The Bondman is a lurid picture of conflicting passions. Love, of an intense sadness, is set against hate and mischance. The strength of the story and the powerfulness of its narration lay hold of the reader’s imagination with a shudder, like a grim masterpiece of Rembrandt. Here is an extract from the opening book—Rachel, the Governor’s daughter, has left her home under the curse of her father, to marry a peasant Icelander, a good-for-nothing. Supported by his mother, they live on the brink of starvation. At last the husband, in shame, complains that if he had sixty crowns he would buy a fishing-boat; and Rachel sells her beautiful hair to procure the money, handing it over to him to make the purchase.
 
The old woman sat by the hearth and smoked. Rachel waited with fear at her heart, but the hours went by and still Stephen did not appear. The old woman dozed before the fire and snored. At length, when the night had worn on towards midnight, an unsteady step came to the door, and Stephen reeled into the house drunk. The old woman awoke and laughed.

Rachel grew faint and sank to a seat. Stephen dropped to his knees on the ground before her, and in a maudlin cry went on to tell of how he had thought to make one hundred crowns of her sixty by a wager, how he had lost fifty, and then in a fit of despair had spent the other ten.

“Then all is gone—all,” cried Rachel. And thereupon the old woman shuffled to her feet and said bitterly, “And a good thing too. I know you—trust me for seeing through your sly ways, my lady. You expected to take my son from me with the price of your ginger hair, you ugly bald-pate.”

Rachel’s head grew light, and with the cry of a baited creature she turned upon the old mother in a torrent of hot words. “You low, mean, selfish soul,” she cried, “I despise you more than the dirt under my feet.”

Worse than this she said, and the old woman called on Stephen to hearken to her, for that was the wife he had brought home to revile his mother.

The old witch shed some crocodile tears, and Stephen lunged in between the women and with the back of his hand struck his wife across the face.

At that blow Rachel was silent for a moment, and then she turned upon her husband. “And so you have[134] struck me—me—me,” she cried. “Have you forgotten the death of Patriksen?”

The blow of her words was harder than the blow of her husband’s hand. The man reeled before it, turned white, gasped for breath, then caught up his cap and fled out into the night.

Stephen never comes back, and the son born to Rachel is christened Jason and is the “Bondman” of the tale. He is brought up by his mother in one of the meanest huts in the fishing quarter of the Icelandic capital, and supported by her drudgery. After nineteen years of flickering belief in her husband’s return, she comes by the knowledge that he is indeed living, but with another wife and another son, in the Island of Man. Broken-hearted and worn-out with hard living, Rachel sinks to her death, and, with her cold hand in his, Jason swears the oath that forms the motive of the book.

“My father has killed my mother.”

“No, no, don’t say that,” said the priest.

“Yes, yes,” said the lad more loudly; “not in a day, or an hour, or a moment, but in twenty long years.”

“Hush, hush, my son,” the old priest murmured.
 
But Jason did not hear him. “Now listen,” he cried, “and hear my vow.” And still he held the cold hand in his, and still the ashy face rested on them.

“I will hunt the world over until I find that man, and when I have found him I will slay him.”

“What are you saying?” cried the priest.

But Jason went on with an awful solemnity. “If he should die, and we should never meet, I will hunt the world over until I find his son, and when I have found him, I will kill him for his father’s sake.”

“Silence, silence,” cried the priest.

“So help me, God!” said Jason.

Stephen Orry, on leaving his wife, has left Iceland as seaman in an English ship, and deserted from it on touching the Isle of Man. There he finds a companion in “the slattern and drab of the island,” and though vaguely ashamed of her, marries her. Michael, “little Sunlocks,” is the offspring of this unhappy union, a union becoming more degrading and more horrible to Stephen with every year of the child’s life. The father’s tortured brain, after trying every other means within his knowledge, resolves to kill his son rather than leave him to grow up under the influence of such a mother, and[136] with that purpose he takes the child out to sea in his little boat. This passage is one of most beautiful that Hall Caine has yet written.

Little Sunlocks had never been out in the boat before and everything was a wonder and delight to him.

“You said you would take me on the water some day. Didn’t you, father?”

“Yes, little Sunlocks, yes.”

It was evening, and the sun was sinking behind the land, very large and red in its setting.

“Do the sun fall down eve’y day, father?”

“It sets, little Sunlocks, it sets.”

“What is sets?”

“Dies.”

“Oh!”

The waters lay asleep under the soft red glow, and over them the sea-fowl were sailing.

“Why are the white birds sc’eaming?”

“Maybe they’re calling their young, little Sunlocks.”

It was late spring, and on the headland the sheep were bleating.

“Look at the baby one—away, away up yonder. What’s it doing there by itself on the ’ock, and c’ying, and c’ying, and c’ying?”

“Maybe it’s lost, little Sunlocks.”

“Then why doesn’t somebody go and tell its father?”

And the innocent face was full of trouble.

The sun went down, the twilight deepened, the air grew chill, the water black, and Stephen was still pulling round the head.
 
“Father, where does the night go when we are asleep?”

“To the other world, little Sunlocks.”

“Oh, I know—heaven.”

Stephen stripped off his guernsey and wrapped it about the child. His eyes shone brightly, his mouth was parched, but he did not flinch. All thoughts, save one thought, had faded from his view.

But no, he could not look into the child’s eyes and do it. The little one would sleep soon, and then it would be easier done. So he took him in his arms and wrapped him in a piece of sailcloth.

“Shut your eyes and sleep, little Sunlocks.”

“I’m not s’eepy, I’m not.”

Yet soon the little lids fell, opened again and fell once more, and then suddenly the child started up.

“But I haven’t said my p’ayers.”

“Say them now, little Sunlocks.”

Then lisping the simple words of the old Icelandic prayer, the child’s voice, drowsy and slow, floated away over the silent water:—
“‘S’eeping or waking, verily we
To God alone belong;
As darkness walks, and shadows flee,
We sing our even-song.’”

“There’s another verse, little Sunlocks—another verse.”
“‘O Father, we are Thy children all,
Thy little children, so weak and small.
Let angels keep
Guard of our s’eep,
And till we wake our spi’its take,
Eternal God, for Ch’ist His sake.’”
 
He finds it impossible to murder the innocent little one, and returns home to find his wife dead.

Then he decides to give the child away, never doubting but that the sunshine of his broken life would be an acceptable present to anyone. The Deputy-Governor, a man of great benevolence and generosity, is his choice; and the Governor accepts the trust, thereby estranging his wife and his own six sons. Adam Fairbrother, the Deputy-Governor, has a daughter of Michael’s age, and until little Greeba goes away to be brought up in the household of the Duke of Athol, the two children live and play together. Michael grows up to be his foster-father’s right hand, and the jealousy of the six sons and their mother cause a rupture in the family, the mother and sons taking the gift of all Adam’s private property and going away to live on it. At the age of eighteen, Greeba returns from London, and at the same time Stephen Orry reappears. He has gathered together two hundred pounds, and with it he asks that Michael shall go to[139] Iceland, there to search out Rachel and her child and succour them from the poverty-stricken life in which Stephen had left them, so long before. Michael refuses the money, but accepts the charge, and takes ship for Iceland on the very day that Jason, in pursuance of his vow, reaches the Isle of Man.

Jason lands on the island, only to rescue his father from drowning and watch over him as he dies. He takes up life with Adam Fairbrother’s sons, and for four years grows in love for Greeba and her father. Then the office of Deputy-Governor is taken from Adam; and turning for home to his wife, in the house that he had given her, is refused admission. He remembers Michael Sunlocks, and determines to go to him in Iceland, leaving Greeba to ............