Dan Baldromma had risen earlier than usual that morning. For more
than a week there had not been water enough to his mill-wheel for his
liking, and suspecting the cause of the shortage he had put a pick
over his shoulder and walked up the glen.
There was a little croft on the top of the brews half a mile nearer
to the mountain. It was called Baldromma-beg (the little Baldromma)
and its occupants (sub-tenants of Dan Baldromma) were a quaint old
couple--Will Skillicorne, a long, slow-eyed, slow-legged person who
was a class-leader among the "Primitives," and his wife, Bridget, a
typical little Manxwoman of her class, keen-eyed, quick-tongued,
illiterate and superstitious.
Their croft was thirsty land, though water in abundance was so near,
and to every request that it should be laid on in pipes from the
glen, Dan had said, "Let your wife carry it---what else is the woman
there for?"
Bridget had carried it for ten years. Then her anger getting the
better of her, she put on a pair of her husband's big boots and
rolled two great boulders into a neck of the river, with the result
that a deep stream of sweet water came flowing down to her house and
fields.
This was just what Dan had suspected, and coming upon the new-made
dam, he stretched his legs across it, swung his pick and sent the
boulders tumbling down the glen, with a torrent of water from
Baldromma-beg at the back of them.
But Bridget, also, had risen earlier than usual that morning, and,
hearing the sound of Dan's pick, she went out to him at his bad work
and fell on him with hot reproaches.
"Was there nothing doing down at the mill, Dan Collister," she cried,
"that thou must be coming up here to put thy evil eye on other
people's places?"
"Get thee indoors, woman," growled Dan, "and put thy house in order."
"My house in order? Mine? And what about thine? Thine that is a
disgrace to the parish and the talk of the island."
"Keep a civil tongue in thy head, Mrs. Skillicorne, or maybe I'll be
showing thee the road at Hollantide."
"Turn me out of the croft, will thou? Do it and welcome! I give
thee lave. It would be middling aisy to find a better farm, and
Satan himself couldn't find a worse landlord. But set thou one foot
on this land until my year is over and if there's a bucket of dirty
water on the cowhouse floor I'll throw it over thee. Put my house in
order indeed! Where's thy daughter, eh? Where's thy daughter, I
say?"
"I've got no daughter, woman, and well thou knows it," said Dan.
"'Deed I do. No wonder the Lord wouldn't trust thee with a daughter
of thy own, the way thou's brought up this one. The slut! The
strumpet! Away with thee and look for her--it will become thee
better."
But Dan having finished his work was now plunging down the glen and
old Will Skillicorne had come out of his house half dressed, with his
braces hanging behind him.
"Come in, woman--lave the man to God," said Will.
"God indeed! The dirt! The ugly black toad! God wouldn't bemane
Himself talking to the like."
"Thou's done it this time, though, I'm thinking. Thou heard what he
said about Hollantide?"
"Chut! Get thee back to bed. What's thou putting thy mouth in for?
Who knows where the man himself will be by that time?"
With a face like a black cloud after this encounter, Dan threw down
his pick on the cobbles of the street and went into the kitchen to
work off his anger on his wife.
"That's what thou's done for me, ma'am! There's not a trollop in the
parish that isn't throwing thy daughter's bad doings in my face."
The kitchen was full of smoke, for the porridge in the oven-pot had
been allowed to burn, and it was not until he was standing back to
the fire, putting his pipe in the pocket of his open waistcoat, that
Dan saw Bessie where she had seated herself, after breaking out of
her mother's arms, by the table and in the darkest corner.
He took in the girl's situation at a glance, but after the manner of
the man he pretended not to do so.
"God bless my soul," he cried. "Back, is she? Well, well! But what
did I say, mother? 'No need to send the Cross Vustha (the fiery
cross) after her, she'll come home.' And my goodness the grand
woman's she's grown! Fur caps and fur-lined cloaks and I don't know
the what! Just come to put a sight on the mother and the ould man, I
suppose. No pride at all at all! I wouldn't trust but there's a
grand carriage waiting for her at the corner of the road."
"Aisy, man, aisy," said Mrs. Collister, picking up her stick, "don't
thou see the girl has walked?"
"Walked, has she?" said Dan, raising his thick eyebrows in pretended
astonishment. "You don't say! All the way from Castletown? Well,
well! So that's how it is, is it? The young waistrel has thrown her
over, has he?"
Bessie had to put her hand to her throat to keep back the cry that
was bubbling up.
"Aisy, man, aisy with the like," said the old woman. But Dan was for
showing no mercy.
"Goodness me, the airs she gave herself going away! I might shut my
door on her, but there would be others to open theirs. And now they
have opened them, and shut them too, I'm thinking."
Bessie, crushed and silent, was clutching the end of the table. Dan
stepped over to her, laid hold of her left hand, lifted it up, as if
looking for her wedding ring, and then flung it away.
"Nothing!" he said. "She's got nothing for it neither. I might have
followed her to Castletown, but I didn't. 'I'll lave her to it,' I
thought. 'Maybe the girl's cleverer than we thought, and will come
home mistress of Baldromma and a thousand good acres besides.' But
no, not a ha'porth! And now she has come back to ate us up for the
rest of our lives! The toot! The boght! The booby!"
"Dan Collister," said the old woman, "don't thou see the girl is ill?"
"Ill, is she?" said Dan. "I wouldn't trust but she is, ma'am. So
it's worse than I thought, and maybe before long there'll be another
mouth to feed."
Bessie dropped her head on the table.
"But not in this house, if you plaze, miss. It happened here once
before, and the island would be having a fine laugh at me if it
happened again."
Once more Dan stepped over to Bessie and touched her arm.
"You're like a dead letter, you've come to the wrong address,
mistress. It wasn't Dan Baldromma's thatched cottage you were
wanting, but the big slate house down the road where the paycocks are
scraming. I'll trouble you to go there."
"Sakes alive, man," cried the old woman, "thou'rt not for turning the
girl out of doors?"
"I am that, ma'am," said Dan, going over to the door. "No trollop
shall be telling me again that my house is the disgrace of the parish
and the talk of the island."
Then throwing the door wide and rattling the catch of it, he said,
"Out of my house, miss! Out of it! Out of it!"
Bessie, who had been sitting motionless, raised her head and rose to
go, although scarcely able to take a step forward, when she felt a
hand that was trembling like a leaf laid on her shoulder.
"Stay thou there, and leave this to me."
It was the old woman who had been crouching over the fire on the
three-legged stool and had now risen, thrown her stick away as if she
had no longer any need of it, and was facing her husband with blazing
eyes.
"Thou talks and talks of this house as thine and thine," she said.
"What made it thine?"
"The law, if thou wants to know, woman," said Dan.
"Then the law is a robber and a thief."
Dan looked at his wife in astonishment, and then burst into a fit of
forced laughter.
"Well, that's good! That's rich! That's wonderful! What next, I
wonder?"
"Do you want me to tell thee the truth, Dan Collister? Before the
girl, too? Then there's not a stick or a stone in the place that in
the eyes of heaven does not belong to me."
"What?"
"Not a stick or a stone, except the landlord's, that wasn't bought
with my father's money--John Corteen, a man of God, if ever there was
one."
"Pity his daughter didn't take after him, then."
"Pity enough, Dan Collister. But when I brought shame into his house
he forgave me. And when the finger of death was on the man the only
trouble he had in life was what was to become of his girl when he was
gone."
"Truth enough, ma'am, he had to find thee a husband, hadn't he?"
"He hadn't far to look, though. And if thou had nothing in thy
pocket and not much on thy back thou had plenty in thy mouth to make
up for it. Thou were not afraid of scandal! Thou didn't mind
marrying a girl who had been talked of with another man!"
"And I did, didn't I?"
"Thou did, God forgive thee! But not till the man's trembling hand
had reached up to the hole in the thatch over his bed for his
stocking purse and counted the money out to thee. Three hundred good
Manx pounds he had worked thirty years for and saved up for his
daughter. And then thou swore on the Holy Book to be good to his
girl and her baby, and the man's dying eyes on thee. And now--now
thou talks of turning my girl out of the house--this house that would
have been her house some day if thou had not come between us. But
no! Thou shan't do that."
"Shan't I?"
"'Deed thou shan't! She may have done wrong, but if she has it's no
more than her mother did before her, and if _I_ daren't turn her out
for it thou shalt not."
"We'll see, ma'am, we'll see," said Dan. He was buttoning up his
waistcoat and putting on his coat.
"It's no use talking to a woman. There's not much sense to be got
out of the like anyway. But when a man marries, the property of the
wife becomes the property of the husband--that's Dempster's law,
isn't it? And standing up for your legal rights, and not being
forced by your wife, or anybody else, to find maintenance for another
man's offspring when it comes--that's Dempster's law too, I belave."
"Yes," said the old woman, "and standing up for your own flesh and
blood when she's sick and weak and the world is going cold on her and
she has nowhere else to lay her head in her trouble--that's Mother's
law, Dan Collister, and it's older than the Dempster's, I'm thinking."
"Do as you plaze, ma'am," said Dan. "If you want more noising about
the bad doings of your daughter it's all as one to me."
He took his billycock hat down from the "lath" under the ceiling and
continued,
"I'll hear what the Speaker has to say about this, though. His wife
wasn't for doing much for thee when the honour of this house was in
question, but maybe she'll alter her tune now that it's the honour of
her own."
He drew his whip from its nail over the fireplace and stepped to the
door.
"And if this matter ends as I expect I'll be hearing what the Coorts
have to say about it, too. Young Mr. Sto'll is to be made Dempster
they're telling me. They're putting him in for it, anyway, and he is
bosom friend to the Spaker's son. But friend or no friend," he said,
with his hand on the hasp, and ready to go, "maybe his first job when
he comes back to the island will be to send his Coroner to this house
to turn the man's mistress and her by-child into the road."
"Tell him to send her coffin at the same time, then," cried the old
woman, almost screaming. "Mine too, Dan Collister. That's the only
way he'll turn my daughter out of this house, I promise thee."
But the old woman collapsed the moment her husband had gone, and
staggering to the rocking-chair she dropped into it and cried. Then
Bessie, who had not yet spoken, rose and said, crying herself,
"Don't cry, I'll go away myself, mother."
But the old woman was up again in a moment.
"No, thou'll not," she said. "Thou'll go up to thy bedroom in the
dairy loft--the one thou had in the innocent old times gone by.
Come, take my arm--my good arm, girl. Lean on me, woman-bogh."