Dan came into the room with his rolling walk, his eyes wild and dark,
his billy-cock hat in his hand and his black hair 'strooked' flat
across his forehead, where a wet brush had left it.
"Good evening, Mr. Spaker! You too, Mistress Gell! It's the twelfth
to-morrow, but I thought I would bring my Hollantide rent to-day."
"Sit down," said the Speaker, who had given him meagre welcome.
Dan drew a chair up to a table, took from the breast pocket of his
monkey-jacket a bulging parcel in a red print handkerchief (looking
like a roadman's dinner), untied the knots of it, and disclosed a
quantity of gold and silver coins, and a number of Manx bank notes
creased and soiled. These he counted out with much deliberation amid
a silence like that which comes between thunderclaps--the Speaker,
standing by the fireplace, coughing to compose himself, his wife
blowing her nose to get rid of her tears, and no other sounds being
audible except the nasal breathing of Dan Baldromma, who had hair
about his nostrils.
"Count it for yourself; I belave you'll find it right, Sir."
"Quite right. I suppose you'll want a receipt?"
"If you plaze."
The Speaker sat at a small desk, and, as well as he could (for his
hand was trembling), he wrote the receipt and handed it across the
table.
"And now about my lease," said Dan.
"What about it?" said the Speaker.
"It runs out a year to-day, Sir, and Willie Kerruish, the advocate,
was telling me at the Michaelmas mart you were not for renewing it.
Do you still hould to that, Mr. Spaker?"
"Certainly I do," said the Speaker. "I don't want to enter into
discussions, but I think you'll be the better for another landlord
and I for another tenant."
There was another moment of silence, broken only by Dan's nasal
breathing, and then he said:
"Mr. Spaker, the Dempster's son has come home in disgrace, they're
saying."
"What's that got to do with it?" said the Speaker.
"My daughter has come home in disgrace, too--my wife's daughter, I
mane."
Mrs. Gell raised herself in her easy chair. "Was it your girl,
then..." she began.
"It was, ma'am. Bessie Corteen--Collister, they're calling her."
"What's all this to me?" said the Speaker.
"She's telling me it's a mistake about the Dempster's son, Sir. It
was somebody else's lad did the mischief."
"I see you are well informed," said the Speaker. "Well, what of it?"
"Cæsar Qualtrough might have prosecuted but he didn't, out of respect
for the Dempster," said Dan.
"So they _say_," said the Speaker.
"But if somebody gave him a scute into the truth he mightn't be so
lenient with another man--one other anyway."
The Speaker was silent.
"There have been bits of breezes in the Kays, they're telling me."
Still the Speaker was silent.
"Cæsar and me were middling well acquaint when I was milling at
Ballabeg and he was hutching at Port St. Mary--in fact we were same
as brothers."
"I see what you mean to do, Mr. Collister," said the Speaker, "but
you can save yourself the trouble. My lad is in this house now if
you want to know, but I'm sending him to sea, and before you can get
to Castletown he will have left the island."
"And what will the island say to that, Sir?" said Dan. "That
Archibald Gell, Spaker of the Kays, chairman of everything, and the
biggest man going, barring the Dempster, has had to send his son away
to save him from the lock-up."
The Speaker took two threatening strides forward, and Dan rose to his
feet. There was silence again as the two men stood face to face, but
this time it was broken by the Speaker's breathing also. Then he
turned aside and said, with a shamefaced look:
"I'll hear what Kerruish has to say. I have to see him in the
morning."
"I lave it with you, Sir; I lave it with you," said Dan.
"Good-day, Mr. Collister."
"Good-day to you, Mr. Spaker! And you, too, Mistress Gell!" said
Dan. But having reached the door of the room he stopped and added:
"There's one thing more, though. If my girl is to live with me she
must work for her meat, and there must be no more sooreying."
"That will be all right--I know my son," said the Speaker.
"And I know my step-daughter," said Dan. "These things go on. A
rolling snowball doesn't get much smaller. Maybe that Captain out of
Ireland isn't gone from the island yet--his spirit, I mane. Keep
your lad away from Baldromma. It will be best, I promise you."
Then the peacocks in the courtyard screamed again and the jolting of
a springless cart was heard going over the gravel. The two in the
drawing-room listened until the sound of the wheels had died away in
the lane to the high road, and then the Speaker said:
"That's what comes of having children! We thought it bad for the
Deemster to be in the pocket of a man like Cæsar Qualtrough, but to
be under the harrow of Dan Baldromma!"
"Aw, dear! Aw, dear!" said Mrs. Gell.
"He was right about Alick going to sea, though," said the Speaker,
and, touching the bell for the parlour-maid, he told her to tell his
son to come back to him.
Alick was in the dining-room by this time, washed and brushed and
doing his best to drink a pot of tea and eat a plate of
bread-and-butter, amid the remonstrances of his three sisters, who,
seeing events from their own point of view, were rating him roundly
on associating with a servant.
"I wonder you hadn't more respect for your sisters?" said Isabella.
"What are people to think of us--Fenella Stanley, for instance?" said
Adelaide.
"I declare I shall be ashamed to show my face in Government House
again," said Verbena.
"Oh, shut up and let a fellow eat," said Alick, and then something
about "first-class flunkeys."
But at that moment the parlour-maid came with his father's message
and he had to return to the drawing-room.
"On second thoughts," said the Speaker, "we have decided that you are
not to go to sea. We have only one son, and I suppose we must do our
best with him. You haven't brains enough for building, so, if you
are not to go back to school, you must stay on the land and learn to
look after these farms in Andreas."
"I'll do my best to please you, Sir," said Alick.
"But listen to this," said the Speaker, "Dan Baldromma has been here,
and we know who the girl was. There is to be no more mischief in
that quarter. You must never see her or hear from her again as long
as you live--is it a promise?"
"Yes, Sir," said Alick, and he meant to keep it.