The Weavers, Complete - Gilbert Parker
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As David looked at them in their single blue calico coverings, in which
they had lived and slept-shivering in the cold night air upon the bare
ground--these thoughts came to him; and he had a sudden longing to follow
them and put the chains upon his own arms and legs, and go forth and
suffer with them, and fight and die? To die were easy. To fight? . . .
Was it then come to that? He was no longer a man of peace, but a man of
the sword; no longer a man of the palm and the evangel, but a man of
blood and of crime! He shrank back out of the glare of the sun; for it
suddenly seemed to him that there was written upon his fore head, "This
is a brother of Cain." For the first time in his life he had a shrinking
from the light, and from the sun which he had loved like a Persian, had,
in a sense, unconsciously worshipped.
He was scarcely aware where he was. He had wandered on until he had come
to the end of the bridge and into the great groups of traffickers who, at
this place, made a market of their wares. Here sat a seller of sugar
cane; there wandered, clanking his brasses, a merchant of sweet waters;
there shouted a cheap-jack of the Nile the virtues of a knife from
Sheffield. Yonder a camel-driver squatted and counted his earnings; and a
sheepdealer haggled with the owner of a ghiassa bound for the sands of
the North. The curious came about him and looked at him, but he did not
see or hear. He sat upon a stone, his gaze upon the river, following with
his eyes, yet without consciously observing, the dark riverine population
whose ways are hidden, who know only the law of the river and spend their
lives in eluding pirates and brigands now, and yet again the peaceful
porters of commerce.
To his mind, never a criminal in this land but less a criminal than he!
For their standard was a standard of might the only right; but he--his
whole life had been nurtured in an atmosphere of right and justice, had
been a spiritual demonstration against force. He was with out fear, as he
was without an undue love of life. The laying down of his life had never
been presented to him; and yet, now that his conscience was his only
judge, and it condemned him, he would gladly have given his life to pay
the price of blood.
That was impossible. His life was not his own to give, save by suicide;
and that would be the unpardonable insult to God and humanity. He had
given his word to the woman, and he would keep it. In those brief moments
she must have suffered more than most men suffer in a long life. Not her
hand, however, but his, had committed the deed. And yet a sudden wave of
pity for her rushed over him, because the conviction seized him that she
would also in her heart take upon herself the burden of his guilt as
though it were her own. He had seen it in the look of her face last
night.
For the sake of her future it was her duty to shield herself from any
imputation which might as unjustly as scandalously arise, if the facts of
that black hour ever became known. Ever became known? The thought that
there might be some human eye which had seen, which knew, sent a shiver
through him.
"I would give my life a thousand times rather than that," he said aloud
to the swift-flowing river. His head sank on his breast. His lips
murmured in prayer:
"But be merciful to me, Thou just Judge of Israel, for Thou hast made me,
and Thou knowest whereof I am made. Here will I dedicate my life to Thee
for the land's sake. Not for my soul's sake, O my God! If it be Thy will,
let my soul be cast away; but for the soul of him whose body I slew, and
for his land, let my life be the long sacrifice."
Dreams he had had the night before--terrible dreams, which he could never
forget; dreams of a fugitive being hunted through the world, escaping and
eluding, only to be hemmed in once more; on and on till he grew grey and
gaunt, and the hunt suddenly ended in a great morass, into which he
plunged with the howling world behind him. The grey, dank mists came down
on him, his footsteps sank deeper and deeper, and ever the cries, as of
damned spirits, grew in his ears. Mocking shapes flitted past him, the
wings of obscene birds buffeted him, the morass grew up about him; and
now it was all a red moving mass like a dead sea heaving about him. With
a moan of agony he felt the dolorous flood above his shoulders, and then
a cry pierced the gloom and the loathsome misery, and a voice he knew
called to him, "David, David, I am coming!" and he had awaked with the
old hallucination of his uncle's voice calling to him in the dawn.
It came to him now as he sat by the water-side, and he raised his face to
the sun and to the world. The idlers had left him alone; none were
staring at him now. They were all intent on their own business, each man
labouring after his kind. He heard the voice of a riverman as he toiled
at a rope standing on the corn that filled his ghiassa from end to end,
from keel to gunwale. The man was singing a wild chant of cheerful
labour, the soul of the hard-smitten of the earth rising above the rack
and burden of the body:
"O, the garden where to-day we sow and to-morrow we reap!
O, the sakkia turning by the garden walls;
O, the onion-field and the date-tree growing,
And my hand on the plough-by the blessing of God;
Strength of my soul, O my brother, all's well!"
The meaning of the song got into his heart. He pressed his hand to his
breast with a sudden gesture. It touched something hard. It was his
flute. Mechanically he had put it in his pocket when he dressed in the
morning. He took it out and looked at it lovingly. Into it he had poured
his soul in the old days--days, centuries away, it seemed now. It should
still be the link with the old life. He rose and walked towards his home
again. The future spread clearly before him. Rapine, murder, tyranny,
oppression, were round him on every side, and the ruler of the land
called him to his counsels. Here a great duty lay--his life for this
land, his life, and his love, and his faith. He would expiate his crime
and his sin, the crime of homicide for which he alone was responsible,
the sin of secrecy for which he and another were responsible. And that
other? If only there had been but one word of understanding between them
before she left!
At the door of his house stood the American whom he had met at the
citadel yesterday-it seemed a hundred years ago.
"I've got a letter for you," Lacey said. "The lady's aunt and herself are
cousins of mine more or less removed, and originally at home in the U. S.
A. a generation ago. Her mother was an American. She didn't know your
name--Miss Hylda Maryon, I mean. I told her, but there wasn't time to put
it on." He handed over the unaddressed envelope.
David opened the letter, and read:
"I have seen the papers. I do not understand what has happened, but I
know that all is well. If it were not so, I would not go. That is the
truth. Grateful I am, oh, believe me! So grateful that I do not yet know
what is the return which I must make. But the return will be made. I hear
of what has come to you--how easily I might have destroyed all! My
thoughts blind me. You are great and good; you will know at least that I
go because it is the only thing to do. I fly from the storm with a broken
wing. Take now my promise to pay what I owe in the hour Fate wills--or in
the hour of your need. You can trust him who brings this to you; he is a
distant cousin of my own. Do not judge him by his odd and foolish words.
They hide a good character, and he has a strong nature. He wants work to
do. Can you give it? Farewell."
David put the letter in his pocket, a strange quietness about his heart.
He scarcely realised what Lacey was saying. "Great girl that. Troubled
about something in England, I guess. Going straight back."
David thanked him for the letter. Lacey became red in the face. He tried
to say something, but failed. "Thee wishes to say something to me,
friend?" asked David.
"I'm full up; I can't speak. But, say--"
"I am going to the Palace now. Come back at noon if you will."
He wrung David's hand in gratitude. "You're going to do it. You're going
to do it. I see it. It's a great game--like Abe Lincoln's. Say, let me
black your boots while you're doing it, will you?"
David pressed his hand.
CHAPTER IX
THE LETTER, THE NIGHT, AND THE WOMAN
"To-day has come the fulfilment of my dream, Faith. I am given to
my appointed task; I am set on a road of life in which there is no
looking back. My dreams of the past are here begun in very truth
and fact. When, in the night, I heard Uncle Benn calling, when in
the Meeting-house voices said, 'Come away, come away, and labour,
thou art idle,' I could hear my heart beat in the ardour to be off.
Yet I knew not whither. Now I know.
"Last night the Prince Pasha called me to his Council, made me
adviser, confidant, as one who has the ear of his captain--after he
had come to terms with me upon that which Uncle Benn left of land
and gold. Think not that he tempted me.
"Last night I saw favourites look upon me with hate because of
Kaid's favour, though the great hall was filled with show of
cheerful splendour, and men smiled and feasted. To-day I know that
in the Palace where I was summoned to my first: duty with the
Prince, every step I took was shadowed, every motion recorded, every
look or word noted and set down. I have no fear of them. They are
not subtle enough for the unexpected acts of honesty in the life of
a true man. Yet I do not wonder men fail to keep honest in the
midst of this splendour, where all is strife as to who shall have
the Prince's favour; who shall enjoy the fruits of bribery,
backsheesh, and monopoly; who shall wring from the slave and the
toil-ridden fellah the coin his poor body mints at the corvee, in
his own taxed fields of dourha and cucumbers.
"Is this like anything we ever dreamed at Hamley, Faith? Yet here
am I set, and here shall I stay till the skein be ravelled out.
Soon I shall go into the desert upon a mission to the cities of the
South, to Dongola, Khartoum, and Darfur and beyond; for there is
trouble yonder, and war is near, unless it is given to me to bring
peace. So I must bend to my study of Arabic, which I am thankful I
learned long ago. And I must not forget to say that I shall take
with me on my journey that faithful Muslim Ebn Ezra. Others I shall
take also, but of them I shall write hereafter.
"I shall henceforth be moving in the midst of things which I was
taught to hate. I pray that I may not hate them less as time goes
on. To-morrow I shall breathe the air of intrigue, shall hear
footsteps of spies behind me wherever I go; shall know that even the
roses in the garden have ears; that the ground under my feet will
telegraph my thoughts. Shall I be true? Shall I at last whisper,
and follow, and evade, believe in no one, much less in myself, steal
in and out of men's confidences to use them for my own purposes?
Does any human being know what he can bear of temptation or of the
daily pressure of the life around him? what powers of resistance
are in his soul? how long the vital energy will continue to throw
off the never-ending seduction, the freshening force of evil?
Therein lies the power of evil, that it is ever new, ever fortified
by continuous conquest and achievements. It has the rare fire of
aggression; is ever more upon the offence than upon the defence;
has, withal, the false lure of freedom from restraint, the throbbing
force of sympathy.
"Such things I dreamed not of in Soolsby's but upon the hill, Faith,
though, indeed, that seemed a time of trial and sore-heartedness.
How large do small issues seem till we have faced the momentous
things! It is true that the larger life has pleasures and expanding
capacities; but it is truer still that it has perils, events which
try the soul as it is never tried in the smaller life--unless,
indeed, the soul be that of the Epicurean. The Epicurean I well
understand, and in his way I might have walked with a wicked grace.
I have in me some hidden depths of luxury, a secret heart of
pleasure, an understanding for the forbidden thing. I could have
walked the broad way with a laughing heart, though, in truth, habit
of mind and desire have kept me in the better path. But offences
must come, and woe to him from whom the offence cometh! I have
begun now, and only now, to feel the storms that shake us to our
farthest cells of life. I begin to see how near good is to evil;
how near faith is to unfaith; and how difficult it is to judge from
actions only; how little we can know to-day what we shall feel
tomorrow. Yet one must learn to see deeper, to find motive, not in
acts that shake the faith, but in character which needs no
explanation, which--"
He paused, disturbed. Then he raised his head, as though not conscious of
what was breaking the course of his thoughts. Presently he realised a
low, hurried knocking at his door. He threw a hand over his eyes, and
sprang up. An instant later the figure of a woman, deeply veiled, stood
within the room, beside the table where he had been writing. There was
silence as they faced each other, his back against the door.
"Oh, do you not know me?" she said at last, and sank into the chair where
he had been sitting.
The question was unnecessary, and she knew it was so; but she could not
bear the strain of the silence. She seemed to have risen out of the
letter he had been writing; and had he not been writing of her--of what
concerned them both? How mean and small-hearted he had been, to have
thought for an instant that she had not the highest courage, though in
going she had done the discreeter, safer thing. But she had come--she had
come!
All this was in his eyes, though his face was pale and still. He was
almost rigid with emotion, for the ancient habit of repose and
self-command of the Quaker people was upon him.
"Can you not see--do you not know?" she repeated, her back upon him now,
her face still veiled, her hands making a swift motion of distress.
"Has thee found in the past that thee is so soon forgotten?"
"Oh, do not blame me!" She raised her veil suddenly, and showed a face as
pale as his own, and in the eyes a fiery brightness. "I did not know. It
was so hard to come--do not blame me. I went to Alexandria--I felt that I
must fly; the air around me seemed full of voices crying out. Did you not
understand why I went?"
"I understand," he said, coming forward slowly. "Thee should not have
returned. In the way I go now the watchers go also."
"If I had not come, you would never have understood," she answered
quickly. "I am not sorry I went. I was so frightened, so shaken. My only
thought was to get away from the terrible Thing. But I should have been
sorry all my life long had I not come back to tell you what I feel, and
that I shall never forget. All my life I shall be grateful. You have
saved me from a thousand deaths. Ah, if I could give you but one life!
Yet--yet--oh, do not think but that I would tell you the whole truth,
though I am not wholly truthful. See, I love my place in the world more
than I love my life; and but for you I should have lost all."
He made a protesting motion. "The debt is mine, in truth. But for you I
should never have known what, perhaps--" He paused.
His eyes were on hers, gravely speaking what his tongue faltered to say.
She looked and looked, but did not understand. She only saw troubled
depths, lighted by a soul of kindling purpose. "Tell me," she said, awed.
"Through you I have come to know--" He paused again. What he was going to
say, truthful though it was, must hurt her, and she had been sorely hurt
already. He put his thoughts more gently, more vaguely.
"By what happened I have come to see what matters in life. I was behind
the hedge. I have broken through upon the road. I know my goal now. The
highway is before me."
She felt the tragedy in his words, and her voice shook as she spoke. "I
wish I knew life better. Then I could make a better answer. You are on
the road, you say. But I feel that it is a hard and cruel road--oh, I
understand that at least! Tell me, please, tell me the whole truth. You
are hiding from me what you feel. I have upset your life, have I not? You
are a Quaker, and Quakers are better than all other Christian people, are
they not? Their faith is peace, and for me, you--" She covered her face
with her hands for an instant, but turned quickly and looked him in the
eyes: "For me you put your hand upon the clock of a man's life, and
stopped it."
She got to her feet with a passionate gesture, but he put a hand gently
upon her arm, and she sank back again. "Oh, it was not you; it was I who
did it!" she said. "You did what any man of honour would have done, what
a brother would have done."
"What I did is a matter for myself only," he responded quickly. "Had I
never seen your face again it would have been the same. You were the
occasion; the thing I did had only one source, my own heart and mind.
There might have been another way; but for that way, or for the way I did
take, you could not be responsible."
"How generous you are!" Her eyes swam with tears; she leaned over the
table where he had been writing, and the tears dropped upon his letter.
Presently she realised this, and drew back, then made as though to dry
the tears from the paper with her handkerchief. As she did so the words
that he had written met her eye: "'But offences must come, and woe to him
from whom the offence cometh!' I have begun now, and only now, to feel
the storms that shake us to our farthest cells of life."
She became very still. He touched her arm and said heavily: "Come away,
come away."
She pointed to the words she had read. "I could not help but see, and now
I know what this must mean to you."
"Thee must go at once," he urged. "Thee should not have come. Thee was
safe--none knew. A few hours and it would all have been far behind. We
might never have met again."
Suddenly she gave a low, hysterical laugh. "You think you hide the real
thing from me. I know I'm ignorant and selfish and feeble-minded, but I
can see farther than you think. You want to tell the truth about--about
it, because you are honest and hate hiding things, because you want to be
punished, and so pay the price. Oh, I can understand! If it were not for
me you would not. . . . " With a sudden wild impulse she got to her feet.
"And you shall not," she cried. "I will not have it." Colour came rushing
to her cheeks.
"I will not have it. I will not put myself so much in your debt. I will
not demand so much of you. I will face it all. I will stand alone."
There was a touch of indignation in her voice. Somehow she seemed moved
to anger against him. Her hands were clasped at her side rigidly, her
pulses throbbing. He stood looking at her fixedly, as though trying to
realise her. His silence agitated her still further, and she spoke
excitedly:
"I could have, would have, killed him myself without a moment's regret.
He had planned, planned--ah, God, can you not see it all! I would have
taken his life without a thought. I was mad to go upon such an adventure,
but I meant no ill. I had not one thought that I could not have cried out
from the housetops, and he had in his heart--he had what you saw. But you
repent that you killed him--by accident, it was by accident. Do you
realise how many times others have been trapped by him as was I? Do you
not see what he was--as I see now? Did he not say as much to me before
you came, when I was dumb with terror? Did he not make me understand what
his whole life had been? Did I not see in a flash the women whose lives
he had spoiled and killed? Would I have had pity? Would I have had
remorse? No, no, no! I was frightened when it was done, I was horrified,
but I was not sorry; and I am not sorry. It was to be. It was the true
end to his vileness. Ah!"
She shuddered, and buried her face in her hands for a moment, then went
on: "I can never forgive myself for going to the Palace with him. I was
mad for experience, for mystery; I wanted more than the ordinary share of
knowledge. I wanted to probe things. Yet I meant no wrong. I thought then
nothing of which I shall ever be ashamed. But I shall always be ashamed
because I knew him, because he thought that I--oh, if I were a man, I
should be glad that I had killed him, for the sake of all honest women!"
He remained silent. His look was not upon her, he seemed lost in a dream;
but his face was fixed in trouble.
She misunderstood his silence. "You had the courage, the impulse to--to
do it," she said keenly; "you have not the courage to justify it. I will
not have it so.
"I will tell the truth to all the world. I will not shrink I shrank
yesterday because I was afraid of the world; to-day I will face it, I
will--"
She stopped suddenly, and another look flashed into her face. Presently
she spoke in a different tone; a new light had come upon her mind. "But I
see," she added. "To tell all is to make you the victim, too, of what he
did. It is in your hands; it is all in your hands; and I cannot speak
unless--unless you are ready also."
There was an unintended touch of scorn in her voice. She had been
troubled and tried beyond bearing, and her impulsive nature revolted at
his silence. She misunderstood him, or, if she did not wholly
misunderstand him, she was angry at what she thought was a needless
remorse or sensitiveness. Did not the man deserve his end?
"There is only one course to pursue," he rejoined quietly, "and that is
the course we entered upon last night. I neither doubted yourself nor
your courage. Thee must not turn back now. Thee must not alter the course
which was your own making, and the only course which thee could, or I
should, take. I have planned my life according to the word I gave you. I
could not turn back now. We are strangers, and we must remain so. Thee
will go from here now, and we must not meet again. I am--"
"I know who you are," she broke in. "I know what your religion is; that
fighting and war and bloodshed is a sin to you."
"I am of no family or place in England," he went on calmly. "I come of
yeoman and trading stock; I have nothing in common with people of rank.
Our lines of life will not cross. It is well that it should be so. As to
what happened--that which I may feel has nothing to do with whether I was
justified or no. But if thee has thought that I have repented doing what
I did, let that pass for ever from your mind. I know that I should do the
same, yes, even a hundred times. I did according to my nature. Thee must
not now be punished cruelly for a thing thee did not do. Silence is the
only way of safety or of justice. We must not speak of this again. We
must each go our own way."
Her eyes were moist. She reached out a hand to him timidly. "Oh, forgive
me," she added brokenly, "I am so vain, so selfish, and that makes one
blind to the truth. It is all clearer now. You have shown me that I was
right in my first impulse, and that is all I can say for myself. I shall
pray all my life that it will do you no harm in the end."
She remained silent, for a moment adjusting her veil, preparing to go.
Presently she spoke again: "I shall always want to know about you--what
is happening to you. How could it be otherwise?"
She was half realising one of the deepest things in existence, that the
closest bond between two human beings is a bond of secrecy upon a thing
which vitally, fatally concerns both or either. It is a power at once
malevolent and beautiful. A secret like that of David and Hylda will do
in a day what a score of years could not accomplish, will insinuate
confidences which might never be given to the nearest or dearest. In
neither was any feeling of the heart begotten by their experiences; and
yet they had gone deeper in each other's lives than any one either had
known in a lifetime. They had struck a deeper note than love or
friendship. They had touched the chord of a secret and mutual experience
which had gone so far that their lives would be influenced by it for ever
after. Each understood this in a different way.
Hylda looked towards the letter lying on the table. It had raised in her
mind, not a doubt, but an undefined, undefinable anxiety. He saw the
glance, and said: "I was writing to one who has been as a sister to me.
She was my mother's sister though she is almost as young as I. Her name
is Faith. There is nothing there of what concerns thee and me, though it
would make no difference if she knew." Suddenly a thought seemed to
strike him. "The secret is of thee and me. There is safety. If it became
another's, there might be peril. The thing shall be between us only, for
ever?"
"Do you think that I--"
"My instinct tells me a woman of sensitive mind might one day, out of an
unmerciful honesty, tell her husband--"