Six days passed as with feet of lead, and Capt’n Davy and Mrs. Quiggin
were still in Douglas. They could not tear themselves away. Morning
and night the good souls were seized by a morbid curiosity about their
servants’ sweethearts. “Seen Peggy lately?” Capt’n Davy would say. “I
suppose you’ve not come across Willie Quarrie lately?” Mrs. Quiggin
would ask. Thus did they squeeze to the driest pulp every opportunity of
hearing anything of each other.
Jenny Crow, with Mrs. Quiggin at Castle Mona, had not yet set eyes on
Captain Davy, and Lovibond, with Captain Davy at Fort Ann, had never
once seen Mrs. Quiggin. Jenny had said nothing of Lovibond to Nelly, and
Lovibond had said nothing of Jenny to Davy.
Matters stood so when one evening Peggy Quine was dressing up her
mistress’s hair for dinner, and answering the usual question.
“Seen Willie Quarrie, ma’am? Aw ‘deed, yes, ma’am; and it’s shocking the
stories he’s telling me. The Capt’n’s making the money fly. Bowls and
beer, and cards and betting--it’s ter’ble, ma’m, ter’ble. Somebody
should hould him. He’s distracted like. Giving to everybody as free as
free. Parsons and preachers and the like--they’re all at him, same as
flies at a sheep with the rot.”
“And what do people say, Peggy?”
“They say fools and their money is quickly parted ma’am.”
“How dare you call anybody a fool, Peggy?”
“Aw it’s not me, ma’am. It’s them that’s seeing him wasting his money
like water through a pitchfork. And the dirts that’s catching most is
shouting loudest. ‘Deed, ma’am, but his conduct is shocking.”
“And what do people say is the cause of it, Peggy?”
“Lumps in his porridge, ma’am.”
“What?”
“Yes, though, that’s what Willie Quarrie is telling me. When a woman
isn’t just running even with her husband they call her lumps in his
porridge. Aw, Willie’s a feeling lad.”
There was a pause after this disclosure, and then Mrs. Quiggin said
in another voice, “Peggy, there’s a strange gentleman staying with the
Captain at Forte Ann, is there not?”
“Yes, ma’am; Mr. Loviboy.”
“What is he like, Peggy?”
“Pepper and salt trowis, ma’am, and a morsel of hair on the tip of his
chin.”
“Tall, Peggy?”
“No, a long wisp’ry man.”
“I suppose he helps the Captain to spend his money?”
“Never a ha’po’th, ma’am, ‘deed no; but ter’ble onaisy at it, and
rigging him constant But no use at all, at all. The Capt’n’s intarmined
to ruin hisself. Somebody should just take him and wallop him, ding
dong, afore he’s wasted all he’s got, and hasn’t a penny left at him.”
“How dare you, Peggy?”
Peggy was dismissed in anger, and Mrs. Quiggin sat down to write a
letter to Lovibond. She begged him to pardon the liberty of one who was
no stranger, though they had never met, in asking him to come to her
without delay. This done, and marked _private_, she called Peggy back
and bade her to take the letter to Willie Quarrie, and tell him to give
it to the gentleman before the Captain came down to breakfast in the
morning.
The day was Sunday, the weather was brilliant, the window was open, and
the salt breath of the sea was floating into the room. With the rustle
of silk like a breeze in a pine tree Jenny Crow came back from a walk,
swinging a parasol by a ring about her wrist.
“Such an adventure!” she said, sinking into a chair. “A man, of
course! I saw him first on the Head at the skirts of the crowd that
was listening to the Bishop’s preaching. Such a manly fellow!
Broad-shouldered, big-chested, standing square on his legs like a rock.
Dark, of course, and such eyes, Nelly! Brown--no black-brown. I like
black-brown eyes in a man, don’t you?”
Captain Davy’s eyes were of the darkest brown. Mrs. Quiggin gave no
sign.
“Then his dress--so simple. None of your cuffs and ruffs, and great high
collars like a cart going for coke. Just a blue serge suit, and a monkey
jacket. I like a man in a monkey jacket.”
Captain Davy wore a monkey jacket; Mrs. Quiggin colored slightly.
“A sailor, thinks I. There’s something so free and open about a sailor,
isn’t there?”
“Do you think so, Jenny?” said Mrs. Quiggin in a faint voice.
“I’m sure of it, Nelly. The sailor is just like the sea. He’s noisy--so
is the sea. Liable to storms--so is the sea. Blusters and boils, and
rocks and reels--so does the sea. But he’s sunny too, and open and free,
and healthy and bracing, and the sea is all that as well.”
Mrs. Quiggin was thinking of Captain Davy, and tingling with pleasure
and shame, but she only said, falteringly, “Didn’t you talk of some
adventure?”
“Oh, of course, certainly,” said Jenny. “After he had listened a moment
he went on, and I lost sight of him. Presently I went on, too, and
walked across the Head until I came within sight of Port Soderick. Then
I sat down by a great bowlder. So quiet up there, Nelly; not a sound
except the squeal of the sea birds, the boo-oo of the big waves outside,
and the plash-ash of the little ones on the beach below. All at once
I heard a sigh. At that I looked to the other side of the bowlder, and
there was my friend of the monkey jacket. I was going to rise, but
he rose instead, and begged me not to trouble. Then I was vexed with
myself, and said I hoped he wouldn’t disturb himself on my account.”
“You never said that, Jenny Crow?”
“Why not, my dear? You wouldn’t have had me less courteous than he was.
So he stood and talked. You never heard such a voice, Nelly. Deep as
a bell, and his Manx tongue was like music. Talk of the Irish brogue!
There’s no brogue in the world like the Manx, is there now, not if the
right man is speaking it.”
“So he was a Manxman,” said Mrs. Quiggin, with a far-away look through
the open window.
“Didn’t I say so before? But he has quite saddened me. I’m sure there’s
trouble hanging over him. ‘I’ve been sailing foreign, ma’am,’ said he,
‘and I don’t know nothing--‘.”
“Oh, then he wasn’t a gentleman?” said Mrs. Quiggin.
Jenny fired up sharply. “Depends on what you call a gentleman, my dear.
Now, any man is a gentleman to me who can afford to dispense with the
first two syllables of the name.”
Mrs. Quiggin looked down at her feet.
“I only meant,” she said meekly, “that your friend hasn’t as much
education--.”
“Then, perhaps, he has more brains,” said Jenny. “That’s the way they’re
sometimes divided, you know, and education isn’t everything.”
“Do _you_ think that, Jenny?” said Mrs. Quiggin, with another long look
through the window.
“Of course I do,” said Jenny.
“And what did he say?”
“’ I’ve been sailing foreign, ma’am,’ he said. ‘And I don’t know nothing
that cut’s a man’s heart from its moorings like coming home same as
a homing pigeon, and then wishing yourself back again same as a lost
one.’”
“Poor fellow!” said Mrs. Quiggin. “He must have found things changed
since he went away.”
“He must,” said Jenny.
“Perhaps he has lost some one who was dear to him,” said Mrs. Quiggin.
“Perhaps,” said Jenny, with a sigh.
“His mother may be, or his sister--” began Mrs. Quiggin.
“Yes, or his wife.” continued Jenny, with a moan.
Mrs. Quiggin drew up suddenly. “What’s his name?” she asked sharply.
“Nay, how could I ask him that?” said Jenny.
“Where does he live?” said Mrs. Quiggin.
“Or that either?” said Jenny.
Mrs. Quiggin’s eyes wandered slowly back to the window. “We’ve all got
our troubles, Jenny,” she said quietly.
“All,” said Jenny. “I wonder if I shall ever see him again.”
“Tell me if you do, Jenny?” said Mrs. Quiggin.
“I will, Nelly,” said Jenny.
“Poor fellow, poor fellow,” said Mrs. Quiggin.
As Jenny rose to remove her bonnet she shot a sly glance out of the
corners of her eyes, and saw that Mrs. Quiggin was furtively wiping her
own.
Meanwhile Lovibond at Fort Ann was telling a similar story to Captain
Davy. He had left the house for a walk before Davy had come down to
breakfast, and on returning at noon he found him immersed in the usual
occupation of his mornings. This was that of reading and replying to his
correspondence. Davy read with difficulty, and replied to all letters
by check. His method of business was peculiar and original. He was
stretched on the sofa with a pipe in his mouth, and the morning’s
letters pigeonholed between his legs. Willie Quarrie sat at a table
with a check-book before him. While Davy read the letters one by one he
instructed Willie as to the nature of the answer, and Willie, with his
head aslant, his mouth awry, and his tongue in his cheek, turned it into
figures on the check-book.
As Lovibond came in Davy was knocking off the last batch for the day.
“‘Respected sir,’ he was reading, ‘I know you’ve a tender heart’...
Send her five pounds, Willie, and tell her to take that talk to the
butchers.”
“‘Honored Captain, we are going to erect a new school in connection
with Ballajora chapel, and if you will honor us by laying the foundation
stone....’ Never laid a stone in my life ‘cept one, and that was my
mawther’s sink-stone. Twenty pounds, Willie. ‘Sir, we are to hold a
bazaar, and if you will consent to open it....’ Bazaar! I know: a
sort of ould clothes shop in a chapel where you’re never tooken up for
cheating, because you always says your paternoster-ings afore you begin.
Ten pounds, Willie. Helloa, here’s Parson Quiggin. Wish the ould devil
would write more simpler; I was never no good at the big spells myself.
‘Dear David....’ That’s good--he walloped me out of the school once for
mimicking his walk--same as a coakatoo esactly. ‘Dear David, owing to
the lamentable death of brother Mylechreest it has been resolved to
ask you to become a member of our committee....’ Com-mittee! I know the
sort--kind of religious firm where there’s three partners, only two of
them’s sleeping ones. Dirty ould hypocrite! Fifteen pounds, Willie.”
This was the scene that Lovibond interrupted by his entrance. “Still
bent on spending your money, Captain?” he said. “Don’t you see that the
people who write you these begging letters are impostors?”
“Coorse I do,” said Davy. “What’s it saying in the Ould Book? ‘Where the
carcass is, there will the eagles be gathered together.’ Only, as Parson
Howard used to say, bless the ould angel, ‘Summat’s gone screw with the
translation theer, friends, should have been vultures.”
“Half of them will only drink your money, Captain,” said Lovibond.
“And what for shouldn’t they? That’s what I’m doing,” said Davy.
“It’s poor work, Captain, poor work. You didn’t always think: money was
a thing to pitch into a ditch.”
“Always? My goodness, no!” said Davy. “Time was once when I thought
money was just all and Tommy in this world. My gough, yes, when I was a
slip of a lad, didn’t I?” said he, sobering very suddenly. “The father
was lost in a gale at the herrings, and the mawther had to fend for the
lot of us. They all went off except myself--the sisters and brothers.
Poor things, they wasn’t willing to stay with us, and no wonder. But
there’s mostly an ould person about every Manx house that sees the young
ones out, and the mawther’s father was at us still. Lame though of his
legs with the rheumatics, and wake in his intellecs for all. Couldn’t
do nothing but lie in by the fire with his bit of a blanket hanging over
his head, same as snow atop of a hawthorn bush. Just stirring the peats,
and boiling the kettle, and lifting the gorse when there was any fire.
The mawther weeded for Jarvis Kewley--sixpence a day dry days, and
fourpence all weathers. Middling hard do’s, mate. And when she’d give
the ould man his basin of broth he’d be saying, squeaky-like, ‘Give
it to the boy, woman; he’s a growing lad?’ ‘Chut! take it, man,’ the
mawther would say, and then he’d be whimpering, ‘I’m keeping you long,
Liza, I’m keeping you long.’ And there was herself making a noise with
her spoon in the bottom of a basin, and there was me grinding my teeth,
and swearing to myself like mad, ‘As sure as the living God I’ll be ruch
some day.’ And now--”
Davy snapped his fingers, laughed boisterously, rolled to his feet, and
said shortly, “Where’ve you been to?”
“To church--the church with a spire at the end of the parade,” said
Lovibond.
“St. Thomas’s--I know it,” said Davy.
St. Thomas’s was half way up to Castle Mona.
The men strolled out at the window, which opened on to the warm, soft
turf of the Head, and lay down there with their faces to the sun-lit
bay.
“Who preached?” said Davy, clasping hands at the back of his head.
“A young woman,” said Lovibond.
Davy lifted his head out of its socket, “My goodness!” he said.
“Well, at all events,” explained Lovi-bond, “it was a girl who preached
to _me_. The moment I went into the church I saw her, and I saw nothing
else until I came out again.”
Davy laughed, “Ay, that’s the way a girl slips in,” said he. “Who was
she?”
“Nay; I don’t know,” said Lovibond; “but she sat over against me on
the opposite side of the aisle, and her face was the only prayer-book I
could keep my eyes from wandering from.”
“And what was her tex’, mate?”
“Beauty, grace, truth, the tenderness of a true heart, the sweetness of
a soul that is fresh and pure.”
Davy looked up with vast solemnity. “Take care,” said he. “There’s odds
of women, sir. They’re like sheep’s broth is women. If there’s a heart
and head in them they’re good, and if there isn’t you might as well be
supping hot water. Faces isn’t the chronometer to steer your boat to the
good ones. Now I’ve seen some you could swear to----.”
“I’ll swear to this one,” said Lovibond with an appearance of tremendous
earnestness.
Davy looked at him, gravely. “D’ye say so?” said he.
“Such eyes, Capt’n--big and full, and blue, and then pale, pale blue, in
the whites of them too, like--like----.”
“I know,” said Davy; “like a blackbird’s eggs with the young birds just
breaking out of them.”
“Just,” said Lovibond, “And then her hair, Capt’n--brown, that brown
with a golden bloom, as if it must have been yellow when she was a
child.”
“I know the sort, sir,” said Davy, proudly; “like the ling on the
mountains in May, with the gorse creeping under it.”
“Exactly. And then her voice, Cap tain, her voice--.”
“So you were speaking to her?” said Davy.
“No, but didn’t she sing?” said Lovi-bond. “Such tones, soft and
tremulous, rising and falling, the same as--as--.”
“Same as the lark’s, mate,” said Davy, eagerly; “same as the
lark’s--first a burst and a mount and then a trimble and a tumble, as if
she’d got a drink of water out of the clouds of heaven, and was singing
and swallowing together--I know the sort; go on.”
Lovibond had kept pace with Davy’s warmth, but now he paused and said
quietly, “I’m afraid she’s in trouble.”
“Poor thing!” said Davy. “How’s that, mate?”
“People can never disguise their feelings in singing a hymn,” said
Lovibond.
“You say true, mate,” said Davy; “nor in giving one out neither. Now,
there was old Kinvig. He had a sow once that wasn’t too reg’lar in her
pigging. Sometimes she gave many, and sometimes she gave few, and
sometimes she gave none. She was a hit-and-a-missy sort of a sow, you
might say. But you always know’d how the ould sow done, by the way
Kinvig gave out the hymn. If it was six he was as loud as a clarnet, and
if it was one his voice was like the tram-bones. But go on about the
girl.”
“That’s all,” said Lovibond. “When the service was over I walked down
the aisle behind her, and touched her dress with my hand, and somehow--”
“I know,” cried Davy. “Gave you a kind of ‘lectricity shock, didn’t it?
Lord alive, mate, girls is quare things.”
“Then she walked off the other way,” said Lovibond.
“So you don’t know where she comes from?” said Davy.
“I couldn’t bring myself to follow her, Capt’n.”
“And right too, mate. It’s sneaking. Following a girl in the streets is
sneaking, and the man that done it ought to be wallopped till all’s
blue. But you’ll see her again, I’ll go bail, and maybe hear who she is.
Rael true women is skess these days, sir; but I’m thinking you’ve got
your flotes down for a good one. Give her line, mate--give her line--and
if I wasn’t such a downhearted chap myself I’d be helping you to land
her.”
Lovibond observed that Capt’n Davy was more than usually restless after
this conversation, and in the course of the afternoon, while he lay in a
hazy dose on the sofa, he overheard this passage between the captain and
his boy:--
“Willie Quarrie, didn’t you say there was an English lady staying with
Mistress Quiggin at Castle Mona?”
“Miss Crows; yes,” said Willie. “So Peggy Quine is telling me--a little
person with a spyglass, and that fond of the mistress you wouldn’t
think.”
“Then just slip across in the morning, and spake to herself, and say can
I see her somewheres, or will she come here, and never say nothing to
nobody.”
Davy’s uneasiness continued far into the evening. He walked alone to
and fro on the turf of the Head in front of the house, until the sun set
behind the hills to the west, where a golden rim from its falling light
died off on the farthest line of the sea to the east, and the town
between lay in a haze of deepening purple. Lovibond knew where his
thoughts were, and what new turn they had taken; but he pretended to see
nothing, and he gave no sign.
Sunday as it was, Capt’n Davy’s cronies came as usual at nightfall. They
were a sorry gang, but Davy welcomed them with noisy cheer. The lights
were brought in, and the company sat down to its accustomed amusements.
These were drinking and smoking, with gambling in disguise at intervals.
Davy lost tremendously, and laughed with a sort of wild joy at every
failure. He was cheated on all hands, and he knew it. Now and again he
called the cheaters by hard name, but he always paid them their money.
They forgave the one for the sake of the other, and went on without
shame. Lovibond’s gorge rose at the spectacle. He was an old gambler
himself, and could have stripped every rascal of them all as naked as a
lettuce after a locust. His indignation got the better of him at last,
and he went out on to the Head.
The calm sea lay like a dark pavement dotted with the reflection of the
stars overhead. Lights in a wide half-circle showed the line of the bay.
Below was the black rock of the island of the Tower of Refuge, and the
narrow strip of the old Red pier; beyond was the dark outline of
the Head, and from the seaward breast of it shot the light of the
lighthouse, like the glow of a kiln. It was as quiet and beautiful out
there as it had been noisy and hideous within.
Lovibond had been walking to and fro for more than an hour listening to
the slumberous voices of the night, and hearing at intervals the louder
bellowing from the room where Captain Davy and his cronies were sitting,
when Davy himself came out.
“I can’t stand no more of it, and I’ve sent them home,” he said. “It’s
like saying your prayers to a hornpipe, thinking of her and carrying on
with them wastrels.”
He was sober in one sense only.
“Tell me more about the little girl in church. Aw, matey, matey!
Something under my waistcoat went creep, creep, creep, same as a
sarpent, when you first spake of her; but its easier to stand till that
jaw inside anyway. Go on, sir. Love at first sight, was it? Aw, well,
the eyes isn’t the only place that love is coming in at, or blind men
would all be bachelors. Now mine came in at the ear.”
“Did you fall in love with her singing, Capt’n?” said Lovibond.
“Yes, did I,” said Davy, “and her spaking, too, and her whispering as
well, but it wasn’t music that brought love in at my ear--my left ear it
was, Matey.”
“Whatever was it then, Capt’n,” said Lovibond.
“Milk,” said Davy.
“Milk?” cried Lovibond, drawing up in their walk.
“Just milk,” said Davy again. “Come along and I tell you. It was this
way. Ould Kinvig kep’ two cows, and we were calling the one Whitie and
the other Brownie. Nelly and me was milking the pair of them, and she
was like a young goat, that full of tricks, and I was same as a big
calf, that shy. One evening--it was just between the lights--that’s
when girls is like kittens, terr’ble full of capers and
mischievousness--Nelly rigged up her kopie--that’s her
milking-stool--agen mine, so that we sat back to back, her milking
Brownie and me milking Whitie. ‘What she agate of now?’ thinks I, but
she was looking as innocent as the bas’es themselves, with their ould
solem faces when they were twisting round. Then we started, and there
wasn’t no noise in the cow-house, but just the cows chewing constant,
and, maybe, the rope running on their necks at whiles and the rattle of
the milk in the pails. And I got to draeming same as I was used of, with
the smell of the hay stealing down from the loft and the breath of
the cows coming puff when they were blowing, and the tits in my hands
agoing, when the rattle-rattle aback of me stopped sudden, and I felt a
squish in my ear like the syringe at the doctor’s. ‘What’s that?’ thinks
I. ‘Is it deaf I’m going?’ But it’s deaf I’d been and blind, too, and
stupid for all down to that blessed minute, for there was Nessy laughing
like fits, and working like mad, and drops of Brownie’s milk going
trickling out of my ear on to my shoulder. ‘It’s not deafness,’ thinks
I; ‘it’s love’; and my breath was coming and going and making noises
like the smithy bellows. So I twisted my wrist and blazed back at her,
and we both fired away, ding-dong, till the cows was as dry as Kinvig
when he was teetotal, and the cow-house was like a snowstorm with a gale
of wind through it, and you couldn’t see a face at the one of us for
swansdown. That’s how Nelly and me ‘came engage.”
He was laughing noisily by this time, and crying alternately, with a
merry shout and a husky croak, “Aw, dear, aw, dear; the days that was,
sir--the days that was!”
Lovibond let him rattle on, and he talked of Nelly for an hour. He had
stories without end of her, some of them as simple as a baby’s prattle,
some as deep as the heart of man, and splitting open the very crust of
the fires of buried passion.
It was late when they turned in for the night. The lights on the line of
the land were all put out, and save for the reflection of the stars only
the lamps of ships at anchor lit up the waters of the bay.
“Good night, capt’n,” said Lovi-bond. “I suppose you’ll go to bed now?”
“Maybe so, maybe no,” said Davy. “You see, I’m like Kinvig these days,
and go to bed to do my thinking. The ould man’s cart-wheel came off
in the road once, and we couldn’t rig it on again no how. ‘Hould hard,
boys,’ says Kinvig; and he went away home and up to the loft, and
whipped off his clothes, and into the blankets and stayed there till
he’d got the lay of that cartwheel. Aw, yes, though--thinking, thinking,
thinking constant--that’s me when I’m in bed. But it isn’t the lying
awake I’m minding. Och, no; it’s the wakening up again. That’s like
nothing in the world but a rusty nail going driving into your skull
afore a blacksmith’s seven-pound sledge. Good night, mate; good night.”