I.
The summer had gone, the gorse had dried up, the herring-fishing had
ended, and Pete had become poor. His Nickey had done nothing, his last
hundred pounds had been spent, and his creditors in scores, quiet as
mice until then, were baying about him like bloodhounds. He sold his
boat and satisfied everybody, but fell, nevertheless, to the position of
a person of no credit and little consequence. On the lips of the people
he descended from “Capt'n Pete” to Peter Bridget. When he saluted the
rich with “How do!” they replied with a stare, a lift of the chin, and
“You've the odds of me, my good man.” To this he replied, with a roll of
the head and a peal of laughter, “Have I now? But you'll die for all.”
Ballajora Chapel had been three months rehearsing a children's cantata
entitled “Under the Palms,” and building an arbour of palm branches on
a platform for Pete's rugged form to figure in; but Cæsar sat there
instead.
Still, Pete had his six thousand pounds in mortgage on Ballawhaine.
Only three other persons knew anything of that--Cæsar, who had his own
reasons for saying nothing; Peter Christian himself, who was hardly
likely to tell; and the High Bailiff, who was a bachelor and a miser,
and kept all business revelations as sacred as are the secrets of
another kind of confessional. When Pete's evil day came and the world
showed no pity, Cæsar became afraid.
“I wouldn't sell out, sir,” said he. “Hould on till Martinmas, anyway.
The first half year's interest is due then. There's no knowing what'll
happen before that. What's it saying, 'He shall give His angels charge
concerning thee.' The ould man has had a polatic stroke, they're telling
me. Aw, the Lord's mercy endureth for ever.”
Pete began to sell his furniture. He cleared out the parlour as bare as
a vault. “Time for it, too,” he said. “I've been wanting the room for a
workshop.”
Martinmas came, and Cæsar returned in high feather. “No interest,” he
said. “Give him the month's grace, and hould hard till it's over.
The Lord will provide. Isn't it written, 'In the world ye shall have
tribulation'? Things are doing wonderful, though. Last night going home
from Ballajora, I saw the corpse-lights coming from the big house to
Kirk Christ's Churchyard, with the parson psalming in front of them. The
ould man's dying---I've seen his soul. To thy name, O Lord, be all the
glory.”
Pete sold out a second room, and turned the key on it. “Mortal cosy and
small this big, ugly mansion is getting, Nancy,” he said.
The month's grace allowed by the deed of mortgage expired, and Cæsar
came to Elm Cottage rubbing both hands. “Turn him out, neck and crop,
sir. Not a penny left to the man, and six thousand goolden pounds paid
into his hands seven months ago. But who's wondering at that? There's
Ross back again, carrying half a ton of his friends over the island,
and lashing out the silver like dust. _Your_ silver, sir, _yours_. And
here's yourself, with the world darkening round you terrible. But no
fear of you now. The meek shall inherit the earth. Aw, God is opening
His word more and more, sir, more and more. There's that Black Tom too.
He was talking big a piece back, but this morning he was up before
the High Bailiff for charming and cheating, and was put away for the
Dempster. Lord keep him from the gallows and hell-fire! Oh, it's a
refreshing saison. It was God spaking to me by Providence when I tould
you to put money on that mortgage. What's the Scripture saying, 'For
brass I bring thee goold'? Turn him out, sir, turn him out.”
“Didn't you tell me that ould Ballawhaine had a polatic stroke?” said
Pete.
“I did; but he's a big man; let him pay his way,” said Cæsar.
“Samson was a strong man, and Solomon was a wise one, but they couldn't
pay money when they hadn't got it,” said Pete.
“Let him look to his son then,” said Cæsar”.
“That's just what he's going to do,” said Pete. “I'll let him die in his
bed, God forgive him.”
The winter came, and Pete began to think of buying a Dandie, which being
smaller than a Nickey, and of yawl rig, he could sail of himself, and so
earn a living by fishing the cod. To do this he had a further clearing
of furniture, thereby reducing the size of the house to three rooms. The
featherbed left his own bedstead, the watch came out of his pocket, and
the walls of the hall-kitchen gaped and yawned in the places where the
pictures had been.
“The bog-bane to the rushy curragh, say I, Nancy,” said Pete. “Not being
used of such grandeur, I was taking it hard. Never could remember to
wind that watch. And feathers, bless you! Don't I remember the lil
mother, with a sickle and a bag, going cutting the long grass on the
steep brews for the cow, and drying a handful for myself for a bed.
Sleeping on it? Never slept the like since at all.”
The result of Pete's first week's fishing was twenty cod and a
gigantic ling. He packed the cod in boxes and sent them by Crow and the
steam-packet to the market in Liverpool. The ling he swung on his back
over his oilskin jacket and carried it home, the head at his shoulder
and the tail dangling at his legs.
“There!” he cried, dropping it on the floor, “split it and salt it, and
you've breakfas'es for a month.”
When the remittance came from Liverpool it was a postal order for
seven-and-sixpence.
“Never mind,” said Pete; “we're bating Dan Hommy anyway--the ould muff
has only made seven-and-a-penny.”
The weather was rough, the fishing was bad, the tackle got broken, and
Pete began to extol plain living.
“Gough bless me,” he said, “I don't know in the world what's coming
to the ould island at all. When I was for a man-servant with Cæsar the
farming boys were ateing potatoes and herrings three times a day. But
now! butcher's mate every dinner-time, if you plaze. And tay! the girls
must be having it reg'lar--and taking no shame with them neither. My
sake, I remember when the mother would be whispering, 'Keep an eye on
the road, boy, while I'm brewing myself a cup of tay.' Truth enough,
Nancy. An ounce a week and a pound of sugar, and people wondering at the
woman for that.”
The mountains were taken from the people, and they were no longer
allowed “to cut turf for fuel; coals were dear, the winter was cold, and
Pete began to complain of a loss of appetite.
“My teeth must be getting bad, Nancy,” he whined. They were white as
milk and faultless as a negro's. “Don't domesticate my food somehow.
What's the odds, though I Can't ate suppers at all, and that's some
constilation. Nothing like going to bed hungry, Nancy, if you're wanting
to get up with an appetite for breakfast. Then the beautiful drames,
woman! Gough bless me, the dinners and the feasts and the bankets you're
ateing in your sleep! Now, if you filled your skin like a High Bailiff
afore going to bed, ten to one you'd have a buggane riding on your
breast the night through and drame of dying for a drink of water. Aw,
sleep's a reg'lar Radical Good for levelling up, anyway.”
Christmas approached, servants boasted of the Christmas boxes they got
from their masters, and Pete remembered Nancy.
“Nancy,” said he, “they're telling me Liza Billy-ny-Clae is getting
twenty pound per year per annum at her new situation in Douglas. She
isn't nothing to yourself at cooking. Mustn't let the lil one stand in
your way, woman. She's getting a big girl now, and I'll be taking her
out in the Dandie with me and tying her down on the low deck there and
giving her a pig's bladder, and she'll be playing away as nice as nice.
See?”
Nancy looked at him, and he dropped his eyes before her.
“Is it wanting to get done with me, you are, Pete?” she said in a
quavering voice. “There's my black--I can sell it for something--it's
never been wore at me since I sat through the sarvice with Grannie the
Sunday after we got news of Kirry. And I'm not a big eater, Pete--never
was--you can clear me of that anyway. A bit of bread and cheese for my
dinner when you are out at the fishing, and I'm asking no better----”
“Hould your tongue, woman,” cried Pete. “Hould your tongue afore you
break my heart I've seen my rich days and I've seen my poor days. I've
tried both, and I'm content.”
II.
Meantime, Philip in Douglas was going from success to success, from rank
to rank, from fame to fame. Everything he put his hand to counted to him
for righteousness. When he came to himself after the disappearance of
Kate, his heart was a wasted field of volcanic action, with ashes and
scoriae of infernal blackness on the surface, but the wholesome soil
beneath. In spite of her injunction, he set himself to look for her.
More than love, more than pity, more than remorse prompted and supported
him. She was necessary to his resurrection, to his new birth. So he
scoured every poor quarter of the town, every rookery of old Douglas,
and this was set down to an interest in the poor.
An epidemic broke out on the island, and during the scare that followed,
wherein some of the wealthy left their homes for England, and many of
the poor betook themselves to the mountains, and even certain of the
doctors found refuge in flight, Philip won golden opinions for presence
of mind and personal courage. He organised a system of registration,
regulated quarantine, and caused the examination of everybody coming to
the island or leaving it. From day to day he went from house to house,
from hospital to hospital, from ward to ward. No dangers terrified him;
he seemed to keep his eye on each case. He was only looking for Kate,
only assuring himself that she had not fallen victim to the pest, only
making certain that she had not come or gone. But the divine madness
which seizes upon a crowd when its heart is touched laid hold of the
island at the sight of Philip's activities. He was worshipped, he
was beloved, he was the idol of the poor, almost everybody else was
forgotten in the splendour of his fame; no committee could proceed
without him; no list was complete until it included his name.
Philip was ashamed of his glories, but he had no heart to repudiate
them. When the epidemic subsided, he had convinced himself that Kate
must be gone, that she must be dead. Gone, therefore, was his only hold
on life, and dead was his hope of a moral resurrection. He could do
nothing without her but go on as he was going. To pretend to a new birth
now would be like a death-bed conversion; it would be like renouncing
the joys of life after they have renounced the renouncer.
His colleague, the old Deemster, was stricken down by paralysis, and he
was required to attend to both their duties. This made it necessary at
first that all Deemster's Courts should be held in Castletown, and
hence Ramsey saw him rarely. He spent his days in the Court-house of the
Castle and his nights at home. His fair hair became prematurely white,
and his face grew more than ever like that of a man newly risen from a
fever.
“Study,” said the world, and it bowed its head the lower.
Yet he was seen to be not only a studious man, but a melancholy one.
To defeat curiosity, he began to enter a little into the life of the
island, and, as time went on, to engage in some of the social duties of
his official position. On Christmas Eve he gave a reception at his
house in Athol Street. He had hardly realised how it would tear at the
tenderest fibres of memory. The very rooms that had been Kate's were
given over to the ladies who were his guests. All afternoon the crush
was great, and the host was the attraction. He was a fascinating
figure--so young, yet already so high; so silent, yet able to speak
so splendidly; and then so handsome with that whitening head, and that
smile like vanishing sunshine.
In the midst of the reception, Philip received a letter from Ramsey that
was like the cry of a bleeding heart:--
“My lil one is ill theyr sayin shes Diein cum to me for gods.
sake.--Peat.”
The snow was beginning to fall as the guests departed. When the last of
them was gone, the clock on the bureau was striking six, and the night
was closing in. By eight o'clock Philip was at Elm Cottage.
III.
Pete was sitting at the foot of the stairs, unwashed, uncombed, with his
clothes half buttoned and his shoes unlaced.
“Phil!” he cried, and leaping up he took Philip by both hands and fell
to sobbing like a child.
They went upstairs together. The bedroom was dense with steam, and the
forms of two women were floating like figures in a fog.
“There she is, the bogh,” cried Pete in a pitiful wail.
The child lay outstretched on Grannie's lap, with no sign of
consciousness, and hardly any sign of life, except the hollow breathing
of bronchitis.
Philip felt a strange emotion come over him. He sat on the end of the
bed and looked down. The little face, with its twitching mouth and
pinched nostrils, beating with every breath, was the face of Kate. The
little head, with its round forehead and the silvery hair brushed back
from the temples, was his own head. A mysterious throb surprised him, a
great tenderness, a deep yearning, something new to him, and born as
it were in his breast at that instant. He had an impulse, never felt
before, to go down on his knees where the child lay, to take it in his
arms, to draw it to him, to fondle it, to call it his own, and to pour
over it the inarticulate babble of pain and love that was bursting from
his tongue. But some one was kneeling there already, and in his jealous
longing he realised that his passionate sorrow could have no voice.
Pete, at Grannie's lap, was stroking the child's arm and her forehead
with the tenderness of a woman.
“The bogh millish! Seems aisier now, doesn't she, Grannie? Quieter,
anyway? Not coughing so much, is she?”
The doctor came at the moment, and Cæsar entered the room behind him
with a face of funereal resignation.
“See,” cried Pete; “there's your lil patient, doctor. She's lying as
quiet as quiet, and hasn't coughed to spake of for better than an hour.”
“H'm!” said the doctor ominously. He looked at the child, made some
inquiries of Grannie, gave certain instructions to Nancy, and then
lifted his head with a sigh.
“Well, we've done all we can for her,” he said. “If the child lives
through the night she may get over it.”
The women threw up their hands with “Aw, dear, aw, dear!” Philip gave
a low, sharp cry of pain; but Pete, who had been breathing heavily,
watching intently, and holding his arms about the little one as if he
would save it from disease and death and heaven itself, now lost himself
in the immensity of his woe.
“Tut, doctor, what are you saying?” he said. “You were always took for a
knowledgable man, doctor; but you're talking nonsense now. Don't you see
the child's only sleeping comfortable? And haven't I told you she hasn't
coughed anything worth for an hour? Do you think a poor fellow's got no
sense at all?”
The doctor was a patient man as well as a wise one--he left the room
without a word. But, thinking to pour oil on Pete's wounds, and not
minding that his oil was vitriol, Cæsar said--
“If it's the Lord's will, it's His will, sir. The sins of the fathers
are visited upon the children--yes, and the mothers, too, God forgive
them.”
At that Pete leapt to his feet in a flame of wrath.
“You lie! you lie!” he cried. “God doesn't punish the innocent for the
guilty. If He does, He's not a good God but a bad one. Why should this
child be made to suffer and die for the sin of its mother? Aye, or its
father either? Show me the _man_ that would make it do the like, and
I'll smash his head against the wall. Blaspheming, am I? No, but it's
you that's blaspheming. God is good, God is just, God is in heaven, and
you are making Him out no God at all, but worse than the blackest devil
that's in hell.”
Cæsar went off in horror of Pete's profanities. “If the Lord keep not
the city,” he said, “the watchman waketh in vain.”
Pete's loud voice had aroused the child. It made a little cry, and
he was all softness in an instant. The women moistened its lips with
barley-water, and hushed its fretful whimper.
“Come,” said Philip, taking Pete's arm.
“Let me lean on you, Philip,” said Pete, and the stalwart fellow went
tottering down the stairs.
They sat on opposite sides of the fireplace, and kept the staircase door
open that they might hear all that happened in the room above.
“Get thee to bed, Nancy,” said the voice of Grannie. “Dear knows how
soon you'll be wanted.”
“You'll be calling me for twelve, then, Grannie--now, mind, you'll be
calling me.”
“Poor Pete! He's not so far wrong, though. What's it saying? 'Suffer lil
childers'----”
“But Cæsar's right enough this time, Grannie. The bogh is took for death
as sure as sure. I saw the crow that was at the wedding going crossing
the child's head the very last time she was out of doors.” Pete was
listening intently. Philip was gazing passively into the fire.
“I couldn't help it, sir--I couldn't really,” whispered Pete across the
hearth. “When a man's got a child that's ill, they may talk about saving
souls, but what's the constilation in that? It's not the soul he's
wanting saving at all, it's the child--now, isn't it, now?”
Philip made some confused response.
“Coorse, I can't expect you to understand that, Philip. You're a grand
man, and a clever man, and a feeling man, but I can't expect you to
understand that--now, is it likely? The greenest gall's egg of a father
that isn't half wise has the pull of you there, Phil. 'Deed he has,
though. When a man has a child of his own he's knowing what it manes,
the Lord help him. Something calls to him--it's like blood calling
to blood--it's like... I don't know that I'm understanding it myself,
neither--not to say _understand_ exactly.”
Every word that Pete spoke was like a sword turning both ways. Philip
drew his breath heavily.
“You can feel for another, Phil--the Lord forbid you should ever feel
for yourself. Books are _your_ children, and they're best off that's
never having no better. But the lil ones--God help them--to see
them fail, and suffer, and sink--and you not able to do nothing--and
themselves calling to you--calling still--calling reg'lar--calling out
of mercy--the way I am telling of, any way--O God! O God!”
Philip's throat rose. He felt as if he must betray himself the next
instant.
“Perhaps the doctor was right for all. Maybe the child isn't willing
to stay with us now the mother is gone; maybe it's wanting away, poor
thing. And who knows? Wouldn't trust but the mother is waiting for the
lil bogh yonder--waiting and waiting on the shore there, and 'ticing and
'ticing---I've heard of the like, anyway.”
Philip groaned. His brain reeled; his legs grew cold as stones. A great
awe came over him. It was not Pete alone that he was encountering.
In these searchings and rendings of the heart, which uncovered every
thought and tore open every wound, he was entering the lists with God
himself.
The church bell began to ring.
“What's that?” cried Philip. It had struck upon his ear like a knell.
“_Oiel Verree_,” said Pete. The bell was ringing for the old Manx
service for the singing of Christmas carols. The fibres of Pete's memory
were touched by it. He told of his Christmases abroad--how it was summer
instead of winter, and fruits were on the trees instead of snow on the
ground--how people who had never spoken to him before would shake hands
and wish him a merry Christmas. Then from sheer weariness and a sense
of utter desolation, broken by the comfort of Philip's company, he fell
asleep in his chair.
The night wore on; the house was quiet; only the husky rasping of the
child's hurried breathing came from the floor above.
An evil thought in the guise of a pious one took possession of Philip.
“God is wise,” he told himself. “God is merciful. He knows what is best
for all of us. What are we poor impotent grasshoppers, that we dare pray
to Him to change His great purposes? It is idle. It is impious.... While
the child lives there will be security for no one. If it dies, there
will be peace and rest and the beginning of content. The mother must be
gone already, so the dark chapter of our lives will be closed at last
God is all wise. God is all good.”
The child made a feeble cry, and Philip crept upstairs to look. Grannie
had dozed off in her seat, and little Katherine was on the bed. A
disregarded doll lay with inverted head on the counterpane. The fire
had slid and died down to a lifeless glow, and the kettle had ceased
to steam. There was no noise in the room save the child's galloping
breathing, which seemed to scrape the walls as with a file. Sometimes
there was a cough that came like a voice through a fog.
Philip crept in noiselessly, knelt down by the bed-head, and leaned over
the pillow. A candle which burned on the mantelpiece cast its light on
the head that lay there. The little face was drawn, the little pinched
nostrils were beating like a pulse, the little lip beneath was beaded
with perspiration, the beautiful round forehead was damp, and the silken
silvery hair was matted.
Philip thought the child must be dying, and his ugly piety gave way.
There was a movement on the bed. One little hand that had been clenched
hard on the breast came over the counterpane and fell, outstretched and
open before him. He took it for an appeal, a dumb and piteous appeal,
and the smothered tenderness of the father's heart came uppermost. _Her_
child, his child, dying, and he there, yet not daring to claim her!
A new fear took hold of him. He had been wrong--there could be no
security in the child's death, no peace, no rest, no content. As surely
as the child died he would betray himself. He would blurt it all out; he
would tell everything. “My child! my darling! my Kate's Kate!” The cry
would burst from him. He could not help it. And to reveal the black
secret at the mouth of an open grave would be terrible, it would be
horrible, it would be awful, “Spare her, O Lord, spare her!”
In a fear bordering on delirium he went downstairs and shook Pete by the
shoulders to awaken him. “Come quickly,” he said.
Pete opened his eyes with a bewildered look» “She's better, isn't she?”
he asked.
“Courage,” said Philip.
“Is she worse?”
“It's life or death now. We must try something that I saw when I was
away.”
“Good Lord, and I've been sleeping! Save her, Philip! You're great; your
clever----”
“Be quiet, for God's sake, my good fellow! Quick, a kettle of boiling
water--a blanket--some hot towels.”
“Oh, you're a friend, you'll save her. The doctors don't know nothing.”
Ten minutes afterwards the child made a feeble cry, coughed loosely,
threw up phlegm, and came out of the drowsy land which it had inhabited
for a week. In ten minutes more it was wrapped in the hot towels and
sitting on Pete's knee before a brisk are, opening its little eyes and
pursing its little mouth, and making some inarticulate communication.
Then Grannie awoke with a start, and reproached herself for sleeping.
“But dear heart alive,” she cried, with both hands up, “the bogh villish
is mended wonderful.”
Nancy came back in her stockings, blinking and yawning. She clapped and
crowed at sight of the child's altered face. The clock in the kitchen
was striking twelve by this time, the bells had begun to ring again, the
carol singers were coming out of the church, there was a sound on the
light snow of the street like the running of a shallow river, and the
waits were being sung for the dawn of another Christmas.
The doctor looked in on his way home, and congratulated himself on the
improved condition. The crisis was passed, the child was safe.
“Ah! better, better,” he said cheerily. “I thought we might manage it
this time.”
“It was the Dempster that done it,” cried Pete. He was cooing and
blowing at little Katherine over the fringe of her towels. “He couldn't
have done more for the lil one if she'd been his own flesh and blood.”
Philip dared not speak. He hurried away in a storm of emotion. “Not
yet,” he thought, “not yet.” The time of his discovery was not yet. It
was like Death, though--it waited for him somewhere. Somewhere and at
some time--some day in the year, some place on the earth. Perhaps his
eyes knew the date in the calendar, perhaps his feet knew the spot on
the land, yet he knew neither. Somewhere and at some time--God knew
where--God knew when--He kept his own secrets.
That night Philip slept at the “Mitre,” and next morning he went up to
Ballure.
IV.
The Governor could not forget Tynwald. Exaggerating the humiliation of
that day, he thought his influence in the island was gone. He sold his
horses and carriages, and otherwise behaved like a man who expected to
be recalled.
Towards Philip he showed no malice. It was not merely as the author of
his shame that Philip had disappointed him.
He had half cherished a hope that Philip would become his son-in-law.
But when the rod in his hand had failed him, when it proved too big
for a staff and too rough for a crutch, he did not attempt to break it.
Either from the instinct of a gentleman, or the pride of a strong man,
he continued to shower his favours upon Philip. Going to London with his
wife and daughter at the beginning of the new year, he appointed Philip
to act as his deputy.
Philip did not abuse his powers. As grandson of the one great Manxman
of his century, and himself a man of talents, he was readily accepted by
the island. His only drawback was his settled melancholy. This added to
his interest if it took from his popularity. The ladies began to whisper
that he had fallen in love, and that his heart was “buried in the
grave.” He did not forget old comrades. It was remembered, in his
favour, that one of his friends was a fisherman, a cousin across the bar
of bastardy, who had been a fool and gone through his fortune.
On St. Bridget's Day Philip held Deemster's Court in Ramsey. The snow
had gone and the earth had the smell of violets. It was almost as if the
violets themselves lay close beneath the soil, and their odour had been
too long kept under. The sun, which had not been seen for weeks, had
burst out that day; the air was warm, and the sky was blue. Inside the
Court-house the upper arcs of the windows had been let down; the sun
shone on the Deemster as he sat on the dais, and the spring breeze
played with his silvery wig. Some^ times, in the pauses of rasping
voices, the birds were heard to sing from the trees on the lawn outside.
The trial was a tedious and protracted one. It was the trial of Black
Tom. During the epidemic that had visited the island he had developed
the character of a witch doctor. His first appearance in Court had been
before the High Bailiff, who had committed him to prison. He had been
bailed out by Pete, and had forfeited his bail in an attempt at flight.
The witnesses were now many, and some came from a long distance. It was
desirable to conclude the same day. At five in the evening the Deemster
rose and said, “The Court will adjourn for an hour, gentlemen.”
Philip took his own refreshments in the Deemster's room--Jem-y-Lord
was with him--then put off his wig and gown, and slipped through the
prisoners' yard at the back and round the corner to Elm Cottage.
It was now quite dark. The house was lit by the firelight only, which
flashed like Will-o'-the-wisp on the hall window. Philip was surprised
by unusual sounds. There was laughter within, then singing, and then
laughter again. He bad reached the porch and his approach had not been
heard. The door stood open and he looked in and listened.
The room was barer than he had ever seen it--a table, three chairs, a
cradle, a dresser, and a corner cupboard. Nancy sat by the fire with the
child on her lap. Pete was squatting on the floor, which was strewn with
rushes, and singing--
“Come, Bridget, Saint Bridget, come in at my door,
The crock's on the bink, and the rush is on the floor.”
Then getting on to all fours like a great boy, and bobbing his head up
and down and making deep growls to imitate the terrors of a wild beast,
he made little runs and plunges at the child, who jumped and crowed in
Nancy's lap and laughed and squealed till she “kinked.”
“Now, stop, you great omathaun, stop,” said Nancy. “It isn't good for
the lil one--'deed it isn't.”
But Pete was too greedy of the child's joy to deny himself the delight
of it. Making a great low sweep of the room, he came back hopping on
his haunches and barking like a dog. Then the child laughed till the
laughter rolled like a marble in her little throat.
Philip's own throat rose at the sight, and his breast began to ache. He
felt the same thrill as before--the same, yet different, more painful,
more full of jealous longing. This was no place for him. He thought he
would go away. But turning on his heel, he was seen by Pete, who was now
on his back on the floor, rocking the child up and down like the bellows
of an accordion, and to and fro like the sleigh of a loom.
“My faith, the Dempster! Come in, sir, come in,” cried Pete, looking
over his forehead. Then, giving the child back to Nancy, he leapt to his
feet.
Philip entered with a sick yearning and sat down in the chair facing
Nancy.
“You're wondering at me, Dempster, I know you are, sir,” Said Pete,
“'Deed, but I'm wondering at myself as well. I thought I was never going
to see a glad day again, and if the sky would ever be blue I would be
breaking my heart. But what is the Manx poet saying, sir? 'I have no
will but Thine, O God.' That's me, sir, truth enough, and since the lil
one has been mending I've never been so happy in my life.”
Philip muttered some commonplace, and put his thumb into the baby's
hand. It was sucked in by the little fingers as by the soft feelers of
the sea-anemone.
Pete drew up the third chair, and then all interest was centred on the
child. “She's growing,” said Philip huskily.
“And getting wise ter'ble,” said Pete. “You wouldn't be-lave it, sir,
but that child's got the head of an almanac. She has, though. Listen
here, sir--what does the cow say, darling?”
“Moo-o,” said the little one.
“Look at that now!” said Pete rapturously.
“She knows what the dog says too,” said Nancy. “What does Dempster
say, bogh?”
“Bow-wow,” said the child.
“Bless me soul!” said Pete, turning to Philip with amazement at the
child's supernatural wisdom. “And there's Tom Hommy's boy--and a fine
lil fellow enough for all--but six weeks older than this one, and not a
word out of him yet.”
Hearing himself talked of, the dog had come from under the table. The
child gurgled down at it, then made purring noises at its own feet, and
wriggled in Nancy's lap.
“Dear heart alive, if it's not like nursing an eel,” said Nancy. “Be
quiet, will you?” and the little one was shaken back to her seat.
“Aisy all, woman,” said Pete. “She's just wanting her lil shoes
and stockings off, that's it.” Then talking to the child.
“Um--am-im--lum--la--loo? Just so! I don't know what that means
myself, but she does, you see. Aw, the child is taiching me heaps, sir.
Listening to the lil one I'm remembering things. Well, we're only big
children, the best of us. That's the way the world's keeping young, and
God help it when we're getting so clever there's no child left in us at
all.”
“Time for young women to be in bed, though,” said Nancy, getting up to
give the baby her bath.
“Let me have a hould of the rogue first,” said Pete, and as Nancy took
the child out of the room, he dragged at it and smothered its open mouth
with kisses.
“Poor sport for you, sir, watching a foolish ould father playing games
with his lil one,” said Pete.
Philip's answer was broken and confused. His eyes had begun to fill, and
to hide them he turned his head aside. Thinking he was looking at the
empty places about the walls, Pete began to enlarge on his prosperity,
and to talk as if he were driving all the trade of the island before
him.
“Wonderful fishing now, Phil. I'm exporting a power of cod. Gretting
postal orders and stamps, and I don't know what. Seven-and-sixpence in a
single post from Liverpool--that's nothing, sir, nothing at all.”
Nancy brought back the child, whose silvery curls were now damp.
“What! a young lady coming in her night-dress!” cried Pete.
“Work enough! had to get it over her head, too,” said Nancy. “She
wouldn't, no, she wouldn't. Here, take and dry her hair by the fire
while I warm up her supper.”
Pete rolled the sleeves of his jersey above his elbows, took the child
on his knee, and rubbed her hair between his hands, singing--
“Come, Bridget, Saint Bridget, come in at my door.”
Nancy clattered about in her clogs, filled a saucepan with bread and
milk, and brought it to the fire.
“Give it to me, Nancy,” said Philip, and he leaned over and held the
saucepan above the bar. The child watched him intently.
“Well, did you ever?” said Pete. “The strange she's making of you,
Philip? Don't you know the gentleman, darling? Aw, but he's knowing you,
though.”
The saucepan boiled, and Philip handed it back to Nancy.
“Go to him then--away with you,” said Pete. “Gro to your godfather. He'd
have been your name-father too if it had been a boy you'd been. Off you
go!” and he stretched out his hairy arms until the child touched the
floor.
Philip stooped to take the little one, who first pranced and beat the
rushes with its feet as with two drumsticks, then trod on its own
legs, swirled about to Pete's arms, dropped its lower lip, and set up a
terrified outcry.
“Ah! she knows her own father, bless her,” cried Pete, plucking the
child back to his breast.
Philip dropped his head and laughed. A sort of creeping fear had taken
possession of him, as if he felt remotely that the child was to be the
channel of his retribution.
“Will you feed her yourself, Pete?” said Nancy. She was coming up with
a saucer, of which she was tasting the contents. “He's that handy with
a child, sir, you wouldn't think 'Deed you wouldn't.” Then, stooping to
the baby as it ate its supper, “But I'm saying, young woman, is there no
sleep in your eyes to-night?”
“No, but nodding away here like a wood-thrush in a tree,” said Pete. He
was ladling the pobs into the child's mouth, and scooping the overflow
from her chin. “Sleep's a terrible enemy of this one, sir. She's having
a battle with it every night of life, anyway. God help her, she'll have
luck better than some of us, or she'll be fighting it the other way
about one of these days.”
“She's us'ally going off with the spoon in her mouth, sir, for all the
world like a lil cherub,” said Nancy.
“Too busy looking at her godfather to-night, though,” said Pete. “Well,
look at him. You owe him your life, you lil sandpiper. And, my sakes,
the straight like him you are, too!”
“Isn't she?” said Nancy. “If I wasn't thinking the same myself! Couldn't
look straighter like him if she'd been his born child; now, could she?
And the curls, too, and the eyes! Well, well!”
“If she'd been a boy, now----” began Pete.
But Philip had risen to return to the Court-house, and Pete said in
another tone, “Hould hard a minute, sir--I've something to show you.
Here, take the lil one, Nancy.”
Pete lit a candle and led the way into the parlour. The room was empty
of furniture; but at one end there was a stool, a stone mason's mallet,
a few chisels, and a large stone.
The stone was a gravestone.
Pete approached it solemnly, held up the candle in front of it, and said
in a low voice, “It's for her. I've been doing it myself, sir, and it's
lasted me all winter, dark nights and bad days. I'll be finishing it
to-night, though, God willing, and to-morrow, maybe, I'll be taking it
to Douglas.”
“Is it----” began Philip, but he could not finish.
The stone was a plain slab, rounded at the top, bevelled about the edge,
smoothed on the face, and chiselled over the back; but there was no sign
or symbol on it, and no lettering or inscription.
“Is there to be no name?” asked Philip at last.
“No,” said Pete.
“No?”
“Tell you the truth, sir, I've been reading what it's saying in the ould
Book about the Recording Angel calling the dead out of their graves.”
“Yes?”
“And I've been thinking the way he'll be doing it will be going to the
graveyards and seeing the names on the gravestones, and calling them out
loud to rise up to judgment; some, as it's saying, to life eternal, and
some to everlasting punishment.”
“Well?”
“Well, sir, I've been thinking if he comes to this one and sees no name
on it”--Pete's voice sank to a whisper--“maybe he'll pass it by and let
the poor sinner sleep on.”
Stumbling back to the Court-house through the dark lane Philip thought,
“It was a lie _then_, but it's true _now_. It _must_ be true. She must
be dead.” There was a sort of relief in this certainty. It was an end,
at all events; a pitiful end, a cowardly end, a kind of sneaking out of
Fate's fingers; it was not what he had looked for and intended, but he
struggled to reconcile himself to it.
Then he remembered the child and thought, “Why should I disturb it? Why
should I disturb Pete? I will watch over it all its life. I will protect
it and find a way to provide for it. I will do my duty by it. The child
shall never want.”
He was offering the key to the lock of the prisoners' yard when some
one passed him in the lane, peered into his face, then turned about and
spoke.
“Oh, it's you, Deemster Christian?”
“Yes, doctor. Good-night!”
“Have you heard the news from Ballawhaine? The old gentleman had another
stroke this morning.”
“No, I had not heard it. Another? Dear me, dear me!”
Back in his room, Philip resumed his wig and gown and returned to
the Court-house. The place was now lit up by candlelight and densely
crowded. Everybody rose to his feet as the Deemster stepped to the dais.
V.
“Come, Bridget, Saint Bridget, come in at my door,
The crock's on the bink and the rush----”
“She's fast,” said Nancy. “Rocking this one to sleep is like waiting for
the kettle to boil. You may try and try, and blow and blow, but never a
sound. And no sooner have you forgotten all about her, but she's singing
away as steady as a top.”
Nancy put the child into the cradle, tucked her about, twisted the head
of the little nest so that the warmth of the fire should enter it, and
hung a shawl over the hood to protect the little eyelids from the light.
“Will you keep the house till I'm home from Sulby, Pete?”
“I've my work, woman,” said Pete from the parlour.
“I'll put a junk on the fire and be off then,” said Nancy.
She pulled the door on to the catch behind her and went crunching the
gravel to the gate. There was no sound in the house now but the
gentle breathing of the sleeping child, soft as an angel's prayer, the
chirruping of the mended fire like a cage of birds, the ticking of the
clock, and, through the parlour wall, the dull pat-put, pat-put of the
wooden mallet and the scrape of the chisel on the stone.
Pete worked steadily for half an hour, and then came back to the
hall-kitchen with his tools in his hands. The cob of coal had kindled to
a lively flame, which flashed and went out, and the quick black shadows
of the chairs and the table and the jugs on the dresser were leaping
about the room like elves. With parted lips, just breaking into a smile,
Pete went down on one knee by the cradle, put the mallet under his arm,
and gently raised the shawl curtain. “God bless my motherless girl,”
he said, in a voice no louder than a breath. Suddenly, while he knelt
there, he was smitten as by an electric shock. His face straightened and
he drew back, still holding the shawl at the tips of his fingers.
The child was sleeping peacefully, with one of its little arms over the
counterpane. On its face the flickering light of the fire was coming
and going, making lines about the baby eyes and throwing up the baby
features. It is in such lights that we are startled by resemblances in a
child's face. Pete was startled by a resemblance. He had seen it before,
but not as he saw it now.
A moment afterwards he was reaching across the cradle again, his arms
spread over it, and his face close down at the child's face, scanning
every line of it as one scans a map. “'Deed, but she is, though,” he
murmured. “She's like him enough, anyway.”
An awful idea had taken possession of his mind. He rose stiffly to his
feet, and the shawl flapped back. The room seemed to be darkening round
him. He broke the coal, though it was burning brightly, stepped to the
other side of the cradle, and looked at the child again. It was the same
from there. The resemblance was ghostly.
He felt something growing hard inside of him, and he returned to
his work in the parlour. But the chisel slipped, the mallet fell too
heavily, and he stopped. His mind fluctuated among distant things. He
could not help thinking of Port Mooar, of the Carasdhoo men, of the day
when he and Philip were brought home in the early, morning.
Putting his tools down, he returned to the room. He was holding his
breath and walking softly, as if in the presence of an invisible thing.
The room was perfectly quiet--he could hear the breath in his nostrils.
In a state of stupor he stood for some time with bis back to the fire
and watched his shadow on the opposite wall and on the ceiling. The
cradle was at his feet. He could not keep his eyes off it. From time to
time he looked down across one of his shoulders.
With head thrown back and lips apart, the child was breathing calmly and
sleeping the innocent sleep. This angel innocence reproached him.
“My heart must be going bad,” he muttered. “Your bad thoughts are
blackening the dead. For shame, Pete Quilliam, for shame!”
He was feeling like a man who is in a storm of thunder and lightning at
night. Familiar things about him looked strange and awful.
Stooping to the cradle again, he turned back the shawl on to the
cradle-head as a girl turns back the shade of her sun-bonnet Then the
firelight was full on the child's face, and it moved in its sleep. It
moved yet more under his steadfast gaze, and cried a little, as if the
terrible thought that was in his mind had penetrated to its own.
He was stooping so when the door was opened and Cæsar entered violently,
making asthmatic noises in his throat. Pete looked up at him with a
stupefied air. “Peter,” he said, “will you sell that mortgage?”
Pete answered with a growl.
“Will you transfer it to me?” said Cæsar.
“The time's not come,” said Pete.
“What time?”
“The time foretold by the prophet, when the lion can lie down with the
lamb.”
Pete laughed bitterly. Cæsar was quivering, his mouth was twitching, and
his eyes were wild. “Will you come over to the 'Mitre,' then?”
“What for to the 'Mitre'?”
“Ross Christian is there.”
Pete made an impatient gesture. “That stormy petrel again! He's always
about when there's bad weather going.”
“Will you come and hear what the man's saying?”
“What's he saying?”
“Will you hear for yourself?”
Pete looked hard at Cæsar, looked again, then caught up his cap and went
out at the door.
VI.
With two of his cronies the man had spent the day in a room overlooking
the harbour, drinking hard and playing billiards. Early in the afternoon
a messenger had come from Ballawhaine, saying, “Your father is ill--come
home immediately.” “By-and-bye,” he had said, and gone on with the game.
Later in the afternoon the messenger had come again, saying, “Your
father has had a stroke of paralysis, and he is calling for you.” “Let
me finish the break first,” he had replied.
In the evening the messenger had come a third time, saying, “Your father
is unconscious.” “Where's the hurry, then?” he had answered, and he sang
a stave of the “Miller's Daughter”--
“They married me against my will,
When I was daughter at the mill.”
Finally, Cæsar, who had been remonstrating with the Ballawhaine at the
moment of his attack, came to remonstrate with Ross, and to pay off a
score of his own as well.
“Honour thy father and thy mother, that thy days----” cried Cæsar, with
uplifted arm and the high pitch of the preacher. “But your days will not
be long, anyway, and, if you are the death of that foolish ould man, it
won't be the first death you're answerable for.”
“So you believe it, too?” said Ross, cue in hand. “You believe your
daughter is dead, do you, old Jephthah Jeremiah? Would you be surprised
to hear, now----” (the cronies giggled) “that she isn't dead at
all?----Good shotr-cannon off the cushion. Halloa! Jephthah Jeremiah
has seen a ghost seemingly. Saw her myself, man, when I was up in town
a month ago. Want to know where she is? Shall I tell you? Oh, you're
a beauty! You're a pattern! You know how to train up a child in the
way----Pocket off the red----It's you to preach at my father, isn't
it? She's on the streets of London--ah, Jeremiah's gone----
'They married me against my will '--
There you are, then--good shot--love--twenty-five and nothing left.”
Pete pushed through to the billiard-room. Fearing there might be
violence, hoping there would be, yet thinking it scarcely proper to lend
the scene of it the light of his countenance, Cæsar had stayed outside.
“Halloa! here's Uriah!” cried Ross. “Talk of the devil--just thought
as much. Ever read the story of David and Uriah? Should, though. Do
you good, mister. David was a great man. Aw” (with a mock imitation of
Pete's Manx), “a ter'ble, wonderful, shocking great man. Uriah was his
henchman. Ter'ble clavar, too, but that green for all, the ould cow
might have ate him. And Uriah had a nice lil wife. The nice now, you
wouldn't think. But when Uriah was away David took her, and then--and
then” (dropping the Manx) “it doesn't just run on Bible lines neither,
but David told Uriah that his wife was dead--ha! ha! ha!----
'Who saw her diet
I said the fly,
I saw her----'
Stop that--let go--help----You'll choke me--help! help!”
At two strides Pete had come face to face with Ross, put one of his
hands at the man's throat and his leg behind him, doubled him back on
his knee, and was holding him there in a grip like that of a vice.
“Help!--help!--oo--ugh!” The fellow gasped, and his face grew dark.
“You're not worth it,” said Pete. “I meant to choke the life out of
your dirty body for lying about the living and blackening the dead, but
you're not worth hanging for. You've got the same blood in you, too, and
I'm ashamed for you. There! get up.”
With a gesture of indescribable loathing, Pete flung the man to the
ground, and he fell over his cue and broke it.
The people of the house came thronging into the room, and met Pete going
out of it. His face was hard and ugly. At first sight they mistook him
for Ross, so disfigured was he by bad passions.
Cæsar was tramping the pavement outside. “Will you let me do it now?” he
said in a hot whisper.
“Do as you like,” said Pete savagely.
“The wicked is snared in the work of his own hand. Higgaion. Selah,”
said Cæsar, and they parted by the entrance to the Court-house.
Pete went home, muttering to himself, “The man was lying--she's dead,
she's dead!”
At the gate of Elm Cottage the dog came up to him, barking with glee.
Then it darted back to the house door, which stood open. “Some one
has come,” thought Pete. “She's dead. The man lied. She's dead,” he
muttered, and he stumbled down the path.
VII.
While the Deemster was stepping up to the dais, and the people in the
court were rising to receive him, a poor bedraggled wayfarer was toiling
through the country towards the town. It was a woman. She must have
walked far, her step was so slow and so heavy. From time to time she
rested, not sitting, but standing by the gates of the fields as she came
to them, and holding by the topmost bar.
When she emerged from the dark lanes into the lamplit streets her pace
quickened for a moment; then it slackened, and then it quickened again.
She walked close to the houses, as if trying to escape observation.
Where there was a short cut through an ill-lighted thoroughfare, she
took it. Any one following her would have seen that she was familiar
with every corner of the town.
It would be hard to imagine a woman of more miserable appearance. Not
that her clothes were so mean, though they were poor and worn, but that
an air of humiliation sat upon her, such as a dog has when it is lost
and the children are chasing it. Her dress was that of an old woman--the
long Manx cloak of blue homespun, fastened by a great hook close under
the chin, and having a hood which is drawn over the head. But in spite
of this old-fashioned garment, and the uncertainty of her step, she
gave the impression of a young woman. Where the white frill of the old
countrywoman's cap should have shown itself under the flange of the
hood, there was a veil, which seemed to be suspended from a hat.
The oddity and incongruity of her attire attracted attention. Women came
out of their houses and crossed to the doors of neighbours to look after
her. Even the boys playing at the corners looked up as she went by.
She was not greatly observed for all that. An unusual interest agitated
the town. A wave of commotion flowed down the streets. The traffic went
in one direction. That direction was the Court-house.
The Court-house square was thronged on three of its sides by people who
were gathered both on the pavement and on the green inside the railings.
Its fourth side was the dark lane at the back going by the door to the
prisoners' yard and the Deemster's entrance. The windows were lit up and
partly open. Some of the people had edged to the walls as if to listen,
and a few had clambered to the sills as if to see. Around the wide
doorway there was a close crowd that seemed to cling to it like a burr.
The woman had reached the first angle of the square when the upper half
of the Court-house door broke into light over the heads of the crowd. A
man had come out. He surged through the crowd and “came down to the gate
with a tail of people trailing after him and asking questions.
“Wonderful!” he was saying. “The Dempster's spaking. Aw, a Daniel come
to judgment, sir. Pity for Tom, though--the man'll get time. I'm sorry
for an ould friend--but the Lord's will be done! Let not the ties of
affection be a snare to our feet--it'll be five years if it's a day, and
(D.V.) he'll never live to see the end of it.”
It was Cæsar. He crossed the street to the “Mitre.” The woman trembled
and turned towards the lane at the back. She walked quicker than ever
now. But, stumbling over the irregular cobbles of the paved way, she
stopped suddenly at the sound of a voice. By this time she was at the
door to the prisoners' yard, and it was standing open. The door of the
corridor leading by the Deemster's chamber to the Court-house was also
ajar, as if it had been opened to relieve the heat of the crowded room
within.
“Be just and fear not,” said the voice. “Remember, whatever unconscious
misrepresentations have been made this day, whatever deliberate
false-swearing (and God and the consciences of the guilty ones know well
there have been both), truth is mighty, and in the end it will prevail.”
The poor bedraggled wayfarer stood in the darkness and trembled. Her
hands clutched at the breast of the cloak, her head dropped into her
breast, and a half-smothered moan escaped from her. She knew the voice;
it had once been very sweet and dear to her; she had heard it at her ear
in tones of love. It was the voice of the Deemster. He was speaking from
the judge's seat; the people were hanging on his lips.
And he was standing in the shadow of the dark lane under the prisoners'
wall.
The woman was Kate. It was true that she had been to London; it was
false that she had lived a life of shame there. In six months she had
descended to the depths of poverty and privations. One day she had
encountered Ross. He was fresh from the Isle of Man, and he told her of
the child's illness. The same night she turned her face towards home. It
was three weeks since she had returned to the island, and she was then
low in health, in heart, and in pocket. The snow was falling. It was a
bitter night. Growing dizzy with the drifting whiteness and numb with
the piercing cold, she had crept up to a lonely house and asked shelter
until the storm should cease.
The house was the home of three old people, two old brothers and an old
sister, who had always lived together. In this household Kate had spent
three weeks of sickness, and the Manx cloak on her back was a parting
gift which the old woman had hung over her thinly-clad shoulders.
Back in the roads Kate had time to tell herself how foolish was her
journey. She was like a sailor who has alarming news of home in some
foreign port and hears nothing afterwards until he comes to harbour. À
month had passed. So many things might have happened. The child might be
better; it might be dead and buried. Nevertheless she pushed on.
When she left London she had been full of bitterness towards Philip. It
was his fault that she had ever been parted from her baby. She would go
back. If she brought shame upon him, let him bear it. On coming near
to home this feeling of vengeance died. Nothing was left but a great
longing to be with her little one and a sense of her own degradation.
Every face she recognised seemed to remind her of the change that had
been wrought in herself since she had looked on it last. She dare not
ask; she dare not speak; she dare not reveal herself.
While she stood in the shadow of the prisoners' yard listening to
Philip's voice, and held by it as by a spell, there was a low hiss and
then a sort of white silence, as when a rocket breaks in the air. The
Deemster had finished; the people in the court were breathing audibly
and moving in their seats.
A minute later she was standing by her old home, hers no longer, and
haunted in her mind by many bitter memories. It was dark and cheerless.
A candle had been burning in the parlour, but it was now spluttering in
the fat at the socket. As she looked into the room, it blinked and went
out.
During the last mile of her journey she had made up her mind what she
would do. She would creep up to the house and listen for the sound of a
child's voice. If she heard it, and the voice was that of a child that
was well, she would be content, she would go away. And if she did not
hear it, if the child was gone, if there was no longer any child there,
if it was in heaven, she would go away just the same--only God knew how,
God knew where.
The road was quiet. With trembling fingers she raised the latch of the
gate, and stepped two paces into the garden. There was no sound from
within. She took two steps more and listened intently. Nothing was
audible. Her heart fell yet lower. She told herself that when a child
lived in a house the very air breathed of its presence, and its little
voice was everywhere. Then she remembered that it was late, that it was
night, that even if the child were well it would now be bathed and in
bed. “How foolish!” she thought, and she took a few steps more.
She had meant to reach the hall window and look in, butt before she
could do so, something came scudding along the path in her direction.
It was the dog, and he was barking furiously. All at once he stopped and
began to caper about her. Then he broke into barking again, this time
with a note of recognition and delight, shot into the house and came
back, still barking, and making a circle of joyful salutation in the
darkness round her.
Quaking with fear of instant discovery, she crept under the old tree and
waited. Nobody came from the house. “There's no one at home,” she told
herself, and at that thought the certainty that the child was gone fell
on her as an oppression of distress.
Nevertheless she stepped up to the porch and listened again. There was
no sound within except the ticking of the clock. Making a call on her
courage, she pushed the door open with the tips of her fingers. It made
a rustle as the bottom brushed over the rushes. At that she uttered
a faint cry and crept back trembling. But all was silence again in an
instant. The fire gave out a strong red glow which spread over the walls
and the ceiling. Her mind took in the impression that the place was
almost empty, but she had no time for such observations. With slow and
stiff motions she slid into the house.
Then she heard a sleepy whimper and it thrilled her. In an instant she
had seen the thing she looked for--the cradle, with its hood towards the
door and its foot to the fire. At the next moment she was on her knees
beside it, doubled over it and crying softly to the baby, looking so
different, smelling of milk and of sleep, “My darling! my darling!”
That was the moment when Pete was coming up the path. The dog was
frisking and barking about him. “She's dead,” he was saying. “The man
lied. She's dead.” With that word on his lips he heaved heavily into
the house. As he did so he became aware that some one was there already.
Before his eye had carried the news to his brain, his ear had told him.
He heard a voice which he knew well, though it seemed to be a memory
of no waking moment, but to come out of the darkness and the hours of
sleep. It was a soft and mellow voice, saying, “My beautiful darling! My
beautiful, rosy darling I My darling! My darling!”
He saw a woman kneeling by the cradle, with both arms buried in it as
though they encircled the sleeping child. Her hood was thrown back, and
her head was bare. The firelight fell on her face, and he knew it. He
passed his hand across his eyes as if trying to wipe out the apparition,
but it remained. He tried to speak, but his tongue was stiff. He stood
motionless and stared. He could not remove his eyes.
Kate heard the door thrown open, and she lifted her head in terror. Pete
was before her, with a violent expression on his face. The expression
changed, and he looked at her as if she had been a spirit. Then, in a
voice of awe, he said, “Who art thou?”
“Don't you know me?” she answered timidly.
It seemed as if he did not hear. “Then it's true,” he muttered to
himself; “the man did not lie.”
She felt her knees trembling under her. “I haven't come to stay,” she
faltered. “They told me the child was ill, and I couldn't help coming.”
Still he did not speak to her. As he looked, his face grew awful. The
dew of fear broke out on her forehead.
“Don't you know me, Pete?” she said in a helpless way.
Still he stood looking down at her, fixedly, almost threateningly.
“I am Katherine,” she said, with a downcast look.
“Katherine is dead,” he answered vacantly.
“Oh! oh!”
“She is in her grave,” he said again.
“Oh, that she were in her grave indeed!” said Kate, and she covered her
face with her hands.
“She is dead and buried, and gone from this house for ever,” said Pete.
He did not intend to cast her off; he was only muttering vague words in
the first spasm of his pain; but she mistook them for commands to her to
go.
There was a moment's silence, and then she uncovered her face and said,
“I understand--yes, I will go away. I oughtn't to have come back at
all--I know that. But I will go now. I won't trouble you any more. I
will never come again.”
She kissed the child passionately. It rubbed its little face with the
back of its hand, but it did not awake. She pulled the hood on to her
head, and drew the veil over her face. Then she lifted herself feebly
to her feet, stood a moment looking about her, made a faint pathetic cry
and slid out at the door.
When she was gone, Pete, without uttering a word or a sound, stumbled
into a chair before the fire, put one hand on the cradle, and fell to
rocking it. After some time he looked over his shoulder, like a man who
was coming out of unconsciousness, and said, “Eh?”
The soul has room for only one great emotion at once, and he had begun
to say to himself, “She's alive! She's here!” The air of the house
seemed to be soft with her presence. Hush!
He got on to his feet. “Kate!” he called softly, very softly, as if she
were near and had only just crossed the threshold.
“Kate!” he called again more loudly.
Then he went out at the porch and floundered along the path, crying
again and again, in a voice of boundless emotion, “Kate! Kate! Kate!”
But Kate did not hear him. He was tugging at the gate to open it, when
something seemed to give way inside his head, and a hoarse groan came
from his throat.
“She's better dead,” he thought, and then reeled back to the house like
a drunken man.
The fire looked black, as if it had gone out. He sat down in the
darkness, and put his hand into his teeth to keep himself from crying
out.
VIII..
The Deemster in the half-lit Court-house was passing sentence.
“Prisoner,” he said, “you have been found guilty by a jury of your
countrymen of one of the cruellest of the crimes of imposture. You have
deceived the ignorant, betrayed the unwary, lied to the simple, and
robbed the poor. You have built your life upon a lie, and in your old
age it brings you to confusion. In ruder times than ours your
offence would have worn another complexion; it would have been called
witchcraft, not imposture, and your doom would have been death. The
sentence of the court is that you be committed to the Castle Rushen for
the term of one year.”
Black Tom, who had stood during the Deemster's sentence with his bald
head bent, wiping his eyes on his sleeve and leaving marks on his face,
recovered his self-conceit as he was being hustled out of court.
“You're right, Dempster,” he cried. “Witchcraft isn't worth nothing now.
Religion's the only roguery that's going these days. Your friend Cæsar
was wise, sir. Bes' re-spec's to him, Dempster, and may you live up to
your own tex' yourself, too.”
“If my industry and integrity,” said a solemn voice at the door--“and
what's it saying in Scripture?--'If any provide not for his own house he
is worse than an infidel.' But the Lord is my shield. What for should I
defend myself? I am a worm and no man, saith the Psalms.”
“The Psalms is about right then, Cæsar,” shouted Black Tom from between
two constables.
In the commotion that followed on the prisoner's noisy removal, the
Clerk of the Court was heard to speak to the Deemster. There was another
case just come in--attempted suicide--woman tried to fling herself into
the harbour--been prevented--would his Honour take it now, or let it
stand over for the High Bailiff's court.
“We'll take it now,” said the Deemster. “We may dismiss her in a moment,
poor creature.”
The woman was brought in. She was less like a human creature than like a
heap of half-drenched clothes. A cloak which looked black with the water
that soaked it at the hood covered her body and head. Her face seemed
to be black also, for a veil which she wore was wet, and clung to her
features like a glove. Some of the people in court recognised her figure
even in the uncertain candlelight. She was the woman who had been seen
to come into the town during the hour of the court's adjournment.
Half helped, half dragged by constables, she entered the prisoner's
dock. There she clutched the bar before her as if to keep herself from
falling. Her head was bent down between her shrinking shoulders as if
she were going through the agony of shame and degradation.
“The woman shouldn't have been brought here like this--quick, be quick,”
said the Deemster.
The evidence was brief. One of the constables being on duty in the
market-place had heard screams from the quay. On reaching the place,
he had found the harbour-master carrying a woman up the quay steps. Mr.
Quarry, coming out of the harbour office, had seen a woman go by like
the wind. A moment afterwards he had heard a cry, and had run to the
second steps. The woman had been caught by a boathook in attempting to
get into the water. She was struggling to drown herself.
The Deemster watched the prisoner intently. “Is anything known about
her?” he asked.
The clerk answered that she appeared to be a stranger, but she would
give no information. Then the sergeant of police stepped up to the
dock. In emphatic tones the big little person asked the woman various
questions. What was her name? No answer. Where did she come from? No
answer. What was she doing in Ramsey? Still no answer.
“Your Honour,” said the sergeant, “doubtless this is one of the human
wrecks that come drifting to our shores in the summer season. The
poorest of them are often unable to get away when the season is over,
and so wander over the island, a pest and a burden to every place they
set foot in.”
Then, turning back to the figure crouching in the dock, he said, “Woman,
are you a street-walker?”
The woman gave a piteous cry, let go her hold of the bar, sank back to
the seat behind her, brushed up the wet black veil, and covered her face
with her hands.
“Sit down this instant, Mr. Gawne,” said the Deemster hotly, and there
was a murmur of approval from behind. “We must not keep this woman a
moment longer.”
He rose, leaned across to the rail in front, clasped his hands before
him, looked down at the woman in the dock, and said in a low tone,
that would have been barely loud enough to reach her ears but for the
silence, as of a tomb, in the court, “My poor woman, is there anybody
who can answer for you?”
The prisoner stooped her head lower and began to cry.
“When a woman is so unhappy as to try to take her life, it sometimes
occurs, only too sadly, that another is partly to blame for the
condition that tempts her to the crime.”
The Deemster's voice was as soft as a caress.
“If there is such a one in this case, we ought to learn it. He ought to
stand by your side. It is only right; it is only just. Is there anybody
here who knows you?”
The prisoner was now crying piteously.
“Ah! we mean no harm to any one. It is in the nature of woman, however
low she may sink, however deep her misfortunes, to shield her dearest
enemy. That is the brave impulse of the weakest among women, and all
good men respect it. But the law has its duty, and in this instance it
is one of mercy.”
The woman moaned audibly.
“Don't be afraid, my poor girl. Nobody shall harm you here. Take courage
and look around. Is there anybody in court who can speak for you--who
can tell us how you came to the place where you are now standing?”
The woman let fall her hands, raised her head, and looked up at the
Deemster, face to face and eye to eye.
“Yes,” she said, “there is _one_.”
The Deemster's countenance became pale, his eyes glistened, his look
wandered, his lips trembled--he was biting them, they were bleeding.
“Remove her in custody,” he muttered; “let her be well cared for.”
There was a tumult in a moment. Everybody had recognised the prisoner as
she was being taken out, though shame and privation had so altered her.
“Peter Quilliam's wife!”--“Cæsar Cregeen's daughter--where's the man
himself?”--“Then it's truth they're telling--it's not dead she is at
all, but worse.”--“Lor-a-massy!”--“What a trouble for the Dempster!”
When Kate was gone, the court ought to have adjourned instantly, yet the
Deemster remained in his seat. There was a mist before his eyes which
dazzled him. He had a look at once wild and timid. His limbs pained
although they were swelling to enormous size. He felt as if a heavy,
invisible hand had been laid on the top of his head.
The clerk caught his eye, and then he rose with an apologetic air, took
hold of the rail, and made an effort to cross the dais. At the next
moment his servant, Jem-y-Lord, had leapt up to his side, but he made an
impatient gesture as if declining help.
There are three steps going down to the floor of the court, and a
handrail on one side of them. Coming to these steps, he stumbled,
muttered some confused words, and fell forward on to his face. The
people were on their feet by this time, and there was a rush to the
place.
“Stand back! He has only fainted,” cried Jem-y-Lord.
“Worse than that,” said the sergeant. “Get him to bed, and send for Dr.
Mylechreest instantly.”
“Where can we take him?” said somebody.
“They keep a room for him at Elm Cottage,” said somebody else.
“No, not there,” said Jem-y-Lord.
“It's nearest, and there's no time to lose,” said the sergeant.
Then they lifted Philip, and carried him as he lay, in his wig and gown
as Deemster, to the house of Pete.
IX.
There is a kind of mental shock which, like an earthquake under a
prison, bursts open every cell and lets the inmates escape. After a
time, Pete remembered that he was sitting in the dark, and he got up to
light a candle. Looking for candlestick and matches, he went from table
to dresser, from dresser to table, and from table back to dresser, doing
the same thing over and over again, and not perceiving that he was going
round and round. When at length the candle was lighted, he took it in
his hand and went into the parlour like a sleepwalker. He set it on the
mantelpiece, and sat down on the stool. In his blurred vision confused
forms floated about him. “Ah! my tools,” he thought, and picked up the
mallet and two of the chisels. He was sitting with these in his hands
when his eyes fell on the other candlestick, the one in which the candle
had gone out “I meant to light a candle,” he thought, and he got up and
took the empty candlestick into the hall. When he came back with another
lighted candle, he perceived that there were two. “I'm going stupid,”
he thought, and he blew out the first one. A moment afterwards he forgot
that he had done so, and seeing the second still burning, he blew that
out also.
So dull were his senses that he did not realise that anything was amiss.
His eyes were seeing objects everywhere about--they were growing to
awful size and threatening him. His ears were hearing noises--they were
making a fearful tumult inside his head.
The room was not entirely dark. A shaft of bleared moonlight came and
went at intervals. The moon was scudding through an angry sky, sometimes
appearing, sometimes disappearing. Pete returned to the stool, and then
he was in the light, but the nameless stone, leaning against the wall,
was in the shade. He took up the mallet and chisels again, intending to
work. “Hush!” he said as he began. The clamour in his brain was so loud
that he thought some one was making a noise in the house. This task was
sacred. He always worked at it in silence.
_Pat-put! pat-put!_ How long he worked he never knew. There are moments
which are not to be measured as time. In the uncertain handling of the
chisel and the irregular beat of the mallet something gave way. There
was a harsh sound like a groan. A crack like a flash of forked lightning
had shot across the face of the stone. He had split it in half. Its
great pieces fell to the floor on either side of him. Then he remembered
that the stone had been useless. “It doesn't matter now,” he thought.
Nothing mattered.
With the mallet hanging from his hand he continued to sit in the
drifting moonlight, feeling as if everything in the world had been
shivered to atoms. His two idols had been scattered at one blow--his
wife and his friend. The golden threads that had bound him to life were
broken. When poverty had come, he had met it without repining; when
death had seemed to come, he had borne up against it bravely. But
wifeless, friendless, deceived where he had loved, betrayed where he had
worshipped, he was bankrupt, he was broken, and a boundless despair took
hold of him.
When hope is entirely gone, anguish will sometimes turn a man into a
monster. There was a fretful cry from the cradle, and, still in the
stupor of his despair, he went out to rock it. The fire, which had only
slid and smouldered, was now struggling into flame, and the child looked
up at him with Philip's eyes. A knife seemed to enter his heart at
that moment. He was more desolate than he had thought. “Hush, my child,
hush!” he said, without thinking. _His_ child? He had none. That solace
was gone.
Anger came to save his reason. Not to have felt anger, he must have been
less than a man or more. He remembered what the child had been to him.
He remembered what it was when it came, and again when he thought its
mother was dead; he remembered what it was when death frowned on it, and
what it had been since death passed it by. Flesh of his flesh, blood
of his blood, bone of his bone, heart of his heart. Not his merely, but
himself.
A lie, a mockery, a delusion, a deception! _She_ has practised it. Oh,
she had hidden her secret. She had thought it was safe. But the child
itself had betrayed it. The secret had spoken from the child's own face.
“Yet I've seen her kneel by the cot and pray, 'God bless my baby, and
its father and its mother'-----”
Why had he not killed her? A wild vision rose before him of killing
Kate, and then going to the Deemster and saying, “Take me; I have
murdered her because you have dishonoured her. Condemn me to death; yet
remember God lives, and He will condemn you to damnation.”
But the pity of it--the pity of it! By a quick revolt of tenderness
he recalled Kate as he had just seen her, crouching at the back of the
cradle, like a hunted hare with uplifted paws uttering its last pitiful
cry. He remembered her altered face, so pale even in the firelight, so
thin, so worn, and his anger began to smoke against Philip. The flower
that he would have been proud to wear on his breast Philip had buried in
the dark. Curse him! Curse him!
She had given up all for that man--husband, child, father, mother, her
friends, her good name, the very light of heaven. How she must have
loved him! Yet he had been ashamed of her, had hidden her away, had been
in fear lest the very air should whisper of her whereabouts. Curse him!
Curse him! Curse him!
In the heat of his great anger Pete thought of himself also. Jealousy
was far beneath him, but, like all great souls, this simple man had
known something of the grandeur of friendship. Two streams running into
them and taking heaven into their bosom. But Philip had kept him apart,
had banked him off, and yet drained him to the dregs. He had uncovered
his nakedness--the nakedness of his soul itself.
Bit by bit Pete pieced together the history of the past months. He
remembered the night of Kate's disappearance, when he had gone to
Ballure and shouted up at the lighted window, “I've sent her to
England,” thinking to hide her fault. At that moment Philip had known
all--where she was (for it was where he had sent her), why she was gone,
and that she was gone for ever. Curse him! Curse him!
Pete recalled the letters--the first one that he had put into Philip's
hand, the second that he had read to him, the third that Philip had
written to his dictation. The little forgeries' to keep her poor name
sweet, the little inventions to make his story plausible, the little
lies of love, the little jests of a breaking heart! And then the
messages! The presents to the child! The reference to the Deemster
himself! And the Deemster had sat there and seen through it all as the
sun sees through glass, yet he had given no sign, he had never spoken;
he had held a quivering, naked heart in his hand, while his own lay
within as cold as a stone. Curse him, O God! Curse him!
Pete remembered the night when Philip came to tell him that Kate was
dead, and how he had comforted himself with the thought that he was not
altogether alone in his great trouble, because his friend was with him.
He remembered the journey to the grave, the grave itself--another's
grave-how he knelt at the foot of it, and prayed aloud in Philip's
hearing, “Forgive me, my poor girl!”
“How shall I kill him?” thought Pete. Deemster too! First Deemster now,
and held high in honour! Worshipped for his justice! Beloved for his
mercy! O God! O God!
There are passions so overmastering that they stifle speech, and man
sinks back to the animal. With an inarticulate shout Pete went to the
parlour and caught up the mallet. A frantic thought had flashed on
him of killing Philip as he sat on the bench which he had disgraced,
administering the law which he had outraged. The wild justice of this
idea made the blood to bubble in his ears. He saw himself holding the
Deemster by the throat, and crying aloud to the people, “You think this
man is a just judge--he is a whited sepulchre. You think he is as true
as the sun--he is as false as the sea. He has robbed me of wife and
child; at the very gates of heaven he has lied to me like hell. The hour
of justice has struck, and thus I pay him--and thus--and thus.”
But the power of words was lost in the drunkenness of his rage. With
a dismal roar he flung the mallet away, and it rolled on the ground in
narrowing circles. “My hands, my hands,” he thought. He would strangle
Philip, and then he would kill everybody in his way, merely for the lust
of killing. Why not? The fatal line was past. Nothing sacred remained.
The world was a howling wilderness of boundless license. With the savage
growl of a caged beast this wild man flung himself on the door, tore it
open, and bounded on to the path.
Then he stopped suddenly. There was a thunderous noise outside, such
as the waves make in a cave. A company of people were coming in at the
gate. Some were walking with the heavy step of men who carry a corpse.
Others were bearing lanterns, and a few held high over their heads the
torches which fishermen use when they are hauling the white nets at
night.
“Who's there?” cried Pete, in a voice that was like a howl.
“Your friend,” said somebody.
“_My_ friend? I have no friend,” cried Pete, in a broken roar.
“'Deed he's gone, seemingly,” said a voice out of the dark.
Pete did not hear. Seeing the crowd and the lights, but only as darkness
veined with fire, he thought Philip was coming again, as he had so often
seen him come in his glory, in his greatness, in his triumph.
“Where is he?” he roared. “He's here,” they answered.
And then Philip was brought up the path in the arms of four bearers, his
head hanging aside and shaking at every step, his face white as the wig
above it, and his gown trailing along the earth.
There was a sudden calm, and Pete dropped back in awe and horror. A bolt
out of heaven seemed to have fallen at his feet, and he trembled as if
lightning had blinded him.
Dead!
His anger had ebbed, his fury had dashed itself against a rock. His
towering rage had shrunk to nothing in the face of this awful presence.
The Dark Spirit had gone before him and snatched his victim out of
his hands. He had come out to kill this man, and here he met him being
brought home dead.
Dead? Then his sin was dead also. God forgive him!
God forgive him, where he was gone! Presumptuous man, stand back.
Oh, mighty and merciful Death! Death the liberator, the deliverer, the
pardoner, the peace-maker! Even the shadow of thy face can quench the
fires of revenge; even the gathering of thy wings can deaden the clamour
of madness, and turn hatred into love and curses into prayers.
X.
In that stripped and naked house there was one room still untouched. It
was the room that had been kept for the Deemster. Philip lay on the bed,
motionless and apparently lifeless. Jem-y-Lord stood beating his hands
at the foot. Pete sat on a low stool at the side with his face doubled
on to his knees. Nancy, now back from Sulby, was blowing into the bars
of the grate to kindle a fire. A little group of men stood huddled like
sheep near the door.
Some one said the Deemster's heart was beating. They brought from
another room a little ivory hand-glass and held it over the mouth. When
they raised it the face of the mirror was faintly blurred.
That little cloud on the glass seemed more bright than the shining tread
of an angel on the sea. Jem-y-Lord took a sponge and began to moisten
the cold forehead. One by one the people behind produced their old
wife's wisdom. Somebody remembered that his grandmother always put salts
to the nostrils of a person seemingly dead; somebody else remembered
that when, on the very day of old Iron Christian's death, his father had
been thrown by a colt and lay twelve hours unconscious, the farrier had
bled him and he had opened his eyes instantly.
The doctor had been half an hour gone to Ballaugh, and a man had been
put on a horse and sent after him. But it was a twelve-miles' journey;
the night was dark; it would be a good hour before he could be back.
They touched Pete on the shoulder and suggested something.
“Eh?” he answered vacantly.
“Dazed,” they told themselves. The poor man could not give a wise-like
answer. He had had a shock, and there was worse before him. They talked
in low voices of Kate and of Ross Christian; they were sorry for Pete;
they were still more sorry for the Deemster.
The Deemster's wig had been taken off and tossed on to the
dressing-table. It lay mouth upwards like any old woman's night-cap.
His hair had dragged after it on the pillow. The black gown had not been
removed, but it was torn open at the neck so that the throat might be
free. One of Philip's arms had dropped over the side of the bed, and the
long, thin hand was cold and green and ethereal as marble.
Pete was crouching on his low stool beside this hand. He needed no
softening to touch it now. The chill fingers were in his palm, and his
hot tears were falling on them. Remembering the crime that he had so
nearly committed, he was holding himself in horror. His friend! His
life-long friend! His only friend! The Deemster no longer, but only the
man. Not the man either, but the child. The cruel years had rolled back
with all their burden of trouble. Forgotten days were come again--days
long buried under the _débris_ of memory. They were boys together again.
A little, sunny fellow in velvet, and a bigger lad in a stocking-cap;
the little one talking, always talking; the big one listening, always
listening; the little one proposing, the big one agreeing; the little
one leading, the big one following; the little one looking up and yet
a little down, the big one looking down and yet a little up. Oh, the
happy, happy times, before anger and jealousy and rage and the mad
impulse of murder had darkened their sun shine!
The memories that brought the tenderest throb to Pete as he sat there
fingering the lifeless hand were of the great deeds that he had done for
Philip--how he had fought for him, and been licked for him, and taken
bloody noses for him, and got thrashed for it by Black Tom. But
there were others only less tender. Philip was leaving home for King
William's, and Pete was cudgelling his dull head what to give him for a
parting gift. Decision was the more difficult because he had nothing
to give. At length he had hit on making a whistle--the only thing his
clumsy fingers had ever been deft at. With his clasp-knife he had cut
a wondrous big one from the bough of a willow; he had pared it; he had
turned it; it blew a blast like a fog-horn. The morning was frosty, and
his feet were bare, but he didn't mind the cold; he didn't feel it--no,
not a ha'p'orth. He was behind the hedge by the gate at Ballure, waiting
for the coach that was to take up Philip, and passing the time by
polishing the whistle on the leg of his shining breeches, and testing
its tone with just one more blow. Then up came Crow, and out came Philip
in his new peaked cap and leggings. Whoop! Gee-up! Away! Off they went
without ever seeing him, without once looking back, and he was left in
the prickly hedge with his blue feet on the frost, a look of dejection
about his mouth, and the top of the foolish whistle peeping out of his
jacket-pocket.
The thick sob that came of these memories was interrupted by a faint
sound from the bed. It was a murmur of delirium, as soft as the hum of
bees, yet Pete heard it.
“Cover me up, Pete, cover me up!” said Philip, dreaming aloud.
Philip was a living man! Thank God! Thank God!
A whisper goes farther than a shout. The people behind whispered the
news to the passage, the passage to the stairs, the stairs to the hall,
and the hall to the garden, where a crowd had gathered in the darkness
to look up at the house over which the angel of death was hovering.
In a moment the room was croaking like a frog-pond. “Praise the Lord!”
cried one. “His mercy endureth for ever,” cried another. “What's he
saying?” said a third. “Rambling in his head, poor thing,” said a
fourth.
Pete turned them out--all except Jem-y-Lord, who was still moistening
the Deemster's face and opening his hands, which were now twitching and
tightening.
“Out of this! Out you go!” cried Pete hoarsely.
“No use taking the anger with him--the man's tried,” they muttered, and
away they went.
Jemmy was loth to see them go. He was afraid to be left alone with
Pete--afraid that the Deemster should be at the mercy of this wild
creature with the flaming eyes.
And now that Philip was a living man Pete began to feel afraid of
himself. At sight of life in Philip's face, his gnawing misery returned.
He thought his hatred had been overcome, but he was wrestling in the
throes of forgiveness again. Here was the man who had robbed him of wife
and child and home! In another moment he might have held him in the grip
of his just wrath.
It is an inscrutable and awful fact, that just at that moment when a
man's good angel has conquered, but is spent, his evil angel is sure to
get the advantage of chance. Philip's delirium set in strong, and the
brute beast in Pete, going through its final struggle, stood over the
bed and watched him. In his violence Philip tore at his breast, and
dragged something from beneath his shirt. A moment later it fell from
his graspless fingers to the floor. It was a lock of dark hair. Pete
knew whose hair it was, and he put his foot on it, and that instant the
mad impulse came again to take Philip by the throat and choke him. Again
and again it came. He had to tread it down even amid his sobs and his
tears.
But love cannot be killed in an instant. It does not drop down dead.
There was a sort of tenderness in the thought that this was the man for
whom Kate had given up all the world. Pete began to feel gently towards
Philip because Kate loved him; he began to see something of Kate in
Philip's face. This strange softening increased as he caught the words
of Philip's delirium. He thought he ought to leave the room, but he
could not tear himself away. Crouching down on the stool, he clasped
his hands behind his head, and tightened his arms over his ears. It was
useless. He could not help but listen. Only disjointed sentences, odd
pages torn from the book of life, some of them blurred with tears; but
they were like a cool hand on a fevered brow to him that heard him.
“I was a child, Philip----didn't know what love was then----coming home
by Ramsey steamer----tell the simple truth, Philip----say we tried to be
faithful and loyal and could not, because we loved each other, and
there was no help for----tell Kirry----yes, Auntie, I have read father's
letters----that picture is cracked----”
This in the voice of one who speaks in his sleep, and then in a hushed,
hot whisper, “Haven't I a right to you?----yes, I have a right----take
your topcoat, then, the storm is coming----I'll never let you
go----don't you remember?----can you ever forget----my husband!----my
husband!”
Pete lifted his head as he listened. He had been thinking that Philip
had robbed him of Kate. Was it he who had robbed Kate of Philip?
“I can't live any longer in this house, Philip----the walls are crushing
me; the ceiling is falling on me; the air is stifling me----three
o'clock, Pete----yes, three to-morrow, in the Council Chamber at
Douglas----I'm not a bad woman, Philip Christian----there is something
you have never guessed and I have never told you----is it the child,
Kate?----did you say the child?----you are sure----you are not deceiving
yourself?”
All this in a tone of deep entreaty, and then, with quick-coming breath,
“Jemmy, get the carriage at Shimmin's and drive it yourself----if there
is any attempt at Ramsey to take the horse out----drive to the lane
between the chapel and the cottage----the moment the lady joins
you----you are right, Kate----you cannot live here any longer----this
life of deception must end----that's the churring of the night-jar going
up to Ballure Glen.”
Jem-y-Lord, who was beating out the pillow, dropped it, in his fumbling,
half over the Deemster's face, and looked at Pete in terror. Would this
cruel delirium never break? Where was the doctor? Would he not come at
all?
Pete had risen to his feet, and was gazing down with a look of stupor.
He had been thinking that Philip had robbed him of the child. Was it he
who had robbed Philip?
“Yes, Pete is telling the same story. He is writing letters to
himself----such simple things!----poor old Pete----he means no
harm----he never dreams that every word is burning----Jemmy, leave out
more brandy to-night, the decanter is empty----”
Pete leaned over the pillow. All at once he started back. Philip's eyes
were open and shining up at him. It was hard to believe that Philip was
not speaking to him eye to eye. But there was a veil between them, the
veil of the hand of God.
“I know, Philip, _I_ know,” said the unconscious man in a quick whisper;
he was breathing fast and loud. “Tell him I'm dead----yes, yes, that's
it, that's it----cruel?----no, but kind----'Poor girl,' he'll say, 'I
loved her once, but she's gone'----I'll do it, I'll do it.” Then, in
tones of fear, “It's madness----to paint faces on the darkness, to hear
voices in the air is madness.” And then, solemnly, with a chill, thick
utterance, “There----there----that one by the wall----”
Big drops of sweat broke out on Pete's forehead. Had he been thinking
that Philip had tortured him? It was he who had been torturing Philip.
The letters, the messages, the presents, these had been the whips and
scorpions in his hand. Every innocent word, every look, every sign, had
been as thongs in the instrument of torture. Pete began to feel a great
pity for Philip. “He had suffered plenty,” thought Pete. “He has carried
this cross about far enough.”
“Good-night, boatman!----I went too far----yes, I am back again, thank
God----”
These words brightly, cheerily, hopefully; then, in the deepest tones,
“Good-bye, Philip----it's all my fault----I've broken the heart of one
man, and I'm destroying the soul of another----I'm leaving this lock
of hair--it is all I have to leave----good-bye!----I ought to have gone
long ago----you will not hate me now----”
The last words frayed off, broke in the throat, and stopped. Then
quickly, with panting breath, came, “Kate! Kate! Kate!” again and again
repeated, beginning in a loud beseeching cry and dying down to a long
wail, as if shouted over a gloomy waste wherein the voice was lost.
Jem-y-Lord had been beating round towards the door, wringing his white
hands like a woman, and praying to God that the Deemster might never
come out of his unconsciousness. “He has told him everything,” thought
Jem. “The man will take his life.”
“I came between them,” thought Pete. “She was not for me. She was not
mine. She was Philip's. It was God's doings.”
The bitterness of Pete's heart had passed away. “But I wish----what's
the good of wishing, though? God help us all,” he muttered, in a
breaking voice, and then he crouched down on the stool as before and
covered his face with his hands..
Philip had lifted his head and risen on one elbow. He was looking out
on the empty air with his glassy eyes, as if a picture stood up before
them.
“Yes, no, yes----don't tell me----that Kate?----it's a mistake----that's
not Kate----that white face!----those hollow eyes!----that miserable
woman!----besides, Kate is dead----she must be dead----what's to do
with the lamps?----they are going out----in the dock, too, and before
me----she there and I here!----she the prisoner, I the judge!”
All this with violent emotion, and with one arm outstretched over Pete's
crouching head.
“If I could hear her voice, though----perhaps her voice now----I'm going
to fall----it's Kate, it's Kate! Oh! oh!”
Philip had paused for several seconds, as if trying to listen, and then,
with a loud cry of agony, he had closed his eyes and rolled back on to
the pillow.
“God has meant me to hear all this,” thought Pete. God had intended that
for this, the peace of his soul, he should follow the phases of this
drama of a naked heart. He was sobbing, but his sobs were like growls.
“What's he doing now?” thought Jem-y-Lord, craning his neck at the door.
“Shall I call for somebody?”
Pete had picked up from the floor the lock of hair that had been lying
under his foot, and he was putting it back into Philip's breast.
“Nothing but me between them,” he thought, “nothing but me.”
“Sit down, sir,” cried the unconscious man. It was only the last
outbreak of Philip's delirium, but Pete trembled and shrank back.
Then Philip groaned and his blue lips quivered. He opened his eyes. They
wandered about the room for a moment, and afterwards fixed themselves on
Pete in a long and haggard gaze. Pete's own eyes were too full of tears
to be full of sight, but he could see that the change had come. He
panted with expectation, and looked down at Philip with doglike delight.
There was a moment's silence, and then, in a voice as faint as a breath,
Philip murmured. “What's----where's----is it Pete?”
At that Pete uttered a shout of joy. “He's himself! He's himself! Thank
God!”
“Eh?” said Philip helplessly.
“Don't you be bothering yourself now,” cried Pete. “Lie quiet, boy;
you're in your own room, and as nice as nice.”
“But,” said Philip, “will you not kindly----”
“Not another word, Phil. It's nothing. You're all serene, and about as
right as ninepence.”
“Your Honour has been delirious,” said Jem-y-Lord.
“Chut!” said Pete behind his hand, and then, with another joyful shout,
“Is it a beefsteak you'll be having, Phil, or a dish of tay and a
herring?”
Philip looked perplexed. “But could you not help me----” he faltered.
“You fainted in the Court-house, sir,” said Jem-y-Lord.
“Ah!” It had all come back.
“Hould your whisht, you gawbie,” whispered Pete, and he made a furtive
kick at Jemmy's shins.
Pete was laughing and crying in one breath. In the joyful reflux from
evil passions the great fellow was like a boy. He poked the fire into a
blaze, snuffed the candle with his fingers, sang out “My gough!” when he
burnt them, and then hopped about the floor and cut as many capers as a
swallow after a shower of rain.
Philip looked at him and relapsed into silence. It seemed as if he had
been on a journey and something had happened in his absence. The secret
which he had struggled so long to confess had somehow been revealed.
Jem-y-Lord was beating out his pillows. “Does he know?” said Philip.--
“Yes,” whispered Jemmy.
“Everything!”
“Everything. You have been delirious.”
“Delirious!” said Philip, with alarm.
Then he struggled to rise. “Help me up. Let me go away. Why did you
bring me here?”
“I couldn't help it, sir. I tried to prevent----”
“I cannot face him,” said Philip. “I am afraid. Help me, help me.”
“You are too weak, sir. Lie still. No one shall harm you. The doctor is
coming.”
Philip sank back with a look of fear. “Water,” he cried feebly.
“Here it is,” said Jem-y-Lord, lifting from the dressing-table the jug
out of which he had moistened the sponge.
“Tut!” cried Pete, and he tipped the jug so that half the water spilled.
“Brandy for a man when he's in bed, you goosey gander. Hould, hard, boy;
I've a taste of the rael stuff in the cupboard. Half a minute, mate.
A drop will be doing no harm at all,” and away he went down the stairs
like a flood, almost sweeping over Nancy, who had come creeping up in
her stockings at the sound of voices.
The child had awakened in its cradle, and, with one dumpy leg over its
little quilt, it was holding quiet converse with its toes.
“Hollo, young cockalorum, is it there you are!” shouted Pete.
At the next moment, with a noggin bottle of brandy in his fist, he was
leaping upstairs, three steps at a time.
Meanwhile Jem-y-Lord had edged up to the Deemster and whispered, with
looks of fear and mystery, “Don't take it, sir.”
“What?” said Philip vacantly.--“The brandy,” said Jem.
“Eh?”
“It will be----” began Jem, but Pete's step was thundering up the
stairs, and with a big opening of the mouth, rather than an audible
utterance of the tongue, he added, “poisoned.”
Philip could not comprehend, and Pete came shouting--
“Where's your water, now, ould Snuff-the-Wind?”
While Pete was pouring the brandy into a glass and adding the water,
Jemmy caught up a scrap of newspaper that was lying about, rummaged
for a pencil, wrote some words on the margin, tore the piece off, and
smuggled it into the Deemster's hand.
“Afraid of Pete!” thought Philip. “It is monstrous! monstrous!”
At that moment there was the sound of a horse's hoofs on the road.
“The doctor,” cried Jem-y-Lord. “The doctor at last. Wait, sir, wait,”
and he ran downstairs.
“Here you are,” cried Pete, coming to the bedside, glass in hand. “Drink
it up, boy. It'll stiffen you. My faith, but it's a oner. Aw, God is
good, though. He's all that. He's good tremenjous.”
Pete was laughing; he was crying; he was tasting a new sweetness--the
sweetness of being a good man again.
Philip was holding Jem-y-Lord's paper before his eyes, and trying to
read it.
“What's this that Jemmy has given me?” he said. “Read it, Pete. My eyes
are dazed.”
Pete took the paper in his left hand, still holding the glass in his
right. To get the light on to the writing he went down on his knees by
the bed-head and leaned over towards the fire. Then, like a school-boy
repeating his task, he read in a singsong voice the words that
Jem-y-Lord had written:--“Don't drink the brandy. Pete is trying to kill
you.”
Pete made a grating laugh. “That's a pretty thing now,” he began, but
he could not finish. His laughter ceased, his eyes opened wide, his
tongue seemed to hang out of his mouth, and he turned his head and
looked back with an agony of doubt into Philip's face.
Philip struggled up. “Give me the brandy, Pete.” He took the glass out
of Pete's hand, and without a second thought, with only a smile of faith
and confidence, he raised it to his lips and drank. When the doctor
entered the room a moment afterwards, Pete was sobbing into the
bed-clothes, and Philip's hand was resting on his head.
XI.
Early the next morning Pete visited Kate in prison. He had something
to say to her, something to ask; but he intended to keep back his own
feelings, to bear himself bravely, to sustain the poor girl's courage.
The light was cold and ashen within the prison walls, and as he followed
the sergeant into the cell, he could not help but think of Kate as he
had first known her, so bright, so merry, so full of life and gaiety.
He found her now doubled up on a settle by a newly-kindled fire in the
sergeant's own apartment. She lifted her head, with a terrified look,
as he entered, and she saw his hollow cheeks and deep eyes and ragged
beard.
“I'm not coming to trouble you,” he said. “I've forgiven _him_, and I'm
forgiving you, too.”
“You are very good,” she answered nervously.
“Good?” He gave a crack of bitter laughter. “I meant to kill him--that's
how good I am. And it's the same as if all the devils out of hell had
been at me the night through to do it still. Maybe I hadn't much
to forgive. I'm like a bat in the light--I'm not knowing where I am
ezactly. Daresay the people will laugh at me when they're getting to
know. Wouldn't trust, but they'll think me a poor-spirited cur, anyway.
Let them--there's never much pity for the dog that's licked.”
His voice shook, although so hard and so husky. “That's not what I came
to say, though. You'll be laving this place soon, and I'm wanting to
ask--I'm wanting to know----”
She had covered her face, and now she said through her hands, “Do as you
like with me, Pete. You are my husband, and I must obey.”
He looked down at her for a moment. “But you cannot love me?”
“I have deceived you, and whatever you tell me to do I will do it.”
“But you cannot love me?”
“I'll be a good wife for the future* Pete--I will, indeed, indeed I
will.”
“But you cannot love me?”
She began to cry. “That's enough,” he said. “I'll not force you.”
“You are very good,” she said again.
He laughed more bitterly than before. “Dou yo think I'm wanting your
body while another man has your heart? That's a game I've played about
long enough, I'm thinking. Good? Not me, missis.”
His eyes, which had been fixed on the fire, wandered to his wife, and
then his lips quivered and his manner changed.
“I'm hard--I'll cut it short. Fact is, I've detarmined to do something,
but I've a question to ask first. You've suffered since you left me,
Kate. He has dragged you down a dale--but tell me, do you love him
still?”
She shuddered and crept closer to the wall.
“Don't be freckened. It's a woman's way to love the man that's done
wrong by her. Being good to her is nothing--sarvice is nothing--kindness
is nothing. Maybe there's some ones that cry shame on her for that--but
not me. Giving herself, body and soul, and thinking nothing what she
gets for it--that's the glory of a woman when she cares for anybody.
Spake up, Kate--do you love him in spite of all?”
The answer came in a whisper that was like a breath--“Yes.”
“That'll do,” said Pete.
He pressed his hand against the place of his old wound. “I might have
known you could never care for me--I might have known that,” he said
with difficulty. “But don't think I can't stand my rackups, as the
saying is. I know my course now--I know my job.”
She was sobbing into her hands, and he was breathing fast and loud.
“One word more--only one--about the child.”
“Little Katherine!”
“Have I a right to her?”
She gasped audibly, but did not answer, and he tried a second time.
“Does she belong to me, Kate?”
Her confusion increased. He tried a third time, speaking more gently
than before.
“If I should lave the island, Kate, could I--must I--may I take the
child along with me?”
At that her fear got the better of her shame, and she cried, “Don't take
her away. Oh, don't, don't!”
“Ah!”
He pressed his hand hard at his side again.
“But maybe that's only mother's love, and what mother----”
He broke off and then began once more, in a voice so low that it was
scarcely to be heard. “Tell me, when the time comes--and it will come,
Kate, have no fear about that----”
He was breaking down, he was struggling hard. “When the time comes for
himself and you to be together, will you be afraid to have the
little one with you--will it seem wrong, Kate--you two and little
Katherine--one household--one family--no?--n--o?”
“No.”
“That's enough.”
The words seemed to come out of the depths of his throat. “I've nothing
more to think about. _He_ must think of all the rest.”
“And you, Pete?”
“What matter about me? D'ye think there's anything worse coming? D'ye
think I'm caring what I ate, and what I drink, and what becomes of me?”
He was laughing again, and her sobs broke out afresh.
“God is good,” he said more quietly. “He'll take care of the likes of
me.”
His motionless eyes were on the crackling fire, and he stood in the
light that flashed from it with a face like stone. “I've no child now,”
he muttered, as though speaking to himself.