that had come of the sale. When all was reckoned, they found they would be just fifteen pounds to the good, and that was now their whole fortune.