I.
Philip was vanquished, and he knew it, but he was not daunted, he was
not distressed. To have resisted the self-abandonment of Kate's love
would have been monstrous. Therefore, he had done no wrong, and there
was nothing to be ashamed of. But when he reached Ballure he did not
dash into Auntie Nan's room, according to his wont, though a light
was burning there, and he could hear the plop and click of thread and
needle; he crept upstairs to his own, and sat down to write a letter. It
was the first of his love letters.
“I shall count the days, the hours, and the minutes until we meet again,
my darling, and I shall be constantly asking what time it is. And seeing
we must be so much apart, let us contrive a means of being together,
nevertheless. Listen!--I whisper the secret in your ear. To-morrow night
and every night eat your supper at eight o'clock exactly; I will do
the same, and so we shall be supping in each other's company, my little
wife, though twenty miles divide us. If any body asks me to supper,
I will refuse in order that I may sup with you. 'I am promised to a
friend,' I'll say, and then I'll sit down in my rooms alone, but you
will be with me.”
Tingling with delight, he wrote this letter to Kate, though less than
an hour parted from her, and went out to post it. He was going upstairs
again, steadily, on tiptoe, his head half aside and his face over his
shoulder, when Auntie Nan's voice came from the blue room--“Philip!”
He returned with a sheepish look, and a sense, never felt before, of
being naked, so to speak. But Auntie Nan did not look at him. She was
working a lamb on a sampler, and she reached over the frame to take
something out of a drawer and hand it to him. It was a medallion of a
young child--a boy, with long fair curls like a girl's, and a face like
sunshine.
“Was it father, Auntie?”
“Yes; a French painter who came ashore with Thurlot painted it for
grandfather.”
Philip laid it on the table. He was more than ever sure that Auntie Nan
had heard something. Such were her tender ways of warning him. He could
not be vexed.
“I'm sleepy to-night, Auntie, and you look tired too. You've been
waiting up for me again. Now, you really must not. Besides, it limits
one's freedom.”
“That's nothing, Philip. You said you would come home after calling on
the poor Deemster, and so----”
“He's in a bad way, Auntie. Drink--delirium--such a wreck. Well, good
night!”
“Did you read the letters, dear?”
“Oh, yes. Father's letters. Yes, I read them. Good night.”
“Aren't they beautiful? Haven't they the very breath of ambition and
enthusiasm? But poor father! How soon the brightness melted away! He
never repined, though. Oh, no, never. Indeed, he used to laugh and joke
at our dreams and our castles in the air. 'You must do it all yourself,
Nannie; you shall have all the cakes and ale.' Yes, when he was a dying
man he would joke like that. But sometimes he would grow serious, and
then he would say, 'Give little Philip some for all. He'll deserve it
more than me. Oh, God,' he would say, 'let me think to myself when I'm
_there_, you've missed the good things of life, but your son has got
them; you are here, but he is on the heights; lie still, thou poor
aspiring heart, lie still in your grave and rest.'”
Philip felt like a bird struggling in the meshes of a net.
“My father was a poet, Auntie, trying to be a man of the world. That was
the real mischief in his life, if you think of it.”
Auntie Nan looked up with her needle at poise above the sampler, and
said in a nervous voice, “The real mischief of your father's life,
Philip, was love--what they call love. But love is not that. Love is
peace and virtue, and right living, and that is only madness and frenzy,
and when people wake up from it they wake up as from a nightmare. Men
talk of it as a holy thing--it is unholy. Books are written in praise of
it--I would have such books burnt. When anybody falls to it, he is like
a blind man who has lost his guide, tottering straight to the precipice.
Women fall to it too. Yes, good women as well as good men; I have seen
them tempted----”
Philip was certain of it now. Some one had been prying upon him at
Sulby. He was angry, and his anger spent itself on Auntie Nan in a
torrent of words. “You are wrong, Aunt Anne, quite wrong. Love is the
one lovely thing in life. It is beauty, it is poetry. Call it passion if
you will--what would the world be like without it? A place where every
human heart would be an island standing alone; a place without children,
without joy, without merriment, without laughter. No, no; Heaven has
given us love, and we are wrong when we try to put it away. We cannot
put it away, and when we make the attempt we are punished for our pride
and arrogance. It ought to be enough for us to let heaven decide whether
we are to be great men or little men, and to decide for ourselves
whether we are to be good men and happy men. And the greatest happiness
of life is love. Heaven would have to work a miracle to enable us to
live without it. But Heaven does not work such a miracle, because the
greatest miracle of heaven is love itself.”
The needle hand of Auntie Nan was trembling above her sampler, and her
lips were twitching.
“You are a young man yet, Philip,” she faltered, “but I am an old lady
now, dear, and I have seen the fruits of the intoxication you call
passion. Oh, have I not, have I not? It wrecks lives, ruins prospects,
breaks up homes, sets father against son, and brother against
brother----”
Philip would give her no chance. He was tramping across the room, and
he burst out with, “You are wrong again, Auntie. You are always wrong
in these matters, because you are always thinking from the particular
to the general--you are always thinking of my father. What you have been
calling my father's fall was really his fate. He deserved it. If he had
been fit for the high destiny he aspired to--if he had been fit to be a
judge, he would not have fallen. That he did fall is proof enough that
he was not fit. God did not intend it. My father's aspirations were not
the call of a stern vocation, they were mere poetic ambition. If he had
ever by great ill-fortune lived to be made Deemster, he would have found
himself out, and the island would have found him out, and you yourself
would have found him out, and all the world would have been undeceived.
As a poet he might have been a great man, but as a Deemster he must have
been a mockery, a hypocrite, an impostor, and a sham.”
Auntie Nan rose to her feet with a look of fright on her sweet old face,
and something dropped with a clank on to the floor.
“Oh, Philip, Philip, if I thought you could ever repeat the error----”
But Philip gave her no time to finish. Tossing his disordered hair from
his forehead, he swung out of the room.
Being alone, he began to collect himself. Was it, in sober fact, he who
had spoken like that? Of his father too? To Auntie Nan as well? He saw
how it was; he had been speaking of his father, but he had been thinking
of himself; he had been struggling to justify himself, to reconcile,
strengthen, and fortify himself. But in doing so he had been breaking an
idol, a life-long idol, his own idol and Auntie Nan's.
He stumbled downstairs in a rush of remorse, and burst again into the
room crying in a broken voice, “Auntie! Auntie!”
But the room was empty; the lamp was turned down; the sampler was pushed
aside. Something crunched under his foot, and he stooped and picked
it up. It was the medallion, and it was cracked across. The accident
terrified him. His skin seemed to creep. He felt as if he had trodden on
his father's face. Putting the broken picture into his pocket, he turned
about like a guilty man and crept silently to bed in the darkness.
But the morning brought him solace for the pains of the night--it
brought him a letter from Kate.
“The Melliah is over at long, long last, and I am allowed to be alone
with my thoughts. They sang 'Keerie fu Snaighty' after you left, and
'The King can only love his wife, And I can do the sa-a-me, And I can do
the same.' But there is really nothing to tell you, for nothing happened
of the slightest consequence. Good night! I am going to bed after I have
posted this letter at the bridge. Two hours hence you will appear to me
in sleep, unless I lie that long awake to think of you. I generally do.
Good-bye, my dear lord and master! You will let me know what you think
best to be done. Your difficulties alarm me terribly. You see, dear, we
two are about to do something so much out of the common. Good night! I
lift my head that you may give me another kiss on the eyes, and here are
two for yours.”
Then there were empty brackets [ ], which Kate had put her lips to,
expecting Philip to do the same.
II.
Philip was going into his chambers in Douglas that morning when he came
upon a messenger from Government House in stately intercourse with his
servant. His Excellency begged him to step up to Onchan immediately, and
to remain for lunch.
The Governor's carriage was at the door, and Philip got into it. He
was not excited; he remembered his agitation at the Governor's former
message and smiled. On leaving his own rooms he had not forgotten to
order supper for eight o'clock precisely.
He found the Governor polite and expansive as usual. He was sitting in
a room hung round with ponderous portraits of former Governors, most of
them in frills and ruffles, and one vast picture of King George.
“You will have heard,” he said, “that our northern Deemster is dead.”
“Is he so?” said Philip. “I saw him at one o'clock yesterday.”
“He died at two?” said the Governor.
“Poor man, poor man!” said Philip.
That was all. Not a tremble of the eyelid, not a quiver of the lip.
“You are aware that the office is a Crown appointment?” said the
Governor. “Applications are made, you know, to the Home Office, but
it is probable that my advice may be asked by the Secretary in his
selection. I may, perhaps, be of use to a candidate.”
Philip gave no sign, and the Governor shifted his leg and continued with
a smile, “Certainly that appears to be the impression of your brother
advocates, Mr. Christian; they are about me already, like wasps at a
glue-pot. I will not question but you'll soon be one of them.”
Philip made a gesture of protestation, and the Governor waved his hand
and smiled again. “Oh, I shan't blame you; young men are ambitious. It
is natural that they should wish to advance themselves in life. In your
case, too, if I may say so, there is the further spur of a desire to
recover the position your family once held, and lately lost through the
mistake or misfortune of your father.”
Philip bowed gravely, but said nothing.
“That, no doubt,” said the Governor, “would be a fact in your favour.
The great fact against you would be that you are still so young. Let me
see, is it eight-and twenty?”
“Twenty-six,” said Philip.
“No more? Only six-and-twenty? And then, successful as your career has
been thus far--perhaps I should say distinguished or even brilliant--you
are still unsettled in life.”
Philip asked if his Excellency meant that he was still unmarried.
“And if I do,” the Governor replied, with pretended severity, “and if I
do, don't smile too broadly, young man. You ought to know by this time
that the personal equation counts for something in this old-fashioned
island of yours. Now, the late Deemster was an example which it would
be perilous to repeat. If it were repeated, I know who would hear of
the blunder every day of his life, and it wouldn't be the Home Secretary
either. Deemster Mylrea was called upon to punish the crimes of drink,
and he was himself a drunkard; to try the offences of sensuality, and he
was himself a sensualist.”
Philip could not help it--he gave a little crack of laughter.
“To be sure,” said the Governor hastily, “you are in no danger of his
excesses; but you will not be a safe candidate to recommend until
you have placed yourself to all appearances out of the reach of them.
'Beware of these Christians,' said the great Derby to his son; and
pardon me if I revive the warning to a Christian himself.”
The colour came strong into Philip's face. Even at that moment he felt
angry at so coarse a version of his father's fault.
“You mean,” said he, “that we are apt to marry unwisely.”
“I do that,” said the Governor.
“There's no telling,” said Philip, with a faint crack of his fingers;
and the Governor frowned a little--the pock-marks seemed to spread.
“Of course, all this is outside my duty, Mr. Christian--I needn't tell
you that; but I feel an interest in you, and I've done you some services
already, though naturally a young man will think he has done everything
for himself. Ah!” he said, rising from his seat at the sound of a gong,
“luncheon is ready. Let us join the ladies.” Then, with one hand on
Philip's shoulder familiarly, “only a word more, Mr. Christian. Send
in your application immediately, and--take the advice of an old
fiddler--marry as soon afterwards as may be. But with your prospects
it would be a sin not to walk carefully. If she's English, so much the
better; but if she's Manx--take care.”
Philip lunched with the Governor's wife, who told him she remembered his
grandfather; also with his unmarried daughter, who said she had heard
him speak for the fishermen at Peel. An official “At home,” the last of
the summer, was to be held in the garden that afternoon, and Philip was
invited to remain. He did so, and thereby witnessed the assaults of the
wasps at the glue-pot. They buzzed about the Governor, they buzzed about
his wife, they buzzed about his dog and about a tame deer, which took
grapes from the hands of the guests.
An elderly gentleman, sitting alone in a carriage, drove up to the lawn.
It was Peter Christian Ballawhaine, looking feebler, whiter, and more
splay-footed than before. Philip stepped up to his uncle and offered
his arm to alight by. But the Ballawhaine brushed it aside and pushed
through to the Governor, to whom he talked incessantly for some minutes
of his son Ross, saying he had sent for him and would like to present
him to his Excellency.
If Philip lacked enjoyment of the scene, if his face lacked heart and
happiness, it was not the fault of his host. “Will you not take Lady
So-and-so to have tea?” the Governor would say; and presently Philip
found himself in a circle of official wifedom, whose husbands had been
made Knights by the Queen, and themselves made Ladies by--God knows
whom. The talk was of the late Deemster.
“Such a life! It's a mercy he lasted so long!”
“A pity, you mean, my dear, not to be hard on him either.”
“Poor thing! He ought to have married. Such a man wants a wife to look
after him. Don't you think so, Mr. Christian?”
“Why,” said a white-haired dame, “have you never heard of his great
romance?”
“Ah! tell us of that. Who was the lady?”
“The lady----” there was a pause; the white-haired dame coughed, smiled,
closed her little ferret eyes, dropped her voice, and said with mock
gravity, “The lady was the blacksmith's daughter, dearest.” And then
there was a merry trill of laughter.
Philip felt sick, bowed to his hosts, and left. As he was going off, his
uncle intercepted him, holding out both hands.
“How's this, Philip? You never come to Ballawhaine now. I see! Oh, I
see! Too busy with the women to remember an old man. They're all talking
of you. Putting the comather on them, eh? I know, I know; don't tell
me.”
III.
Philip's way home lay through the town, but he made a circuit of the
country, across Onchan, so heartsick was he, so utterly choked with
bitter feelings. He felt as if all the angels and devils together must
be making a mock at him. The thing he had worked for through five heavy
years, the end he had aimed at, the goal he had fought for, was his
already--his for the stretching out of his hand. Yet now that it was
his, he could not have it. Oh, the mockery of his fate! Oh, the irony of
his life! It was shrieking, it was frantic!
Then his bolder spirit seemed to say, “What is all this childish fuming
about? Fortune comes to you with both hands full. Be bold, and you may
have both the wish of your soul and the desire of your heart--both the
Deemster-ship and Kate.”
It was impossible to believe that. If he married Kate, the Governor
would not recommend him as Deemster. Had he not admitted that he
stood in some fear of the public opinion of the island? And was it not
conceivable that, besides the unselfish interest which the Governor
had shown in him, there was even a personal one that would operate more
powerfully than fear of the old-fashioned Manx conventions to prevent
any recommendation of the husband of the wrong woman? At one moment a
vague memory rose before Philip, as he crossed the fields, of the lunch
at Government House, of the Governor's wife and daughter, of their
courtesy and boundless graciousness. At the next moment he had drawn up
sharply, with pangs of self-contempt, hating himself, loathing himself,
swearing at himself for a mean-souled ingrate, as he kicked up the grass
and the turf beneath it But the idea had taken root. He could not help
it; the Governor's interest went for nothing in his reckoning.
“What a fool you are, Philip,” something seemed to whisper out of the
darkest corner of his conscience; “take the Deemstership first, and
marry Kate afterwards.” But it was impossible to think of that either.
Say it could be done by any arts of cunning or duplicity, what then?
Then there were the high walls of custom and prejudice to surmount.
Philip remembered the garden-party, and saw that they could never be
surmounted. The Deemster who slapped the conventions in the face would
suffer for it. He would be taboo to half the life of the island--in
public an official, in private a recluse. An icy picture rose before his
mind's eye of the woman who would be his wife in her relations with
the ladies he had just left. She might be their superior in education,
certainly in all true manners, and in natural grace and beauty, in
sweetness and charm, their mistress beyond a dream of comparison.
But they would never forget that she was the daughter of a country
innkeeper, and every little cobble in the rickety pyramid, even from the
daughter of the innkeeper in the town, would look down on her as from a
throne.
He could see them leaving their cards at his door and driving hurriedly
off. They must do that much. It was the bitter pill which the Deemster's
doings made them swallow. Then he could see his wife sitting alone, a
miserable woman, despised envied, isolated, shut off from her own class
by her marriage with the Deemster, and from his class by the Deemster's
marriage with her. Again, he could see himself too powerful to offend,
too dangerous to ignore, going out on his duties without cheer, and
returning to his wife without company. Finally, he remembered his father
and his mother, and he could not help but picture himself sitting at
home with Kate five years after their marriage, when the first happiness
of each other's society had faded, had staled, had turned to the
wretchedness of starvation in its state of siege. Or perhaps going out
for walks with her, just themselves, always themselves only, they two
together, this evening, last evening, and to-morrow evening; through
the streets crowded by visitors, down the harbour where the fishermen
congregate, across the bridge and over the head between sea and sky;
people bowing to them respectfully, rigidly, freezingly; people nudging
and whispering and looking their way. Oh, God, what end could come of
such an abject life but that, beginning by being unhappy, they should
descend to being bad as well?
“What a fuss you are making of things,” said the voice again, but more
loudly. “This hubbub only means that you can't have your cake and eat
it. Very well, take Kate, and let the Deemstership go to perdition.”
There was not much comfort in that counsel, for it made no reckoning
with the certainty that, if marriage with Kate would prevent him from
being Deemster, it would prevent him from being anything in the Isle
of Man. As it had happened with his father, so it would happen with
him--there would be no standing ground in the island for the man who had
deliberately put himself outside the pale.
“Don't worry me with silly efforts to draw a line so straight. If you
can't have Kate and the Deemstership together, and if you can't have
Kate without the Deemstership, there is only one thing left--the
Deemstership without Kate. You must take the office and forego the girl.
It is your duty, your necessity.”
This was how Philip put it to himself at length, and the daylight had
gone by that time, and he was walking in the dark. But the voice which
had been pleading on his side now protested on hers.
“Don't prate of duty and necessity. You mean self-love and
self-interest. Man, be honest. Because this woman is an obstacle in your
career, you would sacrifice her. It is boundless, pitiless selfishness.
Suppose you abandon her, dare you think of her without shame! She loves
you, she trusts you, and she has given you proof of her love and trust.
Hold your tongue. Don't dare to whisper that nobody knows it but you
and heir--that you will be silent, that she will have no temptation to
speak. She loves you. She has given you all. God bless her!”
Affectionate pity swept down the selfish man in him. As the lights of
the town appeared on his path, he was saying to himself boldly, “Since
either way there is trouble, I'll do as I said last night--I'll leave
Heaven to decide whether I'm to be a great man or a little man, and
decide for myself whether I'm to be a true man or a happy man. I'll take
my heart in my hand and go right forward.”
In this temper he returned to his chambers. The rooms fronted to Athol
Street, but backed on to the churchyard of St. George's. They were
quiet, and not overlooked. His lamp was lit. The servant was laying the
cloth.
“Lay covers for two, Jemmy,” said Philip. Then he began to hum
something.
Presently, in feeling for his keys, his fingers touched an unfamiliar
substance in his pocket. He remembered what it was. It was the cracked
medallion of his father. He could not bear to look at it. Unlocking a
chest, he buried it at the bottom under a pile of winter clothing.
This recalled a possession yet more painful, and going to a desk, he
drew out the packet of his father's letters and proceeded to hide them
away with the medallion. As he did so his hand trembled, his limbs
shook, he felt giddy, and he thought the voice that had tormented him
with conflicting taunts was ringing in his ears again. “Bury him deep!
Bury your father out of all sight and all remembrance. Bury his love
of you, his hopes of you, his expectations and dreams of you. Bury and
forget him for ever.”
Philip hesitated a moment, and then banged down the lid of the chest,
and relocked it as his servant returned to the room. The man was a
solemn, dignified, and reticent person, who had been groom to the late
Bishop. His gravity he had acquired from his horses, his dignity from
his master; but his reticence he had created for himself, being a thing
beyond nature in creature or man. His proper name was Cottier; he had
always been known as Jemy-Lord.
“Company not arrived, sir,” he said. “Wait or serve?”
“What is the time?” said Philip.
“Struck eight; but clock two minutes soon.”
“Serve the supper at once,” said Philip.
When the dishes had been brought in and the man dismissed, Philip,
taking his place at the table, drew from his button-hole a flower which
he had picked out of his water-bowl at lunch, and, first putting it to
his lips, he tossed it on to the empty place before the chair which had
been drawn up opposite. Then he sat down to eat.
He ate little; and, do what he would, he could not keep his mind
from wandering. He thought of his aunt, and how hurt she had been the
previous night; of his uncle, and how he had snubbed and then slavered
over him; of the Governor, and how strange the interest he had shown in
him; and finally, he thought of Pete, and how lately he was dead, and
how soon forgotten.
In the midst of these memories, all sad and some bitter, suddenly he
remembered again that he was supping with Kate. Then he struggled to
be bright and even a little gay. He knew that she would be taking her
supper at Sulby at that moment, thinking of him and making believe that
he was with her. So he tried to think that she was with him, sitting in
the chair opposite, looking across the table between the white cloth
and the blue lamp-shade, out of her beaming eyes, with her rings of dark
hair dancing on her forehead, and her ripe mouth twitching merrily. Then
the air of the room seemed to be filled with a sweet presence. He
could have fancied there was a perfume of lace and dainty things.
“Sweetheart!” He laughed--he hardly knew if it was himself that had
spoken. It was dear, delicious fooling.
But his eyes fell on the chest wherein he had buried the letters and the
medallion, and his mind wandered again. He thought of his father, of his
grandfather, of his lost inheritance, and how nearly he had reclaimed
the better part of it, and then once more of Pete, crying aloud at last
in the coil of his trouble, “Oh, if Pete had only lived!”
His voice startled and his words horrified him. To wipe out both in
the first moment of recovered consciousness, he filled his glass to
the brim, and lifted it up, rising at the same time, looking across
the table, and saying in a soft whisper, “Your health, darling, your
health!”
The bell rang from the street door, and he stood listening with the
wine-glass in his hand. When he knew anything more, a voice at his
elbow was saying out of a palpitating gloom, “The gentleman can't come,
seemingly; he has sent a telegram.”
It was Jem-y-Lord holding a telegram in his hand.
Philip tore open the envelope and read--
“Coming home by Ramsey boat to-morrow well and hearty tell Kirry Peat.”
IV.
Somewhere in the dead and vacant dawn Philip went to bed, worn out by a
night-long perambulation of the dark streets. He slept a heavy sleep
of four deep hours, with oppressive dreams of common things swelling to
enormous size about him.
When Jem-y-Lord took the tea to his master's bedroom in the morning,
the tray was almost banged out of his hands by the clashing back of the
door, after he had pushed it open with his knee. The window was half
up, and a cold sea-breeze was blowing into the room; yet the grate and
hearth showed that a fire had been kindled in the night, and his master
was still sleeping.
Jem set down his tray, lifted a decanter that stood on the table, held
it to the light, snorted like an old horse, nodded to himself knowingly,
and closed the window.
Philip awoke with the noise, and looked around in a bewildered way. He
was feeling vaguely that something had happened, when the man said--
“The horse will be round soon, sir.”
“What horse?” said Philip.
“The horse you ride, sir,” said Jem, and, with an indulgent smile, he
added, “the one I ordered from Shimmen's when I posted the letter.”
“What letter?”
“The letter you gave me to post before I went to bed.”
All was jumbled and confused in Philip's mind. He was obliged to make an
effort to remember. Just then the newsboys went shouting down the street
beyond the churchyard: “Special edition--Death of the Deemster.”
Then everything came back. He had written to Kate, asking her to meet
him at Port Mooar at two o'clock that day. It was then, and in that
lonesome place, that he had decided to break the news to her. He must
tell all; he had determined upon his course.
Without appetite he ate his breakfast. As he did so he heard voices
from a stable-yard in the street. He lifted his head and looked out
mechanically. A four-wheeled dogcart was coming down the archway behind
a mettlesome young horse with silver-mounted harness. The man driving
it was a gorgeous person in a light Melton overcoat. One of his spatted
feet was on the break, and he had a big cigar between his teeth. It was
Ross Christian.
The last time Philip had seen the man he had fought him for the honour
of Kate. It was like whips and scorpions to think of that now. Ashamed,
abased, degraded in his own eyes, he turned away his head.
V.
In the middle of the night following the Melliah, Kate, turning in bed,
kissed her hand because it had held the hand of Philip. When she awoke
in the morning she felt a great happiness. Opening her eyes and half
raising herself in bed, she looked around. There were the pink curtains
hanging like a tent above her, there were the scraas of the thatched
roof, with the cracking whitewash snipping down on the counterpane,
there were the press and the wash-hand table, the sheep-skin on the
floor, and the sun coming through the orchard window. But everything was
transfigured, everything beautiful, everything mysterious. She was like
one who had gone to sleep on the sea, with only the unattainable horizon
round about, and awakened in harbour in a strange land that was warm and
lovely and full of sunshine. She closed her eyes again, so that nothing
might disturb the contemplation of the mystery. She folded her round
arms as a pillow behind her head, her limbs dropped back of their own
weight, and her mouth broke into a happy smile. Oh, miracle of miracles!
The whole world was changed.
She heard the clatter of pattens in the room below; it was Nancy
churning in the dairy. She heard shouts from beyond the orchard--it was
her father stacking in the haggard; she heard her mother talking in the
bar, and the mill-wheel swishing in the pond. It seemed almost wonderful
that the machinery of ordinary life could be working away the same as
ever.
Could she be the same herself? She reached over for a hand-glass to look
at her face. As she took it off the table, it slipped from the tips of
her fingers, and, falling face downwards, it broke. She had a momentary
pang at that accident as at a bad omen, but just then Nancy came up with
a letter. It was the letter which Philip had written at Ballure. When
she was alone again she read it. Then she put it in her bosom. It seemed
to be haunted by the odour of the gorse, the odour of the glen, of the
tholthan, of Philip, and of all delights.
A faint ghost of shame came to frighten her. Had she sinned against her
sex? Was it disgraceful that she had wooed and not waited to be won?
With all his love of her, would Philip be ashamed of her also? Her face
grew hot. She knew that she was blushing, and she covered up her head
as if her lover were there to see. Such fears did not last long. Her joy
was too bold to be afraid of tangible things. So overwhelming was her
happiness that her only fear was lest she might awake at some moment and
find that she was asleep now, and everything had been a dream.
That was Friday, and towards noon word came from Kirk Michael that the
Deemster had died on the afternoon of the day before.
“Then they ought to put Philip Christian in his place,” she said
promptly; “I'm sure no one deserves it better.”
They had been talking in low tones in the kitchen with their backs to
her, but faced about with looks of astonishment.
“Sakes alive, Kirry,” cried Nancy, “is it yourself it was? What were you
saying a week ago?”
“Well, do you expect a girl to be saying the one thing always?” laughed
Kate.
“Aw, no,” said Cæsar. “A woman's opinions isn't usually as stiff as the
tail of a fighting Tom cat. They're more coming and going, of a rule.”
Next day, Saturday, she received Philip's second letter, the letter
written at Douglas after the supper and the arrival of Pete's
telegram. It was written crosswise, in a hasty hand, on a half-sheet
of note-paper, and was like a postscript, without signature or
superscription:--.
“Most urgent. Must see you immediately. Meet me at Port Mooar at two
o'clock to-morrow. We can talk there without interruption. Be brave, my
dear. There are serious matters to discuss and arrange.”
The message was curt, and even cold, but it brought her no disquiet.
Marriage! That was the only vision it conjured up. The death of the
Deemster had hastened things--that was the meaning of the urgency. Port
Mooar was near to Ballure--that was why she had to go so far. They would
have to face gossip, perhaps backbiting, perhaps even abuse--that was
the reason she had to be brave. Why and how the Deemster's death should
affect her marriage with Philip was a matter she did not puzzle out.
She had vague memories of girls marrying in delightful haste and sailing
away with their husbands, and being gone before you had time to think
they were to go. But this new fact of her life was only a part of
the great mystery, and was not to be explained by everyday ideas and
occurrences.
Kate ran up to dress, and came down like a bud bursting into flower. She
had dressed more carefully than ever. Philip had great expectations; he
must not be disappointed. Making the excuse of shopping, she was setting
off towards Ramsey, when her father shouted from the stable that he was
for driving the same way. The mare was harnessed to the gig, and they
got up together.
Cæsar had made inquiries and calculations. He had learned that the
_Johannesburg_, from Cape Town, arrived in Liverpool the day before; and
he concluded that Pete's effects would come by the _Peveril_, the weekly
steamer to Ramsay, on Saturday morning, The _Peveril_ left Liverpool at
eight; she would be due at three. Cæsar meant to be on the quay at two.
“It's my duty as a parent, Kate,” said he. “What more natural but
there's something for yourself? It's my duty as a pastor, too, for
there's Manx ones going that's in danger of the devil of covetousness,
and it's doing the Lord's work to put them out of the reach of
temptation. You may exhort with them till you're black in the face, but
it's throwing good money in the mud. Just _chuck!_ No ring at all; no
way responsive!”
Kate was silent, and Cæsar added familiarly, “Of course, it's my right
too, for when a man's birth is _that_ way, there's no heirship by blood,
and possession is nine points of the law. That's so, Kate. You needn't
be looking so hard. It's truth enough, girl. I've had advocate's
opinion.”
Kate had looked, but had not listened. The matter of her father's talk
was too trivial, it's interest was too remote. As they drove, she kept
glancing seaward and asking what time it was.
“Aw, time enough yet, woman,” said Cæsar. “No need to be unaisy at all.
She'll not be round the Head for an hour anyway. Will you come along
with me to the quay, then? No? Well, better not, maybe.”
At the door of a draper's she got down from the gig, and told her father
not to wait for her on going home. Cæsar moistened his forefinger and
held it in the air a moment.
“Then don't be late,” said he, “there's weather coming.”
A few minutes afterwards she was walking rapidly up Ballure. Passing
Ballure House, she found herself treading softly. It was like holy
ground. She did not look across; she gave no sign; there was only a
tremor of the eyelids, a quiver of the mouth, and a tightening of the
hand that held her purse, as, with head down, she passed on. Going by
the water-trough, she saw the bullet-head of Black Tom looking seaward
over the hedge through a telescope encased in torn and faded cloth.
Though the man was repugnant to her, she saluted him cheerfully.
“Fine day, Mr. Quilliam.”
“It _was_ doing a fine day, ma'am, but the bees is coming home,” said
Tom.
He glowered at her as at a scout of the enemy, but she did not mind
that. She was very happy. The sun was still shining. On reaching the
top of the brow, she began to skip and run where the road descends by
Folieu. Thus, with a light heart and a light step, thinking ill of no
one, in love with all the world, she went hurrying to her doom.
The sea below lay very calm and blue. Nothing was to be seen on the
water but a line of black smoke from the funnel of a steamship which had
not yet risen above the horizon.
VI.
Philip put up his horse at the Hibernian, a mile farther on the
high-road, and the tongue of the landlady, Mistress Looney went like
a mill-race while he ate his dinner. She had known three generations of
his family, and was full of stories of his grandfather, of his father,
and of himself in his childhood. Full of facetiæ, too, about his looks,
which were “rasonable promising,” and about the girls of Douglas, who
were “neither good nor middling.” She was also full of sage counsel,
advising marriage with a warm girl having “nice things at her--nice
lands and pigs and things”--as a ready way to square the “bobbery” of
thirty years ago at Ballawhaine.
Philip left his plate half full, and rose from the table to go down to
Port Mooar.
“But, boy veen, you've destroyed nothing,”, cried the landlady. And then
coaxingly, as if he had been a child, “You'll be ateing bits for me,
now, come, come! No more at all? Aw, it's failing you are, Mr. Philip!
Going for a walk is it? Take your topcoat then, for the clover is
closing.”
He took the road that Pete had haunted as a boy on returning home from
school in the days when Kate lived at Cornaa, going through the network
of paths by the mill, and over the brow by Ballajora. The new miller was
pulling down the thatched cottage in which Kate had been born to put
up a slate house. They had built a porch for shelter to the chapel, and
carved the figure of a slaughtered lamb on a stone in the gable. Another
lamb--a living lamb--was being killed by the butcher of Ballajora as
Philip went by the shambles. The helpless creature, with its inverted
head swung downwards from the block, looked at him with its piteous
eyes, and gave forth that distressful cry which is the last wild appeal
of the stricken animal when it sees death near, and has ceased to fight
for life.
The air was quiet, and the sea was calm, but across the Channel a
leaden sky seemed to hover over the English mountains, though they were
still light and apparently in sunshine. As Philip reached Port Mooar, a
cart was coming out of it with a load of sea-wrack for the land, and a
lobster-fisher on the beach was shipping his gear for sea.
“Quiet day,” said Philip in passing.
“I'm not much liking the look of it, though,” said the fisherman.
“Mortal thick surf coming up for the wind that's in.” But he slipped his
boat, pulled up sail, and rode away.
Philip looked at his watch and then walked down the beach. Coming to a
cave, he entered it. The sea-wrack was banked up in the darkness behind,
and between two stones at the mouth there were the remains of a recent
fire. Suddenly he remembered the cave. It was the cave of the Carasdhoo
men. He éould hear the voice of Pete in its rumbling depths; he could
hear and see himself. “Shall we save the women, Pete?--we always do.”
“Aw, yes, the women--and the boys.” The tenderness of that memory was
too much for Philip. He came out of the cave, and walked back over the
shore.
“She will come by the church,” he thought, and he climbed the cliffs
to look out. A line of fir-trees grew there, a comb of little misshapen
ghoul-like things, stunted by the winds that swept over the seas in
winter. In a fork of one of these a bird's nest of last year was still
hanging; but it was now empty, songless, joyless, and dead.
“She's here.” he told himself, and he drew his breath noisily. A white
figure had turned the road by the sundial, and was coming on with the
step of a greyhound.
The black clouds above the English mountains were heeling down on the
land. There was a storm on the other coast, though the sky over the
island was still fine. The steamship had risen above the horizon, and
was heading towards the bay.
VII.
She met him on the hill slope with a cry of joy, and kissed him. It came
into his mind to draw away, but he could not, and he kissed her back.
Then she linked her arm in his, and they turned down the beach.
“I'm glad you've come,” he began.
“Did you ever dream I wouldn't?” she said. Her face was a smile, her
voice was an eager whisper.
“I have something to say to you, Kate--it is something serious.”
“Is it so?” she said. “So very serious?”
She was laughing and blushing together. Didn't she know what he was
going to say? Didn't she guess what this serious something must be? To
prolong the delicious suspense before hearing it, she pretended to be
absorbed in the things about her. She looked aside at the sea, and up
at the banks, and down at the little dubbs of salt water as she skipped
across them, crying out at sight of the sea-holly, the anemone, and
the sea-mouse shining like fire, but still holding to Philip's arm and
bounding and throbbing on it.
“You must be quiet, dear, and listen,” he said.
“Oh, I'll be good--so very good,” she said. “But look! only look at the
white horses out yonder--far out beyond the steamer. Davy's putting on
the coppers for the parson, eh?”
She caught the grave expression of Philip's face, and drew herself up
with pretended severity, saying, “Be quiet, Katey. Behave yourself.
Philip wants to talk to you--seriously--very seriously.”
Then, leaning forward with head aside to look up into his face, she
said, “Well, sir, why don't you begin? Perhaps you think I'll cry out. I
won't--I promise you I won't.”
But she grew uneasy at the settled gravity of his face, and the joy
gradually died off her own. When Philip spoke, his voice was like a
cracked echo of itself.
“You remember what you said, Kate, when I brought you that last letter
from Kimberley--that if next morning you found it was a mistake------”
“_Is_ it a mistake?” she asked.
“Becalm, Kate.”
“I am quite calm, dear. I remember I said it would kill me. But I was
very foolish. I should not say so now. Is Pete alive?”
She spoke without a tremor, and he answered in a husky whisper, “Yes.”
Then, in a breaking voice, he said, “We were very foolish Kate--jumping
so hastily to a conclusion was very foolish-it was worse than foolish,
it was wicked. I half doubted the letter at the time, but, God forgive
me, I _wanted_ to believe it, and so----”
“I am glad Pete is living,” she said quietly.
He was aghast at her calmness. The irregular lines in his face showed
the disordered state of his soul, but she walked by his side without
the quiver of an eyelid, or a tinge of colour more than usual. Had she
understood?
“Look!” he said, and he drew Pete's telegram from his pocket and gave it
to her.
She opened it easily, and he watched her while she read it, prepared for
a cry, and ready to put his arms about her if she fell. But there was
not a movement save the motion of her fingers, not a sound except
the crinking of the thin paper. He turned his head away. The sun was
shining; there was a steely light on the firs, and here and there a
white breaker was rising like a sea-bird out of the blue surface of the
sea.
“Well?” she said.
“Kate, you astonish me,” said Philip. “This comes on us like a
thundercloud, and you seem not to realise it.”
She put her arms about his neck, and the paper rustled on his shoulder.
“My darling,” she said, “do you love me still?”
“You know I love you, but----”
“Then there is no thundercloud in heaven for me now,” she said.
The simple grandeur of the girl's love shamed him. Its trust, its
confidence, its indifference to all the evil chance of life if only he
loved her still, this had been beyond him. But he disengaged her arms
and said, “We must not live in a fool's paradise, Kate. You promised
yourself to Pete----”
“But, Philip,” she said, “that was when I was a child. It was only a
half promise then, and I didn't know what I was doing. I didn't know
what love was. All that came later, dearest, much later--you know when.”
“To Pete it is the same thing, Kate,” said Philip. “He is coming home to
claim you----”
She stopped him by getting in front of him and saying, with face down,
smoothing his sleeve as she spoke, “You are a man, Philip, and you
cannot understand. How can you, and how can I tell you? When a girl is
not a woman, but only a child, she is a different person. She can't love
anybody then--not really--not to say love, and the promises she makes
can't count. It was not I that promised myself to Pete--if I did
promise. It was my little sister--the little sister that was me long,
long ago, but is now gone--put to sleep inside me somewhere. Is that
_very_ foolish, darling?”
“But think of Pete,” said Philip; “think of him going away for love of
you, living five years abroad, toiling, slaving, saving, encountering
privations, perhaps perils, and all for you, all for love of you. Then
think of him coming home with his heart full of you, buoyed up with the
hope of you, thirsting, starving, and yearning for you, and finding you
lost to him, dead to him, worse than dead--it will kill him, Kate.”
She was unmoved by the picture. “I am very sorry, but I do not love
him,” she said quietly. “I am sorry--what else can a girl be when she
does not love a young man?”
“He left me to take care of you, too, and you see--you see by the
telegram--he is coming home with faith in my loyalty. How can I tell him
that I have broken my trust? How can I meet him and explain----”
“I know, Philip. Say we heard he was dead and----”
“No, it would be too wretched. It's only three weeks since the letter
came--and it would not be true, Kate--it would revolt me.”
She lifted her eyes in a fond look of shame-faced love, and said again,
“_I_ know, then--lay the blame on me, Philip. What do I care? Say it
was all my fault, and I made you love me. _I_ shan't care for anybody's
talk. And it's true, isn't it? Partly true, eh?”
“If I talked to Pete of temptation I should despise myself,” said
Philip; and then she threw her head up and said proudly--
“Very well, tell the truth itself--the simple truth, Philip. Say we
tried to be faithful and loyal, and all that, and could not, because we
loved each other, and there was no help for it.”
“If I tell him the truth, I shall die of shame,” said Philip. “Oh, there
is no way out of this miserable tangle. Whether I cover myself with
deceit, or strip myself of evasion, I shall stain my soul for ever. I
shall become a base man, and year by year sink lower and lower in the
mire of lies and deceit.”
She listened with her eyes fixed on his quivering face, and her eyelids
fluttered, and her fond looks began to be afraid.
“Say that we married,” he continued; “we should never forget that you
had broken your promise and I my trust. That memory would haunt us as
long as we lived. We should never know one moment's happiness or one
moment's peace. Pete would be a broken-hearted man, perhaps a wreck,
perhaps--who knows?--dead of his own hand. He would be the ghost between
us always.”
“And do you think I should be afraid of that?” she said. “Indeed, no. If
you were with me, Philip, and loved me still, I should not care for all
the spirits of heaven itself.”
Her face was as pale as death now, but her great eyes were shining.
“Our love would fail us, Kate,” said Philip. “The sense of our guilt
would kill it. How could we go on loving each other with a thing like
that about us all day and all night--sitting at our table--listening to
our talk--standing by our bed? Oh, merciful God!”
The terror of his vision mastered him, and he covered his face with both
hands. She drew them down again and held them in a tight lock in her
fingers. But the stony light of his eyes was more fearful to look
upon, and she said in a troubled voice, “Do you mean, Philip, that
we--could--not marry--now?”
He did not answer, and she repeated the question, looking up into his
face like a criminal waiting for his sentence--her head bent forward and
her mouth open.
“We cannot,” he muttered. “God help us, we dare not,” he said; and then
he tried to show her again how their marriage was impossible, now that
Pete had come, without treason and shame and misery. But his words
frayed off into silence. He caught the look of her eyes, and it was like
the piteous look of the lamb under the hands of the butcher.
“Is that what you came to tell me?” she asked.
His reply died in his throat. She divined rather than heard it.
Her doom had fallen on her, but she did not cry out. She did not yet
realise in all its fulness what had happened. It was like a bullet-wound
in battle; first a sense of air, almost of relief, then a pang, and then
overwhelming agony.
They had been walking again, but she slid in front of him as she had
done before. Her arms crept up his breast with a caressing touch, and
linked themselves behind his neck.
“This is only a jest, dearest,” she said, “some test of my love,
perhaps. You wished to make sure of me--quite, quite sure--now that Pete
is alive and coming home. But, you see, I want only one to love me,
only one, dear. Come, now, confess. Don't be afraid to say you have been
playing with me. I shan't be angry with you. Come, speak to me.”
He could not utter a word, and she let her arms fall from his neck;
and they walked on side by side, both staring out to sea. The English
mountains were black by this time. A tempest was raging on the other
shore, though the air on this side was as soft as human breath. .
Presently she stopped, her feet scraped the gravel, and she exclaimed
in a husky tone, “I know what it is. It is not Pete. I am in your way.
That's it. You can't get on with me about you. I am not fit for you. The
distance between us is too great.”
He struggled to deny it, but he could not. It was part of the truth. He
knew too well how near to being the whole truth it was. Pete had come
at the last moment to cover up his conscience, but Kate was stripping it
naked and showing him the skeleton.
“It's all very well for you,” she cried, “but where am I? Why didn't
you leave me alone? Why did you encourage me? Yes, indeed, encourage
me! Didn't you say, though a woman couldn't raise herself in life, a man
could lift her up if he only loved her? And didn't you tell me there was
neither below nor above where there was true liking, and that if a woman
belonged to some one, and some one belonged to her, it was God's sign
that they were equal, and everything else was nothing--pride was nothing
and position was nothing and the whole world was nothing? But now I know
different. The world is between us. It always has been between us, and
you can never belong to me. You will go on and rise up, and I will be
left behind.”
Then she broke into frightful laughter. “Oh, I have been a fool! How I
dreamt of being happy! I knew I was only a poor ignorant thing, but I
saw myself lifted up by the one I loved. And now I am to be left alone.
Oh, it is awful! Why did you deceive me? Yes, deceive me! Isn't that
deceiving me? You deceived me when you led me to think that you loved
me more than all the world. You don't I It is the world itself you love,
and Pete is only your excuse.”
As she spoke she clutched at his arms, his hands, his breast, and at her
own throat, as if something was strangling her. He did not answer her
reproaches, for he knew well what they were. They were the bitter cry
of her great love, her great misery, and her great jealousy of the
world--the merciless and mysterious power that was luring him away.
After awhile his silence touched her, and she came up to him, full
of remorse, and said, “No, no, Philip, you have nothing to reproach
yourself with. You did not deceive me at all. I deceived myself. It was
my own fault. I led you on--I know that. And yet I've been saying these
cruel things. You'll forgive me, though, will you not? A girl can't help
it sometimes, Philip. Are you crying? You are not crying, are you? Kiss
me, Philip, and forgive me. You can do that, can't you?”
She asked like a child, with her face up and her lips apart. He was
about to yield, and was reaching forward to touch her forehead, when
suddenly the child became the woman, and she leapt upon his breast,
and held him fervently, her blood surging, her bosom exulting, her eyes
flaming, and her passionate voice crying, “Philip, you are mine. No, I
will not release you. I don't care about your plans--you shall give
them up. I don't care about your trust--you shall break it. I don't care
about Pete coming--let him come. The world can do without you--I cannot.
You are mine, Philip, and I am yours, and nobody else's, and never will
be. You _must_ come back to me, sooner or later, if you go away. I know
it, I feel it, it's in my heart. But I'll never let you go. I can't,
I can't. Haven't I a right to you? Yes, I have a right. Don't you
remember?... Can you ever forget?... My _husband!_”
The last word came muffled from his breast, where she had buried her
head in the convulsions of her trembling at the moment when her modesty
went down in the fierce battle with a higher pain. But the plea which
seemed to give her the right to cling the closer made the man to draw
apart. It was the old deep tragedy of human love--the ancient inequality
in the bond of man and woman. What she had thought her conquest had
been her vanquishment. He could not help, it--her last word had killed
everything.
“Oh, God,” he groaned, “that is the worst of all.”
“Philip,” she cried, “what do you mean?”
“I mean that neither can I marry you, nor can you marry Pete. You would
carry to him your love of me, and bit by bit he would find it out, and
it would kill him. It would kill you, too, for you have called me your
husband, and you could never, never, never forget it.”
“I don't want to marry Pete,” she said. “If I'm not to marry you, I
don't want to marry any one. But do you mean that I must not marry at
all--that I never can now that----”
The word failed her, and his answer came thick and indistinct--“Yes.”
“And you, Philip? What about yourself?”
“As there is no other man for you, Kate,” he said, “so there is no other
woman for me. We must go through the world alone.”
“Is this my punishment?”
“It is the punishment of both, Kate, the punishment of both alike.”
Kate stopped her breathing. Her clenched hands slackened away from
his neck, and she stepped back from him, shuddering with remorse, and
despair, and shame. She saw herself now for the first time a fallen
woman. Never before had her sin touched her soul. It was at that moment
she fell.
They had come up to the cave by this time, and she sat on the stone at
the mouth of it in a great outburst of weeping. It tore his heart to
hear her. The voice of her weeping was like the distressful cry of the
slaughtered lamb. He had to wrestle with himself not to take her in his
arms and comfort her. The fit of tears spent itself at length, and after
a time she drew a great breath and was quiet. Then she lifted her face,
and the last gleam of the autumn sun smote her colourless lips and
swollen eyes. When she spoke again, it was like one speaking in her
sleep, or under the spell of somebody who had magnetised her.
“It is wrong of me to think so much of myself, as if that were
everything. I ought to feel sorry for you too. You must be driven to it,
or you could never be so cruel.”
With his face to the sea, he mumbled something about Pete, and she
caught up the name and said, “Yes, and Pete too. As you think it would
be wrong to Pete, I will not hold to you. Oh, it will be wrong to me
as well! But I will not give you the pain of turning a deaf ear to my
troubles any more.”
She was struggling with a pitiless hope that perhaps she might regain
him after all. “If I give him up,” she thought, “he will love me for it;”
and then, with a sad ring in her voice, she said, “You will go on and
be a great man now, for you'll not have me to hold you back.”
“For pity's sake, say no more of that,” he said, but she paid no heed.
“I used to think it a wonderful thing to be loved by a great man. I
don't now. It is terrible. If I could only have you to myself! If you
could only be nothing to anybody else! You would be everything to me,
and what should I care then?”
Between torture and love he had almost broken down at that, but he
gripped his breast and turned half aside, for his eyes were streaming.
She came up to him and touched with the tips of her fingers the hand
that hung by his side, and said in a voice like a child's, “Fancy! this
is the end of everything, and when we part now we are to meet no more.
Not the same way at all--not as we have met. You will be like anybody
else to me, and I will be like anybody else to you. Miss Cregeen, that
will be my name and you will be Mr. Christian. When you see me you'll
say to yourself, 'Yes, poor thing; long ago, when she was a girl, I made
her love me. Nobody ever loved me like that.' And fancy! when you pass
me in the street, you will not even look my way. You won't, will you?
No--no, it will be better not. Goodbye!”
Her simple tenderness almost stifled him. He had to hold his under lip
with his teeth to keep back the cry that was bursting from his tongue.
At last he could bear it no longer, and he broke out, “Would to God we
had never loved each other! Would to God we had never met!”
But she answered with the same childish sweetness, “Don't say that,
Philip. We have had some happy hours together. I would rather be parted
from you like this, though it is so hard, so cruel, than never to have
met you at all. Isn't it something for me to think of, that the truest,
cleverest, noblest man in all the world has loved me?... Good-bye!...
Good-bye!”
His heart bled, his heart cried, but he uttered no sound. They were side
by side. She let his hand slip from the tips of her fingers, and drew
silently away. At three paces apart she paused, but he gave no sign. She
climbed the low brow of the hill slowly, very slowly, trying to command
her throat, which was fluttering, and looking back through her tears as
she went. Philip heard the shingle slip under her feet while she toiled
up the cliff, and when she reached the top the soft thud on the turf
seemed to beat on his heart. She stood there a moment against the sky,
waiting for a sound from the shore, a cry, a word, the lifting of a
hand, a sob, a sigh, her own name, “Kate,” and she was ready to fly back
even then, wounded and humiliated as she was, a poor torn bird that had
been struggling in the lime. But no; he was silent and motionless, and
she disappeared behind the hill. He saw her go, and all the light of
heaven went with her.
VIII.
It was so far back home, so much farther than it had been to come. The
course is short and easy going out to sea when the tide is with you, and
the water is smooth, and the sun is shining, but long and hard coming
back to harbour, when the waves have risen, and the sky is low, and the
wind is on your bow.
So far, so very far. She thought everybody looked at her, and knew her
for what she was--a broken, forsaken, fallen woman. And she was so tired
too; she wondered if her limbs would carry her.
When Philip was left alone, the sky seemed to be lying on his shoulders.
The English mountains were grey and ghostly now, and the storm, which
had spent itself on the other coast, seemed to hang over the island.
There were breakers where the long dead sea had been, and the petrel
outside was scudding close to the white curves, and uttering its dismal
note.
So heavy and confused had the storm and wreck of the last hour left him,
that he did not at first observe by the backward tail of smoke that the
steamer had passed round the Head, and that the cart he had met at the
mouth of the port had come back empty to the cave for another load of
sea-wrack. The lobster-fisher, too, had beached his boat near by, and
was shouting through the hollow air, wherein every noise seemed to
echo with a sepulchral quake, “The block was going whistling at the
mast-head. We'll have a squall I was thinking, so in I came.”
That night Philip dreamt a dream. He was sitting on a dais with a wooden
canopy above him, the English coat of arms behind, and a great book in
front; his hands shook as he turned the leaves; he felt his leg hang
heavily; people bowed low to him, and dropped their voices in his
presence; he was the Deemster, and he was old. A young woman stood in
the dock, dripping water from her hair, and she had covered her face
with her hands. In the witness-box a young man was standing, and his
head was down. The man had delivered the woman to dishonour; she had
attempted her life in her shame and her despair. And looking on the man,
the Deemster thought he spoke in a stern voice, saying, “Witness, I am
compelled to punish her, but oh to heaven that I could punish you in her
place! What have you to say for yourself?” “I have nothing to say for
myself,” the young man answered, and he lifted his head and the old
Deemster saw his face. Then Philip awoke with a smothered scream, for
the young man's face had been his own.
IX.
When Cæsar got to the quay, he looked about with watchful eyes, as if
fearing he might find somebody there before him. The coast was clear,
and he gave a grunt of relief. After fixing the horse-cloth, and
settling the mare in a nose-bag, he began to walk up and down the fore
part of the harbour, still keeping an eager look-out. As time went on
he grew comfortable, exchanged salutations with the harbour-master, and
even whistled a little to while away the time.
“Quiet day, Mr. Quayle.”
“Quiet enough yet, Mr. Cregeen; but what's it saying? 'The greater the
calm the nearer the south wind.'”
By the time that Cæsar, from the end of the pier, saw the smoke of the
steamer coming round Kirk Maughold Head, he was in a spiritual, almost
a mournful, mood. He was feeling how melancholy was the task of going to
meet the few possessions, the clothes and such like, which were all that
remained of a dear friend departed. It was the duty of somebody, though,
and Cæsar drew a long breath of resignation.
The steamer came up to the quay, and there was much bustle and
confusion. Cæsar waited, with one hand on the mare's neck, until the
worst of it was over. Then he went aboard, and said in a solemn voice
to the sailor at the foot of the gangway, “Anything here the property of
Mr. Peter Quilliam?”
“That's his luggage,” said the sailor, pointing to a leather trunk of
moderate size among similar trunks at the mouth of the hatchway.
“H'm!” said Cæsar, eyeing it sideways, and thinking how small it was.
Then, reflecting that perhaps valuable papers were all it was thought
worth while to send home, he added cheerfully, “I'll take it with me.”
Somewhat to Cæsar's surprise, the sailor raised no difficulties,
but just as he was regarding the trunk with that faith which is the
substance of things hoped for, a big, ugly hand laid hold of it, and
began to rock it about like a pebble.
It was Black Tom, smoking with perspiration.
“Aisy, man, aisy,” said Cæsar, with lofty dignity. “I've the gig on the
quay.”
“And I've a stiff cart on the market,” said Black Tom.
“I'm wanting no assistance,” said Cæsar; “you needn't trouble yourself.”
“Don't mention it, Cæsar,” said Black Tom, and he turned the trunk on
end and bent his back to lift it.
But Cæsar put a heavy hand on top and said, “Gough bless me, man, but I
am sorry for thee. Mammon hath entered into thy heart, Tom.”
“He have just popped out of thine, then,” said Black Tom, swirling the
trunk on one of its corners.
But Cæsar held on, and said, “I don't know in the world why you should
let the devil of covetousness get the better of you.”
“I don't mane to--let go the chiss,” said Black Tom, and in another
minute he had it on his shoulder.
“Now, I believe in my heart,” said Cæsar, “I would be forgiven a little
violence,” and he took the trunk by both hands to bring it down again.
“Let go the chiss, or I'll strek thee into the harbour,” bawled Black
Tom under his load.
“The Philistines be upon thee, Samson,” cried Cæsar, and with that there
was a struggle.
In the midst of the uproar, while the men were shouting into each
other's faces, and the trunk was rocking between them shoulder high,
a sunburnt man, with a thick beard and a formidable voice, a stalwart
fellow in a pilot jacket and wide-brimmed hat, came hurrying up the
cabin-stairs, and a dog came running behind him. A moment later he had
parted the two men, and the trunk was lying at his feet.
Black Tom fell back a step, lifted his straw hat, scratched his bald
crown, and muttered in a voice of awe. “Holy sailor!”
Cæsar's face was livid, and his eyes went up toward his forehead. “Lord
have mercy upon me,” he mumbled; “have mercy on my soul, O Lord.”
“Don't be afraid,” said the stranger. “I'm a living man and not a
ghost.”
“The man himself,” said Black Tom.
“Peter Quilliam alive and hearty,” said Cæsar.
“I am,” said Pete. “And now, what's the bobbery between the pair of you?
Shuperintending the beaching of my trunk, eh?”
But having recovered from his terror at the idea that Pete was a spirit,
Cæsar began to take him to task for being a living man. “How's this?”
said he. “Answer me, young man, I've praiched your funeral.”
“You'll have to do it again, Mr. Cregeen, for I'm not gone yet,” said
Pete.
“No, but worth ten dead men still,” said Black Tom. “And my goodness,
boy, the smart and stout you're looking, anyway. Been thatching a bit on
the chin, eh? Foreign parts has made a man of you, Peter. The straight
you're like the family, too! You'll be coming up to the trough with
me--the ould home, you know. I'll be whipping the chiss ashore in a
jiffy, only Cæsar's that eager to help, it's wonderful. No, you'll not
then?”
Pete was shaking his head as he went up the gangway, and seeing this,
Cæsar said severely--
“Lave the gentleman alone, Mr. Quilliam. He knows his own business
best.”
“So do you, Mr. Collecting Box,” said Black Tom. “But your head's as
empty as a mollag, and as full of wind as well. It's a regular ould
human mollag you are, anyway, floating other people's nets and taking
all that's coming to them.”
They were ashore by this time; one of the quay porters was putting
the trunk into the gig, and Cæsar was removing the horse-cloth and the
nose-bag.
“Get up, Mr. Peter, and don't listen to him,” said Cæsar. “If
my industry and integrity have been blessed with increase under
Providence----”
“Lave Providence out of it, you grasping ould Ebenezer, Zachariah,
Amen,” bawled Black Tom.
“You've been flying in the face of Providence all your life, Tom,” said
Cæsar, taking his seat beside Pete.
“You haven't though, you miser,” said Black Tom; “you'd sell your soul
for sixpence, and you'd raffle your ugly ould body if you could get
anybody to take tickets.”
“Go home, Thomas,” said Cæsar, twiddling the reins, “go home and try for
the future to be a better man.”
But that was too much for Black Tom. “Better man, is it? Come down on
the quay and up with your fiss, and I'll show you which of us is the
better man.”
A moment later Cæsar and Pete were rattling over the cobbles of the
market-place, with the dog racing behind. Pete was full of questions.
“And how's yourself, Mr. Cregeen?”
“I'm in, sir, I'm in, sir, praise the Lord.”
“And Grannie?”
“Like myself, sir, not getting a dale younger, but caring little for
spiritual things, though.”
“Going west, is she, poor ould angel? There ought to be a good piece of
daylight at her yet, for all. And--and Nancy Joe?”
“A happy sinner still,” said Cæsar. “I suppose, sir, you'd be making
good money out yonder now? We were hearing the like, anyway.”
“Money!” said Pete. “Well, yes. Enough to keep off the divil and the
coroner. But how's--how's----”
“There now! For life, eh?” said Cæsar.
“Yes, for life; but that's nothing,” said Pete; “how's----”
“Wonderful!” cried Cæsar; “five years too! Boy veen, the light was
nearly took out of my eyes when I saw you.”
“But Kate? How's Kate? How's the girl, herself?” said Pete nervously.
“Smart uncommon,” said Cæsar.
“God bless her!” cried Pete, with a shout that was heard across the
street.
“We'll pick her up at Crellin's, it's like,” said Cæsar.
“What? Crellin's round the corner--Crellin the draper's I Woa! Let me
down! The mare's tired, father;” and Pete was over the wheel at a bound.
He came out of the shop saying Kate had left word that her father was
not to wait for her--she would perhaps be home before him. Amid a crowd
of the “mob beg” children of the streets, to whom he showered coppers
to be scrambled for, Pete got up again to Cæsar's side, and they set off
for Sulby. The wind had risen suddenly, and was hooting down the narrow
streets coming up from the harbour.
“And Philip? How's Philip?” shouted Pete.
“Mr. Christian? Well and hearty, and doing wonders, sir.”
“I knew it,” cried Pete, with a resounding laugh.
“Going like a flood, and sweeping everything before him,” said Cæsar.
“The rising day with him, is it?” said Pete. “I always said he'd be the
first man in the island, and he's not going to deceave me neither.”
“The young man's been over putting a sight on us times and times--he was
up at my Melliah only a week come Wednesday,” said Cæsar.
“Man alive!” cried Pete; “him and me are same as brothers.”
“Then it wasn't true what they were writing in the letter, sir--that
your black boys left you for dead?”
“They did that, bad luck to them,” said Pete; “but I was thinking it no
sin to disappoint them, though.”
“Well, well! lying began with the world, and with the world it will
end,” said Cæsar.
As they passed Ballywhaine, Pete shouted into Cæsar's ear, above the
wind that was roaring in the trees, and scattering the ripening leaves
in clouds, “And how's Dross?”
“That wastrel? Aw, tearing away, tearing away,” said Cæsar.
“Floating on the top of the tide, is he?” shouted Pete.
“Maybe so, but the devil is fishing where yonder fellow's swimming,”
answered Cæsar.
“And the ould man--the Ballawhaine--still above the sod?” bawled Pete
behind his hand.
“Yes, but failing, failing, failing,” shouted Cæsar. “The world's
getting too heavy for the man. Debts here, and debts there, and debts
everywhere.”
“Not much water in the harbour then, eh?” cried Pete.
“No, but down on the rocks already, if it's only myself that knows it,”
shouted Cæsar.
When they had turned the Sulby Bridge, and come in sight of “The Manx
Fairy,” Pete's excitement grew wild, and he leaped up from his seat and
shouted above the wind like a man possessed.
“My gough, the very place! You've been thatching, though--yes, you have.
The street! Holy sailor, there it is! Brownie at you still? Her heifer,
is it? Get up, Molly! A taste of the whip'll do the mare no harm, sir.
My sakes, here's ould Flora hobbling out to meet us. Got the rheumatics,
has she? Set me down, Cæsar. Here we are, man. Lord alive, the smell of
the cowhouse. That warm and damp, it's grand! What, don't you know me,
Flo? Got your temper still, if you've lost your teeth? My sakes, the
haggard! The same spot again! It's turf they're burning inside! And,
my gracious, that's herrings roasting in their brine! Where's Grannie,
though? Let's put a sight in, Cæsar. Well, well, aw well, aw well!”
Thus Pete came home, laughing, shouting, bawling, and bellowing above
the tumult of the wind, which had risen by this time to the strength of
a gale.
“Mother,” cried Cæsar, going in at the porch, “gentleman here from
foreign parts to put a word on you.”
“I never had nobody there belonging to me,” began Grannie.
“No, then, nobody?” said Cæsar.
“One that was going to be, maybe, if he'd lived, poor boy----”
“Grannie!” shouted Pete, and he burst into the bar-room.
“Goodness me!” cried Grannie; “it's his own voice anyway.”
“It's himself,” shouted Pete, and the old soul was in his arms in an
instant.
“Aw dear! Aw dear!” she panted. “Pete it is for sure. Let me sit down,
though.”
“Did you think it was his ghost, then, mother!” said Cæsar with an
indulgent air.
“'Deed no,” said Grannie. “The lad wouldn't come back to plague nobody,
thinks I.”
“Still, and for all the uprisement of Peter, it bates everything,” said
Cæsar. “It's a sort of a resurrection. I thought I'd have a sight up
to the packet for his chiss, poor fellow, and, behould ye, who should I
meet in the two eyes but the man himself!”
“Aw, dear! It's wonderful I it's terrible! I'm silly with the joy,” said
Grannie.
“It was lies in the letter the Manx ones were writing,” said Cæsar.
“Letters and writings are all lies,” said Grannie. “As long as I live
I'll take no more of them, and if that Kelly, the postman, comes here
again, I'll take the bellows to him.”
“So you thought I was gone for good, Grannie?” said Pete. “Well, I
thought so too. 'Will I die?' I says to myself times and times; but I
bethought me at last there wasn't no sense in a good man like me laving
his bones out on the bare Veldt yonder; so, you see, I spread my wings
and came home again.”
“It's the Lord's doings--it's marvellous in our eyes,” said Cæsar; and
Grannie, who had recovered herself and was bustling about, cried--
“Let me have a right look at him, then. Goodness me, the whisker! And as
soft as Manx carding from the mill, too. I like him best when he takes
off his hat. Well, I'm proud to see you, boy. 'Deed, but I wouldn't have
known you, though. 'Who's the gentleman in the gig with father?' thinks
I. And I'd have said it was the Dempster himself, if he hadn't been dead
and in his coffin.”
“That'll do, that'll do,” roared Pete. “That's Grannie putting the fun
on me.”
“It's no use talking, but I can't keep quiet; no I can't,” cried
Grannie, and with that she whipped up a bowl from the kitchen dresser
and fell furiously to peeling the potatoes that were there for supper.
“But where's Kate?” said Pete.
“Aw, yes, where is she? Kate! Kate!” called Grannie, leaning her head
toward the stairs, and Nancy Joe, who had been standing silent until
now, said----
“Didn't she go to Ramsey with the gig, woman?”
“Aw, the foolish I am! Of course she did,” said Grannie; “but why hasn't
she come back with father?”
“She left word at Crellin's not to wait,” said Cæsar.
“She'll be gone to Miss Clucas's to try on,” said Nancy.
“Wouldn't trust now,” said Grannie. “She's having two new dresses done,
Pete. Aw, girls are ter'ble. Well, can you blame them either?”
“She shall have two-and-twenty if she likes, God bless her,” said Pete.
“Goodness me!” said Nancy, “is the man for buying frocks for a Mormon?”
“But you'll be empty, boy. Put the crow down and the griddle on, Nancy,”
said Grannie. “We'll have cakes. Cakes? Coorse I said cakes. Get me
the cloth and I'll lay it myself. The cloth, I'm saying, woman. Did you
never hear of a tablecloth? Where is it? Aw, dear knows where it is
now! It's in the parlour; no, it's in the chest on the landing; no, it's
under the sheets of my own bed. Fetch it, bogh.”
“Will I bring you a handful of gorse, mother?” said Cæsar.
“Coorse you will, and not stand chattering there. But I'm laving you
dry, Pete. Is it ale you'll have, or a drop of hard stuff? You'll wait
for Kate? Now I like that. There's some life at these totallers. 'Steady
abroad?' How dare you, Nancy Joe? You're a deal too clever. Of course
he's been steady abroad--steady as a gun.”
“But Kate,” said Pete, tramping the sanded floor, “is she changed at
all?”
“Aw, she's a woman now, boy,” said Grannie.
“Bless my soul!” said Pete.
“She was looking a bit white and narvous one while there, but she's
sprung out of it fresh and bright, same as the ling on the mountains.
Well, that's the way with young women.”
“I know,” said Pete. “Just the break of the morning with the darlings.”
“But she's the best-looking girl on the island now, Pete,” said Nancy
Joe.
“I'll go bail on it,” cried Pete.
“Big and fine and rosy, and fit for anything.”
“Bless my heart!”
“You should have seen her at the Melliah; it was a trate.”
“God bless me!”
“Sun-bonnet and pink frock and tight red stockings, and straight as a
standard rase.”
“Hould your tongue, woman,” shouted Pete. “I'll see herself first, and
I'm dying to do it.”
Cæsar came back with the gorse; Nancy fed the fire and Grannie stirred
the oatmeal and water. And while the cakes were baking, Pete tramped the
kitchen and examined everything and recognised old friends with a roar.
“Bless me! the same place still. There's the clock on the shelf, with
the scratch on its face and the big finger broke at the joint, and the
lath--and the peck--and the whip--you've had it new corded, though----”
“'Sakes, how the boy remembers!” cried Grannie.
“And the white rumpy” (the cat had leapt on to the dresser out of
the reach of Pete's dog, and from that elevation was eyeing him
steadfastly), “and the slowrie--and the kettle--and the poker--my
gracious, the very poker----”
“Now, did you ever!” cried Grannie with amazement.
“And--yes--no--it is, though--I'll swear it before the
Dempster--that's,” said Pete, picking up a three-legged stool, “that's
the very stool she was sitting on herself in the fire-seat in front of
the turf closet. Let me sit there now for the sake of ould times gone
by.”
He put the stool in the fireplace and sat on it, shouting as he did so
between a laugh and a cry, “Aw, Grannie, bogh--Grannie, bogh! to think
there's been half the world between us since I was sitting here before!”
And Grannie herself, breaking down, said, “Wouldn't you like the tongs,
boy? Give the boy the tongs, woman, just to say he's at home.”
Pete plucked the tongs out of Nancy's hands, and began feeding the
fire with the gorse. “Aw, Grannie, have I ever been away?” he cried,
laughing, and his wet eyes gleaming.
“Nancy Joe, have you no nose at all?” cried Grannie. “The cake's burning
to a cinder.”
“Let it burn, mother,” shouted Pete. “It's the way she was doing herself
when she was young and forgetting. Shillings a-piece for all that's
wasted. Aw, the smell of it's sweet!”
So saying he piled the gorse on the fire, ramming it under the griddle
and choking it behind the crow. And while the oatcake crackled and
sparched and went black, he sniffed up the burning odour, and laughed
and cried in the midst of the smoke that went swirling up the chimney.
And meanwhile, Grannie herself, with the tears rolling down her cheeks,
was flapping her apron before her face and saying, “He'll make me die of
laughing, he will, though--yes, he will!” But behind the apron she was
blubbering to Nancy, “It's coming home, woman, that's it--it's just
coming home again, poor boy!”
By this time word of Pete's return had gone round Sulby? and the
bar-room was soon thronged with men and women, who looked through the
glass partition into the kitchen at the bronzed and bearded man who sat
smoking by the fire, with his dog curled up at his feet. “There'll be a
wedding soon,” said one. “The girl's in luck,” said another. “Success to
the fine girl she always was, and lucky they kept her from the poor
toot that was beating about on her port bow.”--“The young Ballawhaine,
eh?”--“Who else?”
Presently the dog went out to them, and, in default of its master,
became a centre of excited interest. It was an old creature, with a
settled look of age, and a gravity of expression that seemed to say he
had got over the follies of youth, and was now reserved and determined
to keep the peace. His back was curved in as if a cart-wheel had gone
over his spine, he had gigantic ears, a stump of a tail, a coat thin and
prickly like the bristles of a pig, but white and spotted with brown.
“Lord save us! a queer dog, though--what's his breed at all?” said one;
and then a resounding voice came from the kitchen doorway, saying--
“A sort of a Manxman crossed with a bat. Got no tail to speak of, but
there's plenty of ears at him. A handy sort of a dog, only a bit spoiled
in his childhood. Not fit for much company anyway, and no more notion of
dacent behaviour than my ould shoe. Down, Dempster, down.”
It was Pete. He was greeted with loud welcomes, and soon filled the room
all round with the steaming odour of spirits and water.
“You've the Manx tongue at you still, Mr. Quilliam,” said Jonaique; “and
you're calling the dog Dempster; what's that for at all?”
“For sake of the ould island, Mr. Jelly, and for the straight he's like
Dempster Mylrea when he's a bit crooked,” said Pete.
“The old man's dead, sir,” said John the Clerk.
“You don't say?” said Pete.
“Yes, though; the sun went down on him a Wednesday. The drink, sir, the
drink! I've been cutting a sod of his grave to-day.”
“And who's to be Dempster now?” asked Pete. “Who are they putting in for
it?”
“Well,” said John the Clerk, “they're talking and talking, and some's
saying this one and others that one; but the most is saying your ould
friend Philip Christian.”
“I knew it--I always said it,” shouted Pete; “best man in the island,
bar none. Oh, he'll not deceave me.”
The wind was roaring in the chimney, and the light was beginning to
fail. Pete became restless, and walked to and fro, peering out at
intervals by the window that looked on to the road. At this there was
some pushing and nudging and indulgent whispering.
“It's the girl! Aw, be aisy with the like! Five years apart, be aisy!”
“The meadow's white with the gulls sitting together like parrots; what's
that a sign of, father?” said Pete.
“Just a slant of rain maybe, and a puff of wind,” said Cæsar.
“But,” said Pete, looking up at the sky, “the long cat tail was going
off at a slant awhile ago, and now the thick skate yonder is hanging
mortal low.”
“Take your time, sir,” said Cæsar. “No need to send round the Cross
Vustha (fiery cross) yet. The girl will be home immadiently.”
“It'll be dark at her, though,” said Pete.
The company tried to draw him into conversation about the ways of life
in the countries he had visited, but he answered absently and jerkily,
and kept going to the door.
“Suppose there'll be Dempsters enough where you're coming from?” said
Jonaique.
“Sort of Dempsters, yes. Called one of them Ould Necessity, because it
knows no law. He rigged up the statute books atop of his stool for a
high sate, and when he wanted them he couldn't find them high or low.
Not the first judge that's sat on the law, though.... It's coming,
Cæsar, d'ye hear it? That's the rain on the street.”
“Aisy, man, aisy, man,” said Cæsar. “New dresses isn't rigged up in no
time. There'll be chapels now, eh? Chapels and conferences, and proper
religious instruction?”
“Divil a chapel, sir, only a rickety barn, belonging to some-ones
they're calling the Sky Pilots to. Wanted the ould miser that runs it to
build them a new tabernacle, but he wouldn't part till a lump of plaster
fell on his bald head at a love-feast, and then he planked down
a hundred pound, and they all shouted, 'Hit him again, Lord--you
might!'... D'ye hear that, then? That's the water coming down from the
gill. I can't stand no more of it, Grannie.”
Grannie was at the door, struggling to hold it against the wind, while
she looked out into the gathering darkness. “'Deed, but I'm getting
afraid of it myself,” she said, “and dear heart knows where Kirry can be
at this time of night.” “I'm off to find her,” said Pete, and, catching
up his hat and whistling to the dog, in a moment he was gone.
X.
The door was hard to close behind him, for it was now blowing a gale
from the north-east. Cæsar slipped through the dairy to see if the
outbuildings were safe, and came back with a satisfied look. The stable
and cow-house were barred, the barns were shut up, the mill-wheel was on
the brake, the kiln fire was burning gently, and all was snug and tight.
Grannie was wringing her hands as he returned, crying “Kate! Oh, Kate!”
and he reproved her for want of trust in Providence.
People were now coming in rapidly with terrible stories of damage done
by the storm. It was reported that the Chicken Rock Lighthouse was blown
down, that the tide had risen to twenty-five feet in Ramsey and torn up
the streets, and that a Peel fisherman had been struck by his mainsail
into the sea and drowned.
More came into the house at every minute, and among them were all the
lonesome and helpless ones within a radius of a mile--Blind Jane, who
charmed blood, but could not charm the wind; Shemiah, the prophet, with
beard down to his waist and a staff up to his shoulder; and old Juan
Vessy, who “lived on the houses” in the way of a tramp. The people
who had been there already were afraid to go out, and Grannie, still
wringing her hands and crying “Kate, Kate,” called everybody into the
kitchen to gather about the fire. There they bemoaned their boys on the
sea, told stories of former storms, and quarrelled about the years of
wrecks and the sources of the winds that caused them.
The gale increased to fearful violence, and sometimes the wind sounded
like sheets flapping against the walls, sometimes like the deep boom of
the waves that roll on themselves in mid-ocean and never know a shore.
It began to groan in the chimney as if it were a wild beast struggling
to escape, and then the smoke came down in whorls and filled the
kitchen. They had to put out the fire to keep themselves from
suffocation, and to sit back from the fireplace to protect themselves
from cold. The door of the porch flew open, and they barricaded it with
long-handled brushes; the windows rattled in their frames, and they
blocked them up with the tops of the tables. In spite of all efforts
to shut out the wind, the house was like a basket, and it quaked like a
ship at sea. “I never heard the like on the water itself, and I'm used
of the sea, too,” said one. The others groaned and mumbled prayers.
Kelly the Thief, who had come in unopposed by Grannie, was on his knees
in one corner with his face to the wall, calling on the Lord to remember
that he had seen things in letters--stamps and such--but had never
touched them. John the Clerk was saying that he had to bury the
Deemster; Jonaique, the barber, that he had been sent for to “cut” the
Bishop; and Claudius Kewley, the farmer, that he had three fields of
barley still uncut and a stack of oats unthatched. “Oh, Lord,” cried
Claudius, “let me not die till I've got nothing to do!”
Cæsar stood like a strong man amidst their moans and groans, their
bowings of the head and clappings of the hands, and, when he heard the
farmer, his look was severe.
“Cloddy,” said he, “how do you dare to doubt the providence of God?”
“Aisy to talk, Mr. Cregeen,” the farmer whined, “but you've got your own
harvest saved,” and then Cæsar had no resource but to punish the man in
prayer. “The Lord had sent His storm to reprove some that were making
too sure of His mercies; but there was grace in the gale, only they
wouldn't be patient and trust to God's providence; there was milk in
the breast, only the wayward child wouldn't take time to find the teat.
Lord, lead them to true stillness----”
In the midst of Cæsar's prayer there was a sudden roar outside, and he
leapt abruptly to his feet with a look of vexation. “I believe in my
heart that's the mill-wheel broken loose,” said he, “and if it is, the
corn on the kiln will be going like a whirlingig.”
“Trust in God's providence, Cæsar,” cried the farmer.
“So I will,” said Cæsar, catching up his hat, “but I'll put out my kiln
fire first.”
When Pete stepped out of the porch, he felt himself smitten as by an
invisible wing, and he gasped like a fish with too much air. A quick
pain in the side at that moment reminded him of his bullet-wound,
but his heels had heart in them, and he set off to run. The night had
fallen, but a green rent was torn in the leaden sky, and through this
the full moon appeared.
When he got to Ramsey the tide was up to the old cross, slates were
flying like kites, and the harbour sounded like a battlefield with its
thunderous roar of rigging. He made for the dressmaker's, and heard that
Kate had not been there for six hours. At the draper's he learned that
at two o'clock in the afternoon she had been seen going up Ballure. The
sound rocket was fired as he pushed through the town. A schooner riding
to an anchor in the bay was flying her ensign for help. The sea was
terrific--a slaty grey, streaked with white foam like quartz veins; but
the men who had been idling on the quay when the water was calm were now
struggling, chafing, and fighting to go out on it, for the blood of the
old Vikings was in them.
Going by the water-trough, Pete called on Black Tom, who was civil
and conciliatory until he heard his errand, then growled with
disappointment, but nevertheless answered his question. Yes, he had
seen the young woman. She went up early in the “everin,” and left him
good-day. Giving this grateful news, Black Tom could not deny himself
a word of bitterness to poison the pleasure. “And when you are finding
her,” said he, “you'll be doing well to take her in tow, for I'm
thinking there's some that's for throwing her a rope.”
“Who d'ye mane?” said Pete.
“I lave it with you,” said Black Tom; and Pete pulled the door after
him.
On the breast of the hill there was the meeting of two roads, one of
them leading up to the “Hibernian,” the other going down to Port Mooar.
To resolve the difficulty of choice, Pete inquired at a cottage standing
some paces beyond, and as Kate had not been seen to pass up the higher
road, he determined to take the lower one. But he gathered no tidings
by the way, for Billy by the mill knew nothing, and the woman by the
sundial had gone to bed. At length he dipped into Port Mooar, and came
to a little cottage like a child's Noah's ark, with its tiny porch and
red light inside, looking out on the white breakers that were racing
along the beach. It was the cottage of the lobster-fisher. Pete inquired
if he had seen Kate. He answered no; he had seen nobody that day but Mr.
Christian. Which of the Christians? Mr. Philip Christian.
The news carried only one message to Pete's mind. It seemed to explain
something which had begun to perplex him--why Philip had not met him at
the quay, and why Kate had not heard of his coming. Clearly Philip was
at present at Ballure. He had not yet received the telegram addressed to
Douglas.
Pete turned back. Surely Kate had called somewhere. She would be at home
by this time. He tried to run, but the wind was now in his face. It was
veering northwards every minute, and rising to the force of a hurricane.
He tied his handkerchief over his head and under his chin to hold on his
hat. His hair whipped his ears like rods. Sometimes he was swept into
the hedge; often he was brought to his knees. Still he toiled along
through sheets of spray that glistened with the colours of a rainbow,
and ran over the ground like driven rain. His eyes smarted, and the
taste on his lips was salt.
The moon was now riding at the full through a wild flecked sky, and
Pete could clearly see, as he returned towards the bay, a crowd of human
figures on the cliffs above Port Lewaige. Quaking with undefined fears,
he pushed on until he had joined them. The schooner, abandoned by her
crew, had parted her cable, and was rolling like a blinded porpoise
towards the rocks. She fell on them with the groan of a living creature,
and, the instant her head was down, the white lions of the sea leapt
over her with a howl, the water swirled through her bulwarks and filled
her hatches, her rudder was unshipped, her sails were torn from their
gaskets, and the floating home wherein men had sailed, and sung,
and slept, and laughed, and jested, was a broken wreck in the heavy
wallowings of the waves.
Kate had not returned when Pete got back to Sulby, but the excitement of
her absence was eclipsed for the time by the turmoil of Cæsar's trouble.
Standing in the dark on the top of the midden, he was shouting to the
dairy door in a voice of thunder, which went off at the end of his
beard like the puling of a cat. The mill-wheel was going same as a
“whirlingig”--was there nobody to “hould the brake?” The stable roof was
stripped, and the mare was tearing herself to pieces in a roaring “pit
of hell”--was there never a shoulder for the door? The cow-house thatch
was flapping like a sail--was there nothing in the world but a woman
(Nancy Joe) to help a man to throw a ladder and a stone over it?
Only when Cæsar had been pacified was there silence to speak of Kate. “I
picked up news of her coming back by Claughbane,” said Pete, “and traced
her as near home as the 'Ginger.' She can't be far away. Where is she?”
Those who were cool enough fell to conjecture. Grannie had no resource
but groans. Nancy was moaning by her side. The rest were full of their
own troubles. Blind Jane was bewailing her affliction.
“You can all see,” she cried, “but I'm not knowing the harm that's
coming on me.”
“Hush, woman, hush,” said Pete; “we're all same as yourself half our
lives--we're all blind at night.”
In the midst of the tumult a knock came to the door, and Pete made a
plunge towards the porch.
“Wait,” cried Cæsar. “Nobody else comes here to-night except the girl
herself. Another wind like the last and we'll have the roof off the
house too.”
Then he called to the new-comer, with his face to the porch door, and
the answer came back to him in a wail like the wind itself.
“Who's there?”
It was Joney from the glen.
“We're like herrings in a barrel--we can't let you in.”
She wasn't wanting to come in. But her roof was going stripping, and
half her house was felled, and she couldn't get her son (the idiot boy)
to leave his bed. He would perish; he would die; he was all the family
she had left to her--wouldn't the master come and save him?
“Impossible!” shouted Cæsar. “We've our own missing this fearful night,
Joney, and the Lord will protect His children.”
Was it Kate? She had seen her in the glen----
“Let me get at that door,” said Pete.
“But the house will come down,” cried Cæsar.
“Let it come,” said Pete.
Pete shut the door of the bar-room, and then the wind was heard to swirl
through the porch.
“When did you see her, Joney, and where?” said the voice of Pete; and
the voice of Joney answered him--
“Goings by my own house at the start of the storm this everin.”
“I'll come with you--go on,” said Pete, and Grannie shouted across the
bar--
“Take Cæsar's topcoat over your monkey-jacket.”
“I've sail enough already for a wind like this, mother,” cried the
voice of Pete, and then the swirling sound in the porch went off with a
long-drawn whirr, and Cæsar came back alone to the kitchen.
Pete's wound ached again, but he pressed his hand on the place of it and
struggled up the glen, dragging Joney behind him. They came to her house
at last. One half of the thatch lay over the other half; the rafters
were bare like the ribs of the wreck; the oat-cake peck was rattling on
the lath; the meal-barrel in the corner was stripped of its lid, and
the meal was whirling into the air like a waterspout; the dresser was
stripped, the broken crockery lay on the uncovered floor, and the iron
slowrie hanging over the place of the fire was swinging and striking
against the wall, and ringing like a knell. And in the midst of this
scene of desolation the idiot boy was placidly sleeping on his naked
bed, and over it the moon was scudding through a tattered sky.
The night wore on, and the company in the kitchen listened long, and
sometimes heard sounds as of voices crying in the wind, but Pete did not
return. Then they fell to groaning again, to praying aloud without fear,
and to confessing their undiscovered sins without shame.
“I'm searched terrible--I can see through me,” cried Kelly, the postman.
Some were chiefly troubled lest death should fall on them while they
were in a public-house.
“I keep none,” cried Cæsar.
“But you wouldn't let us open the door,” whined the farmer.
If the door had been wide enough for a Bishop, not a soul would have
stirred. For the first time within anyone's recollection, Nancy Joe was
on her knees.
“O Lord,” she prayed, “Thou knowest well I don't often bother Thee.
But save Kate, Lord; oh, save and prasarve my little Kirry! It's twenty
years and better since I asked anything of Thee before and if Thou wilt
only take away this wind, I'll promise not to say another prayer for
twenty years more.”
“Say it in Manx, woman,” moaned Grannie. “I always say my prayers in
Manx as well, and the Lord can listen to the one He knows best.”
“There's prayer as well as praise in singing,” cried Cæsar; and they
began to sing, all down on their knees, their eyes tightly closed, and
their hands clasped before their faces. They sang of heaven and its
peaceful plains, its blue lakes and sunny skies, its golden cities and
emerald gates, its temples and its tabernacles, where “congregations
ne'er break up and Sabbaths never end.” It was some comfort to drown
with the wild discord of their own voices the fearful noises of the
tempest. When they finished the hymn, they began on it again, keeping
it up without a break, sweeping the dying note of the last word into
the rising pitch of the first one. In the midst of their singing,
they thought a fiercer gust than ever was beating on the door, and, to
smother the fear of it, they sang yet louder. The gust came a second
time, and Cæsar cried--
“Again, brothers,” and away they went with another wild whoop through
the hymn.
It came a third time, and Cæsar cried--
“Once more, beloved,” and they raced madly through the hymn again.
Then the door burst open as before a tremendous kick, and Pete, fierce
and wild-eyed, and green with the drift of the salt foam caked thick on
his face, stepped over the threshold with the unconscious body of Kate
in his arms and the idiot boy peering over his shoulder.
“Thank the Lord for an answer to prayer,” cried Cæsar. “Where did you
find her?”
“In the tholthan up the glen,” said Pete. “Up in the witch's tholthan.”
XI.
On the second morning afterwards the air was quiet and full of the odour
of seaweed; the sky was round as the inside of a shell, and pale pink
like the shadow of flame; the water was smooth and silent; the hills
had lost the memory of the storm, and land and sea lay like a sleeping
child.
In this broad and steady morning Kate came back to consciousness. She
had slid out of delirium into sleep as a boat slides out of the open
sea into harbour, and when she awoke there was a voice in her ears that
seemed to be calling to her from the quay. It was a familiar voice, and
yet it was unfamiliar; it was like the voice of a friend heard for the
first time after a voyage. It seemed to come from a long way off, and
yet to be knocking at the very door of her heart. She kept her eyes
closed for a moment and listened; then she opened them and looked again.
The light was clouded and yet dazzling, as if glazed muslin were
shaking before her eyes. Grannie was sitting by her bedside, knitting in
silence.
“Why are you sitting there, mother?” she asked.
Grannie dropped her needles and caught at her apron. “Dear heart alive,
the child's herself again!” she said.
“Has anything happened?” said Kate. “What time is it?”
“Monday morning, bogh, thank the Lord for all His mercies!” cried
Grannie.
The familiar voice came again. It came from the direction of the stairs.
“Who's that?” said Kate, whispering fearfully.
“Pete himself, Kirry. Aw well! Aw dear!”
“Pete!” cried Kate in terror.
“Aw, no, woman, but a living man come back again. No fear of him, bogh!
Not dead at all, but worth twenty dead men yet, and he brought you safe
out of the storm.”
“The storm?”
“Yes, the storm, woman. There warn such a storm on the island I don't
know the years. He found you in the tholthan up the glen. Lost your way
in the wind, it's like, and no wonder. But let me call father. Father!
father! Chut! the man's as deaf as little Tom Hommy. Father!” called
Grannie, bustling about at the stair-head in a half-demented way.
There was some commotion below, and the voice on the stairs was saying,
“_This_ way? No, _sir_. That way, if _you_ plaze.”
“D'ye hear him, Kirry?” cried Grannie, putting her head back into the
room. “That's the man himself. Sitting on the bottom step same as
an ould bulldog, and keeping watch that nobody bothers you. The
good-naturedst bulldog breathing, though, and he hasn't had a wink on
the night. Saved your life, darling. He did; yes, he did, praise God.”
At mention of the tholthan, Kate had remembered everything. She dropped
back on the pillow, and cried, in a voice of pain, “Why couldn't he
leave me to die?”
Grannie chuckled knowingly at that, and wiped her eyes with the corner
of her apron. “The bogh is herself, for sure. When they're wishing
themselves dead they're always mending father! But I'll go down
instead. Lie still, bogh, lie still!”
The voice of Grannie went muffled down the stairs with many “Aw dears,
aw dears!” and then crackled from below through the floor and the
unceiled joists, saying sharply but with a tremor, too, “Nancy Joe, why
aren't you taking a cup of something upstairs, woman?”
“Goodness me, Mistress Cregeen, is it true for all?” said Nancy.
“Why, of course it's true. Do you think a poor child is going fasting
for ever?”
“What's that?” shouted the familiar voice again. “Was it herself you
were spaking to in the dairy loft, Grannie?”
“Who else, man?” said Grannie, and then there was a general tumult.
“Aw, the joy! Aw, the delight! Gough bless me, Grannie, I was thinking
she was for spaking no more.”
“Out of the way,” cried Nancy, as if pushing past somebody to whip the
kettle on to the fire. “These men creatures have no more rising in their
hearts than bread without balm.”
“You're balm enough yourself, Nancy, for a quiet husband. But lend me a
hould of the bellows there--I'll blow up like blazes.”
Cæsar came into the house on the top of this commotion, grumbling as
he stepped over the porch, “The wind has taken half the stacks of my
haggard, mother.”
“No matter, sir,” shouted Pete. “The best of your Melliah is saved
upstairs.”
“Is she herself?” said Cæsar. “Praise His name!”
And over the furious puffing and panting and quacking of the bellows and
the cracking and roaring of the fire, the voice of Pete came in gusts
through the floor, crying, “I'll go mad with the joy! I will; yes, I
will, and nobody shall stop me neither.”
The house, which seemed to have been holding its breath since the storm,
now broke into a ripple of laughter. It began in the kitchen, it ran up
the stairs, it crept through the chinks in the floor, it went over the
roof. But Kate lay on her pillow and moaned, and turned her face to the
wall.
Presently Nancy Joe appeared in the bedroom, making herself tidy at the
doorway with a turn of the hand over her hair. “Mercy on me!” she cried,
clapping her hands at the first sight of Kate's face, “who was the
born blockhead that said the girl's wedding was as like to be in the
churchyard as in the church?”
“That's me,” said a deep voice from the middle of the stairs, and then
Nancy clashed the door back and poured Pete into Kate in a broadside.
“It was Pete that done it, though,” she said. “You can't expect much
sense of the like, but still and for all he saved your life, Kitty. Dr.
Mylechreest says so. 'If the girl had been lying out another hour,' says
he----And, my goodness, the fond of you that man is; it's wonderful!
Twisting and turning all day yesterday on the bottom step yonder same as
a live conger on the quay, but looking as soft about the eyes as if he'd
been a week out of the water. And now! my sakes, _now!_ D'ye hear him,
Kirry? He's fit to burst the bellows. No use, though--he's a shocking
fine young fellow--he's all that.... But just listen!”
There was a fissing sound from below, and a sense of burning. “What do
I always say? You can never trust a man to have sense enough to take it
off. That's the kettle on the boil.”
Nancy went flopping downstairs, where with furious words she rated Pete,
who laughed immoderately. Cæsar came next. He had taken off his boots
and was walking lightly in his stockings; but Kate felt his approach by
his asthmatic breathing. As he stepped in at the door he cried, in the
high pitch of the preacher, “Praise the Lord, O my soul, and all that is
within me praise His holy name!” Then he fell to the praise of Pete as
well.
“He brought you out of the jaws of death and the mouth of Satan. It
was a sign, Katherine, and we can't do better than follow the Spirit's
leading. He saved your life, woman, and that's giving him the right to
have and to hould it. Well, I've only one child in this life, but, if
it's the Lord's will, I'm willing. He was always my white-headed boy,
and he has made his independent fortune in a matter of five years'
time.”
The church bell began to toll, and Kate started up and listened.
“Only the Dempster's funeral, Kitty,” said Cæsar. “They were for burying
him to-morrow, but men that drink don't keep. They'll be putting him in
the family vault at Lezayre with his father, the staunch ould Rechabite.
Many a good cow has a bad calf, you see, and that's bad news for a man's
children; but many a good calf is from a bad cow, and that's good news
for the man himself. It's been the way with Peter anyway, for the
Lord has delivered him and prospered him, and I'm hearing on the best
authority he has five thousand golden sovereigns sent home to Mr.
Dumbell's bank at Douglas.”
Grannie came up with a basin of beef-tea, and Cæsar was hustled out of
the room.
“Come now, bogh; take a spoonful, and I'll lave you to yourself,” said
Grannie.
“Yes, leave me to myself,” said Kate, sipping wearily; and then Grannie
went off with the basin in her hand.
“Has she taken it?” said some one below.
“Look at that, if you plaze,” said Grannie in a jubilant tone; and Kate
knew that the empty basin was being shown around.
Kate lay back on the pillow, listened to the tolling of the bell, and
shuddered. She thought it a ghostly thing that the first voice she had
heard on coming as from another world had been the voice of Pete, and
the first name dinned into her ears had been Pete's name. The procession
of the Deemster's funeral passed the house, and she closed her eyes
and seemed to see it--the coffin on the open cart, the men on horseback
riding beside it, and then the horses tied up to posts and gates
about the churchyard, and the crowd of men of all conditions at the
grave-side. In her mind's eye, Kate was searching through that crowd for
somebody. Was _he_ there? Had he heard what had happened to her?
She fell into a doze, and was awakened by a horse's step on the road,
and the voices of two men talking as they came nearer.
“Man alive, the joy I'm taking to see you! The tallygraph? Coorse not.
Knew I'd find you at the funeral, though.” It was Pete.
“But I meant to come over after it.” It was Philip, and Kate's heart
stood still.
The voices were smothered for a moment (as the buzzing is when the bees
enter the hive), and then began with as sharper ring from the rooms
below.
“How's she now, Mrs. Cregeen?” said the voice of Philip.
“Better, sir--much better,” answered Grannie.
“No return of the unconsciousness?”
“Aw, no,” said Grannie.
“Was she”--Kate thought the voice faltered--“was she delirious?”