“There's something about it here,” said Jonaique, “if people would only
let a man get on.”
“It's mine,” said Black Tom.
“We'll think of that by-and-bye,” said Cæsar, waving his hand to
Jonaique.
“'He had packed his chest for going, when four blacklegs, who had been
hanging round the compound, tempting and plaguing the Kaffirs, made off
with a bag of stones. Desperate gang, too; so nobody was running to be
sent after them. But poor Peter, being always a bit bull-necked, was
up to the office in a jiffy, and Might he go? And off in chase in the
everin' with the twenty Kaffirs of his own company to help him--not much
of a lot neither, and suspected of dealing diamonds with the blacklegs
times; but Peter always swore their love for him was getting thicker and
stronger every day like sour cream. “The captain's love has been their
theme, and shall be till they die,” said Peter.'”
“He drank up the Word like a thirsty land the rain,” said Cæsar. “Peter
Quilliam and I had mortal joy of each other. 'Good-bye, father,' says
he, and he was shaking me by the hand ter'ble. But go on, Jonaique.”
“'That was four months ago, and a fortnight since eight of his Kaffirs
came back.'”
“Aw dear!” “Well, well!” “Lord-a-massy!” “Hush!”
“'They overtook the blacklegs far up country, and Peter tackled them.
But they had Winchester repeaters, and Peter's boys didn't know the
muzzle of a gun from the neck of a gin-bottle. So the big man of the
gang cocked his piece at Peter, and shouted at him like a high bailiff,
“You'd better go back the way you came.” “Not immajetly,” said Peter,
and stretched him. Then there was smoke like a smithy on hooping-day,
and “To your heels, boys,” shouted Peter. And if the boys couldn't equal
Peter with their hands, they could bate him with their toes, and the
last they heard of him he was racing behind them with the shots of the
blacklegs behind him, and shouting mortal, “Oh, oh! All up! I'm done!
Home and tell, boys! Oh, oh.”'”
“Rejoice not against me, O mine enemy. When I fall I shall arise.
Selah,” said Cæsar.
Amid the tumult of moans which followed the reading, Philip, sitting
with head on his hand by the ingle, grew hot and cold with the thought
that after all there was no actual certainty that Pete was dead. Nobody
had seen him die, nobody had buried him; the story of the returned
Kaffirs might be a lie to cover their desertion of Pete, their betrayal
of him, or their secret league with the thieving Boers. At one awful
moment Philip asked himself how he had ever believed the letter. Perhaps
he had _wanted_ to believe it.
Nancy Joe touched him on the shoulder. “Kate is waiting for a word
with you alone, sir,” she said, and Philip crossed the kitchen into
the little parlour beyond, chill with china and bowls of sea-eggs and
stuffed sea-birds.
“He's feeling it bad,” said Nancy.
“Never been the same since Pete went to the Cape,” said Cæsar.
“I don't know for sure what good lads are going to it for,” moaned
Grannie. “And calling it Good Hope of all names! Died of a bullet in his
head, too, aw dear, aw dear! Discussion of the brain it's like. And look
at them black-heads too, as naked as my hand, I'll go bail. I hate the
nasty dirts! Cæsar may talk of one flesh and brethren and all to that,
but for my part I'm not used of black brothers, and as for black angels
in heaven, it's ridiculous.”
“When you're all done talking I'll finish the letter,” said Jonaique.
“They can't help it, Mr. Jelly, the women can't help it,” said Cæsar.
“'Respected Sir, I must now close, but we are strapping up the chest of
the deceased, just as he left it, and sending it to catch the steamer,
the _Johannesburg_, leaving Cape Town Wednesday fortnight----'”
“Hm! Johannesburg. I'll meet her at the quay--it's my duty to meet her,”
said Cæsar.
“And I'll board her in the bay,” shouted Black Tom.
“Thomas Quilliam,” said Cæsar, “it's borne in on my spirit that the
devil of greed is let loose on you.”
“Cæsar Cregeen, don't make a nose of wax of me,” bawled Tom, “and don't
think because you're praiching a bit that religion is going to die with
you. Your head's swelling tre-menjous, and-you won't be able to sleep
soon without somebody to tickle your feet. You'll be forgiving sins
next, and taking money for absolution, and these ones will be making
a pope of you and paying you pence. Pope Cæsar, the publican, in his
chapel hat and white choker! But that chiss is mine, and if there's law
in the land I'll have it.”
With that Black Tom swept out of the house, and Cæsar wiped his eyes.
“No use smoothing a thistle, Mr. Cregeen,” said Jonaique soothingly.
“I've a conscience void of offence.” said Cæsar. “I can only follow the
spirit's leading. But when Belial----”
He was interrupted by a most mournful cry of “Look here! Aw, look, then,
look!”
Nancy was coming out of the back-kitchen with something between the
tips of her fingers. It was a pair of old shoes, covered with dirt and
cobwebs.
“These were his wearing boots,” she said, and she put them on the
counter.
“Dear heart, yes, the very ones,” said Grannie. “Poor boy, they'd move a
heart of stone to see them. Something to remember him by, anyway. Many
a mile his feet walked in them; but they're resting now in Abraham's
bosom.”
Then Cæsar's voice rose loud over the doleful tones around the counter.
“'Vital Spark of Heavenly Flame'--raise it, Mr. Niplightly. Pity we
haven't Peter and his fiddle here--he played with life.”
“I can'd sing to-day, having a cold, bud I'll whisle id,” said the
Constable.
“Pitch it in altoes, then,” said Cæsar. “I'm a bit of a base myself, but
not near so base as Peter.”
Meanwhile a little drama of serious interest was going on upstairs.
There sat Kate before the looking-glass, with flushed cheeks and
quivering mouth. The low drone of many voices came to her through the
floor. Then a dull silence and one voice, and Nancy Joe coming and going
between the kitchen and bedroom.
“What are they doing now, Nancy?” said Kate.
“First one's praying, and then another's praying,” said Nancy.
“Lord-a-massy, thinks I, it'll be my turn next, and what'll I say?”
“Where's Mr. Christian?”
“Gone into the parlour. I whispered him you wanted him alone.”
“You never said that, Nancy,” said Kate, at Nancy's reflection in the
glass.
“Well, it popped out,” said Nancy.
Kate went down, with a look of softened sorrow, and Philip, without
lifting his eyes, began bemoaning Pete. They would never know his
like--so simple, so true, so brave; never, never.
He was fighting against his shame at first seeing the girl after that
kiss, which seemed to him now like treason at the mouth of a grave.
But, with the magic of a woman's art, Kate consoled him. He had
one great comfort--he had been a loyal friend; such fidelity, such
constancy, such affection, forgetting the difference of place, of
education--everything.
Philip looked up at last, and there was the lovely face with its beaming
eyes. He turned to go, and she said, softly, “How we shall miss you!”
“Why so?” said Philip.
“We can't expect to see you so often now--now that you've not the same
reason for coming.”
“I'll be here on Sunday,” said Philip.
“Then you don't intend to desert us yet--not just yet, Philip?”
“Never!” said Philip.
“Well, good-night! Not that way--not by the porch. Good-night!”
As Philip went down the road in the darkness, he heard the words of the
hymn that was being sung inside:
“Thy glory why didst Thou enshrine In such a clod of earth as mine, And
wrap Thee in my clay.”
XII.
At that moment day was breaking over the plains of the Transvaal. The
bare Veldt was opening out as the darkness receded, depth on depth,
like the surface of an unbroken sea. Not a bush, not a path, only a few
log-houses at long distances and wooden beacons like gibbets to define
the Boer farms. No sound in the transparent air, no cloud in the
unveiling sky; just the night creeping off in silence as if in fear of
awakening the sleeping morning.
Across the soulless immensity a covered waggon toiled along with four
horses rattling their link chains, and a lad sideways on the shaft
dangling his legs, twiddling the rope reins and whistling. Inside the
waggon, under a little window with its bit of muslin curtain, a man lay
in the agony of a bullet-wound in his side, and an old Boer and a
woman stood beside him. He was lying hard on the place of his pain and
rambling in delirium.
“See, boys? Don't you see them?”
“See what, my lad?” said the Boer simply, and he looked through the
waggon window.
“There's the head-gear of the mines. Look! the iron roofs are
glittering. And yonder's the mine tailings. We'll be back in a jiffy. A
taste of the whip, boys, and away!”
Untouched by visions, the old Boer could see nothing.
“What does he see, wife, think you?”
“What can he see, stupid, with his face in the pillow like that?”
With the rushing of blood in his ears the sick man called out again:
“Listen! Don't you hear it? That's the noise of the batteries. Whip up,
and away! Away!” and he tore at the fringe of the blanket covering him
with his unconscious fingers.
“Poor boy! he's eager to get to the coast But will he live to cover
another morgen, think you?”
“God knows, Jan--God only knows.”
And the Veldt was very wide, and the sea and its ships were far away,
and over the weary stretch of grass, and rock, and sand, there was
nothing on the horizon between desolate land and dominating sky but a
waste looking like a chaos of purple and green, where no bird ever sang
and no man ever lived, and God Himself was not.
XIII.
“She loves me! She loves me! She loves me!” The words sang in Philip's
ears like a sweet tune half the way back to Ballure. Then he began to
pluck at the brambles by the wayside, to wound his hand by snatching
at the gorse, and to despise himself for being glad when he should have
been in grief. Still, he was sure of it; there was no making any less of
it. She loved him, he was free to love her, there need be no hypocrisy
and no self-denial; so he wiped the blood from his fingers, and crept
into the blue room of Auntie Nan.
The old lady, in a dainty cap with flying streamers, was sitting by
the fireside spinning. She had heard the news of Pete as Philip passed
through to Sulby, and was now wondering if it was not her duty to
acquaint Uncle Peter. The sweet and natty old gentlewoman, brought up in
the odour of gentility, was thinking on the lines of poor Bridget, Black
Tom when dying under the bare scraas, that a man's son was his son in
spite of law or devil.
She decided against telling the Ballawhaine by remembering an incident
in the life of his father. It was about Philip's father, too; so Philip
stretched his legs from the sofa towards the hearth, and listened to the
old Auntie's voice over the whirr of her wheel, with another voice--a
younger voice, an unheard voice--breaking: in at the back of his ears
when the wheel stopped, and a sweet undersong inside of him always,
saying, “Be sensible; there is no disloyalty; Pete is dead. Poor Pete!
Poor old Pete!”
“Though he had cast your father off, Philip, for threatening to make
your mother his wife, he never believed there was a parson on the island
would dare to marry them against his wish.”
“No, really?”
“No; and when Uncle Peter came in at dinner-time a week after and said,
'It's all over,' he said, 'No, sir, no,' and threw down his spoon in
the plate, and the hot broth splashed on my hand, I remember. But Peter
said, 'It's past praying for, sir,' and then grandfather cried, 'No, I
tell you no.' 'But I tell you yes, sir,' said Peter. 'Maughold Church
yesterday morning before service.' Then grandfather lost himself, and
called Peter 'Liar,' and cried that your father couldn't do it. 'And,
besides, he's my own son after all, and would not,' said grandfather.
But I could see that he believed what Uncle Peter had told him, and,
when Peter began to cry, he said, 'Forgive me, my boy; I'm your father
for all, and I've a right to your forgiveness.' All the same, he
wouldn't be satisfied until he had seen the register, and I had to go
with him to the church.”
“Poor old grandfather!”
“The vicar in those days was a little dotty man named Kissack, and it
was the joy of his life to be always crushing and stifling somebody,
because somebody was always depriving him of his rights or something.”
“I remember him--the Cockatoo. His favourite text was, 'Jesus said, then
follow Me,' only the people declared he always wanted to go first.”
“Shocking, Philip. It was evening when we drove up to Maughold, and the
little parson was by the Cross, ordering somebody with a cane. 'I am
told you married my son yesterday; is it true?' said grandfather. 'Quite
true,' said the vicar. 'By banns or special license?' grandfather asked.
'License, of course,' the vicar answered.”
“Curt enough, any way.”
“'Show me the register,' said grandfather, and his face twitched and his
voice was thick. 'Can't you believe me?' said the vicar. 'The register,'
said grandfather. Then the vicar turned the key in the church door and
strutted up the aisle, humming something. I tried to keep grandfather
back even then. 'What's the use?' I said, for I knew he was only
fighting against belief. But, hat in hand, he followed to the Communion
rail, and there the vicar laid the open book before him. Oh, Philip,
shall I ever forget it? How it all comes back--the little dim church,
the smell of damp and of velvet under the holland covers of the pulpit,
and the empty place echoing. And grandfather fixed his glasses and
leaned over the register, but he could see nothing--only blurr, blurr,
blurr.
“'_You_ look at it, child,' he said, over his shoulder. But I daren't
face it; so he rubbed his glasses and leaned over the book again. Oh
dear! he was like one who looks down the list of the slain for the name
he prays he may not find. But the name was there, too surely: 'Thomas
Wilson Christian... to Mona Crellin... signed Wm. Crellin and something
Kissack.'”
Philip's breath came hot and fast.
“The little vicar was swinging his cane to and fro on the other side of
the rail and smiling, and grandfather raised his eyes to him and said,
'Do you know what you've done, sir? You've robbed me of my first-born
son and ruined him.' 'Nonsense, sir,' said the vicar. 'Your son was of
age, and his wife had the sanction of her father. Was I to go round by
Ballawhaine for permission to do my duty as a clergyman?' 'Duty!' cried
grandfather. 'When a young man marries, he marries for heaven or for
hell. Your duty as a clergyman!' he cried, till his voice rang in the
roof. 'If a son of yours had his hand at his throat, would you call
it my duty as Deemster to hand him a knife.' 'Silence, sir,' said the
vicar. Remember where you stand, or, Deemster though you are, you shall
repent it.' 'Arrest me for brawling, will you?' cried grandfather, and
he snatched the cane out of the vicar's hand and struck him across the
breast. 'Arrest me now,' he said, and then tottered and stumbled out of
the church by my arm and the doors of the empty pews.”
Philip went to bed that night with burning brow and throbbing throat.
He had made a startling discovery. He was standing where his father
had stood before him; he was doing what his father had done; he was
in danger of his father's fate! Where was his head that he had never
thought of this before?
It was hard--it was terrible. Now that he was free to love the girl, he
realised what it meant to love her. Nevertheless he was young, and he
rebelled, he fought, he would not deliberate, The girl conquered in his
heart that night, and he lay down to sleep.
But next morning he told himself, with a shudder, that it was lucky he
had gone no farther. One step more and all the evil of his father's
life might have been repeated in his own. There had been nothing said,
nothing done. He would go to Sulby no more.
XIV.
That mood lasted until mid-day, and then a scout of the line of love
began to creep into his heart in disguise. He reminded himself that he
had promised to go on Sunday, and that it would be unseemly to break off
the acquaintance too suddenly, lest the simple folks should think he had
borne with them throughout four years merely for the sake of Pete. But
after Sunday he would take a new turn.
He found Kate dressed as she had never been before. Instead of the loose
red bodice and the sun-bonnet, the apron and the kilted petticoat, she
wore a close-fitting dark green frock with a lace collar. The change was
simple, but it made all the difference. She was not more beautiful, but
she was more like a lady.
It was Sunday evening, and the “Fairy” was closed. Csesar and Grannie
were at the preaching-house, Nancy Joe was cooking crowdie for supper,
and Kate and Philip talked. The girl was quieter than Philip had ever
known her--more modest, more apt to blush, and with the old audacity of
word and look quite gone. They talked of success in life, and she said--
“How I should like to fight my way in the world as you are doing! But a
woman can do nothing to raise herself. Isn't it hard? Whatever the place
where she was born in, she must remain there all her days. She can see
her brothers rise, and her friends perhaps, but she must remain below.
Isn't it a pity? It isn't that she wants to be rich or great. No, not
that; only she doesn't want to be left behind by the people she likes.
She must be, though, and just because she's a woman. I'm sure it's so in
the Isle of Man, anyway. Isn't it cruel?”
“But aren't you forgetting something?” said Philip.
“Yes?”
“If a woman can't rise of herself because the doors of life are locked
to her, it is always possible for a man to raise her.”
“Some one who loves her, you mean, and so lifts her to his own level,
and takes her up with him as he goes up?”
“Why not?” said Philip.
Kate's eyes beamed like sunshine. “That is lovely,” she said in a low
voice. “Do you know, I never thought of that before! If it were my case,
I should like that best of all. Side by side with him, and he doing all?
Oh, that is beautiful!”
And she gazed up with a timid joy at the inventive being who had thought
of this as at something supernatural.
Cæsar and Grannie came back, both in fearful outbursts of Sunday
clothes. Nevertheless Cæsar's eyes, after the first salutation with
Philip, fixed themselves on Kate's unfamliar costume.
“Such worldly attire!” he muttered, following the girl round the kitchen
and blowing up his black gloves. “This caring for the miserable
body that will one day be lowered into the grave! What does the Book
say?--put my tall hat on the clane laff, Nancy. 'Let it not be the
outward adorning of putting on of apparel, but let it be the hidden man
of the heart.'”
“But sakes alive, father,” said Grannie, loosening a bonnet like a
diver's helmet, “if it comes to that, what is Jeremiah saying, 'Can a
maid forget her ornaments?'”
“It's like she can if she hasn't any to remember,” said Cæsar. “But
maybe the prophet Jeremiah didn't know the mothers that's in now.”
“Chut, man! Girls are like birds, and the breed comes out in the
feathers,” said Grannie.
“Where's she getting it then? Not from me at all,” said Cæsar.
“Deed, no, man,” laughed Grannie, “considering the smart she is and the
rasonable good-looking.”
“Hould your tongue, woman; it'll become you better,” said Cæsar.
Philip rose to go. “You're time enough yet, sir,” cried Cæsar. “I was
for telling you of a job.”
Some of the fishermen of Ramsey had been over on Saturday. Their season
was a failure, and they were loud in their protests against the trawlers
who were destroying the spawn. Cæsar had suggested a conference at
his house on the following Saturday of Ramsey men and Peel men, and
recommended Philip as an advocate to advise with them as to the best
means to put a stop to the enemies of the herring. Philip promised to be
there, and then went home to Auntie Nan.
He told himself on the way that Kate was completely above her
surroundings, and capable of becoming as absolute a lady as ever lived
on the island, without a sign of her origin in look or speech, except
perhaps the rising inflexion in her voice which made the talk of the
true Manxwoman the sweetest thing in the world to listen to.
Auntie Nan was sitting by the lamp, reading her chapter before going to
bed.
“Auntie,” said Philip, “don't you think the tragedy in the life of
father was accidental? Due, I mean, to the particular characters of
grandfather and poor mother? Now, if the one had been less proud, less
exclusive, or the other more capable of rising with her husband----”
“The tragedy was deeper than that, dear; let me tell you a story,” said
Auntie Nan, laying down her book. “Three days after your father left
Ballawhaine, old Maggie, the housemaid, came to my side at supper and
whispered that some one was wanting me in the garden. It was Thomas. Oh
dear! it was terrible to see him there, that ought to have been the
heir of everything, standing like a stranger in the dark beyond the
kitchen-door.”
“Poor father!” said Philip.
“'Whist, girl, come out of the light,' he whispered. 'There's a purse
with twenty pounds odd in my desk upstairs; get it, Nan, here's the
key.' I knew what he wanted the money for, but I couldn't help it; I got
him the purse and put ten pounds more of my own in it. 'Must you do it?'
I said. 'I must,' he answered. 'Your father says everybody will despise
you for this marriage,' I said. 'Better they should than I should
despise myself,' said he. 'But he calls it moral suicide,' I said.
'That's not so bad as moral murder,' he replied. 'He knows the island,'
I urged, 'and so do you, Tom, and so do I, and nobody can hold up his
head in a little place like this after a marriage like that.' 'All the
worse for the place,' said he, 'if it stains a man's honour for acting
honourably.'”
“Father was an upright man,” interrupted Philip. “There's no question
about it, my father was a gentleman.”
“'She must be a sweet, good girl, and worthy of you, or you wouldn't
marry her,' said I to father; 'but are you sure that you will be
happy and make her happy?' We shall have each other, and it is our own
affair,' said father.”
“Precisely,” said Philip.
“'But if there is a difference between you now,' I said, 'will it be
less when you are the great man we hope to see you some day?' 'A man is
not always thinking of success,' he answered.
“My father was a great man already, Auntie,” burst out Philip.
“He was shaken and I was ashamed, but I could not help it, I went on.
'Has the marriage gone too far?' I asked. 'It has never been mentioned
between us,' said he. 'Your father is old, and can't live long,' I
pleaded. 'He wants me to behave like a scoundrel,' he answered. 'Why
that, if the girl has no right to you yet?' I said, and he was silent.
Then I crept up and looked in at the window. 'See,' I whispered, 'he's
in the library. We'll take him by surprise. Come!' It was not to be.
There was a smell of tobacco on the air and the thud of a step on the
grass. 'Who's that?' I said. 'Who should it be,' cried father, 'but the
same spy again. I'll shake the life out of him yet as a terrier would
a rat. No use, girl,' he shouted hoarsely, facing towards the darkness,
'they're driving me to destruction.' 'Hush!' I said, and covered his
mouth with my hands, and his breath was hot, like fire. But it was
useless. He was married three days afterwards.”
Philip resolved to see Kate no more. He must go to Sulby on Saturday
to meet the fishermen, but that would be a business visit; he need not
prolong it into a friendly one. All the week through he felt as if his
heart would break; but he resolved to conquer his feelings. He pitied
himself somewhat, and that helped him to rise above his error.
XV.
On Saturday night he was early at Sulby. The bat-room was thronged with
fishermen in guernseys, sea-boots, and sou'-westers. They were all on
their feet together, twisting about like great congers on the quay,
drinking a little and smoking a great deal, thumping the table, and
all talking at once. “How've you done, Billy?”--“Enough to keep away the
divil and the coroner, and that's about all.”--“Where's Tom
Dug?”--“Gone to Austrilla.”--“Is Jimmy over to-day?”--“He's away
to Cleveland.”--“Gough, bless me, every Manx boy seems to be going
foreign.”--“That's where we'll all be after long and last, if we don't
stop these southside trawlers.”
Philip went in and was received with goodwill and rough courtesy, but no
man abated a jot of his freedom of action or liberty of speech, and
the thumping and shouting were as loud as before. “Appeal to the
Receiver-General.”--“Chut! an ould woman with a face winking at you
like a roast potato.”--“Will we go to the Bishop, then?”--“A whitewashed
Methodist with a soul the size of a dried pea.”--“The Governor is the
proper person,” said Philip above the hubbub, “and he is to visit Peel
Castle next Saturday afternoon about the restorations. Let every Manx
fisherman who thinks the trawl-boats are enemies of the fish be there
that day. Then lay your complaint before the man whose duty it is to
inquire into all such grievances; and if you want a spokesman, I'm ready
to speak for you.”--“Bravo!”--“That's the ticket!”
Then the meeting was at an end; the men went on with stories of the
week's fishing, stories of smugglers, stories of the Swaddlers (the
Wesleyans), stories of the totalers (teetotallers), and Philip made
for the door. When he got there, he began to reflect that, being in
the house, he ought to leave good-night with Cæsar and Grannie. Hardly
decent not to do so. No use hurting people's feelings. Might as well
be civil. Cost nothing anyway. Thus an overpowering compulsion in the
disguise of courtesy drew him again into Kate's company; but to-morrow
he would take a new turn.
“Proud to see you, Mr. Philip,” said Cæsar.
“The water's playing in the kettle; make Mr. Philip a cup of tay,
Nancy,” said Grannie. Cæsar was sitting back to the partition,
pretending to read out of a big Bible on his knees, but listening
with both ears and open mouth to the profane stories being told in the
bar-room. Kate was not in the kitchen, but an open book, face downwards,
lay on the chair by the turf closet.
“What's this?” said Philip. “A French exercise-book! Whoever can it
belong to here?”
“Aw, Kirry, of coorse,” said Grannie, “and sticking that close to it of
an everin that you haven't a chance to put a word on her.”
“Vanity, sir, vanity, all vanity,” said Cæsar; and again he listened
hard.
Philip's eyes began to blink. “Teaching herself French, is she? Has she
been doing it long, Grannie?”
“Long enough, sir, three years or better, since poor Pete went away
maybe; and at the books for ever, grammars and tex' books, and I don't
know what.”
Cæsar, with his ear at the glass, made an impatient gesture for silence,
but Grannie continued, “I don't know what for people should be larning
themselves foreign languages at all. For my part, there isn't one of
them bates the Manx itself for plainness. And aren't we reading, when
the Lord wanted to bring confusion on Noah and his disobedient sons and
grandsons at going up the Tower of Babel, he made them spake different
tongues?”
“Good thing too,” snapped Cæsar, “if every poor man was bound to carry
his wife up with him.”
Philip's eyes were streaming, and, unobserved, he put the lesson-book to
his lips. He had guessed its secret. The girl was making herself worthy
of him. God bless, her!
Kate came downstairs in the dark dress and white collar of Sunday night.
She saw Philip putting down the book, lowered her head and blushed,
took up the volume, and smuggled it out of sight. Then Cæsar's curiosity
conquered his propriety and he ventured into the bar-room, Grannie came
and went between the counter and the fishermen, Nancy clicked about from
dairy to door, and Kate and Philip were left alone.
“You were wrong the other night,” she said. “I have been thinking it
over, and you were quite, quite wrong.”
“So?”
“If a man marries a woman beneath him, he stoops to her, and to stoop to
her is to pity her, and to pity her is to be ashamed of her, and to be
ashamed of her would kill her. So you are wrong.”
“Yes?” said Philip.
“Yes,” said Kate, “but do you know what it ought to be? The _woman_
ought to marry beneath herself, and the man _above_ himself; then as
much as the woman descends, the man rises, and so-----don't you see?”
She faltered and stopped, and Philip said, “Aren't you talking
nonsense,' Kate?”
“Indeed, sir!”
Kate pretended to be angry at the rebuff, and pouted her lips, but her
eyes were beaming.
“There is neither above nor below where there is real liking,” said
Philip. “If you like any one, and she is necessary to your life, that is
the sign of your natural equality. It is God's sign, and all the rest is
only man's book-keeping.”
“You mean,” said Kate, trying to keep a grave mouth, “you mean that if
a woman belongs to some one she can like, and some one belongs to her,
that is being equal, and everything else is nothing? Eh?”
“Why not?” said Philip.
It was music to her, but she wagged her head solemnly and said, “I'm
sure you're wrong, Philip. I am, though. Yes, indeed I am. But it's no
use arguing. Not against you. Only----”
The glorious choir of love-birds in her bosom were singing so loud that
she could say no more, and the irresistible one had his way. After a
while, she stuffed something into the fire.
“What's that?” said Philip.
“Oh, nothing,” she answered brightly.
It was the French exercise-book.
XVI.
Philip went home rebelling against his father's fate. It was accidental;
it was inevitable only in the Isle of Man. But perdition to the place
where a man could not marry the woman he loved if she chanced to be born
in the manger instead of the stable loft. Perdition to the land where a
man could not live unless he was a skunk or a cur. Thank God the world
was wide.
That night he said to Auntie Nan, “Auntie, why didn't father go away
when he found the tide setting so strongly against him?”
“He always meant to, but he never could,” said Auntie Nan. “A woman
isn't like a man, ready to pitch her tent here to-day and there
to-morrow. We're more like cats, dear, and cling to the places we're
used to, if they're only ruins of tumbling stones. Your mother wasn't
happy in the Isle of Man, but she wouldn't leave it. Your father
wouldn't go without her, and then there was the child. He was here for
weal or woe, for life or death. When he married his wife he made the
chain that bound him to the island as to a rock.”
“It wouldn't be like that with Kate,” thought Philip. But did Auntie
know anything? Had somebody told her? Was she warning him? On Sunday
night, on the way home from church, she talked of his father again.
“He came to see at last that it wasn't altogether his own affair
either,” she said. “It was the night he died. Your mother had been
unwell and father had sent for me. It was a dark night, and late, very
late, and they brought me down the hill from Lewaige Cottage with a
lantern. Father was sinking, but he _would_ get out of bed. We were
alone together then, he and I, except for you, and you were asleep in
your cot by the window. He made straight for it, and struggled down on
his knees at its side by help of the curtains. 'Listen,' he said, trying
to whisper, though he could not, for his poor throat was making noises.
You were catching your breath, as if sobbing in your sleep. 'Poor little
boy, he's dreaming,' said I; 'let me turn him on his side.' 'It's not
that,' said father; 'he went to sleep in trouble.'”
“I remember it, Auntie,” said Philip. “Perhaps he had been trying to
tell me something.”
“'My boy, my son, forgive me, I have sinned against you,' he said, and
he tried to reach over the cot rail and put his lips to your forehead,
but his poor head shook like palsy and bobbed down into your little
face. I remember you rubbed your nose with your little fist, but you did
not waken. Then I helped him back to bed, and the table with the
medicine glasses jingled by the trembling of his other hand. 'It's dark,
all, all dark, Nannie,' he said, 'sure some angel will bring me light,'
and I was so simple I thought he meant the lamp, for it was dying down,
and I lit a candle.”
Philip went about his work that week as if the spirit of his father were
hovering over him, warning him when awake in words of love and pleading,
crying to him in his sleep in tones of anger and command, “Stand back;
you are at the edge of the precipice.”
Nevertheless his soul rose in rebellion against this league as of the
past and the dead. It was founded in vanity, in the desire for glory and
success. Only let a man renounce the world and all that the world can
give, and he can be true to himself, to his heart's impulse, to his
honour, and to his love. He would deliberate no longer. He despised
himself for deliberating. If was the world against Kate, let the world
go to perdition.
XVII.
On Saturday afternoon he was at Peel. It was a beautiful day; the sun
was shining, and the bay was blue and flat and quiet. The tide was down,
the harbour was empty of water, but full of smacks with hanging sails
and hammocks of nets and lines of mollags (bladders) up to the mast
heads. A flight of seagulls were fishing in the mud, and swirling
through the brown wings of the boats and crying. A flag floated over
the ruins of the castle, the church-bells were ringing, and the
harbour-masters were abroad in best blue and gold buttons.
On the tilting-ground of the castle the fishermen had gathered, sixteen
hundred strong. There were trawlers among them, Manx, Irish, and
English, prowling through the crowd, and scooping up the odds and ends
of gossip as their boats on the bottom scraped up the little fish.
Occasionally they were observed by the herring-fishers, and then there
were high words and free fights. “Taking a creep round from Port le
Murrey are you, Dan?”--“Thought I'd put a sight on Peel to-day.”--“Bad
for your complexion, though; might turn it red, I'm thinking.”--“Strek
me with blood will you? I'd just like you to strek me, begough. I'd put
a Union Jack on your face as big as a griddle.”
The Governor came, an elderly man, with a formidable air, an aquiline
nose, and cheeks pitted with small-pox. Philip introduced the fishermen
and told their grievance. Trawling destroyed immature fish, and so
contributed to the failure of the fisheries. They asked for power to
stop it in the bays of the island, and within three miles of the coast.
“Then draft me a bill with that object, Mr. Christian,” said the
Governor, and the meeting ended with cheers for His Excellency, shouts
for Philip, and mutterings of contempt from the trawlers. “Didn't think
there was a man on the island could spake like it.”--“But hasn't your
fancy-man been rubbing his back agen the college?”--“I'd take lil tacks
home if I was yourself, Dan.”--“Drink much more and it'll be two feet
deep inside of you.”
Philip was hurrying away under the crumbling portcullis, when a
deputation of the fishermen approached him. “What are we owing you, Mr.
Christian?” asked their spokesman.
“Nothing,” answered Philip.
“We thank you, sir, and you'll be hearing from us again. Meanwhile, a
word if you plaze, sir?”
“What is it, men?” said Philip.
“When a young man can spake like yonder, it's a gift, sir, and he's
houlding it in trust for something. The ould island's wanting a big
man ter'ble bad, and it hasn't seen the like since the days of your own
grandfather. Good everin, and thank you--good everin!”
With that the rough fellows dismissed him at the ferry steps, and he
hastened to the market-place, where he had left his horse. On putting
up, he had seen Cæsar's gig tipped up in the stable-yard. It was now
gone, and, without asking questions, he mounted and made towards Ramsey.
He took the old road by the cliffs, and as he cantered and galloped, he
hummed, and whistled, and sang, and slashed the trees to keep himself
from thinking. At the crest of the hill he sighted the gig in front, and
at Port Lady he came up with it. Kate was driving and Cæsar was nodding
and dozing.
“You've been having a great day, Mr. Christian,” said Cæsar. “Wish I
could say the same for myself; but the heart of man is decaitful, sir,
and desperately wicked. I'm not one to clap people in the castle
and keep them from sea for debts of drink, and they're taking a
mane advantage. Not a penny did I get to-day, sir, and many a yellow
sovereign owing to me. If I was like some--now there's that Tom Raby,
Glen Meay. He saw Dan the Spy coming from the total meeting last night.
'Taken the pledge, Dan?' says he. 'Yes, I have,' says Dan. 'I'm plazed
to hear it,' says he; 'come in and I'll give you a good glass of rum
for it.' And Dan took the rum for taking the pledge, and there he was as
drunk as Mackilley in the castle this morning.”
Philip listened as he rode, and a half-melancholy, half-mocking
expression played on his face. He was thinking of his grandfather, old
Iron Christian, brought into relation with his mother's father, Capt.
Billy Ballure, of the dainty gentility of Auntie Nan and the unctuous
vulgarity of the father of Kate.
Cæsar grumbled himself to sleep at last, and then Philip was alone with
the girl, and riding on her side of the gig. She was quiet at first, but
a joyous smile lit up her face.
“I was in the castle, too,” she said, with a look of pride.
The sun went down over the waters behind them, and cast their brown
shadows on the road in front; the twilight deepened, the night came
down, the moon rose in their faces, and the stars appeared. They could
hear the tramp of the horses' hoofs, the roll of the gig wheels, the
wash and boom of the sea on their left, and the cry Of the sea-fowl
somewhere beneath. The lovelinese and warmth of the autumn night stole
over Kate, and she began to keep up a flow of merry chatter.
“I can tell all the sounds of the fields in the darkness. By the
moonlight? No; but with my eyes shut, if you like. Now try me.”
She closed her eyes and went on: “Do you hear that--that patter like
soft rain? That's oats nearly ripe for harvest. Do you hear that,
then--that pit-a-pat, like sheep going by on the street? That's wheat,
just ready. And there--that whiss, whiss, whiss? That's barley.”
She opened her eyes: “Don't you think I'm very clever?”
Philip felt an impulse to lean over the wheel and put his arms about the
girl's neck.
“Take care,” she cried merrily; “your horse is shying.”
He gazed at her face, lit up in the white moonlight. “How bright and
happy you seem, Kate!” he said with a shiver; and then he laid one hand
on the gig rail.
Her eyelids quivered, her mouth twitched, and she answered gaily, “Why
not? Aren't you? You ought to be, you know. How glorious to succeed? It
means so much--new things to see, new houses to visit, new pleasures,
new friends----”
Her joyous tones broke down in a nervous laugh at that last word, and he
replied, in a faltering voice, “That may be true of the big world over
yonder, Kate, but it isn't so in a little island like ours. To succeed
here is like going up the tower of Castle Rushen with some one locking
the doors on the stone steps behind you. At every storey the room
becomes less, until at the top you have only space to stand alone. Then,
if you should ever come down again, there's but one way for you--over
the battlements with a crash.”
She looked up at him with startled eyes, and his own were large and full
of trouble. They were going through Kirk Michael by the house of the
Deemster, who was ill, and both drew rein and went slowly. Some acacias
in the garden slashed their broadswords in the night air, and a windmill
behind stood out against the moon like a gigantic bat. The black shadow
of the horses stepped beside them.
“Are you feeling lonely to-night, Philip?”
“I'm feeling----”
“Yes?”
“I'm feeling as if the dead and the living, the living and the dead--oh,
Kate, Kate, I don't know what I'm feeling.”
She put her hand caressingly on the top of his hand. “Never mind, dear,”
she said softly; “I'll stand by you. You shan't be _alone_.”
XVIII.
It was midday, then, on the tropic seas, and the horizon was closing in
with clouds as of blood and vapours of stifling heat. A steamship was
rolling in a heavy swell, under winds that were as hot as gusts from an
open furnace. Under its decks a man lay in an atmosphere of fever and
the sickening odour of bandages and stale air. Above the throb of the
engines and the rattle of the rudder chain he heard a step going by his
open door, and he called in a feeble voice that was cheerful and almost
merry, but yet the voice of a homesick boy--
“How many days from home, engineer?”
“Not more than twenty now.”
“Put on steam, mate; put it on. Wish I could be skipping below and
stoking up for you like mad.”
As the ship rolled, the green reflection of the water and the red light
of the sky shot alternately through the porthole and lit up the berth
like firelight flashing in a dead house.
“Ask the boys if they'll carry me on deck, sir--just for a breath of
fresh air.”
The sailors came and carried him. “You can do anything for a chap like
that.”
The big sun was straight overhead, weighing down on their shoulders, and
there was no shelter anywhere, for the shadows were under foot.
“Slip out the sails, lads, and let's fly along. Wish I could tumble up
the rigging myself and look out from the yards same as a gull, but I'm
only an ould parrot chained down to my stick.”
They left him, and he gazed out on the circle of water and the vapour
shaking over it like a veil. The palpitating air was making the circle
smaller every minute, but the world seem cruelly large for all that. He
was looking beyond the visible things; he was listening deeper than the
wash of the waves; he was dreaming, dreaming. Apparitions were floating
in the heat-clouds over him. Home! Its voices whispered at his ear, its
face peered into his eyes. But the hot winds came up and danced round
him; the air, the sea, the sky, the whole world, the utter universe
seemed afire; his eyes rolled upwards to his brow; he almost choked and
fainted.
“Carry him below, poor fellow! He's got a good heart to think he'll ever
see home again. He'll never see it.”
Half-way down the companion-ladder he opened his eyes with a look of
despair. Would God let him die after all?
XIX.
Kate began to feel that Philip was slipping away from her. He loved her,
she was sure of that, but something was dragging them apart Her great
enemy was Philip's success. This was rapid and constant. She wanted to
rejoice in it; she struggled to feel glad and happy, and even proud. But
that was impossible. It was ungenerous, it was mean, but she could not
help it--she resented every fresh mark of Philip's advancement.
The world that was carrying Philip up was carrying him away. She would
be left far below. It would be presumptuous to lift her eyes to him.
Visions came to her of Philip in other scenes than her scenes, among
ladies in drawing-rooms, beautiful, educated, clever, able to talk of
many things beyond her knowledge. Then she looked at herself, and
felt vexed with her hands, made coarse by the work of the farm; at her
father, and felt ashamed of the moleskin clothes he wore in the mill; at
her home, and flushed deep at the thought of the bar-room.
It was small and pitiful, she knew that, and she shuddered under the
sense of being a meaner-hearted girl than she had ever thought. If
she could do something of herself to counteract the difference made
by Philip's success, if she could raise herself a little, she would be
content to keep behind, to let him go first, to see him forge ahead of
her, and of everybody, being only in sight and within reach. But she
could do nothing except writhe and rebel against the network of female
custom, or tear herself in the thorny thicket of female morals.
Harvest had begun; half the crop of Glenmooar had been saved, a third
was in stook, and then a wet day had come and stopped all work in the
fields. On this wet day, in the preaching-room of the mill, amid forms
and desks, with the cranch of the stones from below, the wash of the
wheel from outside, and the rush of the uncrushed corn from above, Cæsar
sat rolling sugganes for the stackyard, with Kate working the twister,
and going backward before him, and half his neighbours sheltering from
the rain and looking on.
“Thought I'd have a sight up and tell you,” said Kelly, the postman.
“What's the news, Mr. Kelly?” said Cæsar.
“The ould Dempster's dying,” said Kelly.
“You don't say?” said everybody.
“Well, as good as dying at ten minutes wanting eight o'clock this
morning,” said the postman.
“The drink's been too heavy for the man,” said John, the clerk.
“Wine is a serpent, and strong drink a mocker,” said Cæsar.
“Who'll be the new Dempster, Mr. Niplightly,” said Jonaique.
“Hm!” snuffled the constable, easing his helmet, “dat's a serious
matter, Mr. Jelly. We'll dake our time--well dake our time.”
“Chut! There's only one man for it,” said Cæsar.
“Perhaps yes, perhaps no,” said the constable.
“Do you mane the young Ballawhaine, Mr. Cregeen?” said the postman.
“Do I mane fiddlesticks!” said Cæsar.
“Well, the man's father is at the Govenar reg'lar, they're telling me,”
said Kelly, “and Ross is this, and Ross is that--”
“Every dog praises his own tail,” said Cæsar.
“I'm not denying it, the man isn't fit--he has sold himself to the
devil, that's a fact----”
“No, he hasn't,” said Cæsar, “the devil gets the like for nothing.”
“But he's a Christian for all, and the Christians have been Dempsters
time out of time----”
“Is he the only Christian that's in, then, eh?” said Cæsar. “Go on,
Kate; twist away.”
“Is it Mr. Philip? Aw, I'm saying nothing against Mr. Philip,” said the
postman.
“You wouldn't get lave in this house, anyway,” said Cæsar.
“Aw, a right gentleman and no pride at all,” said the postman. “As free
and free with a poor man, and no making aisy either. I've nothing agen
him myself. No, but a bit young for a Dempster, isn't he? Just a taste
young, as the man said, eh?”
“Older than the young Ballawhaine, anyway,” said John, the clerk.
“Aw, make him Dempster, then. I'm raising no objection,” said Mr. Kelly.
“Go on, girl. Does that twister want oiling? Feed it, woman, feed it,”
said Cæsar.
“His father should have been Dempster before him,” said John, the clerk.
“Would have been too, only he went crooked when he married on yonder
woman. She's through though, and what more natural----”
The rope stopped again, and Kate's voice, hard and thick, came from the
farther end of it. “His mother being dead, eh?”
“It was the mother that done for the father, anyway,” said the clerk.
“Consequently,” said Kate, “he is to praise God that his mother is
gone!”
“That girl wants a doctor,” muttered Jonaique.
“The man couldn't drag the woman up after him,” began the clerk. “It's
always the way----”
“Just that,” said Kate, with bitter irony.
“Of coorse, I'm not for saying it was the woman's fault entirely----”
“Don't apologise for her,” said Kate. “She's gone and forgotten, and
that being so, her son has now a chance of being Deemster.”
“So he has,” shouted Cæsar, “and not second Dempster only, but first
Dempster itself in time, and go on with the twister.”
Kate laughed loudly, and cried, “Why don't you keep it up when your
hand's in? First Deemster Christian, and then Sir Philip Christian, and
then Lord Christian, and then----But you're talking nonsense, and you're
a pack of tattlers. There's no thought of making Philip Christian a
Deemster, and no hope of it and no chance of it, and I trust there never
will be.”
So saying, she flung the twister on the floor and rushed out of the
mill, sobbing hysterically.
“Dr. Clucas is wonderful for females and young girls,” said Jonaique.
“It's that Ross again,” muttered Cæsar.
“And he'll have her yet,” said Kelly, the postman.
“I'd see her dead first,” said Cæsar. “It would be the jaws of hell and
the mouth of Satan.”
That she who loved Philip to distraction should be the first to abuse
and defame him was agony near to madness, for Kate knew where she stood.
It was not merely that Philip's success was separating them, not merely
that the conventions of life, its usages, its manners, and its customs
were putting worlds between them. The pathos of the girl's position
was no accidental thing. It was a deeper, older matter; it was the same
to-day as it had been yesterday and would be to-morrow; it began in the
garden of Eden and would go on till the last woman died---it was the
natural inferiority of woman in relation to man.
She had the same passions as Philip, and was moved by the same love.
But she was not free. Philip alone was free. She had to wait on Philip's
will, on Philip's word. She saw Philip slipping away from her, but she
could not snatch at him before he was gone; she could not speak first;
she could not say, “I love you; stay with me!” She was a woman, only a
woman! How wretched to be a woman! How cruel!
But ah! the dear delicious thought! It came stealing up into her heart
when the red riot was nearly killing her. What a glorious thing it
was to be a woman after all! What a powerful thing! What a lovely and
beloved thing! To rule the king, being the slave, was sweeter than to be
the king himself. That was woman's place. It was where heaven itself
had put her from the beginning until now. What weapons had it given
her! Beauty! Charm! Love! The joy of it! To be the weak and overcome the
strong! To be nothing in the battle of life, and yet conqueror of all
the world!
Kate vowed that, come what would, Philip should never leave her.
XX.
On the day when the last of the harvest is saved in the Isle of Man, the
farmer gives a supper to his farm-people, and to the neighbours who
have helped him to cut and house it. This supper, attended by simple and
beautiful ceremonies, is called the Melliah. The parson may be asked to
it, and if there is a friend of position and free manners, he also is
invited. Cæsar's Melliah fell within a week of the rope-making in the
mill, and partly to punish Kate, partly to honour himself, he asked
Philip to be present.
“He'll come,” thought Kate with secret joy, “I'm sure he'll come;” and
in this certainty, when the day of Melliah came, she went up to her room
to dress for it. She was to win Philip that day or lose him for ever.
It was to be her trial day--she knew that. She was to fight as for her
life, and gain or lose everything. It was to be a battle royal between
all the conventions of life, all the network of female custom, all the
inferiority of a woman's position as God himself had suffered it to be,
and one poor girl.
She began to cry, but struggling with her sadness, she dashed the tears
from her glistening eyes. What was there to cry about? Philip _wanted_
to love her, and he should, he must.
It was a glorious day, and not yet more than two o'clock. Nancy had
washed up the dinner things, the fire-irons were polished, the boots and
spare whips were put up on, the lath, the old hats like lines of heads
on a city gate were hung round the kitchen walls, the hearthrug was
down, the turf was piled up on the fire, the kettle was singing from the
slowrie, and the whole house was taking its afternoon nap.
Kate's bedroom looked over the orchard and across the stackyard up the
glen. She could see the barley stack growing in the haggard; the laden
cart coming down the glen road with the driver three decks up over the
mare, now half smothered and looking suddenly little, like a snail under
the gigantic load; and beyond the long meadow and the Bishop's bridge,
the busy fields dotted with the yellow stooks and their black shadows
like a castle's studded doors.
When she had thrown off her blue-black dress to wash her arms and
shoulders and neck were bare. She caught sight of herself in the glass,
and laughed with delight. The years had brought her a fuller flow of
life. She was beautiful, and she knew it. And Philip knew it too, but
he should know it to day as he had never known it before. She folded her
arms in their roundness over her bosom in its fulness and walked up and
down the little room over the sheep-skin rugs, under the turfy scraas,
glowing in the joy of blooming health and conscious loveliness. Then she
began to dress.
She took from a drawer two pairs of stockings, one black and the other
red, and weighed their merits with moral gravity--which? The red had it,
and then came the turn of the boots. There was a grand new pair, with
countless buttons, two toecaps like two flowers, and an upward curve
like the arm of a glove. She tried them on, bent back and forward, but
relinquished them with a sigh in favour of plain shoes cut under the
ankles and tied with tape.
Her hair was a graver matter. Its tangled curls had never satisfied her.
She tried all means to bring them into subjection; but the roll on top
was ridiculous, and the roll behind was formal. She attempted long waves
over the temples. It was impossible. With a lash-comb she dragged her
hair back to its natural lawlessness, and when it fell on her forehead
and over her ears and around her white neck in little knowing rings
that came and went, and peeped out and slid back, like kittens at
hide-and-seek, she laughed and was content.
From a recess covered by a shawl running on a string she took down her
bodice. It was a pink blouse, loose over the breast, like hills of
red sand on the shore, and loose, too, over the arms, but tight at
the wrist. When she put it on it lit up her head like a gleam from the
sunset, and her eyes danced with delight.
The skirt was a print, with a faint pink flower, the sash was a band of
cotton of the colour of the bodice, and then came the solemn problems
of the throat. It was round, and full, and soft, and like a tower. She
would have loved to leave it bare, but dared not. Out of a drawer under
the looking-glass she took a string of pearls. They were a present from
Kimberley, and they hung over her fingers a moment and then slipped
back. A white silk handkerchief, with a watermark, was chosen instead.
She tied it in a sailor's knot, with the ends flying loose, and the
triangular corner lying down her back.
Last of all, she took out of a box a broad white straw hat, like
an oyster shell, with a silver-grey ribbon, and a sweeping ostrich
feather.. She looked at it a moment, blew on it, plucked at its ribbon,
lifted it over her head, held it at poise there, dropped it gently on to
her hair, stood back from the glass to see it, and finally tore it off
and sent it skimming on to the bed.
The substitute was her everyday sun-bonnet, which had been lying on the
floor by the press. It was also of pale pink, with spots on its print
like little shells on a big scallop. When she had tossed it over her
black curls, leaving the strings to fall on her bosom, she could not
help but laugh aloud.
After all, she was dressed exactly the same as on other days of life,
except Sunday, only smarter, perhaps, and fresher maybe.
The sun-bonnet was right though, and she began to play with it. It was
so full of play; it lent itself to so many moods. It could speak; it
could say anything. She poked it to a point, as girls do when the sun
is hot, by closing its mouth over the tip of her nose, leaving only a
slumberous dark cave visible, through which her black eyes gleamed and
her eyelashes shone. She tied the strings under her chin, and tipped
the bonnet back on to her neck, as girls will when the breeze is cool,
leaving her hair uncovered, her mouth twitching merrily, and her head
like a nymph-head in an aureole. She took it off and tossed it on her
arm, the strings still knotted, swinging it like a basket, then wafting
it like a fan, and walking as she did so to and fro in the room, the
floor creaking, her print frock crinkling, and she herself laughing with
the thrill of passion vibrating and of imagined things to come.
Then she went downstairs with a firm and buoyant step, her fresh lithe
figure aglow with young blood and bounding health.
At the gate of the “haggard” she met Nancy Joe coming out of the
washhouse.
“Lord save us alive!” exclaimed Nancy. “If I ever wanted to be a man
until this day!”
Kate kissed and hugged her, then fled away to the Melliah field.
XXI.
Philip, in Douglas, had received the following communication from
Government House:--
“His Excellency will be obliged to Mr. Philip Christian if he will
not leave the island for the present without acquainting him of his
destination.”
The message was a simple one: it said little, and involved and
foreshadowed nothing, but it threw Philip into a condition of great
excitement. To relieve his restlessness by giving way to it, he went out
to walk. It was the end of the tourist season, and the _Ben-my-Chree_
was leaving the harbour. Newsboys, burrowing among the crowds on
the pier to sell a Manx evening paper, were crying, “Illness of the
Deemster--serious reports.”
Philip's hair seemed to rise from his head. The two things came together
in his mind. With an effort to smudge out the connection he turned back
to his lodgings, looking at everything that his eyes fell on in the
rattling streets, speaking to everybody he knew, but seeing nothing and
hearing nobody. The beast of life had laid its claws on him.
Back in his rooms, he took out of his pocket a packet which Auntie Nan
had put in his hand when he was leaving Ramsey. It was a bundle of his
father's old letters to his sister cousin, written from London in the
days when he was studying law and life was like the opening dawn. “The
ink is yellow now,” said Auntie Nan; “it was black then, and the hand
that wrote them is cold. But the blood runs red in them yet. Read them,
Philip,” she said with a meaning look, and then he was sure she knew of
Sulby.
Philip read his father's letters until it was far into the night, and he
had gone through every line of them. They were as bright as sunshine, as
free as air, easy, playful, forcible, full of picture, but, above all,
egotistical, proud with the pride of intellectuality, and vain with the
certainty of success. It was this egotism that fascinated Philip. He
sniffed it up as a colt sniffs the sharp wind. There was no need to make
allowances for it. The castles which his father had been building in
the air were only as hovels to the golden palaces which his son's eager
spirit was that night picturing. Philip devoured the letters. It was
almost as if he had written them himself in some other state of being.
The message from Government House lay on a table at his right, and
sometimes he put his open hand over it as he sat close under the lamp on
a table at his left and read on:--
... “Heard old Broom in the House last night, and today I lunched
with him at Tabley's. They call him an orator and the king of
conversationalists. He speaks like a pump, and talks like a bottle
running water. No conviction, no sincerity, no appeal. Civil enough to
me though, and when he heard that father was a Deemster, he told me the
title meant Doomster, and then asked me if I knew the meaning of 'House
of Keys,' and said it had its origin in the ancient Irish custom
of locking the muniment chests with twenty-four keys, whereof each
counsellor kept one. When he had left us Tabley asked if he wasn't a
wonderful man, and if he didn't know something of everything, and I
said, 'Yes, except the things of which I knew a little, and of them he
knew nothing.'... My pen runs, runs. But, Nannie, my little Nannie, if
this is what London calls a great man, I'll kick the ball like a toy
before me yet.”
... “So you are wondering where I am living--in man-sion or attic!
Behold me then in Brick Court, Temple, second floor. Goldsmith wrote the
'Vicar' on the third, but I've not got up to that yet. His rooms were
those immediately above me. I seem to see him coming down past my door
in that wonderful plum-coloured coat. And sitting here at night I think
of him--the sudden fear, the solitary death, then these stairs thronged
with his pensioners, the mighty Burke pushing through, Reynolds with his
ear-trumpet, and big 'blinking Sam,' and last of all the unknown grave,
God knows where, by the chapel wall. Poor little Oliver! They say it
was a women that was 'in' at the end. No more of the like now, no more
debts, no more vain 'talk like poor Poll:' the light's out--all still
and dark.”
... “How's my little Nannie? Does she still keep a menagerie for sick
dogs and lost cats? And how's the parson-gull with the broken wing,
and does he still strut like Parson Kis-sack in his surplice? I was at
Westminster Hall yesterday. It was the great trial of Mitchell, M. P.,
who forged his father's will. Stevens defended--bad, bad, bad, smirking
all the while with small facetiæ. But Denman's summing up--oh! oh! such
insight, such acuteness! It was wonderful. I had a seat in the gallery.
The grand old hall was a thrilling scene--the dense throng, the upturned
faces, the counsel, the judges, the officers of court, and then the
windows, the statues, the echo of history that made every stone and
rafter live--Oh, Nan, Nan, listen to me! If I live I'll sit on the bench
there some day--I will, so help me God!”
When Philip had finished his father's letters, he was on the heights,
and poor Kate was left far below, out of reach and out of sight.
Hitherto his ambitions had been little more than the pale shadow of his
father's hopes, but now they were his own realities.
XXII.
Next morning the letter came from Cæsar inviting him to the Melliah,
and then he thought of Kate more tenderly. She would suffer, she would
cry--it would make his heart bleed to see her; but must he for a few
tears put by the aims of a lifetime? If only Pete had been alive!
If only Pete were yet to come home! He grew hot and ashamed when he
remembered the time, so lately past, when the prayer of his secret heart
would have been different. It was so easy now to hate himself for such
evil impulses.
Philip decided to go to the Melliah. It would give him the chance he
wanted of breaking off the friendship finally. More than friendship
there had never been, except secretly, and that could not count. He knew
he was deceiving himself; he felt an uneasy sense of loss of honour and
a sharp pang of tender love as often as Kate's face rose up before him.
On the day of the Melliah he set off early, riding by way of St. John's
that he might inquire at Kirk Michael about the Deemster.. He found the
great man's house a desolate place. The gate was padlocked, and he had
to clamber over it; the acacias slashed above him going down the path,
and the fallen leaves encumbered his feet At the door, which was shut,
he rang, and before it was opened to him an old woman put her untidy
head out of a little window at the side.
“It's scandalous the doings that's here, sir,” she whispered. “The
Dempster's gone into 'sterics with the drink, and the lil farmer fellow,
Billiam Cowley, is over and giving him as much as he wants, and driving
everybody away.”
“Can I speak to him?” said Philip.
“Billiam? It isn't fit. He'll blackguard you mortal, and the Dempster
himself is past it. Just sitting with the brandy and drinking and
drinking, and ateing nothing; but that dirt brought up on the Curragh
shouting for beefstakes morning and night, and having his dinner laid on
a beautiful new white sheet as clane as a bed.”
From the ambush of a screen before an open door, Philip looked into the
room where the Deemster was killing himself. The window shutters were up
to keep out the daylight; candles were burning in the necks of bottles
on the mantelpiece; a fire smouldered in a grate littered with paper
and ashes; a coarse-featured man was eating ravenously at the table,
a chop-bone in his fingers, and veins like cords moving on his low
forehead--and the Deemster himself, judge of his island since the death
of Iron Christian, was propped up in a chair, with a smoking glass on a
stool beside him, and a monkey perched on his shoulder. “Turn them out,
neck and crop, Dempster; the women are all for robbing a man,” said the
fellow; and a husky, eaten-out voice replied to him with a grunt and a
laugh, “H'm! That's only what you're doing yourself, then, you rascal,
and if I'd let the right one in long ago you wouldn't be here now--nor
I neither, would I, Jacko?” The tail of the monkey flapped on the
Deemster's breast, and Philip crept away with a shiver.
The sun was shining brightly outside the house, and the air was fresh
and sweet. Remounting his horse, which was neighing and stamping at the
gate, Philip rode hard to bring back a sense of warmth. At the “Fairy”
he alighted and put up, and saw Grannie, who was laying tables in the
mill.
“I'm busy as Trap's wife,” she said, “and if you were the Govenar itself
you wouldn't get lave to spake to me now. Put a sight on himself on the
field yonder, the second meadow past the Bishop's bridge, and come back
with the boys to supper.”
Philip found the Melliah field. Two-score workers, men, women, and
children, a cart and a pair of horses were scattered over it. Where the
corn had been cut the day before the stubble had been woven overnight
into a white carpet of cobwebs, which neither sun nor step of man had
yet dispelled. There were the smell of the straw, the cawing of the
rooks in the glen, the hissing to the breeze of the barley still
standing, the swish of the scythe and the gling of the sickle, the
bending and rising of the shearers, the swaying of the binders dragging
the sheaves, the gluck of the wheels of the cart, the merry head of a
child peeping out of a stook like a young bird out of the broken egg,
and a girl in scarlet, whom Philip recognised, standing at the farthest
hedge, and waving the corn band with which she was tieing to some one
below.
Philip vaulted into the field, and was instantly seized by every woman
working in it, except Kate, tied up with the straw ropes, and only
liberated on paying the toll of an intruder.
“But I've come to work,” he protested, and Cæsar who, was plotting the
last rigs of the harvest, paired him with Kate and gave him a sickle.
“He's a David, he'll smite down his thousands/,” said Cæsar. Then
cocking his eye up the field, “the Ballabeg for leader,” he cried, “he's
a plate-ribbed man. And let ould Maggie take the butt along with him.
Jemmy the Red for the after-rig, and Robbie to follow Mollie with the
cart Now ding-dong, boys, bend your backs and down with it.”
Kate had not looked up when Philip came into the field, but she had
seen him come, and she gave a little start when he took his place in his
shirt-sleeves beside her. He used some conventional phrases which she
scarcely answered, and then nothing was heard but the sounds of the
sickle and the corn. She worked steadily for some time, and he looked
up at her at intervals with her round bare arms and supple waist and
firm-set foot and tight red stocking. Two butterflies tumbling in the
air played around her sun bonnet and a lady-clock settled on her wrist.
Time was called for rest as Nancy Joe came through the gate bringing a
basket with bottles and a can.
“The belly's a malefactor that forgets former kindness,” said Cæsar;
“ate and drink.”
Then the men formed a group about the ale, the older women drank tea,
the children making bands were given butter-milk, and the younger women
with babes went cooing and clucking to the hedge where the little ones
lay nuzzled up and unattended, some asleep in shawls, some awake on
their backs and grabbing at the wondrous forests of marguerites towering
up beside them, and all crying with one voice at sight of the breast,
which the mothers were as glad to give as they to take.
The rooks cawed in the glen, there was a hot hum of bees, and a company
of starlings passed overhead, glittering in the sunlight like the scales
of a herring.
“They're taiching us a lesson,” said Cæsar. “They're going together over
the sea; but there's someones on earth would sooner go to heaven itself
solitary, and take joy if they found themselves all alone and the cock
of the walk there.”
Kate and Philip stood and talked where they had been shearing quietly,
simply, without apparent interest, and meanwhile the workers discussed
them.
First the men: “He works his siggle like a man though.”--“A stout boy
anyway; give him practice and he'd shear many a man in bed.” Then the
women: “She's looking as bright as a pewter pot, and she's all so pretty
as the Govenar's daughter too.”--“Got a good heart, though. Only last
week she had word of Pete, and look at the scarlet perricut.” Finally
both men and women: “Lave her alone, mother; it's that Ross
that's wasting the woman.”--“Well, if I was a man I'd know my
tack.”--“Wouldn't trust. It comes with Cæsar anyway; the Lord prospers
him; she'll have her pickings. Nothing bates religion in this world.
It's like going to the shop with an ould Manx shilling--you get your
pen'orth of taffy and twelve pence out.”--“Lend's a hand with the jough
then, boy. None left? Aw, Cæsar's wonderful religious, but there's never
much lavings of ale with him.”
Cæsar was striding through the stooks past Philip and Kate.
“Will it thrash well, Mr. Cregeen?” said Philip.
“Eight bolls to the acre maybe, but no straw to spake of, sir,” said
Cæsar. “Now, boys, let the weft rest on the last end, finish your work.”
The workers fell to again, and the sickle of the leader sang round his
head as he hacked and blew and sent off his breath in spits until the
green grass springing up behind him left only a triangular corner of
yellow corn. Fore-rig and the after-rig took a tussle together, and
presently nothing was standing of all the harvest of Glenmooar but one
small shaft of ears a yard wide or less. Then the leaders stopped, and
all the shearers of the field came up and cast down their sickles into
the soil in a close circle, making a sheaf of crescent moons.
“Now for the Melliah,” said Cæsar. “Who's to be Queen?”
There was a cry for Kate, and she sailed forward buoyantly, fresh still,
warm with her work, and looking like the afterglow from the sunset in
the lengthening shadows from the west.
“Strike them from their legs, Kirry,” cried Nancy Joe, and Kate drew up
one of the sickles, swept her left arm over the standing corn, and at a
single stroke of her right brought the last ears to the ground.
Then there was a great shout. “Hurrah for the Mel-liah!” It rang through
the glen and echoed in the mountains. Grannie heard it in the valley,
and said to herself, “Cæsar's Melliah's took.”
“Well, we've gathered the ripe corn, praise His name,” said Cæsar, “but
what shall be done at the great gathering for unripe Christians?”
Kate lifted her last sheaf and tied it about with a piece of blue
ribbon, and Philip plucked the cushag (the ragwort) from the hedge, and
gave it her to put in the band.
This being done; the Queen of the Melliah stepped back, feeling Philip's
eyes following her, while the oldest woman shearer came forward.
“I've a crown-piece, here that's being lying in my pocket long enough,
Joney,” said Cæsar with an expansive air, and he gave the woman her
accustomed dole.
She was a timid, shrinking creature, having a face walled with wrinkles,
and wearing a short blue petticoat, showing heavy dull boots like a
man's, and thick black stockings.
Then the young fellows went racing over the field, vaulting the stooks,
stretching a straw rope for the girls to jump over, heightening and
tightening it to trip them up, and slacking and twirling it to make them
skip. And the girls were falling with a laugh, and leaping up again
and flying off like the dust, tearing their frocks and dropping their
sun-bonnets as if the barley grains they had been reaping had got into
their blood.
In the midst of this maddening frolic, while Cæsar and the others were
kneeling behind the barley stack, Kate snatched Philip's hat from his
head and shot like a gleam into the depths of the glen.
Philip dragged up his coat by one of its arms and fled after her.
XXIII.
Sulby Glen is winding, soft, rich, sweet, and exquisitely beautiful.
A thin thread of blue water, laughing, babbling, brawling, whooping,
leaping, gliding, and stealing down from the mountains; great boulders
worn smooth and ploughed hollow by the wash of ages; wet moss and lichen
on the channel walls; deep, cool dubbs; tiny reefs; little cascades of
boiling foam; lines of trees like sentinels on either side, making the
light dim through the overshadowing leafage; gaunt trunks torn up by
winds and thrown across the stream with their heads to the feet of their
fellows; the golden fuschia here, the green trammon there; now and again
a poor old tholthan, a roofless house, with grass growing on its kitchen
floor; and over all the sun peering down with a hundred eyes into the
dark and slumberous gloom, and the breeze singing somewhere up in the
tree-tops to the voice of the river below.
Kate had run out on the stem of one of the fallen trees, and there
Philip found her, over the middle of the stream, laughing, dancing,
waving his hat in one hand, and making sweeping bows to her reflection
in the water below.
“Come back,” he cried. “You terrible girl, you'll fall. Sit down
there--don't torment me, sit down.”
After a curtsey to him she turned her attention to her skirts, wound
them about her ankles, sat on the trunk, and dangled her shapely feet
half an inch over the surface of the stream.
Then Philip had time to observe that the other end of the tree did
not reach the opposite bank, but dipped short into the water. So he
barricaded his end by sitting on it, and said triumphantly: “My hat, if
you please.”
Kate looked and gave a little cry of alarm and then a chuckle, and then
she said--
“You thought you'd caught me, didn't you? You can't, though,” and she
dropped on to a boulder from which she might have skipped ashore.
“I can't, can't I?” said Philip; and he twisted a smaller boulder on his
side, so that Kate was surrounded by water and cut off from the bank.
“My hat now, madam,” he said with majestic despotism. 10
She would not deliver it, so he pretended to leave her where she was.
“Good-bye, then; good evening,” he cried over the laughter of the
stream, and turned away a step bareheaded.
A moment later his confidence was dashed. When he turned his head back
Kate had whipped off her shoes and stockings, and was ramming the one
inside the other.
“What are you doing?” cried Philip.
“Catch this--and this,” she said, flinging the shoes across to him. Then
clapping his straw hat on the crown of her sun-bonnet, she tucked up her
skirts with both hands and waded ashore.
“What a clever boy you are! You thought you'd caught me again, didn't
you?” she said.
“I've caught your shoes, anyway,” said Philip, “and until you give me my
hat I'll stick to them.”
She was on the shingle, but in her bare feet, and could not make a step.
“My shoes, please?” she pleaded.
“My hat first,” he answered.
“Take it.”
“No; you must give it me.”
“Never! I'll sit here all night first,” said Kate.
“I'm willing,” said Philip.
They were sitting thus, the one bare-headed, the other with bare feet,
and on the same stone, as if seats in the glen were scarce, when there
came the sound of a hymn from the field they had left, and then it was
agreed by way of mutual penalty that Kate should put on Philip's hat on
condition that Philip should be required to put on Kate's shoes.
At the next moment Philip, suddenly sobered, was reproaching himself
fiercely. What was he doing? He had come to tell Kate that he should
come no more, and this was how he had begun! Yesterday he was in
Douglas reading his father's letters, and here he was to-day, forgetting
himself, his aims in life, his duties, his obligations--everything.
“Philip,” he thought, “you are as weak as water. Give up your plans; you
are not fit for them; abandon your hopes--they are too high for you.”
“How solemn we are all at once!” said Kate.
The hymn (a most doleful strain, dragged out to death on every note) was
still coming from the Melliah field, and she added, slyly, shyly, with
a mixture of boldness and nervousness, “Do you think this world is so
very bad, then?”
“Well--aw--no,” he faltered, and looking up he met her eye, and they
both laughed.
“It's all nonsense, isn't it?” she said, and they began to walk down the
glen.
“But where are we going?”
“Oh, we'll come out this way just as well.”
The scutch grass, the long rat-tail, and the golden cushag were swishing
against his riding-breeches and her print dress. “I must tell her now,”
he thought. In the narrow places she went first, and he followed with a
lagging step, trying to begin. “Better prepare her,” he thought. But he
could think of no commonplace leading up to what he wished to say.
Presently, through a tangle of wild fuchsia, there was a smell of
burning turf in the air and the sound of milking into a pail, and then a
voice came up surprisingly as from the ground, saying:
“Aisy on the thatch, Miss Cregeen, ma'am.”
It was old Joney, the shearer, milking her goat, and Kate had stepped
on to the roof of her house without knowing it, for the little place was
low and opened from the water's edge and leaned against the bank.
Philip made some conventional inquiries, and she answered that she had
been thirty years there, and had one son living with her, and he was an
imbecile.
“There was once a flock at me, and I was as young as you are then, miss,
and all as happy; but they're laving me one by one, except this one, and
he isn't wise, poor boy.”
Philip tried to steel his heart. “It is cruel,” he thought, “it will
hurt her; but what must be, must be.” She began to sing and went
carolling down the glen, keeping two paces in front of him. He followed
like an assassin meditating the moment to strike. “He is going to say
something,” she thought, and then she sang louder.
“Kate,” he called huskily.
But she only clapped her hands, and cried in a voice of delight, “The
echo! Here's the echo! Let's shout to it.”
Her kindling features banished his purpose for the time, and he
delivered himself to her play. Then she called up the gill, “Ec--ho!
Ec--ho!” and listened, but there was no response, and she said, “It
won't answer to its own name. What shall I call?”
“Oh, anything,” said Philip.
“Phil--ip! Phil--ip!” she called, and then said pettishly, “No, Philip
won't hear me either.” She laughed. “He's always so stupid though, and
perhaps he's asleep.”
“More this way,” said Philip. “Try now.”
“You try.”
Philip took up the call. “Kate!” he shouted, and back came the answer,
_Ate!_ “Kate--y!”--_Ate--y_.
“Ah! how quick! Katey's a good girl. Hark how she answers you,” said
Kate.
They walked a few steps, and Kate called again, “Philip!” There was no
answer. “Philip is stubborn; he won't have anything to do with me,” said
Kate.
Then Philip called a second time, “Katey!” And back came the echo as
before. “Well, that's too bad. Katey is--yes, she's actually _following_
you!”
Philip's courage oozed out of him. “Not yet,” he thought.
_Traa-dy-liooar_--time enough. “After supper, when everybody is going!
Outside the mill, in the half light of candles within and darkness
without! It will sound so ordinary then, 'Good-bye! Haven't you heard
the news? Auntie Nan is reconciled at last to leaving Ballure and
joining me in Douglas.' That's it; so simple, so commonplace.”
The light was now coming between the trees on the closing west in long
swords of sunset red. They could hear the jolting of the laden cart on
its way down the glen. The birds were fairly rioting overhead, and all
sorts of joyous sounds filled the air. Underfoot there were long ferns
and gorse, which caught at her crinkling dress sometimes, and then he
liberated her and they laughed. A trailing bough of deadly nightshade
was hanging from the broken head of an old ash stump, whose wasted feet
were overgrown by two scarlet-tipped toadstools, and she plucked a long
tendril of it and wound it about her head, tipping her sun-bonnet back,
and letting the red berries droop over her dark hair to her face. Then
she began to sing,
O were I monarch o' the globe,
Wi' thee to reign, wi' thee to reign.
Radiant gleams shot out of her black pupils, and flashes of love like
lightning passed from her eye to his.
Then he tried to moralise. “Ah!” he said, out of the gravity of his
wisdom, “if one could only go on for ever like this, living from minute
to minute! But that's the difference between a man and a woman. A woman
lives in the world of her own heart. If she has interests, they centre
there. But a man has his interests outside his affections. He is
compelled to deny himself, to let the sweetest things go by.”
Kate began to laugh, and Philip ended by laughing too.
“Look!” she cried, “only look.”
On the top of the bank above them a goat was skirmishing. He was a
ridiculous fellow; sometimes cropping with saucy jerks, then kicking up
his heels, as if an invisible imp had pinched him, then wagging his rump
and laughing in his nostrils.
“As I was saying,” said Philip, “a man has to put by the pleasures of
life. Now here's myself, for example. I am bound, do you know, by a kind
of duty--a sort of vow made to the dead, I might say------”
“I'm sure he's going to say something,” thought Kate. The voice of his
heart was speaking louder and quicker than his halting tongue. She saw
that a blow was coming, and looked about for the means to ward it off.
“The fairy's dubb!” she cried suddenly, and darted from his side to the
water's edge.
It was a little round pool, black as ink, lying quiet and apparently
motionless under a noisy place where the waters swirled and churned over
black moss, and the stream ran into the dark. Philip had no choice but
to follow her.
“Cut me a willow! Your penknife! Quick, sir, quick! Not that old
branch--a sapling. There, that's it. Now you shall hear me tell my own
fortune.”
“An ordeal is it?” said Philip.
“Hush! Be quiet, still, or little Phonodoree wont listen. Hush, now
hush!”
With solemn airs, but a certain sparkle in her eyes, she went down on
her knees by the pool, stretched her round arm over the water, passed
the willow bough slowly across its surface, and recited her incantation:
Willow bough, willow bough, which of the four,
Sink, circle, or swim, or come floating ashore?
Which is the fortune you keep for my life,
Old maid or young mistress or widow or wife?
With the last word she flung the willow bough on to the pool, and sat
back on her heels to watch it as it moved slowly with the motion of the
water.
“Bravo!” cried Philip.
“Be quiet. It's swimming. No, it's coming ashore.”
“It's wife, Kate. No, it's widow. No, it's----”
“Do be serious. Oh, dear! it's going--yes, it's going round. Not that
either. No, it has--yes, it has------oh!”
“Sunk!” said Philip, laughing and clapping his hands. “You're doomed to
be an old maid, Kate. Phonodoree says so.”
“Cruel Brownie! I'm vexed that I bothered with him,” said Kate, dropping
her lip. Then nodding to her reflection in the water where the willow
bough had disappeared, she said, “Poor little Katey! He might have given
you something else. Anything but that dear, eh?”
“What,” laughed Philip, “crying? Because Phonodoree--never!”
Kate leapt up with averted face. “What nonsense you are talking!” she
said.
“There are tears in your eyes, though,” said Philip.
“No wonder, either. You're so ridiculous. And if I'm meant for an old
maid, you're meant for an old bachelor--and quite right too!”
“Oh, it is, is it?”
“Yes, indeed. You've got no more heart than a mushroom, for you're all
head and legs, and you're going to be just as bald some day.”
“I am, am I, mistress?”
“If I were you, Philip, I should hire myself out for a scarecrow, and
then having nothing under your clothes wouldn't so much matter.”
“It wouldn't, wouldn't it?” said Philip.
She was shying off at a half circle; he was beating round her.
“But you're nearly as old as Methuselah already, and what you'll be when
you're a man----”
“Lookout!”
She made him an arch curtsey and leapt round a tree, and cried from the
other side, “I know. A squeaking old croaker, with the usual old song,
'Deed yes, friends, this world is a vale of sin and misery.' The men's
the misery and the women's the sin----”
“You rogue, you!” cried Philip.
He made after her, and she fled, still speaking, “What do you think a
girl wants with a----Oh! Oh! Oo!”
Her tirade ended suddenly. She had plunged into a bed of the prickly
gorse, and was feeling in twenty places at once what it was to wear low
shoes and thin stockings.
“With a Samson, eh?” cried Philip, striding on in his riding breeches,
and lifting the captured creature in his arms. “Why, to carry her, you
torment, to carry her through the gorse like this.”
“Ah!” she said, turning her face over his shoulder, and tickling his
neck with her breath.
Her hair caught in a tree, and fell in a dark shower over his breast. He
set her on her feet; they took hands, and went carolling down the glen
together:
“The brightest jewel in my crown, Wad be my queen, wad be my queen.”
The daylight lingered as if loth to leave them. There was the fluttering
of wings overhead, and sometimes the last piping of birds. The wind
wandered away, and left their voices sovereign of all the air.
Then there came a distant shout; the cheer of the farm people on
reaching home with the Melliah.. It awakened Philip as from a fit of
intoxication.
“This is madness,” he thought. “What am I doing?” “He is going to speak
now,” she told herself.
Her gaiety shaded off into melancholy, and her melancholy burst into
wild gaiety again. The night had come down, the moon had risen, the
stars had appeared. She crept closer to Philip's side, and began to
tell him the story of a witch. They were near to the house the witch had
lived in. There it was--that roofless cottage--that tholthan under the
deep trees like a dungeon.
“Have you never heard of her, Philip? No? The one they called the
Deemster's lady?”
“What Deemster?” said Philip.
“This one, Deemster Mylrea, who is said to be dying.”
“He is dying; he is killing himself; I saw him to-day,' said Philip.
“'Well, she was the blacksmith's daughter, and he left her, and she went
mad and cursed him, and said she was his wife though they hadn't been to
church, and he should never marry anybody else. Then her father turned
her out, and she came up here all alone, and there was a baby, and they
were saying she killed it, and everybody was afraid of her. And all the
time her boy was making himself a great, great man until he got to be
Deemster. But he never married, never, though times and times people
were putting this lady on him and then that; but when they told the
witch, she only laughed and said, 'Let him, he'll get lave enough!' At
last she was old and going on two sticks, and like to die any day, and
then he crept out of his big house unknown to any one and stole up
here to the woman's cottage. And when she saw the old man she said, 'So
you've come at last, boy; but you've been keeping me long, bogh, you've
been keeping me long.' And then she died. Wasn't that strange?”
Her dark eyes looked up at him and her mouth quivered.
“Was it witchcraft, then?” said Philip.
“Oh, no; it was only because he was her husband. That was the hold she
had of him. He was tempted away by a big house and a big name, but he
_had_ to come back to her. And it's the same with a woman. Once a girl
is the wife of somebody, she _must_ cling to him, and if she is ever
false she must return. Something compels her. That's if she's really his
wife--really, truly. How beautiful, isn't it? Isn't it beautiful?”
“Do you think that, Kate? Do you think a man, like a woman, would cling
the closer?”
“He couldn't help himself, Philip.”
Philip tried to say it was only a girl's morality, but her confidence
shamed him. She slipped her moist fingers into his hand again. They were
close by the deserted tholthan, and she was creeping nearer and nearer
to his side. A bat swirled above their heads and she made a faint cry.
Then a cat shot from under a gooseberry bush, and she gave a little
scream. She was breathing irregularly. He could smell the perfume of her
fallen hair. He was in agony of pain and delight. His heart was leaping
in his bosom; his eyes were burning.
“She's right,” he thought. “Love is best. It is everything. It is the
crown of life. Shall I give it up for the Dead Sea fruit of worldly
success? Think of the Deemster! Wifeless, childless, living solitary,
dying alone, unregretled, unmourned. What is the wickedness you are
plotting? Your father is dead, you can do him neither good nor harm.
This girl is alive. She loves you. Love her. Let the canting hypocrites
prate as they will.”
She had disengaged her hand, and was creeping away from him in the half
darkness, treading softly and going off like a gleam.
“Kate!” he called.
He heard her laughter, he heard the drowsy hum of the gill, he could
smell the warm odour of the gorse bushes.
“But this is madness,” he thought. “This is the fever of an hour. Yield
now and I am ruined for life. The girl has come between me and my aims,
my vows, my work--everything. She has tempted me, and I am as weak as
water.”
“Kate!”
She did not answer.
“Come here this moment, Kate. I have something to say to you.”
“Bite!” she said, coming back and holding an apple to his lips. She had
plucked it in the overgrown garden.
“Listen! I'm leaving Ramsey for good--don't intend to practise in the
northern courts any longer--settling in Douglas--best work lies there,
you see--worst of it is--we shan't meet again soon--not very soon, you
know--not for years, perhaps----”
He began by stammering, and went on stuttering, blurting out his words,
and trembling at the sound of his own voice.
“Philip, you must not go!” she cried. “I'm sorry, Kate, very sorry.
Shall always remember so tenderly--not to say fondly--the happy boy and
girl days together.”
“Philip, Philip, you must not go--you cannot go--you shall not go!”
He could see her bosom heaving under her loose red bodice. She took hold
of his arm and dragged at it.
“Won't you spare me? Will you shame me to death? Must I tell you? If you
won't speak, I will. You cannot leave me, Philip, because--because--what
do I care?--because I love you!”
“Don't say that, Kate!”
“I love you, Philip--I love you--I love you!”
“Would to God I had never been born!”
“But I will show you how sweet it is to be alive. Take me, take me--I am
yours!”
Her upturned face seemed to flash. He staggered like one seized with
giddiness. It was a thing of terror to behold her. Still he struggled.
“Though apart, we shall remember each other, Kate.”
“I don't want to remember. I want to have you with me.”
“Our hearts will always be together.”
“Come to me then, Philip, come to me!”
“The purest part of our hearts--our souls----”
“But I want _you!_ Will you drive a girl to shame herself again? I want
_you_, Philip! I want your eyes that I may see them every day; and
your hair, that I may feel it with my hands; and your lips--can I help
it?--yes, and your lips, that I may kiss and kiss them!”
“Kate! Kate! Turn your eyes away. Don't look at me like that!” She was
fighting for her life. It was to be now or never.
“If you won't come to me, I'll go to you!” she cried; and then she
sprang upon him, and all grew confused, the berries of the nightshade
whipped his forehead, and the moon and the stars went out.
“My love! My darling! My girl!”
“You won't go now?” she sobbed.
“God forgive me, I cannot.”
“Kiss me. I feel your heart beating. You are mine--mine--mine! Say you
won't go now!”
“God forgive us both!”
“Kiss me again, Philip! Don't despise me that I love you better than
myself!”
She was weeping, she was laughing, her heart was throbbing up to her
throat. At the next moment she had broken from his embrace and was gone.
“Kate! Kate!”
Her voice came from the tholthan.
“Philip!”
When a good woman falls from honour, is it merely that she is a victim
of momentary intoxication, of stress of passion, of the fever of
instinct? No. It is mainly that she is a slave of the sweetest,
tenderest, most spiritual and pathetic of all human fallacies--the
fallacy that by giving herself to the man she loves she attaches him
to herself for ever. This is the real betrayer of nearly all good women
that are betrayed. It lies at the root of tens of thousands of the cases
that make up the merciless story of man's sin and woman's weakness.
Alas! it is only the woman who clings the closer. The impulse of the
man is to draw apart. He must conquer it or she is lost. Such is the
old cruel difference and inequality of man and woman as nature made
them--the old trick, the old tragedy.
XXIV.
Old Mannanin, the magician, according to his wont, had surrounded
his island with mist that day, and, in the helpless void of things
unrevealed, a steamship bound for Liverpool came with engines slacked
some points north of her course, blowing her fog-horn over the
breathless sea with that unearthly yell which must surely be the sound
whereby the devil summons his legions out of chaos.
Presently something dropping through the dense air settled for a moment
on the damp rope of the companion ladder, and one of the passengers
recognised it.
“My gough! It's a bird, a sparrow,” he cried.
At the same moment there was a rustle of wind, the mist lifted, and a
great round shoulder rose through the white gauze, as if it had been the
ghost of a mountain.
“That's the Isle of Man,” the passenger shouted, and there was a cry
of incredulity. “It's the Calf, I'm telling you, boys. Lave it to me to
know.” And instantly the engines were reversed.
The passenger, a stalwart fellow, with a look as of pallor under a tawny
tan, walked the deck in a fever of excitement, sometimes shouting in a
cracked voice, sometimes laughing huskily, and at last breaking down in
a hoarse gurgle like a sob.
“Can't you put me ashore, capt'n?”
“Sorry I can't, sir, we've lost time already.”
There was a dog with him, a little, misshappen, ugly creature, and he
lifted it up in his arms and hugged it, and called it by blusterous
swear names, with noises of inarticulate affection. Then he went down
to his berth in the second cabin and opened a little box of letters, and
took them out one by one, and leaned up to the port to read them. He
had read them before, and he knew them by heart, but he traced the lines
with his broad forefinger, and spelled the words one by one. And as he
did so he laughed aloud, and then cried to himself, and then laughed
once more. “She is well and happy, and looking lovely, and, if she does
not write, don't think she is forgetting you.”
“God bless her. And God bless him, too. God bless them both!”
He went up on deck again, for he could not rest in one place long. There
was a breeze now, and he filled his lungs and blew and blew. The island
was dying down over the sea in a pale light of silver grey. An engineman
and a stoker were leaning over the bulwark to cool themselves.
“Happy enough now, sir, eh?”
“Happy as a sand-boy, mate, only mortal hungry. Tiffin you say? Aw, the
heart has its hunger same as anything else, and mine has been on short
commons these five years and better. See that island there, lying like
a salmon gull atop of the water? Looks as if she might dip under it,
doesn't she? That's my home, my native land, as the man says, and only
three weeks ago I wasn't looking to see the thundering ould thing again;
but God is good, you see, and I am middling fit for all. I'm a Manxman
myself, mate, and I've got a lil Manx woman that's waiting for me
yonder. It's only an ould shirt I'm bringing her to patch, as the saying
is, but she'll be that joyful you never seen. It's bad to take a woman
by surprise, though--these nervous creatures--'sterics, you see--I'll
send her a tally graph from the Stage. My sakes! the joy she'll be
taking of that boy, too! He'll be getting sixpence for himself and
a drink of butter-milk. It's always the way of these poor lil
things--can't stand no good news at all--people coming home and the
like--not much worth, these women--crying reglar--can't help it. Well,
you see, they're tender-hearteder than us, and when anybody's been five
years... Be gough, we're making way, though! The island's going under,
for sure. Or is it my eyes that isn't so clear since my bit of a
bullet-wound! Aw, God is good, tremen-jous!”
The breaking voice stopped suddenly, and the engine-men turned about,
but the passenger was stumbling down the cabin stairs.
“If ever a man came back from the dead it's that one,” said both men
together.