It was the first Saturday in August, when the throbbing and thunging
of the vast machinery of the mills and factories of the English
industrial counties comes to a temporary stop, and for three days at
least, tens of thousands of its servers, male and female, pour into
the island for health and holiday.
Stowell and Gell had never yet seen the inrushing of the liberated
ones, so with no other thought, and little thinking what fierce game
fate was playing with them, they had come into Douglas that day, in
flannels and straw hats, in eager spirits and with high steps, to
look on its sights and scenes.
It was late afternoon, and they made first for the pier, where a
crowd of people had already assembled to witness the arrival of an
incoming steamer.
She was densely crowded. Every inch of her deck seemed to be packed
with passengers, chiefly young girls, as the young men thought, some
of them handsome, many of them pretty, all of them comely. With
sparkling eyes and laughing mouths they shouted their salutations to
their friends on the pier, while they untied the handkerchiefs which
they had bound about their heads to keep down their hair in the
breeze on the sea, and pinned on their hats before landing.
The young men found the scene delightful. A little crude, perhaps a
little common, even a little coarse, but still delightful.
Then they walked along the promenade, and that, too, was crowded.
From the water's edge to the round hill-tops at the back of the town,
every thoroughfare seemed to be thrilling with joyous activity.
Hackney carriages, piled high with luggage and higher still with
passengers, were sweeping round the curve of the bay; windows and
doors were open and filled with faces, and the whole sea-front, from
end to end, seemed to be as full of women's eyes as a midnight sky of
stars.
For tea they went up to Castle Mona--a grave-looking mansion in the
middle of the bay, built for a royal residence by one of the Earls of
Derby when they were lords of Man before the Athols, but now declined
to the condition of an hotel for English visitors, with its wooded
slopes to the sea (wherein more than one of our old Manx Kings may
have pondered the problems of his island kingdom), transformed into a
public tea-garden, on which pretty women were sitting under coloured
sunshades and a string band from London was playing the latest airs
from Paris.
The young men took a table at the seaward end of the lawn, with the
rowing boats skimming the fringe of the water in front, the white
yachts scudding across the breast of the bay, the brown-sailed
luggers dropping out of the harbour with the first flood of the
flowing tide; and then the human tide of joyous life running fast on
the promenade below--girls chiefly, as they thought, usually in white
frocks, white stockings and white shoes, skipping along like human
daisy-chains with their arms entwined about each other's waists, and
sometimes turning their heads over their shoulders to look up at them
and laugh.
The sun went down behind the hills at the back of the town, the
string band stopped, the coloured sunshades disappeared, the gong was
sounded from the hall of the hotel and they went indoors for dinner.
They sat by an open window of the stately dining-room (wherein our
old Earls and their Countesses once kept court), and being in higher
spirits than ever by this time, they ate of every dish that was put
before them, drank a bottle of champagne, toasted each other and
every pretty woman they could remember of the many they had seen that
day ("Here's to that fine girl with the black eyes who was standing
by the funnel"), and looked at intervals at the scenes outside until
the light failed and the darkness claimed them.
At one moment they saw the dark hull of another steamer, lit up in
every port-hole, gliding towards the pier, and at the next (or what
seemed like the next), shooting across the white sheet of light from
the uncovered windows of their dining-room, a large blue landau,
drawn by a pair of Irish bays, driven by a liveried coachman. Gell
leapt up to look at it.
"Vic," he cried, "I think that must be the Governor's carriage."
"It is," said Stowell.
"And that's the Governor himself inside of it."
"No doubt."
"And the lady sitting beside him is .... yes, no .... yes ..... upon
my soul I believe it was his daughter."
"Impossible," said Stowell, and, remembering what Janet had told him,
he thought no more of the matter.
They returned to the lawn to smoke after dinner, and then the sky was
dark and the stars had begun to appear; the tide was up but the sea
was silent; the rowing-boats were lying on the shingle of the beach;
the yachts were at anchor in the bay; the last of the fishing-boats,
each with a lamp in its binnacle, were doubling the black brow of the
head, and from the farthest rock of it the revolving light in the
lighthouse was sweeping the darkness from the face of the town as
with an illuminated fan. The young men were enraptured. It was
wonderful! It was enchanting! It was like walking on the terrace at
Monte Carlo!
Then suddenly, as at the striking of a clock, the town itself began
to flame. One by one the façades of the theatres and dancing palaces
that lined the front were lit up by electricity. It raced along like
ignited gunpowder and in a few minutes the broad curve of the bay
from headland to headland, was sparkling and blazing under ten
thousand lights.
It was now the beginning of night in the little gay town. The young
men could hear the creak of the iron turn-stile to one of the
dancing-halls near at hand, and the shuffling of the feet of the
multitudes who were passing through it, and then, a few minutes
later, the muffled music of the orchestra and the deadened drumming
of the dancing within.
That was more than they could bear, in their present state of
excitement, without taking part in the scene of it, so within five
minutes more, they were passing through the turn-stile themselves and
hurrying down a tunnel of trees, lit up by coloured lamps, to the
open door of the dancing-hall--deep in a dark garden which seemed to
sleep in shadow on either side of them.
The vast place, decorated in gold and domed with glass, was crowded,
but going up into the gallery the young men secured seats by the
front rail and were able to look down. What a spectacle! Never
before, they thought, though they had travelled round the world, had
they seen anything to compare with it. To the clash of the brass
instruments and the boom of the big drums, five thousand young men
and young women were dancing on the floor below. Most of the men
wore flannels and coloured waist-scarves, and most of the girls were
in muslin and straw hats. They were only the workers from the mills
and factories of Lancashire and Yorkshire, but the flush of the sun
and the sea was in their faces and the joy and health of young life
was in their blood.
Stowell felt himself becoming giddy. Waves of perfume were floating
up to him, with the warmth of women's bright eyes, red lips and
joyous laughter. His nerves were quivering; his pulses were beating
with a pounding rush. He was beginning to feel afraid of himself and
he had an almost irresistable impulse to get up and go.