In The Manxman, Hall Caine sounds the depths of humanity, and brings up the cry of living men and women to our ears. The sacred powerfulness of Love is his theme, the depths of spiritual degradation in which Love, twisted, distorted, makes its own punishment—the ennobling beauty of carrying out its great Unselfishness in simple fearlessness. And this is shown in the three characters, Kate, Pete and Philip, which, as they develop, touch every chord of sympathy in the reader’s gamut of sensibility.

Kate and Pete are children of one generation. Life is theirs and the light of the sun; yesterday has no hold over them, neither has to-morrow. Philip is the[171] aristocrat, knowing his father’s, and his father’s father, heavy with the knowledge of their follies and sins; the world calls to him, for him there is a great To-morrow. Into the complexity of his nature comes love—love for a girl who is “of the people”—Kate; and the alternate yielding to and resisting his love makes the tragedy of the three lives.

The scene is laid entirely in the Isle of Man. Manx characteristics, humours, eccentricities and pathos making up the atmosphere so exclusively that when we are introduced for the moment to an assemblage chiefly English, we feel ourselves to be in a foreign element.

Philip Christian is brought up by his aunt, who in dread lest the principal weakness of their house should appear in him, makes it her task to keep in his remembrance the misery of his father’s life, who, in marrying beneath him, ruined his career and lost his self-respect. We are carried through Philip’s childhood with its love for little peasant Pete, until, with[172] Pete’s child-sweetheart, Kate, the miller’s daughter, the three stand together on the borderland of the mystery of manhood and womanhood. Then Pete, leaving Manxland to seek a fortune which shall make him acceptable in the eyes of Kate’s parents, commits his sweetheart to Philip’s care and toils his youth away in South Africa. Philip in his r?le of protector and letter-carrier, visits the inn of Sulby, Kate’s home, now frequently, now infrequently, as his hidden love for Kate or the thought of treason to his friend surges uppermost. And Kate’s child-love for Pete fades, passes into woman’s passion for Philip. Understanding nothing of Philip’s feelings, but knowing his love for her, and caring for nothing else, she rebels at his silence and sometimes consciously, sometimes unconsciously, uses all her power to tempt him to break it.

After the lapse of some months, in which Philip had not been seen at Sulby, she wrote him a letter. It was to say how anxious she had been at the length of time since she had last heard from Pete, and to ask if he[173] had any news to relieve her fears. The poor little lie was written in a trembling hand which shook honestly enough, but from the torment of other feelings.

Philip answered the letter in person. Something had been speaking to him day and night, like the humming of a top, finding him pretexts on which to go; but now he had to make excuses for staying so long away. It was evening. Kate was milking, and he went out to her in the cowhouse.

“We began to think we were to see no more of you,” she said, over the rattle of the milk in the pail.

“I’ve—I’ve been ill,” said Philip.

The rattle died to a thin hiss. “Very ill?” she asked.

“Well, no—not seriously,” he answered.

“I never once thought of that,” she said. “Something ought to have told me. I’ve been reproaching you, too.”

Philip felt ashamed of his subterfuge, but yet more ashamed of the truth; so he leaned against the door and watched in silence. The smell of hay floated down from the loft, and the odour of the cow’s breath came in gusts as she turned her face about. Kate sat on the milking-stool close by the ewer, and her head, on which she wore a sun-bonnet, she leaned against the cow’s side.

“No news of Pete, then? No?” she said.

“No,” said Philip.

Kate dug her head deeper in the cow, and muttered, “Dear Pete! So simple, so natural.”

“He is,” said Philip.

“So good-hearted, too.”

“Yes.”

[174]

“And such a manly fellow—any girl might like him,” said Kate.

“Indeed, yes,” said Philip.

There was silence again, and two pigs which had been snoring on the manure heap outside began to snort their way home. Kate turned her head so that the crown of the sun-bonnet was toward Philip, and said,—

“Oh, dear! Can there be anything so terrible as marrying somebody you don’t care for?”

“Nothing so bad,” said Philip.

The mouth of the sun-bonnet came round. “Yes, there’s one thing worse, Philip.”

“No?”

“Not having married somebody you do,” said Kate, and the milk rattled like hail.

Kate began to hate the very name of Pete. She grew angry with Philip also. Why couldn’t he guess? Concealment was eating her heart out. The next time she saw Philip, he passed her in the market-place on the market-day, as she stood by the tipped-up gig, selling her butter. There was a chatter of girls all round as he bowed and went on. This vexed her, and she sold out at a penny a pound less, got the horse from the “Saddle,” and drove home early.

On the way to Sulby she overtook Philip and drew up. He was walking to Kirk Michael to visit the old Deemster, who was ill. Would he not take a lift? He hesitated, half declined, and then got into the gig. As she settled herself comfortably after this change, he trod on the edge of her dress. At that he drew quickly away as if he had trodden on her foot.

[175]

She laughed, but she was vexed; and when he got down at “The Manx Fairy,” saying he might call on his way back in the evening, she had no doubt Grannie would be glad to see him.

News comes of Pete’s death, and Kate, knowing nothing of the world’s share in Philip’s heart, thinks the only barrier removed. And, for a few hot, passionate hours Philip does give way, only to be dragged back at the heels of his ambition, under the shield of Pete’s home-coming and the falsity of the rumour of his death. He tells Kate that marriage with her would be treasonable to Pete, more than that, that neither he nor she can in honour marry either each other or anyone else. In her despair, Kate falls back upon stratagem. She sees Pete, allows herself to be considered his betrothed, and encourages rather than prevents the wedding preparations. Still Philip gives no sign, and Kate is married without fully realising what she is doing; but, on awakening to her new life, she sets herself the easy though bitter task of keeping Pete happy and[176] ignorant. Philip absents himself for some months, and then, returning to his native island and the career he had laid out for himself, becomes, on Pete’s happy insistence, an occasional inmate of the latter’s cottage. A child is born, and Kate finds it impossible to keep from Philip the knowledge that it is his. She tells him, and thence ensues the tragedy of Pete’s life.

“You are right,” he said, with his head bent down. “You cannot live here any longer. This life of deception must end.”

“Then you will take me away, Philip?”

“I must, God forgive me, I must. I thought it would be sin. But that was long ago. It will be punishment. If I had known before—and I have been coming here time and again—looking on his happiness—but if I had once dreamt—and then only an hour ago—the oath at its baptism—O God!”

Her tears were flowing again, but a sort of serenity had fallen on her now.

“Forgive me,” she whispered. “I tried to keep it to myself—”

“You could not keep it; you ought never to have kept it so long; the finger of God Himself ought to have burnt it out of you.”

He spoke harshly, and she felt pain; but there was a secret joy as well.

“I am ruining you, Philip,” she said, leaning over him.

[177]

“We are both drifting to ruin, Katherine,” he answered hoarsely. He was an abandoned hulk, with anchorage gone and no hand at the helm—broken, blind, rolling to destruction.

“I can offer you nothing, Kate, nothing but a hidden life, a life in the dark. If you come to me you will leave a husband who worships you for one to whom your life can never be joined. You will exchange a life of respect by the side of a good man for a life of humiliation, a life of shame. How can it be otherwise now? It is too late, too late!”

Kate goes, and Pete crushes his grief to defend her honour. The lies he invents, that she has gone to visit his uncle in Liverpool, the letters he writes to himself, purporting to have come from her, the wiles he practises to deceive the neighbours—all intensify his terrible sorrow.

“A letter for you, Mr Quilliam.”

Hearing these words, Pete, his eyes half shut as if dozing in the sunset, wakened himself with a look of astonishment.

“What? For me, is it? A letter, you say? Aw, I see,” taking it and turning it in his hand, “just a line from the mistress, it’s like. Well, well! A letter for me, if you plaze,” and he laughed like a man much tickled.

He was in no hurry. He rammed his dead pipe with his finger, lit it again, sucked it, made it quack, drew a[178] long breath, and then said quietly, “Let’s see what’s her news at all.”

He opened the letter leisurely, and read bits of it aloud, as if reading to himself, but holding the postman while he did so in idle talk on the other side of the gate. “And how are you living to-day, Mr Kelly? Aw, h’m—getting that much better it’s extraordinary—Yes, a nice evenin’, very, Mr Kelly, nice, nice—that happy and comfortable and Uncle Joe is that good—heavy bag at you to-night, you say? Aw, heavy, yes, heavy—love to Grannie and all inquiring friends—nothing, Mr Kelly, nothing—just a scribe of a line, thinking a man might be getting unaisy. She needn’t, though—she needn’t. But chut! It’s nothing. Writing a letter is nothing to her at all. Why, she’d be knocking that off, bless you,” holding out half a sheet of paper, “in less than an hour and a half. Truth enough, sir.” Then, looking at the letter again, “What’s this, though? P.N. They’re always putting a P.N. at the bottom of a letter, Mr Kelly. P.N.—I was expecting to be home before, but I wouldn’t get away for Uncle Joe taking me to the theaytres. Ha, ha, ha! A mighty boy is Uncle Joe. But, Mr Kelly, Mr Kelly,” with a solemn look, “not a word of this to C?sar!”