“Not rambling at all,” replied Grannie.

“Thank God,” said Philip, and Kate felt a long breath of relief go

through the air.

“I didn't hear of it until this morning,” said Philip. “The postman told

me at breakfast-time, and I called on Dr. Mylechreest coming out. If I

had known----I didn't sleep much last night, anyway; but if I had ever

imagined----”

“You're right good to the girl, sir,” said Grannie, and then Kate,

listening intently, caught a quavering sound of protestation.

“'Deed you are, though, and always have been,” said Grannie, “and I'm

saying it before Pete here, that ought to know and doesn't.”

“Don't I, though?” came in the other voice--the resounding voice--the

voice full of laughter and tears together. “But I do that, Grannie, same

as if I'd been here and seen it. Lave it to me to know Phil Christian.

I've summered and wintered the man, haven't I? He's timber that doesn't

start, mother, blow high, blow low.”

Kate heard another broken sound as of painful protest, and then with a

sickening sense she covered up her head that she might hear no more.

XII.

She was weak and over-wrought, and she fell asleep as she lay covered.

While she slept a babel of meaningless voices kept clashing in her ears,

and her own voice haunted her perpetually. When she awoke it was

broad morning again, and the house was full of the smell of boiling

stock-fish. By that she knew it was another day, and the hour of early

breakfast. She heard the click of cups and saucers on the kitchen table,

the step of her father coming in from the mill, and then the heartsome

voice of Pete talking of the changes in the island since he went

away. New houses, promenades, iron piers, breakwaters, lakes,

towers--wonderful I extraordinary! tre-menjous!

“But the boys--w here's the Manx boys at all?” said Pete. “Gone like a

flight of birds to Austrillya and Cleveland and the Cape, and I don't

know where. Not a Manx house now that hasn't one of the boys foreign.

And the houses themselves--where's the ould houses and the crofts?

Felled, all felled or boarded up. And the boats--where's the boats?

Lying rotting at the top of the harbour.”

Grannie's step came into the kitchen, and Pete's loud voice drooped to a

whisper. “How's herself this morning, mother?”

“Sleeping quiet and nice when I came downstairs,” said Grannie.

“Will I be seeing her myself to-day, think you?” asked Pete.

“I don't know in the world, but I'll ask,” answered Grannie.

“You're an angel, Grannie,” said Pete, “a reg'lar ould archangel.”

Kate shuddered with a new fear. It was clear that in the eyes of her

people the old relations with Pete were to stand. Everybody expected her

to marry Pete; everybody seemed anxious to push the marriage on.

Grannie came up with her breakfast, pulled aside the blind, and opened

the window.

“Nancy will tidy the room a taste,” she said coaxingly, “and then I

shouldn't wonder if you'll be sending for Pete.”

Kate raised a cry of alarm.

“Aw, no harm when a girl's poorly,” said Grannie, “and her promist man

for all.”

Kate tried to protest and explain, but courage failed her. She only

said, “Not yet, mother. I'm not fit to see him yet.”

“Say no more about it. Not to-day at all--to-morrow maybe,” said

Grannie, and Kate clutched at the word, and answered eagerly--

“Yes, tomorrow, mother; to-morrow maybe.”

Before noon Philip had come again. Kate heard his horse's step on the

road, trotting hard from the direction of Peel. He drew up at the porch,

but did not alight, and Grannie went out to him.

“I'll not come in to-day, Mrs. Cregeen,” he said. “Does she continue to

improve?”

“As nice as nice, sir,” said Grannie.

Kate crept out of bed, stole to the window, hid behind the curtains, and

listened intently.

“What a mercy all goes well,” he said; Kate could hear the heaving of

his breath. “Is Pete about?”

“No, but gone to Ramsey, sir,” said Grannie. “It's like you'll meet him

if you are going on to Ballure.”

“I must be getting back to business,” said Philip, and the horse swirled

across the road.

“Did you ride from Douglas on purpose, then?” said Grannie, and Philip

answered with an audible effort--

“I was anxious. What an escape she has had! I could scarcely sleep last

night for thinking of it.”

Kate put her hand to her throat to keep back the cry that was bubbling

up, and her mother's voice came thick and deep.

“The Lord's blessing. Master Philip----” she began, but the horse's feet

stamped out everything as it leapt to a gallop in going off.

Kate listened where she knelt until the last beat of the hoofs had died

away in the distance, and then she crept back to bed and covered up her

head in the clothes as before, but with a storm of other feelings. “He

loves me,” she told herself with a thrill of the heart. “He loves

me--he loves me still! And he will never, never, never see me married to

anybody else.”

She felt an immense relief now, and suddenly found strength to think of

facing Pete. It even occurred to her to send for him at once, as a first

step towards removing the impression that the old relations were to

remain. She would be quiet, she would be cold, she would show by her

manner that Pete was impossible, she would break the news gently.

Pete came like the light at Nancy's summons. Kate heard him on the

stairs whispering with Nancy and breathing heavily. Nancy was hectoring

it over him and pulling him about to make him presentable.

“Here,” whispered Nancy, “take the redyng comb and lash your hair out,

it's all through-others. And listen--you've got to be quiet. Promise

me you'll be quiet. She's wake and low and nervous, so no kissing. D'ye

hear me now, no kissing.”

“Aw, kissing makes no noise to spake of, woman,” whispered Pete; and

then he was in the room.

Kate saw him come, a towering dark figure between her and the door. He

did not speak at first, but slid down to the chair at the foot of the

bed, modestly, meekly, reverently, as if he had entered a sanctuary. His

hand rested on his knee, and she noticed that the wrist was hairy and

tattooed with the three legs of Man.

“Is it you, Pete?” she asked; and then he said in a low tone, almost in

a whisper, as if speaking to himself in a hush of awe--

“It's her own voice again! I've heard it in my drames these five years.”

He looked helplessly about him for a moment, fixed his watery eyes on

Nancy as if he wanted to burst into sobs but dare not for fear of the

noise, then turned on his chair and seemed on the point of taking to

flight. But just at that instant his dog, which had followed him into

the room, planted its forelegs on the counterpane and looked impudently

into Kate's face.

“Down, Dempster, down!” cried Pete; and after that, the ice being broken

by the sound of his voice, Pete was his own man once more.

“Is that your dog, Pete?” said Kate.

“Aw, no, Kate, but I'm his man,” said Pete. “He does what he likes with

me, anyway. Caught me out in Kimber-ley and fetched me home.”

“Is he old?”

“Old, d'ye say? He's one of the lost ten tribes of dogs, and behaves as

if he'd got to inherit the earth.”

She felt Pete's big black eyes shining on her.

“My gracious, Kitty, what a woman you're growing, though!” he said.

“Am I so much changed?” she asked.

“Changed, is it?” he cried. “Gough bless me heart! the nice little

thing you were when we used to play fishermen together down at Cornaa

Harbour--d'ye remember? The ould kipper-box rolling on a block for

a boat at sea--do you mind it? Yourself houlding a bit of a broken

broomstick in the rope handle for a mast, and me working the

potato-dibber on the ground, first port and then starboard, for rudder

and wind and oar and tide. 'Mortal dirty weather this, cap'n?' 'Aw, yes,

woman, big sea extraordinary'--d'ye mind it, Kirry!”

Kate tried to laugh a little and to say what a long time ago it was

since then. But Pete, being started, laughed uproariously, slapped his

knee, and rattled on.

“Up at the mill, too--d'ye remember that now? Yourself with the top of

a barrel for a flower basket, holding it 'kimbo at your lil hip and

shouting, 'Violets! Swate violets! Fresh violets!'” (He mocked her

silvery treble in his lusty baritone and roared with laughter.)

“And then me, woman, d'ye mind me?--me, with the pig-stye gate atop of

my head for a fish-board, yelling, 'Mackerel! Fine ladies, fresh ladies,

and bellies as big as bishops--Mack-er-el!' Aw, Kirry, Kirry! Aw, the

dear ould times gone by! Aw, the changes, the changes!... Did I _know_

you then? Are you asking me did I know you when I found you in the glen?

Did I know I was alive, Kitty? Did I know the wind was howling? Did I

know my head was going round like a compass, and my heart thumping a

hundred and twenty pound to the square inch? Did I kiss you and kiss you

while you were lying there useless, and lift you up and hitch your poor

limp arms around my neck, and carry you out of the dirty ould tholthan

that was going to be the death of you--the first job I was doing on

the island, too, coming back to it.... Lord save us, Kitty, what have I

done?”

Kate had dropped back on the pillow, and was sobbing as if her heart

would break, and seeing this, Nancy fell on Pete with loud reproaches,

took the man by the shoulders and his dog by the neck, and pushed both

out of the room.

“Out of it,” cried Nancy. “Didn't I tell you to be quiet? You great

blethering omathaun, you shall come no more.”

Abashed, ashamed, humiliated, and quiet enough now, Pete went slowly

down the stairs.

XIII.

Late that night Kate heard Cæsar and her mother talking together as they

were going to bed. Cæsar was saying--

“I got him on the track of a good house, and he went off to Ramsey this

morning to put a sight on it.”

“Dear heart alive, father!” Grannie answered, “Pete isn't home till a

week come Saturday.”

“The young man is warm on the wedding,” said Cæsar, “and he has money,

and store is no sore.”

“But the girl's not fit for it, 'deed she isn't,” said Grannie.

“If she's wake,” said Cæsar, “shell be no worse for saying 'I will,' and

when she's said it she'll have time enough to get better.”

Kate trembled with fear. The matter of her marriage with Pete was going

on without her. A sort of supernatural power seemed to be pushing it

along. Nobody asked if she wished it, nobody questioned that she did so.

It was taken for granted that the old relations would stand. As soon

as she could go about she would be expected to marry Pete. Pete himself

would expect it, because he believed he had her promise; her mother

would expect it, because she had always thought of it as a thing

understood; her father would expect it, because Pete's prosperity had

given him a new view of Pete's piety and pedigree; and Nancy Joe

would expect it, too, if only because she was still haunted by her old

bugbear, the dark shadow of Ross Christian. There was only one way to

break down these expectations, and that was to speak out. But how was a

girl to speak? What was she to say?

Kate pretended to be ill. Three days longer she lay, like a hunted wolf

in its hole, keeping her bed from sheer dread of the consequences of

leaving it. The fourth day was Sunday. It was morning, and the church

bells were ringing. Cæsar had shouted from his bedroom for some one to

tie his bow, then for some one to button his black gloves. He had gone

off at length with the footsteps of the people stepping round to chapel.

The first hymn had been started, and its doleful notes were trailing

through the mill walls. Kate was propped up in bed, and the window of

her room was open. Over the droning of the hymn she caught the sound of

a horse's hoofs on the road. They stopped at a little distance, and then

came on again, with the same two voices as before.

Pete was talking with great eagerness. “Plenty of house, aw plenty,

plenty,” he was saying. “Elm Cottage they're calling it--the slate

one with the ould fir-tree behind the Coort House and by the lane to

Claughbane. Dry as a bone and clane as a gull's wing. You could lie with

your back to the wall and ate off the floor. Taps inside and water as

white as gin. I've been buying the cabin of the 'Mona's Isle' for a

summer-house in the garden. Got a figurehead for the porch too, and

I'll have an anchor for the gate before I'm done. Aw, I'm bound to have

everything nice for her.”

There was a short silence, in which nothing was heard but the step of

the horse, and then Philip said in a faltering voice, “But isn't this

being rather in a hurry, Pete?”

“Short coorting's the best coorting, and ours has been long enough

anyway,” said Pete. They had drawn up at the porch, and Pete's laugh

came in at the window.

“But think how weak she is,” said Philip. “She hasn't even-left her bed

yet, has she?”

“Well, yes, of coorse, sartenly,” said Pete, in a steadier voice, “if

the girl isn't fit----”

“It's so sudden, you see,” said Philip. “Has she--has she--consented?”

“Not to say consented----” began Pete; and Philip took him up and said

quickly, eagerly, hotly--

“She can't--I'm sure she can't.”

There was silence again, broken only by the horse's impatient pawing,

and then Philip said more calmly, “Let Dr. Mylechreest see her first, at

all events.”

“I'm not a man for skinning the meadow to the sod, no----” said Pete, in

a doleful tone; but Kate heard no more.

She was trembling with a new thought. It was only a shadowy suggestion

as yet, and at first she tried to beat it back. But it came again, it

forced itself upon her, it mastered her, she could not resist it.

The way to break the fate that was pursuing her was to make _Philip_

speak out! The way to stop the marriage with Pete was to compel Philip

to marry her! He thought she would never consent to marry Pete--what if

he were given to understand that she had consented. That was the way to

gain the victory over Philip, the way to punish him!

He would not blame her--he would lay the blame at the door of chance, of

fate, of her people. He would think they were forcing this marriage upon

her--the mother out of love of Pete, the father out of love of Pete's

money, and Nancy out of fear of Ross Christian. He would know that she

could not struggle because she could not speak. He would believe she was

yielding against her will, in spite of her love, in the teeth of

their intention. He would think of her as a victim, as a martyr, as a

sacrifice.

It was a deceit--a small deceit; it looked so harmless, too--so

innocent, almost humorous, half ridiculous; and she was a woman, and she

could not put it away. Love, love, love! It would be her excuse and her

forgiveness. She had appealed to Philip himself and in vain. Now she

would pretend to go on with her old relations. It was so little to do,

and the effects were so certain. In jealousy and in terror Philip would

step out of himself and claim her.

She had craft--all hungry things have craft. She had inklings of

ambition, a certain love of luxury, and desire to be a lady. To

get Philip was to get everything. Love would be satisfied, ambition

fulfilled, the aims of refinement reached. Why not risk the great stake?

Nancy came to tidy the room, and Kate said, “Where's Pete all this time,

I wonder?”

“Sitting in the fire-seat this half-hour,” said Nancy. “I don't know in

the world what's come over the man. He's rocking and moaning there like

a cow licking a dead calf.”

“Would he like to come up, think you?”

“Don't ask the man twice if you want him to say no,” said Nancy.

Blushing and stammering, and trying to straighten his black curls, Pete

came at Nancy's call.

Kate had few qualms. The wound she had received from Philip had left her

conscienceless towards Pete. Yet she turned her head a little sideways

as she welcomed him.

“Are you better, then, Kirry?” said Pete timidly.

“I'm nearly as well as ever,” she answered.

“You are, though?” said Pete. “Then you'll be down soon, it's like, eh?”

“I hope so, Pete--quite soon.”

“And fit for anything, now--yes?”

“Oh, yes, fit for anything.”

Pete laughed from his heart like a boy. “I'll take a slieu round to

Ballure and tell Philip immadiently.”

“Philip?” said Kate, with a look of inquiry.

“He was saying this morning you wouldn't be equal to it, Kirry.”

“Equal to what, Pete?”

“Getting--going--having--that's to say--well, you know, putting a sight

on the parson himself one of these days, that's the fact.” And, to cover

his confusion, Pete laughed till the scraas of the roof began to snip.

There was a moment's pause, and then Kate said, with a cough and a

stammer and her head aside, “Is that so _very_ tiring, Pete?”

Pete leapt from his chair and laughed again like a man demented. “D'ye

say so, Kitty? The word then, darling--the word in my ear--as soft as

soft----”

He was leaning over the bed, but Kate drew away from him, and Nancy

pulled him back, saying, “Get off with you, you goosey gander! What for

should you bother a poor girl to know if sugar's sweet, and if she's

willing to change a sweetheart for a husband?”

It was done. One act--nay, half an act; a word--nay, no word at all, but

only silence. The daring venture was afoot.

Grannie came up with Kate's dinner that day, kissed her on both cheeks,

felt them hot, wagged her head wisely, and whispered, “I know--you

needn't tell _me!_”

XIV.

The last hymn was sung, Cæsar came home from chapel, changed back

from his best to his work-day clothes, and then there was talking and

laughing in the kitchen amid the jingling of plates and the vigorous

rattling of knives and forks.

“Phil must be my best man,” said Pete. “He'll be back to Douglas now,

but I'll get you to write me a line, Cæsar, and ask him.”

“Do you hold with long engagements, Pete?” said Grannie.

“A week,” said Pete, with the air of a judge; “not much less anyway--not

of a rule, you know.”

“You goose,” cried Nancy, “it must be three Sundays for the banns.”

“Then John the Clerk shall get them going this evening,” said Pete.

“Nancy had the pull of me there, Grannie. Not being in the habit of

getting married, I clane forgot about the banns.”

John the Clerk came in the afternoon, and there was some lusty

disputation.

“We must have bridesmaids and wedding-cakes, Pete--it's only proper,”

said Nancy.

“Aw, yes, and tobacco and rum, and everything respectable,” said Pete.

“And the parson--mind it's the parson now,” said Grannie; “none of their

nasty high-bailiffs. I don't know in the world how a dacent woman can

rest in her bed----”

“Aw, the parson, of coorse--and the parson's wife, maybe,” said Pete.

“I think I can manage it for you for to-morrow fortnight,” said John

the Clerk impressively, and there was some clapping of hands, quickly

suppressed by Cæsar, with mutterings of--

“Popery! clane Popery, sir! Can't a person commit matrimony without a

parson bothering a man?”

Then Cæsar squared his elbows across the table and wrote the letter to

Philip. Pete never stood sponsor for anything so pious.

“Respected and Honoured Sir,--I write first to thee that it hath been

borne in on my mind (strong to believe the Lord hath spoken) to marry on

Katherine Cregeen, only beloved daughter of Cæsar Cregeen, a respectable

man and a local preacher, in whose house I tarry, being free to use all

his means of grace. Wedding to-morrow fortnight at Kirk Christ,

Lezayre, eleven o'clock forenoon, and the Lord make it profitable to

my soul.--With love and-reverence, thy servant, and I trust the Lord's,

Peter Quilliam.”

Having written this, Cæsar read it aloud with proper elevation of pitch.

Grannie wiped her eyes, and Pete said, “Indited beautiful, sir--only you

haven't asked him.”

“My pen's getting crosslegs,” said Cæsar, “but that'll do for an N.B.”

“N. B.--Will you come for my best man?”

Then there was more talk and more laughter. “You're a lucky fellow,

Pete,” said Pete himself. “My sailor, you are, though. She's as sweet

as clover with the bumbees humming over it, and as warm as a gorse bush

when the summer's gone.”

And then, affection being infectious beyond all maladies known to

mortals, Nancy Joe was heard to say, “I believe in my heart I must be

having a man myself before long, or I'll be losing the notion.”

“D'ye hear that, boys?” shouted Pete. “Don't all spake at once.”

“Too late--I've lost it,” said Nancy, and there was yet more laughter.

To put an end to this frivolity, Cæsar raised a hymn, and they sang it

together with cheerful voices. Then Cæsar prayed appropriately, John the

Clerk improvised responses, and Pete went out and sat on the bottom

step in the lobby and smoked up the stairs, so that Kate in the bedroom

should not feel too lonely.

XV.

Meanwhile Kate, overwhelmed with shame, humiliation, self-reproach,

horror of herself, and dread of everything, lay with cheeks ablaze and

her head buried in the bedclothes. She had no longer any need to pretend

to be sick; she was now sick in reality. Fate had threatened her. She

had challenged it. They were gambling together. The stake was her love,

her life, her doom.

By the next day she had worked herself into a nervous fever. Dr.

Mylechreest came to see her, unbidden of the family. He was one of those

tall, bashful men who, in their eagerness to be gone, seem always to

have urgent business somewhere else. After a single glance at her and

a few muttered syllables, he went off hurriedly, as if some one were

waiting for him round the corner. But on going downstairs he met Cæsar,

who asked him how he found her.

“Feverish, very; keep her in bed,” he answered. “As for this marriage,

it must be put off. She's exciting herself, and I won't answer for

the consequences. The thing has fallen too suddenly. To tell you the

truth--this way, Mr. Cregeen--I am afraid of a malady of the brain.”

“Tut, tut, doctor,” said Cæsar.

“Very well, if you know better. Good-day! But let the wedding wait.

_Traa dy liooar_--time enough, Mr. Cregeen. A right good Manx maxim for

once. Put it off--put it off!”

“It's not my putting off, doctor. What can you do with a man that's

wanting to be married? You can't bridle a horse with pincers.”

But when the doctor was gone, Cæsar said to Grannie, “Cut out the

bridesmaids and the wedding-cakes and the fiddles and the foolery, and

let the girl be married immadiently.”

“Dear heart alive, father, what's all the hurry?” said Grannie.

“And Lord bless my soul, what's all the fuss?” said Cæsar. “First

one objecting this, then another objecting that, as if everybody was

intarmined to stop the thing. It's going on, I'm telling you; d'ye hear

me? There's many a slip--but no matter. What's written with the pen

can't be cut out with the axe, so lave it alone, the lot of you.”

Kate was in an ecstasy of exultation. The doctor had been sent by

Philip. It was Philip who was trying to stop the marriage. He would

never be able to bear it; he would claim her soon. It might be to-day,

it might be to-morrow, it might be the next day. The odds were with her.

Fate was being worsted. Thus she clung to her blind faith that Philip

would intervene.

That was Monday, and on Tuesday morning Philip came again. He was very

quiet, but the heart has ears, and Kate heard him. Pete's letter had

reached him, and she could see his white face. After a few words of

commonplace conversation, he drew Pete out of the house. What had he got

to say? Was he thinking that Pete must be stopped at all hazards? Was

he about to make a clean breast of it? Was he going to tell all?

Impossible! He could not; he dared not; it was _her_ secret.

Pete came back to the house alone, looking serious and even sad. Kate

heard him exchange a few words with her father as they passed through

the lobby to the kitchen. Cæsar was saying--

“Stand on your own head, sir, that's my advice to you.”

In the intensity of her torment she could not rest. She sent for Pete.

“What about Philip?” she said. “Is he coming? What has he been telling

you?”

“Bad news, Kate--very bad,” said Pete.

There was a fearful silence for a moment. It was like the awful hush

at the instant when the tide turns, and you feel as if something has

happened to the world. Then Kate hardened her face and said, “What is

it?”

“He's ill, and wants to go away in a week. He can't come to the

wedding,'' said Pete.

“Is that all?” said Kate. Her heart leapt for joy. She could not help

it--she laughed. She saw through Philip's excuse. It was only his

subterfuge--he thought Pete would not marry without him.

“Aw, but you never seen the like, though, Kirry,” said Pete; “he was

that white and wake and narvous. Work and worry, that's the size of it.

There's nothing done in this world without paying the price of it, and

that's as true as gospel. 'The sea's calling me, Pete,' says he, and

then he laughed, but it was the same as if a ghost itself was grinning.”

In the selfishness of her enfeebled spirit, Kate still rejoiced. Philip

was suffering. It was another assurance that he would come to her

relief.

“When does he go?” she asked.

“On Tuesday,” answered Pete.

“Isn't there a way of getting a Bishop's license to marry in a week?”

said Kate.

“But will you, though?” said Pete, with a shout of joy.

“Ask Philip first. No use changing if Philip can't come.”

“He shall--he must. I won't take No.”

“You may kiss me now,” said Kate, and Pete plucked her up into his arms

and kissed her.

She was heart-dead to him yet, from the wound that Philip had dealt her,

but at the touch of his lips a feeling of horror seemed to cramp all her

limbs. With a shudder she crept down in the bed and hid her face, hating

herself, loathing herself, wishing herself dead.

He stood a moment by her side, crying like a big boy in his great

happiness. “I don't know in the world what she sees in me to be so fond

of me, but that's the way with the women always, God bless them!”

She did not lift her face, and he stepped quietly to the door. Half-way

through he turned about and raised one arm over his head. “God's rest

and God's peace be with you, and may the man that gets you keep a clane

heart and a clane hand, and be fit for the good woman he's won for his

wife.”

At the next minute he went tearing down the stairs, and the kitchen rang

with his laughter.

XVI.

Fate scored one. Kate had been telling herself that Philip was tired of

her, that he did not love her any longer, that having taken all he could

take he desired to be done with her, that he was trying to forget her,

and that she was a drag upon him, when suddenly she remembered the

tholthan, and bethought herself for the first time of a possible

contingency. Why had she not thought of it before? Why had _he_ never

thought of it? _If_ it should come to pass! The prospect did not appal

her; it did not overwhelm her with confusion or oppress her with shame;

it did not threaten to fall like a thunderbolt; the thought of it came

down like an angel's whisper.

She was not afraid. It was only an idea, only a possibility, only a

dream of consequences, but at one bound it brought her so much nearer to

Philip. It gave her a right to him. How dare he make her suffer so? She

would not permit him to leave her. He was her husband, and he must

cling to her, come what would. Across the void that had divided them

a mysterious power drew them together. She was he, and he was she, and

they were one, for--who knows?--who could say?--perhaps Nature herself

had willed it.

Thus the first effect of the new thought upon Kate was frenzied

exultation. She had only one thing to do now. She had only to go

to Philip as Bathsheba went to David. True, she could not say what

Bathsheba said. She had no certainty, but her case was no less strong.

“Have you never thought of what may possibly occur?” This is what she

would say now to Philip. And Philip would say to her, “Dearest, I have

never thought of that. Where was my head that I never reflected?” Then,

in spite of his plans, in spite of his pledge to Pete, in spite of the

world, in spite of himself--yea, in spite of his own soul if it stood

between them--he would cling to her; she was sure of it--she could swear

to it--he could not resist.

“He will believe whatever I tell him,” she thought, and she would say,

“Come to me, Philip; I am frightened.” In the torture of her palpitating

heart she would have rejoiced at that moment if she could have been sure

that she was in the position of what the world calls a shameful woman.

With that for her claim she could see herself going to Philip and

telling him, her head on his breast, whispering sweetly the great

secret--the wondrous news. And then the joy, the rapture, the long kiss

of love! “Mine, mine, mine! he is mine at last!”

That could not be quite so; she was not so happy as Bathsheba; she was

not sure, but her right was the same for all that. Oh, it was joyful, it

was delicious!

The little cunning arts of her sex, the small deceits in which she had

disguised herself fell away from her now. She said to herself, “I will

stop the nonsense about the marriage with Pete.” It was mean, it was

foolish, it was miserable trifling, it was wicked, it was a waste

of life--above all, it was doing a great, great wrong to her love of

Philip! How could she ever have thought of it?

Next morning she was up and was dressing when Grannie came into the room

with a cup of tea. “I feel so much better,” she said “that I think I'll

go to Douglas by the coach today, mother.”

“Do, bogh,” said Grannie cheerfully, “and Pete shall go with you.”

“Oh, no; I must be quite alone, mother.”

“Aw, aw! A lil errand, maybe! Shopping is it? Presents, eh? Take your

tay, then.” And Grannie rolled the blind, saying, “A beautiful morning

you'll have for it, too. I can see the spire as plain as plain.” Then,

turning about, “Did you hear the bells this morning, Kitty?”

“Why, what bells, mammy?” said Kate, through a mouthful of bread and

butter.

“The bells for Christian Killip. Her old sweetheart took her to church

at last. He wouldn't get rest at your father till he did--and her baby

two years for Christmas. But what d'ye think, now? Robbie left her at

the church door, and he's off by the Ramsey packet for England. Aw,

dear, he did, though. 'You can make me marry her,' said he, 'but you

can't make me live with her,' he said, and he was away down the road

like the dust.”

“I don't think I'll go to Douglas to-day, mother,” said Kate in a broken

voice. “I'm not so very well, after all.”

“Aw, the bogh!” said Grannie. “Making too sure of herself, was she? It's

the way with them all when they're mending.”

With cheerful protestations Grannie helped her back to bed, and then

went off with an anxious face to tell Cæsar that she was more ill than

ever.

She was ill indeed; but her worst illness was of the heart. “If I go to

him and tell him,” she thought, “he will marry me--yes. No fear that he

will leave me at the church door or elsewhere. He will stay with me. We

will be man and wife to the last. The world will know nothing. But _I_

will know. As long as I live I will remember that he only sacrificed

himself to repair a fault That shall never be--never, never!”

Cæsar came up in great alarm. He seemed to be living in hourly dread

that some obstacle would arise at the last moment to stop the marriage.

“Chut, woman!” he said play-. fully. “Have a good heart, Kitty. The

sun's not going down on you yet at all.”

That night there were loud voices from the bar-room. The talk was of the

marriage which had taken place in the morning, and of its strange and

painful sequel. John the Clerk was saying, “But you'd be hearing of the

by-child, it's like?”

“Never a word,” said somebody.

“Not heard of it, though? Fetching the child to the wedding to have the

bad name taken off it--no? They were standing the lil bogh---it's only

three--two is it, Grannie, only two?--well, they were standing the lil

thing under its mother's perricut while the sarvice was saying.”

“You don't say!”

“Aw, truth enough, sir! It's the ould Manx way of legitimating. The

parsons are knowing nothing of it, but I've seen it times.”

“John's right,” said Mr. Jelly; “and I can tell you more--it was just

_that_ the man went to church for.”

“Wouldn't trust,” said John the Clerk. “The woman wasn't getting much of

a husband out of it anyway.”

“No,” said Pete--he had not spoken before--“but the child was getting

the name of its father, though.”

“That's not mountains of thick porridge, sir,” said somebody. “Bobbie's

gone. What's the good of a father if he's doing nothing to bring you

up?”

“Ask your son if you've got any of the sort,” said Pete; “some of you

have. Ask me. I know middling well what it is to go through the world

without a father's name to my back. If your lad is like myself, he's

knowing it early and he's knowing it late. He's knowing it when he's

saying his bits of prayers atop of the bed in the gable loft: 'God bless

mother--and grandmother,' maybe--there's never no 'father' in his little

texes. And he's knowing it when he's growing up to a lump of a lad and

going for a trade, and the beast of life is getting the grip of him. Ten

to one he comes to be a waistrel then, and, if it's a girl instead, a

hundred to nothing she turns out a--well, worse. Only a notion, is

it? Just a parzon's lie, eh? Having your father's name is nothing--no?

That's what the man says. But ask the _child_, and shut your mouth for a

fool.”

There was a hush and a hum after that, and Kate, who had reached from

the bed to open the door, clutched it with a feverish grasp.

“But Christian Killip is nothing but a trollop, anyway, sir,” said

Cæsar.

“Every cat is black in the night, father--the girl's in trouble,” said

Pete. “No, no! If I'd done wrong by a woman, and she was having a child

by me, I'd marry her if she'd take me, though I'd come to hate her like

sin itself.”

Grannie in the kitchen was wiping her eyes at these brave words, but

Kate in the bedroom was tossing in a delirium of wrath. “Never, never,

never!” she thought.

Oh, yes, Philip would marry her if she imposed herself upon him, if she

hinted at a possible contingency. He, too, was a brave man; he also had

a lofty soul--he would not shrink. But no, not for the wealth of worlds.

Philip loved her, and his love alone should bring him to her side. No

other compulsion should be put upon him, neither the thought of her

possible future position, nor of the consequences to another. It was the

only justice, the only safety, the only happiness now or in the time to

come.

“He shall marry me for _my_ sake,” she thought, “for my own sake--my own

sake only.”

Thus in the wild disorder of her soul--the tempest of conflicting

passions--her pride barred up the one great way.

XVII.

There was no help for it after all--she must go on as she had begun,

with the old scheme, the old chance, the old gambling hazard. Heart-sick

and ashamed, waiting for Philip, and listening to every step, she kept

her room two days longer. Then Cæsar came and rallied her.

“Gough bless me, but nobody will credit it,” he said. “The marriage

for Monday, and the bride in bed a Wednesday. People will say it isn't

coming off at all.”

This alarmed her. It partly explained why Philip did not come. If he

thought there was no danger of the marriage, he would be in no hurry to

intervene. Next day (Thursday) she struggled up and dressed in a light

wrapper, feeling weak and nervous, and looking pale and white like

apple-blossom nipped by frost. Pete would have carried her downstairs,

but she would not have it. They established her among a pile of cushions

before a fire in the parlour, with its bowl of sea-birds' eggs that had

the faint, unfamiliar smell--its tables of old china that shook and rang

slightly with every step and sound. The kitchen was covered with the

litter of dressmakers preparing for the wedding. There were bodices

to try on, and decisions to give on points of style. Kate agreed to

everything. In a weak and toneless voice she kept on telling them to do

as they thought hest. Only when she heard that Pete was to pay did she

assert her will, and that was to limit the dresses to one.

“Sakes alive now, Kirry,” cried Nancy, “that's what I call ruining a

good husband--the man was willing to buy frocks for a boarding-school.”

Pete came, sat on a stool at her feet, and told stories. They were

funny stories of his life abroad, and now and again there came bursts

of laughter from the kitchen, where they were straining their necks to

catch his words through the doors, which they kept ajar. But Kate hardly

listened. She showed signs of impatience sometimes, and made quick

glances around when the door opened, as if expecting somebody. On

recovering herself at these moments, she found Pete looking up at her

with the big, serious, moist eyes of a dog.

He began to tell of the house he had taken, to excuse himself for not

consulting her, and to describe the progress of the furnishing.

“I've put it all in the hands of Cannell & Quayle, Kitty,” he said, “and

they're doing it beautiful. Marble slabs, bless you, like a butcher's

counter; carpets as soft as daisies, and looking-glasses as tall as a

man.”

Kate had not heard him. She was trying to remember all she knew of the

courts of the island--where they were held, and on what days.

“Have you seen Philip lately?” she asked.

“Not since Monday,” said Pete. “He's in Douglas, working like mad to be

here on Monday, God bless him!”

“What did he say when he heard we had changed the day?”

“Wanted to get out of it first. 'I'm sailing on Tuesday,' said he.”

“Did you tell him that _I_ proposed it?”

“Trust me for not forgetting that at all. 'Aw, then,' says he, 'there's

no choice left,' he says.”

Kate's pale face became paler, the dark circles about her eyes grew yet

more dark. “I think I'll go back to bed, mother,” she said in the same

toneless voice.

Pete helped her to the foot of the stairs. The big, moist eyes

were looking at her constantly. She found it hard to keep an equal

countenance.

“But will you be fit for it, darling?” said Pete.

“Why, of course she'll be fit, sir,” said Cæsar. “What girl is ever more

than middling the week before she's married?”

Next day she persuaded her father to take her to Douglas. She had little

errands there that could not be done in Ramsey. The morning was fine but

cold. Pete helped her up in the gig, and they drove away. If only she

could see Philip, if only Philip could see her, he would know by

the look of her face that the marriage was not of her making--that

compulsion of some sort was being put on her. She spent four hours

going from shop to shop, lingering in the streets, but seeing nothing

of Philip. Her step was slow and weary, her features were pinched and

starved, but Cæsar could scarcely get her out of the town. At length the

daylight began to fail, and then she yielded to his importunities.

“How short the days are now,” she said with a sigh, as they ran into the

country.

“Yes, they are a cock's stride shorter in September,” said Cæsar; “but

when a woman once gets shopping, Midsummer day itself won't do--she's

wanting the land of the midnight sun.”

Pete lifted her out of the gig in darkness at the door of the “Fairy,”

and, his great arms being about her, he carried her into the house and

set her down in the fire-seat. She would have struggled to her feet if

she had been able; she felt something like repulsion at his touch; but

he looked at her with the mute eloquence of love, and she was ashamed.

The house was full of gossips that night. They talked of the marriage

customs of old times. One described the “pay-weddings,” where the hat

went round, and every guest gave something towards the cost of the

breakfast and the expenses of beginning housekeeping--rude forefather

of the practice of the modern wedding present. Another pictured the

irregular marriages made in public-houses in the days when the island

had three breweries and thirty drinking shops to every thousand of its

inhabitants. The publican laid two sticks crosswise on the floor, and

said to the bride and bridegroom--

“Hop over the sticks and lie crossed on the floor, And you're man and

wife for nevermore.”

There was some laughter at this, but Kate sat in the fire-seat and

sipped her tea in silence, and Pete said quietly, “Nothing to laugh at,

though. I remember a girl over Foxal way that was married to a man like

that, and then he went off to Kinsale, and got kept for the herring

riots--d'ye mind them? She was a strapping girl, though, and when the

man was gone the boys came bothering her, first one and then another,

and good ones among them too. And honour bright for all, they were for

taking her to the parzon about right But no! Did they think she was for

committing beggamy? She was married to one man, and wasn't that enough

for a dacent girl anyway. And so she wouldn't and she didn't, and last

of all her own boy came back, and they lived together man and wife, and

what for shouldn't they?”

This question from the man who was on the point of going to church was

received with shouts of laughter, through which the voice of Grannie

rose in affectionate remonstrance, saying, “Aw, Pete, it's ter'ble to

hear you, bogh.”

“What's there ter'ble about that, Grannie?” said Pete. “Isn't it the

Almighty and not the parzon that makes the marriage?”

“Aw, boy veen, boy veen,” cried Grannie, “you was used to be a good man,

but you have fell off very bad.”

Kate was in a fever of eagerness. She wanted to open her heart to Pete,

to beg him to spare her, to tell him that it was impossible that they

should ever marry. Pete would see that Philip was her husband by every

true law, human and divine. In this mood she lived through much of the

following day, Friday, tossing and turning in bed, for the exhaustion of

the day in Douglas had confined her to her room again.

In the evening she came downstairs, and was established in the fire-seat

as before. There were four or five old women in the kitchen spinning

yarn for a set of blankets which Grannie intended for a wedding present.

“When the day's work was nearly done, two or three old men, the old

husbands of the old women, came to carry their wheels home again. Then,

as the wheels whirred for the last of the twist, Pete set the old crones

to tell stories of old times.

“Tell us of the days when you were young, Anne,” said Pete to an ancient

dame of eighty. Her husband of eighty-four sat sucking his pipe by her

side.

“Well,” said old Anne, stretching her arms to the yarn, “I was as near

going foreign, same as yourself, sir, just as near, now, as makes no

matter. It was the very day I married this man, and his brother was

making a start for Austrillya. Jemmy was my ould sweetheart, only I had

given him up because he was always stealing my pocket-handkerchers. But

he came that morning and tapped at my window, and 'Will you come, Anne?'

says he, and I whipped on my perricut and stole out and down to the quay

with him. But my heart was losing me when I saw the white horses on the

water, and home I came and went to church with this one instead.”

While old Anne told her story her old husband opened his mouth wider and

wider, until the pipe-shank dropped out of his toothless gums on to his

waistcoat. Then he stretched his left arm and brought down his clenched

hand with a bang on to her shoulder.

“And have you been living with me better than sixty years,” said he,

“and never telling me that before?”

Pete tried to pacify his ancient jealousy, but it was not to be

appeased, and he shouldered the wheel and hobbled off, saying, “And I

sent out two pound five to put a stone on the man's grave!”

There was loud laughter when the old couple were gone, but Pete said,

nevertheless, “A sacret's a sacret, though, and the ould lady had no

right to tell it. It was the dead man's sacret too, and she's fouled the

ould man's memory. If a person's done wrong, the best thing he can do

next is to say darned little about it.”

Kate rose and went off to bed. Another door had been barred to her, and

she felt sick and faint.

XVIII.

The next day was Saturday. Kate remembered that Philip came to Ballure

on Saturdays. She felt sure that he would come to Sulby also. Let him

only set eyes on her, and he would divine the trouble that had taken the

colour out of her cheeks. Then he would speak to Pete and to her father;

he would deliver her; he would take everything upon himself. Thus all

day long, like a white-eyed gambler who has staked his last, she waited

and listened and watched. At breakfast she said to herself, “He will

come this morning.” At dinner, “He will come this evening.” At supper,

“He will come tonight.”

But Philip did not come, and she grew hysterical as well as restless.

She watched the clock; the minutes passed with feet of lead, but the

hours with wings of fire. She was now like a criminal looking for a

reprieve. Every time the clock warned to strike, she felt one hour

nearer her doom.

The strain was wearing her out. She reproached Philip for leaving her to

this cruel uncertainty, and she suffered the pangs of one who tries

at the same time to love and to hate. Then she reproached herself with

altering the date of the marriage, and excused Philip on the grounds of

her haste. She felt like a witch who was burning by her own spell. Hope

was failing her, and Will was breaking down as well. Nevertheless, she

determined that the wedding should be postponed.

That was on Saturday night. On Sunday morning she had gone one step

farther. The last pitiful shred of expectation that Philip would

intervene seemed then to be lost, and she had resolved that, come

what would, she should not marry at all. No need to appeal to Pete; no

necessity to betray the secret of Philip. All she had to do was to

say she would not go on with the wedding, and no power on earth should

compel her.

With this determination, and a feeling of immense relief, she went

downstairs. Cæsar was coming in from the preaching-room, and Pete from

the new house at Ramsey. They sat down to dinner. After dinner she would

speak out. Cæsar sharpened the carving-knife on the steel, and said,

“We've taken the girl Christian Killip back to communion to-day.”

“Poor thing,” said Grannie, “pity she was ever put out of it, though.”

“Maybe so,--maybe no,” said Cæsar. “Necessary anyway; one scabby sheep

infects the flock.”

“And has marriage daubed grace on the poor sheep's sore then, Cæsar?”

said Pete.

“She's Mistress Robbie Teare and a dacent woman, sir,” said Cæsar,

digging into the beef, “and that's all the truck a Christian church has

got with it.”

Kate did not eat her dinner that day, and neither did she speak out as

she had intended. A supernatural power seemed to have come down at the

last moment and barred up the one remaining pathway of escape. She was

in the track of the storm. The tempest was ready to fall on her. Where

could she fly for shelter?

What her father had said of the girl had revealed her life to her in the

light of her relation to Philip. The thought of the possible contingency

which she had foreseen with so much joy, as so much power, had awakened

the consciousness of her moral position. She was a fallen woman! What

else was she? And if the contingency befell, what would become of her?

In the intensity of her father's pietistic views the very shadow of

shame would overwhelm his household, overthrow his sect, and uproot

his religious pretensions. Kate trembled at the possibility of such a

disaster coming through her. She saw herself being driven from house and

home. Where could she fly? And though she fled away, would she not still

be the cause of sorrow and disgrace to all whom she left behind--her

mother, her father, Pete, everybody?

If she could only tear out the past, at least she could stop this

marriage. Or if she had been a man she could stop it, for a man may sin

and still look to the future with a firm face. But she was a woman, and

a woman's acts may be her own, but their consequences are beyond her.

Oh, the misery of being a woman! She asked herself what she could do,

and there was no answer. She could not break the web of circumstances.

Her situation might be false, it might be dishonourable, but there was

no escape from it. There was no gleam of hope anywhere.

Late that night--Sunday night--they were sitting together in the

kitchen, Kate in the fire-seat as usual, Pete on the stool by the turf

closet, smoking up the chimney, Cæsar reading aloud, Grannie listening,

and Nancy cooking the supper, when the porch door burst open and

somebody entered. Kate rose to her feet with a startled cry of joy,

looked round eagerly, and then sat down again covered with confusion.

It was the girl Christian Killip, a pale, weak, frightened creature,

with the mouth and eyes of a hare.

“Is Mr. Quilliam here?” she asked.

“Here's the man himself, Christian,” said Grannie. “What do you want

with him?”

“Oh, God bless you, sir,” said the girl to Pete, “God bless you for ever

and ever.”

Then turning back to Grannie, she explained in woman's fashion, with

many words, that somebody unknown had sent her twenty pounds, for the

child, by post, the day before, and she had only now guessed who it must

be when John the Clerk had told her what Pete had said a week before.

Pete grunted and glimed, smoked up the chimney, and said, “That'll do,

ma'am, that'll do. Don't believe all you hear. John says more than his

Amens, anyway.”

“I'm axing your pardon, miss,” said the girl to Kate, “but I couldn't

help coming--I couldn't really--no, I couldn't,” and then she began to

cry.

“Where's that child?” said Pete, heaving up to his feet with a ferocious

look. “What! you mane to say you've left the lil thing alone, asleep? Go

back to it then immajent. Good night!”

“Good night, sir, and God bless you, and when you're married to-morrow,

God bless your wife as well!”

“That'll do--that'll do,” said Pete, backing her to the porch.

“You desarve a good woman, sir, and may the Lord be good to you both.”

“Tut! tut!” said Pete, and he tut-tutted her out of the house.

She smoothed her baby's hair more tenderly than ever that night, and

kissed it again and again.

Kate could scarcely breathe, she could barely see. Her pride and her

will had broken down utterly. This greathearted man loved her. He would

lay down his life if need be to save her. To morrow he would marry her.

Here, then, was her rock of refuge--this strong man by her side.

She could struggle against fate no longer. It's invisible hand was

pushing her on. It's blind power was dragging her. If Philip would not

come to claim her she must marry Pete.

And Pete? She meant no harm to Pete. She had not yet thought of things

from Pete's point of view. He was like the camel-bag in the desert to

the terrified wayfarer when the sand-cloud breaks oyer him. He flies to

it. It shelters him. But what of the camel itself, with its head in the

storm? Until the storm is over he does not think of that.

XIX.

Meantime Philip himself was in the throes of his own agony. At the news

of Kate's illness he was overwhelmed with remorse, and when he inquired

if she had been delirious, he was oppressed with a sense of meanness

never felt before. At his meeting with Pete he realised for the first

time to what depths his duplicity had degraded him. He had prided

himself on being a man of honour, and he was suddenly thrown out of the

paths in which he could walk honourably.

When the first shock of Kate's disaster was over, he remembered the

interview with the Governor. The Deemstership burnt in his mind with

a growing fever of desire, but he did not apply for it. He did not

even mention it to Auntie Nan. She heard of his prospects from Peter

Christian Balla-whaine, who first set foot in her house on this errand

of congratulation. The sweet old soul was wildly excited. All the hopes

of her life were about to be realised, the visions and the dreams were

coming true. Philip was going to regain what his father had lost. Had he

made his application yet? No? He would, though; it was his duty.

But Philip could not apply for the Deemstership. To sit down in cold

blood and write to the Home Secretary while Kate was lying sick in bed

would be too much like asking the devil's wages for sacrificing her.

Then came Pete with his talk of the wedding. That did not really alarm

him. It was only the last revolution of the old wheel that had been set

spinning before Pete went away. Kate would not consent. They had taken

her consent for granted. He felt easy, calm, and secure.

Next came his old master, the college friend of his father, now promoted

to the position of Clerk of the Polls. He was proud of his pupil, and

had learnt that Philip was first favourite with the Governor.

“I always knew it,” he said. “I did, ma'am, I did. The first time I set

eyes on him, thinks I, 'Here comes the makings of the best lawyer in the

island,' and by ------ he's not going to disappoint me either.”

The good fellow was a noisy, hearty, robustious creature, a bachelor,

and when talking of the late Deemster, he said women were usually the

chief obstacles in a man's career. Then he begged Auntie Nan's pardon,

but the old lady showed no anger. She agreed that it had been so in some

cases. Young men should be careful what stumbling-blocks they set up in

the way of their own progress.

Philip listened in silence, and was conscious, through all the unselfish

counselling, of a certain cynical bitterness. Still he did not make

application for the Deemstership. Then came Cæsar's letter announcing

the marriage, and even fixing a date for it. This threw him into a fit

of towering indignation. He was certain of undue pressure. They were

forcing the girl. It was his duty to stop the marriage. But how? There

was one clear course, but that course he could not take. He could not go

back on his settled determination that he must not, should not marry the

girl himself. Only one thing was left--to rely on Kate. She would never

consent. Not being able to marry _him_, she would marry no man. She

would do as he was doing--she would suffer and stand alone.

By this time Philip's love, which, in spite of himself, had grown cool

since the Melliah, and in his fierce battle with his worldly aims,

suddenly awakened to fresh violence at the approach of another man. But

his ambition fought with his love, and he began to ask himself if it

made, any difference after all in this matter of Kate whether he took

the Deemstership or left it. Kate was recovering; he had nothing to

reproach himself with, and it would be folly to sacrifice the ambition

of a lifetime to the love of a woman who could never be his, a woman he

could never marry. At that he wrote his letter to the Home Secretary.

It was a brilliant letter of its kind, simple, natural, strong, and

judicious. He had a calm assurance that nothing so good would leave the

island, yet he could not bring himself to post it. Some quiverings of

the old tenderness came back as he held it in his hand, some visions of

Kate, with her twitching lips, her passionate eyes, some whisperings of

their smothered love.

Then came Pete again with the decisive blow. Kate _had_ consented. There

was no longer any room for doubt. His former indignation seemed almost

comic, his confidence absurd. Kate was willing to marry Pete, and after

all, what right had he to blame her? What right had he to stop the

marriage? He had wronged the girl enough already. A good man came and

offered her his love. She was going to take it. How should he dare to

stop her from marrying another, being unable to marry her himself?

That night he posted his letter to the Home Secretary, and calmed the

gnawings of his love with dreams of ambition. He would regain the place

of his father; he would revive the traditions of his grandfather; the

Christians should resume their ancient standing in the Isle of Man; the

last of their race should be a strong man and a just one. No, he would

never marry; he would live alone, a quiet life, a peaceful one, slightly

tinged with melancholy, yet not altogether unhappy, not without cheer.

Under all other emotions, strengthening and supporting him, was a secret

bitterness towards Kate--a certain contempt of her fickleness, her

lightness, her shallow love, her readiness to be off with the old love

and on with the new. There was a sort of pride in his own higher type of

devotion, his sterner passion. Pete invited him to the wedding, but he

would not go, he would invent some excuse.

Then came the change of the day to suit his supposed convenience, and

also Kate's own invitation. Very well, be it so. Kate was defying him.

Her invitation was a challenge. He would take it; he would go to the

wedding. And if their eyes should meet, he knew whose eyes must fall.

XX.

Early next day the sleeping morning was awakened by the sound of a horn.

It began somewhere in the village, wandered down the glen, crossed the

bridge, plodded over the fields, and finally coiled round the house of

the bride in thickening groans of discord. This restless spirit in the

grey light was meant as herald of the approaching wedding. It came from

the husky lungs of Mr. Jonaique Jelly.

Before daylight “The Manx Fairy” was already astir. Somewhere in the

early reaches of the dawn the house had its last dusting down at the

hands of Nancy Joe. Then Grannie finished, on hearth and griddle, the

baking of her cakes. After that, some of the neighbours came and carried

off to their own fires the beef, mutton, chickens, and ducks intended

for the day's dinner. It was woman's work that was to the fore, and all

idle men were hustled out of the way.

Towards nine o'clock breakfast was swallowed standing. Then everybody

began to think of dressing. In this matter the men had to be finished

off before the women could begin. Already they were heard bellowing for

help from unseen regions upstairs. Grannie took Cæsar in hand. Pete was

in charge of Nancy Joe.

It was found at the last moment that Pete had forgotten to provide

himself with a white shirt. He had nothing to be married in except the

flannel one in which he came home from Africa. This would never do. It

wasn't proper, it wasn't respectable. There was no choice but to borrow

a shirt of Cæsar's. Cæsar's shirt was of ancient pattern, and Pete was

shy of taking it. “Take it, or you'll have none,” said Nancy, and she

pushed him back into his room. When he emerged from it he walked with

a stiff neck down the stairs in a collar that reached to his ears at

either side, and stood out at his cheeks like the wings of a white bat,

with two long sharp points on the level of his eyes, which he seemed to

be watching warily to avoid the stab of their ironed starch. At the

same moment Cæsar appeared in duck trousers, a flowered waistcoat, a

swallow-tail coat, and a tall hat of rough black beaver.

The kitchen was full of men and women by this time, and groups of young

fellows were gathered on the road outside, some with horses, saddled and

bridled for the bride's race home after the ceremony; others with guns

ready loaded for firing as the procession appeared; and others again

with lines of print handkerchiefs, which, as substitutes for flags, they

were hanging from tree to tree.

At every moment the crowd became greater outside, and the company inside

more dense. John the Clerk called on his way to church, and whispered

Pete that everything was ready, and they were going to sing a beautiful

psalm.

“It isn't many a man's wedding I would be taking the same trouble with,”

said John. “When you are coming down the alley give a sight up, sir, and

you'll see me.”

“He's only a poor thing,” said Mr. Jelly in Pete's ear as John the Clerk

went off. “No more music in the man than my ould sow. Did you hear the

horn this morning, sir? Never got up so early for a wedding before. I'll

be giving you 'the Black and the Grey' going into the church.”

Grannie came down in a gigantic bonnet like a half-moon, with her white

cap visible beneath it; and Nancy Joe appeared behind her, be-ribboned

out of all recognition, and taller by many inches for the turret of

feathers and flowers on the head that was usually bare.

Then the church bells began to peal, and Cæsar made a prolonged A--hm!

and said in a large way, “Has the carriage arrived?”

“It's coming over by the bridge now,” said somebody at the door, and at

the next moment a covered wagonette drew up at the porch.

“All ready?” asked Cæsar.

“Stop, sir,” said Pete, and then, turning to Nancy Joe, “Is it glad a

man should be on his wedding-day, Nancy?”

“Why, of coorse, you goose. What else?” she answered.

“Well, no man can be glad in a shirt like this,” said Pete; “I'm going

back to take it off.”

Two minutes afterwards he reappeared in his flannel one, under his suit

of blue pilot, looking simple and natural, and a man every inch of him.

“Now call the bride,” said Cæsar.

XXI.

Kate had been kept awake during the dark hours with a sound in her ears

that was like the measured ringing of far-off bells. When the daylight

came she slept a troubled sleep, and when she awoke she had a sense of

stupefaction, as if she had taken a drug, and was not yet recovered from

the effects of it. Nancy came bouncing into her room and crying, “It's

your wedding-day, Kitty!” She answered by repeating mechanically, “It's

your wedding day, Kitty.”

There was an expression of serenity on her face; she even smiled a

little. A sort of vague gaiety came over her, such as comes to one who

has watched long in agony and suspense by the bed of a sick person and

the person is dead. Nancy drew the little window curtain aside, stooped

down, and looked out and said, “'Happy the bride the sun shines on'

they're saying, and look! the sun is shining.”

“Oh, but the sun is an old sly-boots,” she answered.

They came up to dress her. She kept stumbling against things, and then

laughing in a faint way. The dress was the new one, and when they had

put it on they stood back from her and shouted with delight. She took up

the little broken hand-glass to look at herself. Her great eyes sparkled

piteously.

The church bells began to ring her wedding-peal. She had to listen hard

to hear it. All sounds seemed to be very far away; everything looked a

long way off. She was living in a sort of dead white dawn of thought and

feeling.

At last they came to say the coach was ready and everything was waiting

for the bride. She repeated their message like a machine, made a slow

gesture, and followed them downstairs. When she got near to the bottom,

she looked around on the faces below as if expecting to see somebody.

Just then her father was saying, “Mr. Christian is to meet us at the

church.”

She smiled faintly and answered the people's greetings in an indistinct

tone. There was some indulgent whispering at sight of her pale face.

“Pale but genteel,” said some one, and then Nancy reached over and drew

the bride's veil down over her face.

At the next minute she was outside the house, standing at the back of

the wagonette. The coachman, with his white rosette, was holding the

door open on one side, and her father was elevating her hand on the

other.

“Am I to go, then?” she asked in a helpless voice.

“Well, what do _you_ think?” said Cæsar. “Shall the man slip off and get

married to himself, think you?”

There was laughter among the people standing round, and she laughed also

and stepped into the coach. Her mother followed her, crinkling in noisy

old silk, and Nancy Joe came next, smelling of lavender and hair-oil.

Then her father got in, and then Pete, with his great warm presence.

A salute of six guns was fired straight up by the coach-windows. The

horses pranced, Nancy screamed, and Grannie started, but Kate gave no

sign. People were closing round the coach-door and shouting altogether

as at a fair. “Good luck to you, boy. Good luck! Good luck!” Pete was

answering in a rolling voice that seemed to be lifting the low roof off,

and at the same time flinging money out in handfuls as the horses moved

away.

They were going slowly down the road. From somewhere in front came

the sound of a clarionet. It was playing “the Black and the Grey.”

Immediately behind there was the tramp of people walking with an even

step, and on either side the rustle of an irregular crowd. The morning

was warm and beautiful. Here and there the last of the golden cushag

glistened on the hedges with the first of the autumn gorse. They passed

two or three houses that had been made roofless by the recent storm,

and once or twice they came on a fallen tree-trunk with its thin leaves

yellowing on the fading grass.

Kate was floating vaguely through these sights and sounds. It was all

like a dream to her--a waking dream in shadow-land. She knew where she

was and where she was going. Some glimmering of hope was left yet.

She was half expecting a miracle of some sort. Philip would be at the

church. Something supernatural would occur.

They drew up sharply, the glass of the windows rattled, and the talk

that had been going on in the carriage ceased. “Here we are,” cried

Cæsar; there were voices outside, and then the others inside stepped

down. She saw a hand held out to her and knew whose it was before her

eyes had risen to the face. Philip was there. He was helping her to

alight.

“Am I to get down too?” she asked in a helpless way.

Cæsar said something that made the people laugh again, and then she

smiled like faded sunshine and took the hand of Philip. She held it a

moment as if expecting him to say something, but he only raised his hat.

His face was white as marble. He will speak yet, she thought.

Over the gateway to the churchyard there was an arch of flowers and

evergreens, with an inscription in coloured letters: “God bless the

happy pair.” The sloping path going down as to a dell was strewn with

gilvers and slips of fuchsia.

At the bottom stood the old church mantled in ivy, like a rock of the

sea covered by green moss.

Leaning on her father's arm she walked in at the porch. The church was

full of people. As they passed under the gallery there was a twittering

as of birds. The Sunday-school girls were up there, looking down and

talking eagerly. Then the coughing and hemming ceased; there was a sort

of deep inspiration; the church seemed to hold its breath for a moment.

After that there were broken exclamations, and the coughing and hemming

began again. “How pale!”--“Not fit, poor thing.” Everybody was pitying

her starved features.

“Stand here,” said somebody in a soft voice.

“Must I?” she said quite loudly.

All at once she was aware that she was alone before the communion rail,

with the parson--old ruddy-faced Parson Quiggin--in his white surplice

facing her. Some one came and stood beside her. It was Pete. She did not

look at him, but she felt his warm presence again, and was relieved. It

was like shelter from the eyes around. After a moment she turned about

Philip was one step behind Pete. His head was bent.

Then the service began. The voice of the parson muttered words in a low

voice, but she did not listen. She found herself trying to spell out the

Manx text printed over the chancel arch: “Bannet T'eshyn Ta Cheet ayns

Ennyn y Chearn” (“Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord”).

Suddenly the words the parson was speaking leapt into meaning and made

her quiver.

“.... is commended of Saint Paul to be honourable among all men, and

therefore not by any to be enterprised, nor taken in hand unadvisedly,

lightly, or wantonly----”

She seemed to know that Philip's eyes were on her. They were on the back

of her head, and the veil over her face began to shake.

The voice of the parson was going on again--

“Therefore if any man can show just cause why they may not lawfully be

joined together, let him now speak, or else hereafter for ever hold his

peace.”

She turned half around. Her eyes fell on Philip. His face was

colourless, almost fierce; his forehead was deathly white. She was sure

that something was about to happen.

Now was the moment for the miracle. It seemed to her as if the whole

congregation were beginning to divine what tie there was between him and

her. She did not care, for he would soon declare it. He was going to do

so now; he had raised his head, he was about to speak.

No, there was no miracle. Philip's eyes fell before her eyes, and his

head went down. He was only digging at the red baize with one of his

feet. She felt tired, so very tired, and oh! so cold. The parson had

gone on with his reading. When she caught up with him he was saying--

“--as ye shall, answer at the great day of judgment, when the secrets of

all hearts shall be disclosed, that if either of you know any impediment

why ye may not be lawfully joined together in matrimony, ye do now

confess it.”

The parson paused. He had always paused at that point. The pause had no

meaning for him, but for Kate how much! Impediment! There was indeed an

impediment. Confess? How could she ever confess? The warning terrified

her. It seemed to have been made for her alone. She had heard it before,

and thought nothing of it. Now it seemed to scorch her very soul. She

began to tremble violently.

There was an indistinct murmur which she did not catch. The parson

seemed to be speaking to Pete--

“--love her, comfort her, honour and keep her... so long as ye both

shall live.”

And then came Pete's voice, full and strong from his great chest, but

far off, and going by her ear like a voice in a shell--“I will.”

After that the parson's words seemed to be falling on her face.

“Wilt thou have this man to thy wedded husband, to live together after

God's ordinance in the holy estate of matrimony? Wilt thou obey him and

serve him, love, honour, and keep him in sickness and in health; and

forsaking all other, keep thee unto him, so long as ye both shall live?”

Kate was far away. She was spelling out the Manx text, “Bannet T'eshyn

Ta Cheet,” but the letters were dancing in and out of each other, and

yellow lights were darting from her eyes. Suddenly she was aware that

the parson's voice had stopped. There was blank silence, then an uneasy

rustle, and then somebody was saying something in a soft tone.

“Eh?” she said aloud.

The parson's voice came now in a whisper at her breast--“Say, 'I will.'”

“Ah I,” she murmured.

“I-will! That's all, my dear. Say it with me, 'I--will.'”

She framed her lips to speak, but the words were half uttered by the

parson. The next thing she knew was that a stray hand was holding her

hand. She felt more safe now that her poor cold fingers lay in that big

warm palm.

It was Pete, and he was speaking again. She did not so much hear him as

feel his voice tingling through her veins.

“I, Peter Quilliam, take thee, Katherine Cregeen----'”

But it was all a vague murmur, fraying off into nothing, ending like a

wave with a long upward plash of low sound.

The parson was speaking to her again, softly, gently, caressingly,

almost as if she were a frightened child. “Don't be afraid, my dear! try

to speak after me. Take your time.”

Then, aloud, “'I, Katherine Cregeen.'”

Her throat gurgled; she faltered, but she spoke at length in the

toneless voice of one who speaks in sleep.

“'I, Katherine Cregeen---'”

“'Take thee, Peter Quilliam----'”

The toneless voice broke---- “take thee, Peter Quilliam------'”

And then all came in a rush, with some of the words distinctly repeated,

and some of them droned and dropped--

“--'to my wedded husband, to have and to hold-----'”

“--'have and to hold-----'”

“--'from this day forward.... till death do us part-----'”

“--'death do us part------'”

“--'therefore I give thee my troth------'”

“--'troth------'”

The last word fell like a broken echo, and then there was a rustle in

the church, and much audible breathing. Some of the school-girls in the

gallery were reaching over the pews with parted lips and dancing eyes.

Pete had taken her left hand, and was putting the ring on her finger.

She was conscious of his warm breath and of the words--

“With this ring I thee wed, with my body I thee worship, and with all my

worldly goods I thee endow, Amen.”

Again she left her cold hand in Pete's warm hand. He was stroking it on

the outside with his other one.

It was all a dream. She seemed to rally from it as she moved down the

aisle. Ghostly faces were smiling at her out of the air on either side,

and the choir in the gallery behind the school-girls were singing the

psalm, with John the Clerk's husky voice drawling out the first word

of each new verse as his companions were singing the last word of the

preceding one--

“Thy wife shall be as the fruitful vine upon the walls of thine house;

Thy children like the olive branches round about thy table.

As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be;

World without end, A--men.”

They were all in the vestry now, standing together in a group. Her

mother was wiping her eyes, Pete was laughing, and Nancy Joe was

nudging him and saying in an audible whisper, “Kiss her, man--it's only

respectable.”

The parson was leaning over the table. He spoke to Pete, and then said,

“A substantial mark, too. The lady's turn next.”

The open book was before her, and the pen was put into her hand. When

she laid it down, the parson returned his spectacles to their sheath,

and a nervous voice, which thrilled and frightened her, said from

behind, “Let me be the first to wish you happiness, Mrs. Quilliam.”

It was Philip. She turned towards him, and their eyes met for a moment.

But she was only conscious of his prominent nose, his clear-cut chin,

his rapid smile like sunshine, disappearing as before a cloud. He said

something else--something about a new life and a new beginning--but she

could not gather its meaning, her mind would not take it in. At the next

moment they were all in the open air.

XXII.

Philip had been in torment--first the torment of an irresistible hatred

of Kate. He knew that this hatred was illogical, that it was monstrous;

but it supported his pride, it held him safe above self-contempt in

being present at the wedding. When the carriage drew up at the church

gate, and he helped Kate to alight, he thought she looked up at him as

one who says, “You see, things are not so bad after all!” And when she

turned her face to him at the beginning of the service, he thought

it wore a look of fierce triumph, of victory, of disdain. But as the

ceremony proceeded and he observed her absent-ness, her vacancy, her

pathetic imbecility, he began to be oppressed by an awful sense of her

consciousness of error. Was she taking this step out of pique? Was she

thinking to punish him, forgetting the price she would have to pay?

Would she awake to-morrow morning with her vexation and vanity gone,

face to face with a hideous future--the worst and most terrible that

is possible to any woman--that of being married to one man and loving

another?

Faugh! Would his own vanity haunt him even there? Shame, shame! He

forced himself to do the duty of a best man. In the vestry he approached

the bride and muttered the conventional wishes. His heart was devouring

itself like a rapid fire, and it was as much as he could do to look

into her piteous eyes and speak. Struggle as he might at that moment, he

could not put out of his heart a passionate tenderness. This frightened

him, and straightway he resolved to see no more of Kate. He must be fair

to her, he must be true to himself. But walking behind her up the path

strewn with flowers from the church door to the gate, the gnawings of

the worm of buried love came on him again, and he felt like a man who

was being dragged through the dirt.

XXIII.

Four saddle-horses, each with its rider seated and ready, had been

waiting at the churchyard gate, pawing up the gravel. The instant the

bride and bridegroom came out of the church the horses set off for

Cæsar's house at a furious gallop. Kate and Pete, Cæsar, Grannie, and

Nancy, with the addition of Philip and Parson Quiggin, returned in the

covered carriage.

At the turn of the road the way was blocked by a group of stalwart girls

out of the last of the year's cornfields. With the straw rope of the

stackyard stretched across, they demanded toll before the carriage would

be allowed to pass. Pete, who sat by the door, put his head out and

inquired solemnly if the highway women would take their charge in silver

or in kind--half-a-crown apiece or a kiss all round. They laughed, and

answered that they saw no objection to taking both. Whereupon Pete,

whispering behind his hand that the mistress was looking, tossed into

the air a paper bag, which rose like a cannon-ball, broke in the air

like a shell, and fell over their white sun-bonnets like a shower.

At the door of “The Manx Fairy” the four riders were waiting with

smoking horses. The first to arrive had been rewarded already with a

bottle of rum. He had one other ancient privilege. As the coach drove up

to the door, he stepped up to the bride with the wedding-cake and broke

it over her head. Then there was a scramble for the pieces among the

girls who gathered round her, that they might take them to bed and dream

of a day to come when they should themselves be as proud and happy.

The wedding-breakfast (a wedding-dinner) was laid in the loft of the

mill, the chapel of The Christians. Cæsar sat at the head of the table,

with Grannie on one side and Kate on the other. Pete sat next to Kate,

and Philip next to Grannie. The parson sat at the foot with Nancy Joe, a

lady of consequence, receiving much consideration, at his reverent right

hand. Jonaique Jelly sat midway down the table, with a fine scorn on

his features, for John the Clerk sat opposite with a fiddle gripped

between his knees.

The neighbours brought in the joints of beef and mutton, the chickens

and the ducks. Cæsar and the parson carved. Black Tom, who had been

invited by way of truce, served out the liquor from an eighteen-gallon

cask, and sucked it up himself like the sole of an old shoe. Then Cæsar

said grace, and the company fell to. Such noise, such sport, such chaff,

such laughter! Everything was a jest--every word had wit in it. “How are

you doing, John?”--“Haven't done as well for a month, sir; but what's

it saying, two hungry meals make the third a glutton.”--“How are _you_

doing, Tom?”--“No time to get a right mouthful for myself Cæsar; kept

so busy with the drink.”--“Aw, there'll be some with their top works

hampered soon.”--“Got plenty, Jonaique?”--“Plenty, sir, plenty. Enough

down here to victual a menagerie. It'll be Sunday every day of the week

with the man that's getting the lavings.”--“Take a taste of this

beef before it goes, Mr. Thomas Quilliam, or do you prefer the

mutton?”--“I'm not partic'lar, Mr. Cregeen. Ateing's nothing to me

but filling a sack that's empty.”

Grannie praised the wedding service--it was lovely--it was

beautiful--she didn't think the ould parzon could have made the like;

but Cæsar criticised both church and clergy--couldn't see what for the

cross on the pulpit and the petticoat on the parson. “Popery, sir, clane

Popery,” he whispered across Grannie to Philip.

Away went the shanks of mutton, the breasts of birds, and the slabs of

beef, and up came an apple-pudding as round as a well-fed salmon, and as

long as a twenty-pound cod. There was a shout of welcome. “None of your

dynamite pudding that,--as green as grass and as sour as vinegar.”

Kate was called on to make the first cut of the monster. A faint colour

had returned to her cheeks since she had come home. She was talking a

little, and even laughing sometimes, as if the weight on her heart

was lightening every moment. She rose at the call, took, with the hand

nearest to the dish, the knife that her father held out, and plunged

it into the pudding. As she did so, with all eyes upon her, the

wedding-ring on her finger flashed in the light and was seen by

everybody.

“Look at that, though,” cried Black Tom. “There's the wife for a

husband, if you plaze. Ashamed of showing it, is she? Not she, the

bogh.”

Then there was much giggling among the younger women, and cries of “Aw,

the poor girl! Going to church has been making her left-handed!”

“Time enough, my beauties,” cried Pete; “and mind you're not struck that

way yourselves one of these days.”

Away went the dishes, and the parson rose to return thanks.

“Never heard that grace but once before, Parson Quiggin,” said Pete,

“and then”--lighting his pipe--“then it was a burial sarvice.”

“A _burial_ sarvice!”

A dozen voices echoed the words together, and in a moment the table was

quiet.

“Yes, though,” said Pete. “It was up at Johannesburg. Two chums settled

there, and one married a girl. Nice lil thing, too; some of the Boer

girls, you know; but not much ballast at her at all. The husband went

up country for the Consolidated Co., and when he came back there was

trouble. Chum had been sweethearting the wife a bit!”

“Aw, dear!”--“Aw, well, well!”

“Do? The husband? He went after the chum with a repeater, and took him.

Bath-chair sort of a chap--no fight in him at all. 'Mercy!' he cries. 'I

can't,' says the husband. 'Forgive him this once,' says the wife. 'It's

only once a woman loses herself,' says the man. 'Mercy, mercy!' 'Say

your prayers.' 'Mercy, mercy, mercy!' 'Too late!' and the husband shot

him dead. The woman dropped in a faint, but the man said, 'He didn't say

his prayers, though--I must be doing it for him.' Then down he went on

his knees by the body, but the prayers were all forgot at him--all but

the bit of a grace, so he said that instead.”

Loud breathings on every side followed Pete's story, and Cæsar, leaning

over towards Philip, whose face had grown ashy, said, “Terrible, sir,

terrible! But still and for all, right enough, though, eh! What's it

saying, Better an enemy than a bad friend.”

Philip answered absently; his eyes were on the opposite side of the

table. There was a sudden rising of the people about Kate.

“Water, there,” shouted Pete. “It's a thundering blockhead I am for

sure--frightning the life out of people with stories fit for a funeral.”

“No, no,” said Kate; “I'm not faint Why should you think so?”

“Of coorse, not, bogh,” said Nancy, who was behind her in a twinkling.

“White is she? Well, what of it, man? It's only becoming on a girl's

wedding-day. Take a lil sup, though, woman--there, there!”

Kate drank the water, with the glass jingling against her teeth, and

then began to laugh. The parson's ruddy face rose at the end of the

table. “Friends,” he said, “after that tragic story, let us indulge in

a little vanity. Fill up your glasses to the brim, and drink with me to

the health of the happy couple. We all know both of them. We know the

bride for a good daughter and a sweet girl--one so naturally pure that

nobody can ever say an evil word or think an evil thought when she is

near. We know the bridegroom for a real Manxman, simple and rugged and

true, who says all he thinks and thinks all he says. God has been

very good to them. Such virginal and transparent souls have much to be

thankful for. It is not for them to struggle with that worst enemy of

man, the enemy that is within, the enemy of bad passions. So we can wish

them joy on their union with a full heart and a sure hope that, whatever

chance befall them on the ways of this world, they will be happy and

content.”

“Aw, the beautiful advice,” said Grannie, wiping her eyes.

“Popery, just Popery,” muttered Cæsar. “What about original sin?”

There was a chorus of applause. Kate was still laughing. Philip's head

was down.

“And now, friends,” continued the parson, “Captain Quilliam has been a

successful man abroad, but he has had to come home to do the best piece

of work he ever did.” (A voice--“Do it yourself, parzon.”) “It is true

I've never done it myself. Vanity of vanities, love is not for me. It's

been the Lord's will to put me here to do the marrying and leave my

people to do the loving. But there is a young man present who has all

the world before him and everything this life can promise except one

thing, and that's the best thing of all--a wife.” (Kate's laughter grew

boisterous.) “This morning he helped his friend to marry a pure and

beautiful maiden. Now let me remind him of the text which says, 'Go thou

and do likewise.'”

The toast was drunk standing, with shouts of “Cap'n Pete,” and,

amid much hammering on the table, stamping on the floor, and other

thunderings of applause, Cap'n Pete rolled up to reply. After a moment's

pause, in which he distributed sage winks and nods on every side, he

said: “I'm not much for public spaking myself. I made my best speech and

my shortest in church this morning--_I will_. The parzon has has been

telling my _dooiney molla_ to do as I have done today. He can't. Begging

pardon of the ladies, there's only one woman on the island fit for him,

and I've got her.” (Kate's laughter grew shrill.) “My wife----”

At this word, uttered with an air of life-long familiarity, twenty

clay pipes lost their heads by collision with the table, and Pete was

interrupted by roars of laughter.

“Gough bless me, can't a married man mention his wife in company? Well

then. Mistress Cap'n Peter Quilliam----”

This mouthful was the signal for another riotous interruption, and a

general call for more to drink.

“Won't that do for you neither? I'm not going back on it, though. 'Whom

God hath joined together let no man put asunder'--isn't that it, Parzon

Quiggin? What's it you're saying--no man but the Dempster? Well, the

Dempster's here that is to be--I'll clear him of _that_, anyway.”

Kate's laughter became explosive and uncontrollable. Pete nodded

sideways to fill up the gap in his eloquence, and then went on. “But if

my _dooiney molla_ can't marry my wife, there's one thing he can do for

her--he can make her house his home in Ramsey when he goes to Douglas

for good and comes down here to the coorts once a fortnight.”

Kate laughed more immoderately than ever; but Philip, with a look of

alarm, half rose from his seat, and said across the table, “There's my

aunt at Ballure, Pete.”

“She'll be following after you,” said Pete.

“There are hotels enough for travellers,” said Philip.

“Too many by half, and that's why I asked in public,” said Pete.

“I know the brotherly feeling----” began Philip.

“Is it a promise?” demanded Pete.

“If I can't escape your kindness----”

“No, you can't; so there's an end of it.”

“It will kill me yet----”

“May you never die till it polishes you off.”.

At Philip's submission to Pete's will, there was a general chorus of

cheers, through which Kate's shrill laughter rang like a scream. Pete

patted the back of her hand, and continued, “And now, young fellows

there, let an ould experienced married man give you a bit of advice--he

swore away all his worldly goods this morning, so he hasn't much else to

give. I've no belief in bachelors myself. They're like a tub without a

handle--nothing to lay hould of them by.” (Much nudging and whispering

about the bottom of the table.) “What's that down yonder? 'The vicar,'

you say? Aw, the vicar's a grand man, but he's only a parzon, you see.

Mr. Christian, is it? He's got too much work to do to be thinking about

women. We're living on the nineteenth century, boys, and it's middling

hard feeding for some of us. If the fishing's going to the dogs and the

farming going to the deuce, don't be tossing head over tip at the tail

of the tourist. If you've got the pumping engine inside of you, in plain

English, if you've got the indomable character of the rael Manxman, do

as I done--go foreign. Then watch your opportunity. What's Shake-spar

saying?” Pete paused. “What's that he's saying, now?” Pete scratched his

forehead. “Something about a flood, anyway.” Pete stretched his hand out

vigorously. “'Lay hould of it at the flood,' says he, 'that's the way to

make your fortune.'”

Then Pete melted to sentiment, glanced down at Kate's head, and

continued, “And when you come back to the ould island--and there isn't

no place like it--you can marry the girl of your heart, God bless her.

Work's black, but money's white, and love is as sweet on potatoes and

herrings three times a day, as on nothing for dinner, and the same every

night of the week for supper. While you're away, you'll be draming of

her. 'Is she faithful?' 'Is she thrue?' Coorse she is, and waiting to

take you the very minute you come home.” Kate was still laughing as if

she could not stop. “Look out for the right sort, boys. Plenty of the

like in yet. If the young men of these days are more smart and more

educated than their fathers, the young women are more handsome and more

virtuous than their mothers. So _ben-my-chree_, my hearties, and enough

in the locker to drive away the divil and the coroner.”

Through the volley of cheers which followed Pete's speech came the

voice of Black Tom, thick with drink, “Drive off the crow at the

wedding-breakfast.”

Everybody rose and looked. A great crow, black as night, had come in

at the open door of the mill, calmly, sedately, as if by habit, for the

corn that usually lay there.

“It manes divorce,” said Black Tom.

“Scare it away,” cried some one.

“It's the new wife must do it,” said another.

“Where's Kate?” cried Nancy.

But Kate only looked and went on laughing as before.

The crow turned tail and took flight of itself at finding so eager

an audience. Then Pete said, “Whose houlding with such ould wife's

wonders?”

And Cæsar answered, “Coorse not, or fairies either. I've slept out all

night on Cronk-ny-airy-Lhaa--before my days of grace, I mane--and I

never seen no fairies.”

“It would be a fool of a fairy, though, that would let _you_ see him,

Cæsar,” said Black Tom.

At nine o'clock Cæsar's gig was at the door of “The Manx Fairy” to take

the bride and bridegroom home. They had sung “Mylecharane,” and “Keerie

fu Snaighty,” and “Hunting the Wren,” and “The Win' that Shook the

Barley,” and then they had cleared away the tables and danced to the

fiddle of John the Clerk and the clarionet of Jonaique Jelly. Kate, with

wild eyes and flushed cheeks, had taken part in everything, but always

fiercely, violently, almost tempestuously, until people lost enjoyment

of her heartiness in fear of her hysteria, and Cæsar whispered Pete to

take her away, and brought round the gig to hasten them.

Kate went up for her cloak and hat, and in the interval between her

departure and reappearance, Grannie and Nancy Joe, both glorified

beings, Nancy with her unaccustomed cap askew, stood in the middle of a

group of women, who were deferring, and inquiring, and sympathising.

“I don't know in the world how she has kept up so long,” said Grannie.

“And dear heart knows how _I'm_ to keep up when she's gone,” said Nancy,

with her apron to her eyes.

Kate came down ready. Everybody followed her into the road, and all

stood round the gig with flashes from the gig-lamps on their faces,

while Pete swung her up into the seat, lifting her bodily in his great

arms.

“You wouldn't drown yourself to-night for an ould rusty nail, eh,

Capt'n?” cried somebody with a laugh.

“You go bail,” said Pete, and he leapt up to Kate's side, twiddled the

reins, cracked the whip, and they drove away.

XXIV.

Philip had stood at the door of the porch, struggling to command his

soul, and employing all his powers to look cheerful and even gay. But as

Kate had passed she had looked at him with an imploring look, and then

he had seemed to understand everything--that she had made a mistake and

that she knew it, that her laughter had been bitterer than tears, that

some compulsion had been put upon her, and that she was a wretched and

miserable woman. At the next moment she had gone by with an odour

of lace and perfume; and then a flood of tenderness, of pity, of mad

jealousy had come upon him, and it had been as much as he could do to

restrain himself. One instant he held himself in hand, and at the next

the wheels of the gig had begun to move, the horse had started, the

women had trooped into the house again, and there was nothing before him

but the broad back of Cæsar, who was looking into the darkness after the

vanishing gig-lamps, and breathing asthmatical breath.

“Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother and shall cleave

unto his wife,” said Cæsar. “You're time enough yet, sir; come in, come

in.”

But the man was odious to Philip at that moment, the house was odious,

the people and the talk inside were odious, and he slipped away

unobserved.

Too late! From the torment of his own thoughts he could not escape--his

lost love, his lost happiness, his memories of the past, his dreams of

the future. A voice--it was his own voice--seemed to be taunting him

constantly: “You were not worthy of her. You did not know her value. She

is gone; and what have you got instead!”

The Deemstership! That was of no consequence now. A name, an idle name!

Love was the only thing worth having, and it was lost. Without it all

the rest was nothing, and he had flung it away. He had been a monster,

he had been a fool. The thought of his folly was insupportable;

the recollection of his selfishness was stifling; the memory of his

calculating deliberations was dragging him again in the dust. Thus, with

a sense of crushing shame, he plunged down the dark road, trying not to

think of the gig that had gone swinging along in front of him.

He would leave the island. To-morrow he would sail for England. No

matter if he lost the chance of promotion. To-morrow, to-morrow! But

to-night? How could he live through the hours until morning, with the

black thoughts which the darkness generated? How could he sleep? How lie

awake? What drug would bring forgetfulness? Kate! Pete! To-night! Oh,

God! oh, God!

XXV.

Six strides of the horse into the darkness and Kate's hysteria was

gone. She had been lost to herself the whole day-through, and now she

possessed herself again. She grew quiet and silent, and even solemn. But

Pete rattled on with cheerful talk about the day's doings. At the doors

of the houses on the road as they passed, people were standing in the

half-light to wave them salutations, and Pete sent back his answers in

shouts and laughter. Turning the bridge they saw a little group at the

porch of the “Ginger.”

“There's company waiting for us yonder,” said Pete, giving the mare a

touch of the whip.

“Let us get on,” said Kate in a nervous whisper.

“Aw, let's be neighbourly, you know,” said Pete. “It wouldn't be dacent

to disappoint people at all. We'll hawl up for a minute just, and hoof

up the time at a gallop. Woa, lass, woa, mare, woa, bogh!”

As the gig drew up at the inn door, a voice out of the porch cried, “Joy

to you, Capt'n, and joy to your lady, and long life and prosperity to

you both, and may the Lord give you children and health and happiness to

rear them, and may you see your children's children, and may they call

you blessed.”

“Glasses round. Mrs. Kelly,” shouted Pete.

“Go on, please,” said Kate in a fretful whisper, and she tugged at

Pete's sleeve.

The stars came out; the moon gave a peep; the late hay of the Curragh

sent a sweet odour through the night. Kate shuddered and Pete covered

her shoulders with a rug. Then he began to sing snatches. He sang bits

of all the songs that had been sung that night, but kept coming back at

intervals to an old Manx ditty which begins--

“Little red bird of the black turf ground,

Where did you sleep last night?”

Thus he sang like a great boy as he went rolling down the dark road, and

Kate sat by his side and trembled.

They came to the town, rattled down the Parliament Street, passed the

Court-house under the trees, turned the sharp angle by the market-place,

and drew up at Elm Cottage in the corner.

“Home at last,” cried Pete, and he leapt to the ground.

A dog began to bark inside the house. “D'ye hear him?” said Pete.

“That's the master in charge.”

The porch door was opened, and a comfortable-looking woman in a widow's

cap came out with a lighted candle shaded by her hand.

“And this is your housekeeper, Mrs. Gorry,” said Pete.

Kate did not answer. Her eyes had been fixed in a rigid stare on the

hind-quarters of the horse, which were steaming in the light of the

lamps. Pete lifted her down as he had lifted her up. Then Mrs. Gorry

took her by the hand, and saying, “Mind the step, ma'am--this way,

ma'am,” led her through the gate and along the garden path, and up

to the porch. The porch opened on a square hall, furnished as a

sitting-room. A fire was burning, a lamp was lit, the table was laid for

supper, and the place was warm and cosy.

“_There!_ What d'ye say to _that_?” cried Pete, coming behind with the

whip in his hand.

Kate looked around; she did not speak; her eyes began to fill.

“Isn't it fit for a Dempster's lady?” said Pete, sweeping the

whip-handle round the room like a showman.

Kate could bear no more. She sank into a chair and burst into a fit of

tears. Pete's glowing face dropped in an instant.

“Dear heart alive, darling, what is it?” he said. “My poor girl, what's

troubling you at all? Tell me, now--tell me, bogh, tell me.”

“It's nothing, Pete, nothing. Don't ask me,” said Kate. But still she

sobbed as if her heart would break.

Pete stood a moment by her side, smoothing her arm with his hand. Then

he said, with a crack and a quaver in his great voice, “It _is_ hard

for a girl, I know that, to lave father and mother and every one and

everything that's been sweet and dear to her since she was a child, and

to come to the house of her husband and say, 'The past has been very

good to me; but still and for all, I'm for trusting the future to you.'

It's hard, darling; I know it's hard.”

“Oh, leave me! leave me!” cried Kate, still weeping.

Pete brushed his sleeve across his eyes, and said, “Take her upstairs,

Mrs. Gorry, while I'm putting up the mare at the 'Saddle.'”

Then he whistled to the dog, which had been watching him from the

hearthrug, and went out of the house. The handle of the whip dragged

after him along the floor.

Mrs. Gorry, full of trouble, took Kate to her room. Would she not eat

her supper? Then salts were good for headache-should she bring a bottle

from her box? After many fruitless inquiries and nervous protestations,

the good soul bade Kate good-night and left her.

Being alone, Kate broke into yet wilder paroxysms of weeping. The

storm-cloud which had been gathering had burst at last. It seemed as if

the whole weight of the day had been deferred until then. The piled-up

hopes of weeks had waited for that hour, to be cast down in the sight

of her own eyes. It was all over. The fight with Fate was done, and the

frantic merriment with which she had kept down her sense of the place

where the blind struggle had left her made the sick recoil more bitter.

She thought of Philip, and her trouble began to moderate. Somewhere out

of the uncrushed part of her womanhood there came one flicker of womanly

pride to comfort her. She saw Philip at last from the point of revenge.

He loved her; he would never cease to love her. Do what he might to

banish the thought of her, she would be with him always; the more surely

with him, the more reproachfully and unattainably, because she would

be the wife of another man. If he could put her away from him in the

daytime, and in the presence of those worldly aims for which he had

sacrificed her, when night came he would be able to put her away no

more. He would never sleep but he would see her. In every dream he would

stretch out his arms to her, but she would not be there, and he would

awake with sobs and in torment. There was a real joy in this thought,

although it tore her heart so terribly.

She got strength from the cruel comforting, and Mrs. Gorry in the room

below, listening intently, heard her crying cease. With her face still

shut in both her hands, she was telling herself that she had nothing to

reproach herself with; that she could not have acted differently; that

she had not really made this marriage; that she had only submitted to

it, being swept along by the pitiless tide, which was her father, and

Pete, and everybody. She was telling herself, too, that, after all, she

had done well. Here she lay in close harbour from the fierce storm which

had threatened her. She was safe, she was at peace.

The room lay still. The night was very quiet within those walls. Kate

drew down her hands and looked about her. The fire was burning gently,

and warming her foot on the sheepskin rug that lay in front of it. A

lamp burned low on a table behind her chair. At one side there was a

wardrobe of the shape of an old press, but with a tall mirror in the

door; on the other side there was the bed, with the pink curtains

hanging like a tent. The place had a strange look of familiarity. It

seemed as if she had known it all her life. She rose to look around, and

then the inner sense leapt to the outer vision, and she saw how it was.

The room was a reproduction of her own bedroom at home, only newer and

more luxurious. It was almost as if some ghost of herself had been there

while she slept--as if her own hand had done everything in a dream of

her girlhood wherein common things had become grand.

Kate's eyes began to fill afresh, and she turned to take off her cloak.

As she did so, she saw something on the dressing-table with a label

attached to it. She took it up. It was a little mirror, a handglass

like her own old one, only framed in ivory, and the writing on the label

ran--

Insted of The one that is bruk with fond Luv to Kirry.

peat.

Her heart was now beating furiously. A flood of feeling had rushed over

her. She dropped the glass as if it stung her fingers. With both hands

she covered her face. Everything in the room seemed to be accusing her.

Hitherto she had thought only of Philip. Now for the first time she

thought of Pete.

She had wronged him--deeply, awfully, beyond atonement or hope of

forgiveness. He loved her; he had married her; he had brought her to

his home, to this harbour of safety, and she had deceived and betrayed

him--she had suffered herself to be married to him while still loving

another man.

A sudden faintness seized her. She grew dizzy and almost fell. A more

terrible memory had come behind. The thought was like ravens flapping

their black wings on her brain. She felt her temples beating against her

hands. They seemed to be sucking the life out of her heart.

Just then the voice of Pete came beating up the echoes between the house

and the chapel beyond the garden--

“Little red bird of the black turf ground,

Where did you sleep last night?”

She heard him open the garden gate, clash it back, come up the path with

an eager step, shut the door of the house and chain it on the inside.

Then she heard his deep voice speaking below.

“Better now, Mrs. Gorry?”

“Aw, better, sir, yes, and quiet enough this ten minutes.”

“Give her time, the bogh! Be aisy with the like, be aisy.”

Presently she heard him send off Mrs. Gorry for the night, saying he

should want no supper, and should be going to bed soon. Then the house

became quiet, and the smell of tobacco smoke came floating up the

stairs.

Kate's hot breath on her hands grew damp against her face. She felt

herself swooning, and she caught hold of the mantelpiece.

“It cannot be,” she thought. “He must not come. I will go down to him

and say, 'Pete, forgive me, I am really the wife of another.'”

Then she would tell him everything. Yes, she would confess all now.

Oh, she would not be afraid. His love was great. He would do what she

wished.

She made one step towards the door, and was pulled up as by a curb. Pete

would say, “Do you mean that you have been using me as a cloak? Do you

ask me to live in this house, side by side with you, and let no one

suspect that we are apart? Then why did you not ask me yesterday? Why do

you ask me to-day, when it is too late to choose?”

No, she could not confess. If confession had been difficult yesterday,

it was a thousand times more difficult to-day, and it would be a

thousand thousand times more difficult tomorrow.

Kate caught up the cloak she had thrown aside. She must go away.

Anywhere, anywhere, no matter where. That was the one thing left to

her--the only escape from the wild tangle of dread and pain. Pete was in

the hall; there must be a way out at the back; she would find it.

She lowered the lamp, and turned the handle of the door. Then she saw a

light moving on the landing, and heard a soft step on the stairs. It

was Pete, with a candle, coming up in his stockinged feet. He stopped

midway, as if he heard the click of the latch, and then went noiselessly

down again.

Kate closed the door. She would not go. If she left the house that night

she would cover Pete with suspicion and disgrace. The true secret would

never be known; the real offender would never suffer; but the finger of

scorn would be raised at the one man who had sheltered and shielded her,

and he would die of humiliation and blind self-reproach.

This reflection restrained her for the moment, and when the stress of

it was spent she was mastered by a fear that was far more terrible. For

good or for all she was now married to Pete, and he had the rights of

a husband. He had a right to come to her, and he _would_ come. It

was inevitable; it had to be. No boy or girl love now, no wooing, no

dallying, no denying, but a grim reality of life--a reality that comes

to every woman who is married to a man. She was married to Pete. In the

eye of the world, in the eye of the law, she was his, and to fly from

him was impossible.

She must remain. God himself had willed it As for the shame of her

former relation to Philip, it was her own secret. God alone knew of it,

and He would keep it safe. It was the dark chamber of her heart which

God only could unlock. He would never unlock it until the Day of

Judgment, and then Philip would be standing by her side, and she would

cast it back upon him, and say, “His, not mine, O God,” and the Great

Judge of all would judge between them.

But she began to cry again, like a child in the dark. As she threw off

her cloak a second time, her dress crinkled, and she looked down at it

and remembered that it was her wedding-dress. Then she looked around at

the room, and remembered that it was her wedding chamber. She remembered

how she had dreamt of coming in her bridal dress to her bridal

room--proud, afraid, tingling with love, blushing with joy, whispering

to herself, “This is for me--and this--and this. _He_ has given it, for

he loves me and I love him, and he is mine and I am his, and he is my

love and my lord, and he is coming to--”

There was a gentle knocking at the door. It made her flesh creep. The

knock came again. It went shrieking through and through her.

“Kirry,” whispered a voice from without.

She did not stir.

“It's only Pete.”

She neither spoke nor moved.

There was silence for a moment, and then, half nervously, half jovially,

half in laughter, half with emotion as if the heart outside was

palpitating, the voice came again, “I'm coming in, darling!”