The Weavers, Complete - Gilbert Parker
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Faith read what was passing in his mind. She flushed--slowly flushed
until her face--and eyes were one soft glow, then she laid a hand upon
his arm and said: "Davy, I feel the truth about him--no more. Nothing of
him is for thee or me. His ways are not our ways." She paused, and then
said solemnly: "He hath a devil. That I feel. But he hath also a mind,
and a cruel will. He will hew a path, or make others hew it for him. He
will make or break. Nothing will stand in his way, neither man nor thing,
those he loves nor those he hates. He will go on--and to go on, all
means, so they be not criminal, will be his. Men will prophesy great
things for him--they do so now. But nothing they prophesy, Davy, keeps
pace with his resolve."
"How does thee know these things?"
His question was one of wonder and surprise. He had never before seen in
her this sharp discernment and criticism.
"How know I, Davy? I know him by studying thee. What thee is not he is.
What he is thee is not." The last beams of the sun sent a sudden glint of
yellow to the green at their feet from the western hills, rising far over
and above the lower hills of the village, making a wide ocean of light,
at the bottom of which lay the Meeting-house and the Cloistered House,
and the Red Mansion with the fruited wall, and all the others, like
dwellings at the bottom of a golden sea. David's eyes were on the
distance, and the far-seeing look was in his face which had so deeply
impressed Faith in the Meeting-house, by which she had read his future.
"And shall I not also go on?" he asked.
"How far, who can tell?"
There was a plaintive note in her voice--the unavailing and sad protest
of the maternal spirit, of the keeper of the nest, who sees the brood fly
safely away, looking not back.
"What does thee see for me afar, Faith?" His look was eager.
"The will of God, which shall be done," she said with a sudden
resolution, and stood up. Her hands were lightly clasped before her like
those of Titian's Mater Dolorosa among the Rubens and Tintorettos of the
Prado, a lonely figure, whose lot it was to spend her life for others.
Even as she already had done; for thrice she had refused marriages
suitable and possible to her. In each case she had steeled her heart
against loving, that she might be all in all to her sister's child and to
her father. There is no habit so powerful as the habit of care of others.
In Faith it came as near being a passion as passion could have a place in
her even-flowing blood, under that cool flesh, governed by a heart as
fair as the apricot blossoms on the wall in her father's garden. She had
been bitterly hurt in the Meeting-house; as bitterly as is many a woman
when her lover has deceived her. David had acknowledged before them all
that he had played the flute secretly for years! That he should have
played it was nothing; that she should not have shared his secret, and so
shared his culpability before them all, was a wound which would take long
to heal.
She laid her hand upon his shoulder suddenly with a nervous little
motion.
"And the will of God thee shall do to His honour, though thee is outcast
to-day. . . . But, Davy, the music-thee kept it from me."
He looked up at her steadily; he read what was in her mind.
"I hid it so, because I would not have thy conscience troubled. Thee
would go far to smother it for me; and I was not so ungrateful to thee. I
did it for good to thee."
A smile passed across her lips. Never was woman so grateful, never wound
so quickly healed. She shook her head sadly at him, and stilling the
proud throbbing of her heart, she said:
"But thee played so well, Davy!"
He got up and turned his head away, lest he should laugh outright. Her
reasoning--though he was not worldly enough to call it feminine, and
though it scarce tallied with her argument--seemed to him quite her own.
"How long have we?" he said over his shoulder. "The sun is yet five
minutes up, or more," she said, a little breathlessly, for she saw his
hand inside his coat, and guessed his purpose.
"But thee will not dare to play--thee will not dare," she said, but more
as an invitation than a rebuke. "Speech was denied me here, but not my
music. I find no sin in it."
She eagerly watched him adjust the flute. Suddenly she drew to him the
chair from the doorway, and beckoned him to sit down. She sat where she
could see the sunset.
The music floated through the room and down the hillside, a searching
sweetness.
She kept her face ever on the far hills. It went on and on. At last it
stopped. David roused himself, as from a dream. "But it is dark!" he
said, startled. "It is past the time thee should be with me. My
banishment began at sunset."
"Are all the sins to be thine?" she asked calmly. She had purposely let
him play beyond the time set for their being together.
"Good-night, Davy." She kissed him on the cheek. "I will keep the music
for the sin's remembrance," she added, and went out into the night.
CHAPTER IV
THE CALL
"England is in one of those passions so creditable to her moral sense, so
illustrative of her unregulated virtues. We are living in the first
excitement and horror of the news of the massacre of Christians at
Damascus. We are full of righteous and passionate indignation.
'Punish--restore the honour of the Christian nations' is the proud appeal
of prelate, prig, and philanthropist, because some hundreds of Christians
who knew their danger, yet chose to take up their abode in a fanatical
Muslim city of the East, have suffered death."
The meeting had been called in answer to an appeal from Exeter Hall. Lord
Eglington had been asked to speak, and these were among his closing
words.
He had seen, as he thought, an opportunity for sensation. Politicians of
both sides, the press on all hands, were thundering denunciations upon
the city of Damascus, sitting insolent and satiated in its exquisite
bloom of pear and nectarine, and the deed itself was fading into that
blank past of Eastern life where there "are no birds in last year's
nest." If he voyaged with the crowd, his pennant would be lost in the
clustering sails! So he would move against the tide, and would startle,
even if he did not convince.
"Let us not translate an inflamed religious emotion into a war," he
continued. "To what good? Would it restore one single life in Damascus?
Would it bind one broken heart? Would it give light to one darkened home?
Let us have care lest we be called a nation of hypocrites. I will neither
support nor oppose the resolution presented; I will content myself with
pointing the way to a greater national self-respect."
Mechanically, a few people who had scarcely apprehended the full force of
his remarks began to applaud; but there came cries of "'Sh! 'Sh!" and the
clapping of hands suddenly stopped. For a moment there was absolute
silence, in which the chairman adjusted his glasses and fumbled with the
agenda paper in his confusion, scarcely knowing what to do. The speaker
had been expected to second the resolution, and had not done so. There
was an awkward silence. Then, in a loud whisper, some one said:
"David, David, do thee speak."
It was the voice of Faith Claridge. Perturbed and anxious, she had come
to the meeting with her father. They had not slept for nights, for the
last news they had had of Benn Claridge was from the city of Damascus,
and they were full of painful apprehensions.
It was the eve of the first day of winter, and David's banishment was
over. Faith had seen David often at a distance--how often had she stood
in her window and looked up over the apricot-wall to the chair-maker's
hut on the hill! According to his penalty David had never come to Hamley
village, but had lived alone, speaking to no one, avoided by all, working
out his punishment. Only the day before the meeting he had read of the
massacre at Damascus from a newspaper which had been left on his doorstep
overnight. Elder Fairley had so far broken the covenant of ostracism and
boycott, knowing David's love for his Uncle Benn.
All that night David paced the hillside in anxiety and agitation, and saw
the sun rise upon a new world--a world of freedom, of home-returning, yet
a world which, during the past four months, had changed so greatly that
it would never seem the same again.
The sun was scarce two hours high when Faith and her father mounted the
hill to bring him home again. He had, however, gone to Heddington to
learn further news of the massacre. He was thinking of his Uncle Benn-all
else could wait. His anxiety was infinitely greater than that of Luke
Claridge, for his mind had been disturbed by frequent premonitions; and
those sudden calls in his sleep-his uncle's voice--ever seemed to be
waking him at night. He had not meant to speak at the meeting, but the
last words of the speaker decided him; he was in a flame of indignation.
He heard the voice of Faith whisper over the heads of the people. "David,
David, do thee speak." Turning, he met her eyes, then rose to his feet,
came steadily to the platform, and raised a finger towards the chairman.
A great whispering ran through the audience. Very many recognised him,
and all had heard of him--the history of his late banishment and
self-approving punishment were familiar to them. He climbed the steps of
the platform alertly, and the chairman welcomed him with nervous
pleasure. Any word from a Quaker, friendly to the feeling of national
indignation, would give the meeting the new direction which all desired.
Something in the face of the young man, grown thin and very pale during
the period of long thought and little food in the lonely and meditative
life he had led; something human and mysterious in the strange tale of
his one day's mad doings, fascinated them. They had heard of the liquor
he had drunk, of the woman he had kissed at the cross-roads, of the man
he had fought, of his discipline and sentence. His clean, shapely figure,
and the soft austerity of the neat grey suit he wore, his broad-brimmed
hat pushed a little back, showing well a square white forehead--all
conspired to send a wave of feeling through the audience, which presently
broke into cheering.
Beginning with the usual formality, he said: "I am obliged to differ from
nearly every sentiment expressed by the Earl of Eglington, the member for
Levizes, who has just taken his seat."
There was an instant's pause, the audience cheered, and cries of delight
came from all parts of the house. "All good counsel has its sting," he
continued, "but the good counsel of him who has just spoken is a sting in
a wound deeper than the skin. The noble Earl has bidden us to be
consistent and reasonable. I have risen here to speak for that to which
mere consistency and reason may do cruel violence. I am a man of peace, I
am the enemy of war--it is my faith and creed; yet I repudiate the
principle put forward by the Earl of Eglington, that you shall not clinch
your hand for the cause which is your heart's cause, because, if you
smite, the smiting must be paid for."
He was interrupted by cheers and laughter, for the late event in his own
life came to them to point his argument.
"The nation that declines war may be refusing to inflict that just
punishment which alone can set the wrong-doers on the better course. It
is not the faith of that Society to which I belong to decline correction
lest it may seem like war."
The point went home significantly, and cheering followed. "The high wall
of Tibet, a stark refusal to open the door to the wayfarer, I can
understand; but, friend"--he turned to the young peer--"friend, I cannot
understand a defence of him who opens the door upon terms of mutual
hospitality, and then, in the red blood of him who has so contracted,
blots out the just terms upon which they have agreed. Is that thy faith,
friend?"
The repetition of the word friend was almost like a gibe, though it was
not intended as such. There was none present, however, but knew of the
defection of the Earl's father from the Society of Friends, and they
chose to interpret the reference to a direct challenge. It was a
difficult moment for the young Earl, but he only smiled, and cherished
anger in his heart.
For some minutes David spoke with force and power, and he ended with
passionate solemnity. His voice rang out: "The smoke of this burning
rises to Heaven, the winds that wail over scattered and homeless dust
bear a message of God to us. In the name of Mahomet, whose teaching
condemns treachery and murder, in the name of the Prince of Peace, who
taught that justice which makes for peace, I say it is England's duty to
lay the iron hand of punishment upon this evil city and on the Government
in whose orbit it shines with so deathly a light. I fear it is that one
of my family and of my humble village lies beaten to death in Damascus.
Yet not because of that do I raise my voice here to-day. These many years
Benn Claridge carried his life in his hands, and in a good cause it was
held like the song of a bird, to be blown from his lips in the day of the
Lord. I speak only as an Englishman. I ask you to close your minds
against the words of this brilliant politician, who would have you settle
a bill of costs written in Christian blood, by a promise to pay, got
through a mockery of armed display in those waters on which once looked
the eyes of the Captain of our faith. Humanity has been put in the
witness-box of the world; let humanity give evidence."
Women wept. Men waved their hats and cheered; the whole meeting rose to
its feet and gave vent to its feelings.
For some moments the tumult lasted, Eglington looking on with face
unmoved. As David turned to leave the table, however, he murmured,
"Peacemaker! Peacemaker!" and smiled sarcastically.
As the audience resumed their seats, two people were observed making
their way to the platform. One was Elder Fairley, leading the way to a
tall figure in a black robe covering another coloured robe, and wearing a
large white turban. Not seeing the new-comers, the chairman was about to
put the resolution; but a protesting hand from John Fairley stopped him,
and in a strange silence the two new-comers mounted the platform. David
rose and advanced to meet them. There flashed into his mind that this
stranger in Eastern garb was Ebn Ezra Bey, the old friend of Benn
Claridge, of whom his uncle had spoken and written so much. The same
instinct drew Ebn Ezra Bey to him--he saw the uncle's look in the
nephew's face. In a breathless stillness the Oriental said in perfect
English, with a voice monotonously musical:
"I came to thy house and found thee not. I have a message for thee from
the land where thine uncle sojourned with me."
He took from a wallet a piece of paper and passed it to David, adding: "I
was thine uncle's friend. He hath put off his sandals and walketh with
bare feet!" David read eagerly.
"It is time to go, Davy," the paper said. "All that I have is thine. Go
to Egypt, and thee shall find it so. Ebn Ezra Bey will bring thee. Trust
him as I have done. He is a true man, though the Koran be his faith. They
took me from behind, Davy, so that I was spared temptation--I die as I
lived, a man of peace. It is too late to think how it might have gone had
we met face to face; but the will of God worketh not according to our
will. I can write no more. Luke, Faith, and Davy--dear Davy, the night
has come, and all's well. Good morrow, Davy. Can you not hear me call? I
have called thee so often of late! Good morrow! Good morrow! . . . I doff
my hat, Davy--at last--to God!"
David's face whitened. All his visions had been true visions, his dreams
true dreams. Brave Benn Claridge had called to him at his door--"Good
morrow! Good morrow! Good morrow!" Had he not heard the knocking and the
voice? Now all was made clear. His path lay open before him--a far land
called him, his quiet past was infinite leagues away. Already the staff
was in his hands and the cross-roads were sinking into the distance
behind. He was dimly conscious of the wan, shocked face of Faith in the
crowd beneath him, which seemed blurred and swaying, of the bowed head of
Luke Claridge, who, standing up, had taken off his hat in the presence of
this news of his brother's death which he saw written in David's face.
David stood for a moment before the great throng, numb and speechless.
"It is a message from Damascus," he said at last, and could say no more.
Ebn Ezra Bey turned a grave face upon the audience.
"Will you hear me?" he said. "I am an Arab." "Speak--speak!" came from
every side.
"The Turk hath done his evil work in Damascus," he said. "All the
Christians are dead--save one; he hath turned Muslim, and is safe." His
voice had a note of scorn. "It fell sudden and swift like a storm in
summer. There were no paths to safety. Soldiers and those who led them
shared in the slaying. As he and I who had travelled far together these
many years sojourned there in the way of business, I felt the air grow
colder, I saw the cloud gathering. I entreated, but he would not go. If
trouble must come, then he would be with the Christians in their peril.
At last he saw with me the truth. He had a plan of escape. There was a
Christian weaver with his wife in a far quarter--against my entreaty he
went to warn them. The storm broke. He was the first to fall, smitten in
'that street called Straight.' I found him soon after. Thus did he speak
to me--even in these words: 'The blood of women and children shed here
to-day shall cry from the ground. Unprovoked the host has turned wickedly
upon his guest. The storm has been sown, and the whirlwind must be
reaped. Out of this evil good shall come. Shall not the Judge of all the
earth do right?' These were his last words to me then. As his life ebbed
out, he wrote a letter which I have brought hither to one"--he turned to
David--"whom he loved. At the last he took off his hat, and lay with it
in his hands, and died. . . . I am a Muslim, but the God of pity, of
justice, and of right is my God; and in His name be it said that was a
crime of Sheitan the accursed."
In a low voice the chairman put the resolution. The Earl of Eglington
voted in its favour.
Walking the hills homeward with Ebn Ezra Bey, Luke, Faith, and John
Fairley, David kept saying over to himself the words of Benn Claridge: "I
have called thee so often of late. Good morrow! Good morrow! Good morrow!
Can you not hear me call?"
ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS:
There is no habit so powerful as the habit of care of others
THE WEAVERS
By Gilbert Parker
BOOK II.
V. THE WIDER WAY
VI. "HAST THOU NEVER BILLED A MANY"
VII. THE COMPACT
VIII. FOR HIS SOUL'S SAKE AND THE LAND'S SAKE
IX. THE LETTER, THE NIGHT, AND THE WOMAN
X. THE FOUR WHO KNEW
XI. AGAINST THE HOUR OF MIDNIGHT
XII. THE JEHAD AND THE LIONS
XIII. ACHMET THE ROPEMAKER STRIKES
XIV. BEYOND THE PALE
CHAPTER V
THE WIDER WAY
Some months later the following letter came to David Claridge in Cairo
from Faith Claridge in Hamley:
David, I write thee from the village and the land of the people
which thou didst once love so well. Does thee love them still?
They gave thee sour bread to eat ere thy going, but yet thee didst
grind the flour for the baking. Thee didst frighten all who knew
thee with thy doings that mad midsummer time. The tavern, the
theatre, the cross-roads, and the cockpit--was ever such a day!
Now, Davy, I must tell of a strange thing. But first, a moment.
Thee remembers the man Kimber smitten by thee at the public-house on
that day? What think thee has happened? He followed to London the
lass kissed by thee, and besought her to return and marry him. This
she refused at first with anger; but afterwards she said that, if in
three years he was of the same mind, and stayed sober and hard-
working meanwhile, she would give him an answer, she would consider.
Her head was high. She has become maid to a lady of degree, who has
well befriended her.
How do I know these things? Even from Jasper Kimber, who, on his
return from London, was taken to his bed with fever. Because of the
hard blows dealt him by thee, I went to make amends. He welcomed
me, and soon opened his whole mind. That mind has generous moments,
David, for he took to being thankful for thy knocks.
Now for the strange thing I hinted. After visiting Jasper Kimber at
Heddington, as I came back over the hill by the path we all took
that day after the Meeting--Ebn Ezra Bey, my father, Elder Fairley,
and thee and me--I drew near the chairmaker's but where thee lived
alone all those sad months. It was late evening; the sun had set.
Yet I felt that I must needs go and lay my hand in love upon the
door of the empty hut which had been ever as thee left it. So I
came down the little path swiftly, and then round the great rock,
and up towards the door. But, as I did so, my heart stood still,
for I heard voices. The door was open, but I could see no one. Yet
there the voices sounded, one sharp and peevish with anger, the
other low and rough. I could not hear what was said. At last, a
figure came from the door and went quickly down the hillside. Who,
think thee, was it? Even "neighbour Eglington." I knew the walk
and the forward thrust of the head. Inside the hut all was still.
I drew near with a kind of fear, but yet I came to the door and
looked in.
As I looked into the dusk, my limbs trembled under me, for who
should be sitting there, a half-finished chair between his knees,
but Soolsby the old chair-maker! Yes, it was he. There he sat
looking at me with his staring blue eyes and shock of redgrey hair.
"Soolsby! Soolsby!" said I, my heart hammering at my breast; for
was not Soolsby dead and buried? His eyes stared at me in fright.
"Why do you come?" he said in a hoarse whisper. "Is he dead, then?
Has harm come to him?"
By now I had recovered myself, for it was no ghost I saw, but a
human being more distraught than was myself. "Do you not know me,
Soolsby?" I asked. "You are Mercy Claridge from beyond--beyond and
away," he answered dazedly. "I am Faith Claridge, Soolsby,"
answered I. He started, peered forward at me, and for a moment he
did not speak; then the fear went from his face. "Ay, Faith
Claridge, as I said," he answered, with apparent understanding, his
stark mood passing. "No, thee said Mercy Claridge, Soolsby," said
I, "and she has been asleep these many years." "Ay, she has slept
soundly, thanks be to God!" he replied, and crossed himself. "Why
should thee call me by her name?" I inquired. "Ay, is not her tomb
in the churchyard?" he answered, and added quickly, "Luke Claridge
and I are of an age to a day--which, think you, will go first?"
He stopped weaving, and peered over at me with his staring blue
eyes, and I felt a sudden quickening of the heart. For, at the
question, curtains seemed to drop from all around me, and leave me
in the midst of pains and miseries, in a chill air that froze me to
the marrow. I saw myself alone--thee in Egypt and I here, and none
of our blood and name beside me. For we are the last, Davy, the
last of the Claridges. But I said coldly, and with what was near to
anger, that he should link his name and fate with that of Luke
Claridge: "Which of ye two goes first is God's will, and according
to His wisdom. Which, think thee," added I--and now I cannot
forgive myself for saying it--"which, think thee, would do least
harm in going?" "I know which would do most good," he answered,
with a harsh laugh in his throat. Yet his blue eyes looked kindly
at me, and now he began to nod pleasantly. I thought him a little
mad, but yet his speech had seemed not without dark meaning. "Thee
has had a visitor," I said to him presently. He laughed in a
snarling way that made me shrink, and answered: "He wanted this and
he wanted that--his high-handed, second-best lordship. Ay, and he
would have it, because it pleased him to have it--like his father
before him. A poor sparrow on a tree-top, if you tell him he must
not have it, he will hunt it down the world till it is his, as
though it was a bird of paradise. And when he's seen it fall at
last, he'll remember but the fun of the chase; and the bird may get
to its tree-top again--if it can--if it can--if it can, my lord!
That is what his father was, the last Earl, and that is what he is
who left my door but now. He came to snatch old Soolsby's palace,
his nest on the hill, to use it for a telescope, or such whimsies.
He has scientific tricks like his father before him. Now is it
astronomy, and now chemistry, and suchlike; and always it is the
Eglington mind, which let God A'mighty make it as a favour. He
would have old Soolsby's palace for his spy-glass, would he then?
It scared him, as though I was the devil himself, to find me here.
I had but come back in time--a day later, and he would have sat here
and seen me in the Pit below before giving way. Possession's nine
points were with me; and here I sat and faced him; and here he
stormed, and would do this and should do that; and I went on with my
work. Then he would buy my Colisyum, and I wouldn't sell it for all
his puffball lordship might offer. Isn't the house of the snail as
much to him as the turtle's shell to the turtle? I'll have no
upstart spilling his chemicals here, or devilling the stars from a
seat on my roof." "Last autumn," said I, "David Claridge was housed
here. Thy palace was a prison then." "I know well of that.
Haven't I found his records here? And do you think his makeshift
lordship did not remind me?" "Records? What records, Soolsby?"
asked I, most curious. "Writings of his thoughts which he forgot--
food for mind and body left in the cupboard." "Give them to me upon
this instant, Soolsby," said I. "All but one," said he, "and that
is my own, for it was his mind upon Soolsby the drunken chair-maker.
God save him from the heathen sword that slew his uncle. Two better
men never sat upon a chair!" He placed the papers in my hand, all
save that one which spoke of him. Ah, David, what with the flute
and the pen, banishment was no pain to thee! . . . He placed the
papers, save that one, in my hands, and I, womanlike, asked again
for all. "Some day," said he, "come, and I will read it to you.
Nay, I will give you a taste of it now," he added, as he brought
forth the writing. "Thus it reads."