She slid to her knees at his feet, took the hand that hung by his side

and began to cover it with kisses. “Forgive me,” she said; “I have been

very weak and very guilty.”

“What's the use of talking like that?” he answered. “What's past is

past,” and he drew his hand away. “No child now, no child now,” he

muttered again, as though his dispair cried out to God.

He was feeling like a man wrecked in mid-ocean. A spar came floating

towards him. It was all he could lay hold of from the foundering ship,

in which he had sailed, and sung, and laughed, and slept. He had thought

to save his life by it, but another man was clinging to it, and he had

to drop it and go down.

She could not look into his face again; she could not touch his hand;

she could not ask for his forgiveness. He stood over her for a moment

without speaking, and then, with his hollow cheeks, and deep eyes, and

ragged heard, he went away in the morning sunlight.

XII.

Phillip fell into a deep sleep. When he awoke, he saw, as in a mirror,

a solution to the tumultuous drama of his life. It was a glorious

solution, a liberating and redeeming end, an end bringing freedom from

the bonds which had beset him. What matter if it was hard; if it was

difficult; if it was bitter as Marah and steep as Calvary? He was ready,

he was eager. Oh, blessed sleep! Oh, wise and soothing sleep I It

had rent the dark cloud of his past and given the flash of light that

illumined the path before him.

He opened his eyes and saw Auntie Nan seated by his side, reading a

volume of sermons. At the change in his breathing the old dove looked

round, dropped the book, and began to flutter about. “Hush, dearest,

hush!” she whispered.

There was a heavy, monotonous sound, like the beating of a distant drum

or the throb of an engine under the earth.

“Auntie!”--“Yes, dearest.”

“What day is it?”

“Sunday. Oh, you've had a long, long sleep, Philip. You slept all day

yesterday.”

“Is that the church-bell ringing?”

“Yes, dear, and a fine morning, too--so soft and springlike. I'll open

the window.”

“Then my hearing must be injured.”

“Ah! they muffled the bell--that's it. 'The church is so near,' they

said, 'it might trouble him.'”

A carriage was coming down the road. It rattled on the paved way; then

the rattling ceased, and there was a dull rumble as of a cart sliding

on to a wooden bridge. “That horse has fallen,” said Philip, trying to

rise.

“It's only the straw on the street,” said Auntie Nan. “The people

brought it from all parts. 'We must deaden the traffic by the house,'

they said. Oh, you couldn't think how good they've been. Yesterday was

market-day, but there was no business done. Couldn't have been; they

were coming and going the whole day long. 'And how's the Deemster now?'

'And how's he now?' It was fit to make you cry. I believe in my heart,

Philip, nobody in Ramsey went to bed the first night at all. Everybody

waiting and waiting to see if there wasn't something to fetch, and the

kettle kept boiling in every kitchen round about. But hush, dearest,

hush! Not so much talking all at once. Hush, now!”

“Where is Pete?” asked Philip, his face to the wall.

“Oiling the hinges of the door, dearest. He was laying carpets on the

stairs all day yesterday. But never the sound of a hammer. The man's

wonderful. He must have hands like iron. His heart's soft enough,

though. But then everybody is so kind--everybody, everybody! The doctor,

and the vicar, and the newspapers--oh, it's beautiful! It's just as Pete

was saying.”

“What was Pete saying, Auntie?”

“He was saying the angels must think there's somebody sick in every

house in the island.”

A sound of singing came through the open window, above the whisper of

young leaves and the twitter of birds. It was the psalm that was being

sung in church--

“Blessed is the man that considereth the poor and needy;

The Lord shall deliver him in time of trouble.”

“Listen, Philip. That must be a special psalm. I'm sure they're singing

it for you. How sweet of them! But we are talking too much, dear. The

doctor will scold. I must leave you now, Philip. Only for a little,

though, while I go back to Bal lure, and I'll send up Cottier.”

“Yes, send up Cottier,” said Philip.

“My darling,” said the old soul, looking down as she tied her bonnet

strings. “You'll lie quiet now? You're sure you'll lie quiet? Well, good

bye! good-bye!”

As Philip lay alone the soar and swell of the psalm filled the room.

Oh, the irony of it all! The frantic, hideous, awful irony! He was

lying there, he, the guilty one, with the whole island watching at his

bedside, pitying him, sorrowing for him, holding its breath until he

should breathe, and she, his partner, his victim, his innocent victim,

was in jail, in disgrace, in a degradation more deep than death. Still

the psalm soared and swelled. He tried to bury his head in the pillows

that he might not hear.

Jem-y-Lord came in hurriedly and Philip beckoned him close. “Where is

she?” he whispered.

“They removed her to Castle Rushen late last night, your Honour,” said

Jemmy softly.

“Write immediately to the Clerk of the Bolls,” said Philip. “Say she

must be lodged on the debtors' side and have patients' diet and every

comfort. My Kate! my Kate!” he kept saying, “it shall not be for long,

not for long, my love, not for long!”

The convalescence was slow and Philip was impatient. “I feel better

to-day, doctor,” he would say, “don't you think I may get out of bed?”

“_Traa dy liooar_ (time enough), Deemster,” the doctor would answer.

“Let us see what a few more days will do.”

“I have a great task before me, doctor,” he would say again. “I must

begin immediately.”

“You have a life's work before you, Deemster, and you must begin soon,

but not just yet.”

“I have something particular to do, doctor,” he said at last. “I must

lose no time.”

“You must lose no time indeed, that's why you must stay where you are a

little longer.”

One morning his impatience overcame him, and he got out of bed. But,

being on his feet, his head reeled, his limbs trembled, he clutched at

the bed-post, and had to clamber back. “Oh God, bear me witness, this

delay is not my fault,” he murmured.

Throughout the day he longed for the night, that he might close his eyes

in the darkness and think of Kate. He tried to think of her as she

used to be--bright, happy, winsome, full of joy, of love, of passion,

dangling her feet from the apple-tree, or tripping along the tree-trunk

in the glen, teasing him? tempting him. It was impossible. He could

only think of her in, the gloom of the prison. That filled his mind with

terrors. Sometimes in the dark hours his enfeebled body beset his brain

with fantastic hallucinations. Calling for paper and pens, he would make

show of writing a letter, producing no words or intelligible signs, but

only a mass of scrawls and blotches. This he would fold and refold with

great elaboration, and give to Jem y-Lord with an air of gravity and

mystery, saying in a whisper, “For her!” Thus night brought no solace,

and the dawn found him waiting for the day, that he might open his eyes

in the sunlight and think, “She is better where she is; God will comfort

her.”

A fortnight went by and he saw nothing of Pete. At length he made a call

on his courage and said, “Auntie, why does Pete never come?”

“He does, dearest. Only when you're asleep, though. He stands there in

the doorway in his stockings. I nod to him and he comes in and looks

down at you. Then he goes away without a word.”

“What is he doing now?”

“Going to Douglas a good deal seemingly. Indeed, they're saying--but

then people are so fond of talking.”

“What are people saying, Auntie?”

“It's about a divorce, dearest!”

Philip groaned and turned away his face.

He opened his eyes one day from a doze, and saw the plain face of Nancy

Joe, framed in a red print handkerchief. The simple creature was talking

with Auntie Nan, holding council, and making common cause with the

dainty old lady as unmarried women and old maids both of them.

“'Why don't you keep your word true?' says I. 'Wasn't you saying you'd

take her back,' says I, 'whatever she'd done and whatever she was, so

help you God?' says I. 'Isn't she shamed enough already, poor thing,

without you going shaming her more? Have you no bowels at all? Are you

only another of the gutted herrings on a stick?' says I. 'Why don't you

keep your word true?' 'Because,' says he, 'I want to be even with the

other one,' says he, and then away he went wandering down by the tide.”

“It's unchristian, Nancy,” said Auntie Nan, “but it's human; for

although he forgives the woman, he can hardly be expected to forgive the

man, and he can't punish one without punishing both.”

“Much good it'll do to punish either, say I. What for should he put up

his fins now the hook's in his gizzard? But that's the way with the men

still. Talking and talking of love and love; but when trouble is coming,

no better than a churn of sour cream on a thundery day. We're best off

that never had no truck with them--I don't know what you think, Miss

Christian, ma'am. They may talk about having no chances--I don't mind

if they do--do you? I had chance enough once, though--I don't know what

you've had, ma'am. I had one sweetheart, anyway--a sort of a sweetheart,

as you might say; but he was sweeter on the money than on me. Always

asking how much I had got saved in the stocking. And when he heard I had

three new dresses done, 'Nancy,' says he, 'we had better be putting a

sight up on the parzon now, before they're all wore out at you.'”

The Governor, who was still in London, wrote a letter full of tender

solicitude and graceful compliment. The Clerk of the Rolls had arranged

from the first that two telegrams should be sent to him daily, giving

accounts of Philip's condition. At last the Clerk came in person,

and threw Auntie Nan into tremors of nervousness by his noise and

robustious-ness. He roared as he came along the path, roared himself

through the hall, up the stairs, and into the bedroom, roared again

as he set eyes on Philip, protesting that the sick man was worth five

hundred dead men yet, and vowing with an oath (and a tear trickling down

his nose) that he would like to give “time” to the fools who frightened

good people with bad reports. Then he cleared the room for a private

consultation. “Out you go, Cottier. Look slippy, man!”

Auntie Nan fled in terror. When she had summoned resolution to invade

afresh the place of the bear that had possession of her lamb, the Clerk

of the Rolls was rising from the foot of the bed and saying--

“We'll leave it at that then, Christian. These d------ things _will_

happen; but don't you bother your head about it. I'll make it all

serene. Besides, it's nothing--nothing in a lifetime. I'll have to send

you the summons, though. You needn't trouble about that; just toss it

into the fire.”

Philip's head was down, his eyes were on the counterpane, and a faint

tinge of colour overspread his wasted face.

“Ah! you're back, Miss Christian? I must be going, though. Good-bye,

old fellow! Take care of yourself--good men are scarce. Good-bye, Miss

Christian! Good-bye, all! Good-bye, Phil! God bless you!”

With that he went roaring down the stairs, but came thunging up again in

a moment, put his head round the doorpost, and said--

“Lord bless my soul, if I wasn't forgetting an important bit of

news--very important news, too! It hasn't got into the papers yet,

but I've had the official wrinkle. What d'ye think?--the Governor has

resigned! True as gospel. Sent in his resignation to the Home Office

the night before last. I saw it coming. He hasn't been at home since

Tynwald. Look sharp and get better now. Good-bye!”

Philip got up for the first time the day following. The weather was soft

and full of whispers of spring; the window was open and Philip sat with

his face in the direction of the sea. Auntie Nan was knitting by his

side and running on with homely gossip. The familiar and genial talk

was floating over the surface of his mind as a sea-bird floats over the

surface of the sea, sometimes reflected in it, sometimes skimming it,

sometimes dipping into it and being lost.

“Poor Pete! The good woman here thinks he's hard. Perhaps he is; but I'm

sure he is much to be pitied. Ross has behaved badly and deserves all

that can come to him. 'He's the same to me as you are, dear--in blood,

I mean--but somehow I can't be sorry.... Ah! you're too tender-hearted,

Philip, indeed you are. You'd find excuses for anybody. The doctor says

overwork, dearest; but _I_ say the shock of seeing that poor creature in

that awful position. And what a shock you gave me, too! To tell you the

truth, Philip, I thought it was a fate. Never heard of it? No? Never

heard that grandfather fainted on the bench? He did, though, and he

didn't recover either. How well I remember it! Word broke over the town

like a clap of thunder, 'The Deemster has fallen in the Court-house.'

Father heard it up at Ballure and ran down bareheaded. Grandfather's

carriage was at the Courthouse door, and they brought him up to

Ballawhaine. I remember I was coming downstairs when I saw the carriage

draw up at the gate. The next minute your father, with his wild eyes and

his bare head, was lifting something out of the inside. Poor Tom! He had

never set foot in the house since grandfather had driven him out of it.

And little did grandfather think in whose arms he was to travel the last

stage of his life's journey.”

Philip had fallen asleep. Jem-y-Lord entered with a letter. It was in a

large envelope and had come by the insular post.

“Shall I open it?” thought Auntie Nan. She had been opening and replying

to Philip's letters during the time of his illness, but this one bore

an official seal, and so she hesitated. “Shall I?” she thought, with the

knitting needle to her lip. “I will. I may save him some worry.”

She fixed her glasses and drew out the letter. It was a summons from the

Chancery Division of the High Court of Justice--a petition for divorce.

The petitioner's name was Peter Quilliam; the respondent----, the co

respondent----.

As Philip awoke from his doze, with the salt breath of the sea in his

nostrils and the songs of spring in his ears, Auntie Nan was fumbling

with the paper to get it back into the envelope. Her hands trembled,

and when she spoke her voice quivered. Philip saw in a moment what had

happened. She had stumbled into the pit where the secret of his life lay

buried.

The doctor came in at that instant. He looked attentively at Auntie Nan,

and said significantly, “You have been nursing too long, Miss Christian,

you must go home for a while.”

“I will go home at once,” she faltered, in a feeble inward voice.

Philip's head was on his breast. Such was the first step on the Calvary

he intended to ascend. O God, help him! God support him! God bear up his

sinking feet that he might not fall from weakness, or fear, or shame.

XIII.

Cæsar visited Kate at Castle Rushen. He found her lodged in a large and

light apartment (once the dining-room of the Lords of Man), indulged

with every comfort, and short of nothing but her liberty. As the turnkey

pulled the door behind him, Cæsar lifted both hands and cried, “The Lord

is my refuge and my strength; a very present help in trouble.” Then he

inquired if Pete had been there before him, and being answered “No,” he

said, “The children of this world are wiser in their generation than the

children of light.” After that he fell to the praise of the Deemster,

who had not only given Kate these mercies, comfortable to her carnal

body, if dangerous to her soul, but had striven to lighten the burden of

her people at the time when he had circulated the report of her death,

knowing she was dead indeed, dead in trespasses and sins, and choosing

rather that they should mourn her as one who was already dead in fact,

than feel shame for her as one that was yet alive in iniquity.

Finally, he dropped his handkerchief on to the slate floor,-went down

on one knee by the side of his tall hat, and called on her in prayer

to cast in her lot afresh with the people of God. “May her lightness be

rebuked, O Lord!” he cried. “Give her to know that until she repents

she hath no place among Thy children. And, Lord, succour Thy servant in

his hour of tribulation. Let him be well girt up with Christian armour.

Help him to cry aloud, amid his tears and his lamentations, 'Though my

heart and hers should break, Thy name shall not be dishonoured, my Lord

and my God!'”

Rising from his knee and dusting it, Cæsar took up his tall hat, and

left Kate as he had found her, crouching by the fire inside the wide

ingle of the old hall, covering her face and saying nothing.

He was in this mood of spiritual exaltation as he descended the steps

into the Keep, and came upon a man in the dress of a prisoner sweeping

with a besom. It was Black Tom. Cæsar stopped in front of him, moved

his lips, lifted his face to the sky, shut both eyes, then opened them

again, and said in a voice of deep sorrow, “Aw, Thomas! Thomas Quilliam!

I'm taking grief to see thee, man. An ould friend, whose hand has rested

in my hand, and swilling the floor of a prison! Well, I warned thee

often. But thou wast ever stony ground, Thomas. And now thou must see

for thyself whether was I right that honesty is the better policy. Look

at thee, and look at me. The Lord has delivered me, and prospered me

even in temporal things. I have lands and I have houses. And what hast

thou thyself? Nothing but thy conscience and thy disgrace. Even thy very

clothes they have taken away from thee, and they would take thy hair

itself if thou had any.”

Black Tom stood with feet flatly planted apart, rested himself on the

shank of his besom, and said, “Don't be playing cammag (shindy) with me,

Mr. Holy Ghoster. It isn't honesty that's making the diff'rance between

us at all--it's luck. You've won and I've lost, you've succeeded and

I've failed, you're wearing your chapel hat and I'm in this bit of a

saucepan lid, but you're only a reg'lar ould Pharisee, anyway.”

Cæsar waved his hand. “I can't take the anger with thee, Thomas,” he

said, backing himself out. “I thought the devil had been chained since

our last camp-meeting, but I was wrong seemingly. He goeth about still

like a raging lion, seeking whom he may devour.”

“Don't be trying to knock me down with your tex'es,” said Thomas,

shouldering his besom. “Any cock can crow on his own midden.”

“You can't help it, Thomas,” said Cæsar, edging away. “It isn't my ould

friend that's blaspheming at all. It's the devil that has entered into

his heart and is rending him. But cast the devil out, man, or hell will

be thy portion.”

“I was there last night in my dreams, Cæsar,” said Black Tom, following

him up. “'Oh, Lord Devil, let me in,' says I. 'Where d'ye come from?'

says he. 'The Isle of Man,' says I. 'I'm not taking any more from there

till my Bishop comes,' says he. 'Who's that?' says I. 'Bishop Cæsar, the

publican--who else?' says he.”

“I marvel at thee, Thomas,” said Cæsar, half through the small door

of the portcullis, “but the sons of Belial have to fight hard for his

throne. I'll pray for thee, though, that it be not remembered against

thee when(D.V.) there will be weeping and wailing and gnashing of

teeth.”

That night Cæsar visited the Deemster at Elm Cottage. His eyes

glittered, and there was a look of frenzy in his face. He was still in

his mood of spiritual pride, and when he spoke it was always with the

thees and the thous and in the high pitch of the preacher.

“The Ballawhaine is dead, your Honour,” he cried, “They wouldn't have me

tell thee before because of thy body's weakness, but now they suffer it.

Groanings and moanings and 'stericks of torment! Ter'ble sir, ter'ble!

Took a notion he would have water poured out for him at the last. It

couldn't wash him clane, though. And shouting with his dying voice,

'I've sinned, O God, I've sinned!' Oh, I delivered my soul, sir; he can

clear me of that, anyway. 'Lay hould of a free salvation,' says I. 'I've

not lived a right life,' says he. 'Truth enough,' says I; 'you've lived

a life of carnal freedom, but now is the appointed time. Say, “Lord,

I belaive; help thou my unbelaife.”' 'Too late, Mr. Cregeen, too late,'

says he, and the word was scarce out of his mouth when he was key-cold

in a minute, and gone into the night of all flesh that's lost. Well,

it was his own son that killed him, sir; robbed him of every silver

sixpence and ruined him. The last mortgage he raised was to keep the

young man out of prison for forgery. Bad, sir, bad! To indulge a child

to its own damnation is bad. A human infirmity, though; and I'm feeling

for the poor sinner myself being tempted--that is to say inclining--but

thank the Lord for his strengthening arm----”

“Is he buried?” asked Philip.

“Buried enough, and a poor funeral too, sir,” said Cæsar, walking the

room with a proud step, the legs straightened, the toes conspicuously

turned out. “Driving rain and sleet, sir, the wind in the trees, the

grass wet to your calf, and the parson in his white smock under the

umbrella. Nobody there to spake of, neither; only myself and the tenants

mostly.”

“Where was Ross?”

“Gone, sir, without waiting to see his foolish ould father pushed under

the sod. Well, there was not much to wait for neither. The young man has

been a besom of fire and burnt up everything. Not so much left as would

buy a rope to hang him. And Ballawhaine is mine, sir; mine in a way of

spak-ing--my son-in-law's, anyway--and he has given me the right to have

and to hould it. Aw, a Sabbath time, sir; a Sabbath time. I made up my

mind to have it the night the man struck me in my own house in Sulby. He

betrayed my daughter at last, sir, and took her from her home, and then

her husband lent six thousand pounds on mortgage. 'Do what you like with

it,' said he, and I said to myself, 'The man shall starve; he shall be

a beggar; he shall have neither bread to eat, nor water to drink, nor a

roof to cover him.' And the moment the breath was out of the ould man's

body I foreclosed.”

Philip was trembling from head to foot. “Do you mean,” he faltered,

“that that was your reason?”

“It is the Lord's hand on a rascal,” said Cæsar, “and proud am I to be

the instrument of his vengeance. 'God moves in a mysterious way,' sir.

Oh, the Lord is opening His word more and more. And I have more to tell

thee, too. Balla-whaine would belong to thyself, sir, if every one had

his rights. It was thy grandfather's inheritance, and it should have

been thy father's, and it ought to be thine. Take it, sir, take it on

thy own terms; it is worth a matter of twelve thousand, but thou shalt

have it for nine, and pay for it when the Lord gives thee substance.

Thou hast been good to me and to mine, and especially to the poor lost

lamb who lies in the Castle to-night in her shame and disgrace. Little

did I think I should ever repay thee, though. But it is the Lord's

doings. It is marvellous in our eyes. 'Deep in unfathomable mines'----”

Cæsar was pacing the room and speaking in tones of rapture. Philip, who

was sitting at the table, rose from it with a look of fear.

“Frightful! frightful!” he muttered. “A mistake! a mistake!”

“The Lord God makes no mistakes, sir,” cried Cæsar.

“But what if it was not Ross----” began Philip. Cæsar paid no heed.

“What if it was not Ross----” Cæsar glanced over his shoulder.

“What if it was some one else----” said Philip. Cæsar stopped in front

of him.

“Some one you have never thought of--some one you have respected and

even held in honour----”

“Who, then?” said Cæsar huskily.

“Mr. Cregeen,” said Philip, “it is hard for me to speak. I had not

intended to speak yet; but I should hold myself in horror if I were

silent now. You have been living in awful error. Whatever the cost,

whatever the consequences, you must not remain in that error a moment

longer. It was not Ross who took away your daughter.”

“Who was it?” cried Cæsar. His voice had the sound of a cracked bell.

Philip struggled hard. He tried to confess. His eyes wandered about the

walls. “As you have cherished a mistaken resentment,” he faltered, “so

you have nourished a mistaken gratitude.”

“Who? who?” cried Cæsar, looking fixedly into Philip's face.

Philip's rigid fingers were crawling over the papers on the table like

the claws of crabs. They touched the summons from the Chancery Court,

and he picked it up.

“Read this,” he said, and held it out to Cæsar.

Cæsar took it, but continued to look at Philip with eyes that were

threatening in their wildness. Philip felt that in a moment their

positions had been changed. He was the judge no longer, but only a

criminal at the bar of this old man, this grim fanatic, half-mad already

with religious mania.

“The Lord of Hosts is mighty,” muttered Cæsar; and then Philip heard the

paper crinkle in his hand.

Cæsar was feeling for his spectacles. When he had liberated them from

the sheath, he put them on the bridge of his nose upside down. With

the two glasses against the wrinkles of his forehead and his eyes still

uncovered, he held the paper at arm's length and tried to read it. Then

he took out his red print handkerchief to dust the spectacles. Fumbling

spectacles and sheath and handkerchief and paper in his trembling hands

together, he muttered again in a quavering voice, as if to fortify

himself against what he was to see, “The Lord of Hosts is mighty.”

He read the paper at length, and there was no mistaking it. “Quilliam v.

Quilliam and Christian (Philip).”

He laid the summons on the table, and returned his spectacles to their

sheath. His breathing made noises in his nostrils. “_Ugh cha nee!_” (woe

is me), he muttered. “_Ugh cha nee! Ugh cha nee!_”

Then he looked helplessly around and said, “Depart from me, for I am a

sinful man, O Lord.”

The vengeance that he had built up day by day had fallen in a moment

into ruins. His hypocrisy was stripped naked. “I see how it is,” he said

in a hoarse voice. “The Lord has de-ceaved me to punish me. It is the

public-house. Ye cannot serve God and mammon. What's gained on the

devil's back is lost under his belly. I thought I was a child of God,

but the deceitfulness of riches has choked the word. _Ugh cha nee! Ugh

cha nee!_ My prosperity has been like the quails, only given with the

intent of choking me. _Ugh cha nee!_”

His spiritual pride was broken down. The Almighty had refused to be made

a tool of. He took up his hat and rolled his arm over it the wrong way

of the nap. Half-way to the door he paused. “Well, I'll be laving you;

good-day, sir,” he said, nodding his head slowly. “The Lord's been

knowing what you were all the time seemingly. But what's the use of His

knowing--He never tells on nobody. And I've been calling on sinners to

flee from the wrath, and He's been letting the devils make a mock at

myself! _Ugh cha nee! Ugh cha nee!_”

Philip had slipped back in his chair, and his head had fallen forward'

on the table. He heard the old man go out; he heard his heavy step drop

slowly down the stairs; he heard his foot dragging on the path outside.

“_Ugh cha nee! Ugh cha nee!_” The word rang in his heart like a knell.

Jem-y-Lord, who had been out in the town, came back in great excitement.

“Such news, your Honour! Such splendid news!”

“What is it?” said Philip, without lifting his head.

“They're signing petitions all over the island, asking the Queen to

make you Governor.”

“God in heaven!” said Philip; “that would be frightful.”

XIV.

When Philip was fit to go out, they brought up a carriage and drove

him round the bay. The town had awakened from its winter sleep, and the

harbour was a busy and cheerful scene. More than a hundred men had come

from their crofts in the country, and were making their boats ready for

the mackerel-fishing at Kinsale. There was a forest of masts where the

flat hulls had been, the taffrails and companions were touched up with

paint, and the newly-barked nets were being hauled over the quay.

“Good morning, Dempster,” cried the men.

They all saluted him, and some of them, after their Manx fashion, drew

up at the carriage-door, lifted their caps with their tarry hands, and

said--

“Taking joy to see you out again, Dempster. When a man's getting over an

attack like that, it's middling clear the Lord's got work for him.”

Philip answered with smiles and bows and cheerful words, but the

kindness oppressed him. He was thinking of Kate. She was the victim

of his success. For all that he received she had paid the penalty. He

thought of her dreams, her golden dreams, her dreams of going up side by

side and hand in hand with the man she loved. “Oh, my love, my love!” he

murmured. “Only a little longer.”

The doctor was waiting for him when he reached home.

“I have something to say to you, Deemster,” he said, with averted face.

“It's about your aunt.”

“Is she ill?” said Philip.--“Very ill.”

“But I've inquired daily.”

“By her express desire the truth has been kept back from you.”

“The carriage is still at the door----” began Philip.

“I've never seen any one sink so rapidly. She's all nerve. No doubt the

nursing exhausted her.”

“It's not that--I'll go up immediately.”

“She was to expect you at five.”

“I cannot wait,” said Philip, and in a moment he was on the road. “O

God!” he thought, “how steep is the path I have to tread.”

On getting to Ballure, he pushed through the hall and stepped upstairs.

At the door of Auntie Nan's bedroom he was met by Martha, the housemaid,

now the nurse. She looked surprised, and made some nervous show of

shutting him out. Before she could dc so he was already in the room. The

air was heavy with the smell of medicines and vinegar and the odours of

sick life.

“Hush!” said Martha, with a movement of lips and eyebrows.

Auntie Nan was asleep in a half-sitting position on the bed. It was a

shock to see the change in her. The beautiful old face was white and

drawn with pain; the chin was hanging heavily; the eyes were half open;

there was no cap on her head; her hair was straggling loosely and was

dull as tow.

“She must be very ill,” said Philip under his breath.

“Very,” said Martha. “She wasn't expecting you until five, sir.”

“Has the doctor told her? Does she know?”

“Yes, sir; but she doesn't mind that. She knows she's dying, and

is quite resigned--quite--and quite cheerful--but she fears if you

knew--hush!”

There was a movement on the bed.

“She'll be shocked if she--and she's not ready to receive--in here,

sir,” whispered Martha, and she motioned to the back of a screen that

stood between the door and the bed.

There was a deep sigh, a sound as of the moistening of dry lips, and

then the voice of Auntie Nan--not her own familiar voice, but a sort of

vanishing echo of it. “What is the time, Martha?”

“Twenty minutes wanting five, ma'am.”

“So late! It wasn't nice of you to let me sleep so long, Martha. I'm

expecting the Governor at five. What a mercy he hasn't come earlier. It

wouldn't be right to keep him waiting, and then--bring me the sponge,

girl. Moisten it first. Now the towel. The comb next. That's better. How

lifeless my hair is, though. Oil, you say? I wonder! I've never used it

in my life: but at a time like this--well, just a little, then--there,

that will do. Bring me a cap--the one with the pink bow in it. My face

is so pale--it will give me a little colour. That will do. You

couldn't tell I had been ill, could you? Not very ill, anyway? Now side

everything away. The medicines too--put them in the cupboard. So many

bottles. 'How ill she must have been!' he would say. And now open the

drawer on the left, Martha, the one with the key in it, and bring me

the paper on the top. Yes, the white paper. The folded one with the

endorsement. Endorsement means writing on the back, Martha. Ah! I've

lived all my life among lawyers. Lay it on the counterpane. The keys?

Lay them beside it. No, put them behind my pillow, just at my back. Yes,

there--lower, though, deeper still--that's right. Now set a chair, so

that he can sit beside me. This side of the bed--no, this side. Then the

light will be on him, and I will be able to see his face--my eyes are

not so good as they were, you know. A little farther back--not quite so

much, neither--that will do. Ah!”

There was a long breath of satisfaction, and then Auntie Nan said--

“I suppose it's----what time is it now, Martha?”

“Ten minutes wanting five, ma'am.”

“Did you tell Jane about the cutlets? He likes them with bread-crumbs,

you know. I hope she won't forget to say 'Your Excellency.' I shall hear

his voice the moment he comes into the hall. My ears are no worse, if

my eyes are. Perhaps he won't speak, though, 'She's been so ill,'

he'll think. Martha, I think you had better open the door. Jane is so

forgetful. She might say things, too. If he asks, 'How is she to-day,

Martha'' you must answer quite brightly, 'Better to-day, your

Excellency.'”

There was an exclamation of pain.

“Oh! Ugh--Oo! Oh, blessed Lord Jesus!”

“Are you sure you are well enough, ma'am? Hadn't I better tell him----”

“No, I'll be worse to-morrow, and the next day worse still. Give me a

dose of medicine, Martha--the morning medicine--the one that makes me

cheerful. Thank you, Martha. If I feel the pain when he is here, I'll

bear it as long as I can, and then I'll say, 'I'm finding myself drowsy,

Philip; you had better go and lie down.' Will you understand that,

Martha?”

“Yes, ma'am,” said Martha.

“I'm afraid we must be a little deceitful, Martha. But we can't help

that, can we? You see he has to be installed yet, and that is always a

great excitement. If he thought I was very ill, now--_very_, very

ill, you know--yes, I really think he would wish to postpone it, and I

wouldn't have that for worlds and worlds. He has always been so fond

of his old auntie. Well, it's the way with these boys. I daresay people

wonder why he has never married, being so great and so prosperous. That

was for my sake. He knew I should----”

Philip was breathing heavily. Auntie Nan listened. “I'm sure there's

somebody in the hall, Martha. Is it----? Yes, it's----; Go down to him

quick----”

“Yes, ma'am,” said Martha, making a noise with the screen to cover

Philip's escape on tiptoe. Then she came to him on the landing, wiping

her eyes with her apron, and pretended to lead Philip back to the room.

“My boy! my boy!” cried Auntie Nan, and she folded him in her arms.

The transformation was wonderful. She had a look of youth now, almost

a look of gaiety. “I've heard the great, great news,” she whispered,

taking his hand.

“That's only a rumour, Auntie,” said Philip. “Are you better?”

“Oh, but it will come true. Yes, yes, I'm better. I'm sure it will come

true. And, dear heart, what a triumph! I dreamt it all the night before

I heard of it. You were on the top of the Tynwald, and there was a great

crowd. But come and sit down and tell me everything. So you are better

yourself? Quite strong again, dear? Oh, yes, any where, Philip-sit

anywhere. Here, this chair will do--this one by my side. Ah! How well

you look!”

She was carried away by her own gaiety. Leaning back on the pillow,

but still keeping his hand in hers, she said, “Do you know, Philip

Christian, who is the happiest person in the world? I'm sure you don't,

for all you're so clever. So I'll tell you. Perhaps you think it's a

beautiful young wife just married to a husband who worships her. Well,

you're quite, quite wrong, sir. It's an old, old lady, very, very old,

and very feeble, just tottering on, and not expecting to live a great

while longer, but with her sons about her, grown up, and big, and

strong, and having all the world before them. That's the happiest person

on earth. And I'm the next thing to it, for my boy--my own boy's boy---”

She broke off, and then, with a far-off look, she said, “I wonder will

he think I've done my duty!”

“Who?” asked Philip.

“Your father,” she answered.

Then she turned to the maid and said, quite gaily, “You needn't wait,

Martha. His Excellency will call you when I want my medicine. Won't you,

your Excellency?”

Philip could not find it in his heart to correct her again. The girl

left the room. Auntie Nan glanced at the closing door, then reached over

to Philip with an air of great mystery, and whispered--

“You mustn't be shocked, Philip, or surprised, or fancy I'm very ill, or

that I'm going to die; but what do you think I've done?”

“Nay, what?”

“I've made my will! Is that very terrible?”

“You've done right, Auntie,” said Philip.

“Yes, the High Bailiff has been up and everything is in order, every

little thing. See,” and she lifted the paper that the maid had laid on

the counterpane. “Let me tell you.” She nodded her head as she ran over

the items. “Some little legacies first, you know. There's Martha, such

a good girl--I've left her my silk dresses. Then old Mary, the housemaid

at Ballawhaine. Poor old thing! she's been down with rheumatism three

years, and flock beds get so lumpy--I've left her my feather one. I

thought at first I should like you to have my little income. Do you

know, your old auntie is quite an old miser. I've grown so fond of my

little money. And it seemed so sweet to think--but then you don't

want it now, Philip. It would be nothing to you, would it? I've been

thinking, though--now, what do you think I've been thinking of doing

with my little fortune?”

Philip stroked the wrinkled fingers with his other hand.

“What's right, I'm sure, Auntie. What is it?”

“You would never guess.”--“No?”

“I've been thinking,” with sudden gravity. “Philip, there's nobody in

the world so unhappy as a poor gentlewoman who has slipped and fallen.

Then this one's father, he has turned his back on her, they're telling

me, and of course she can't expect anything from her husband. I've been

thinking, now----”

“Yes?” said Philip, with his eyes down.

“To tell you the truth, I've been thinking it would be so nice----”

And then, nervously, faltering, in a quavering voice, with many excuses,

out came the great secret, the mighty strategy. Auntie Nan had willed

her fortune to Kate.

“You're an angel, Auntie,” said Philip in a thick voice.

But he saw through her artifice. She was talking of Kate, but she was

thinking of himself. She was trying to relieve him of an embarrassment;

to remove an impediment that lay in his path; to liberate his

conscience; to cover up his fault; to conceal everything.

“And then this house, dear,” said Auntie Nan. “It's yours, but you'll

never want it. It's been a dear little harbour of refuge, but the

storm is over now. Would you--do you see any objection--perhaps you

might--could you not let the poor soul come and live here with her

little one, after I--when all is over, I mean--and she is--eh?”

Philip could not speak. He took the wrinkled hand and drew it up to his

lips.

The old soul was beside herself with joy. “Then you're sure I've done

right? Quite sure? Lock it up in the drawer again, dearest The top

one on the left. Oh, the keys? Dear me, yes; where are the keys? How

tiresome! I remember now. They're at the back of my pillow. Will

you call Martha? Or perhaps you would yourself--will you?” (very

artfully)--“you don't mind then? Yes, that's it; more this way, though,

a little more--ah! My boy! my boy!”

The old dove's second strategy had succeeded also. In fumbling behind

her pillow for the keys, Philip had to put his arms about her again, and

she was kissing him on the forehead and on the cheeks.

Then came a spasm of pain. It dragged at her features, but her smile

struggled through it. She fetched a difficult breath, and said--

“And now--dear--I'm finding myself--a little drowsy--how selfish of

me--your cutlets--browned--nicely browned--breadcrumbs, you know----”

Philip fled from the room and summoned Martha. He wandered aimlessly

about the house for hours that night. At one moment he found himself

in the blue room, Auntie Nan's workroom, so full of her familiar

things--the spinning-wheel, the frame of the sampler, the old-fashioned

piano, the scent of lavender--all the little evidences of her presence,

so dainty, so orderly, so sweet A lamp was burning for the convenience

of the doctor, but there was no fire.

The doctor came again towards ten o'clock. There was nothing to be done;

nothing to be hoped; still she might live until morning, if----

At midnight Philip crept noiselessly to the bedroom. The condition was

unaltered. He was going to lie down, but wished to be awakened if there

was any change.

It was long before he dropped off, and he seemed to have slept only a

moment when there was a knocking at his door. He heard it while he

was still sleeping. The dawn had broken, the streamers of the sun were

rising out of the sea. A sparrow in the garden was hacking the air with

its monotonous chirp.

Auntie Nan was far spent, yet the dragging expression of pain was gone,

and a serenity almost angelic overspread her face. When she recognised

Philip she felt for his hand, guided it to her heart, and kept it there.

Only a few words did she speak, for her breath was short. She commended

her soul to God. Then, with a look of pallid sunshine, she beckoned

to Philip. He stooped his ear to her lips, and she whispered, “Hush,

dearest! Never tell any one, for nobody ever knew--ever dreamt--but I

loved your father--and--_God gave him to me in you._”

The dear old dove had delivered herself of her last great secret. Philip

put his lips to her cheek, iced already over the damps and chills of

death. Then the eyes closed, the sweet old head slid back, the lips

changed their colour, but still lay open as with a smile. Thus died

Auntie Nan, peacefully, hopefully, trustfully, almost joyfully, in the

fulness of her love and of her pride.

“O God,” thought Philip, “let me go on with my task. Give me strength to

withstand the temptation of love like this.”

Her love had tempted him all his life His father had been twenty years

dead, but she had kept his spirit alive--his aims, his ambitions, his

fears, and the lessons of his life. There lay the beginnings of his

ruin, his degradation, and the first cause of his deep duplicity. He

had recovered everything that had been lost; he had gained all that

his little world could give; and what was the worth of it? What was the

price he had paid for it? “What shall it profit a man if he gain the

whole world and lose his own soul?”

Philip put his lips to the cold forehead. “Sweet soul, forgive me! God

strengthen me! Let me not fail at this last moment.”

XV.

Philip did not go back to Elm Cottage. He buried Auntie Nan at the foot

of his father's grave. There was no room at either side, his mother's

sunken grave being on the left and the railed tomb of his grandfather on

the right. They had to remove a willow two feet nearer to the path.

When all was over he returned home alone, and spent the afternoon in

gathering up Auntie Nan's personal belongings, labelling some of them

and locking them up in the blue room. The weather had been troubled

for some days. Spots had been seen on the sun. There were magnetic

disturbances, and on the night before the aurora had pulsed in the

northern sky. When the sun was near to sinking there was a brilliant

lower sky to the west, with a bank of rolling cloud above it like a

thick thatch roof, and a shaft of golden light dipping down into the

sea, as if an angel had opened a door in heaven. After the sun had gone

a fiery red bar stretched across the sky, and there were low rumblings

of thunder.

Pausing in his work to look out on the beach, Philip saw a man riding

hard on horseback. It was a messenger from Government Offices. He

drew up at the gate. A moment later the messenger was in Philip's room

handing him a letter.

If anybody had seen the Deemster as he took that letter he must have

thought it his death-warrant. A deadly pallor came to his face when

he broke the seal of the envelope and drew out the contents. It was a

commission from the Home Office. Philip was appointed Governor of the

Isle of Man. “My punishment, my punishment!” he thought. The higher

he rose, the lower he had to fall. It was a cruel kindness, a painful

distinction, an awful penalty. Truly the steps of this Calvary were

steep. Would he ever ascend it?

The messenger was bowing and smirking before him. “Thousand

congratulations, your Excellency!”

“Thank you, my lad. Go downstairs. They'll give you something to eat.”

A moment later Jem-y-Lord came into the room on some pretence and hopped

about like a bird. “Yes, your Excellency--No, your Excellency--Quite so,

your Excellency.”

Martha came next, and met Philip on the landing with a courageous smile

and a courtesy. And the whole house, lately so dark and sad, seemed to

lighten and to laugh, as when, after a sleepless night, you look,

and lo! the daylight is on the blind; you listen and the birds are

twittering in their cages below the stairs.

“_She_ will hear it too,” thought Philip.

He wrote her two lines of a letter, the first that he had penned since

his illness--

“Keep up heart, dear; I will be with you soon.”

This, without signature or superscription, he put into an envelope, and

addressed. Then he went out and posted it himself.

There was lightning as he returned. He felt as if he would like to

wander away in it down to Port Mooar, and round by the caves, and under

the cliffs, where the sea-birds scream.

XVI.

The night had fallen, and he was sitting in his room, when there was

a clamour of loud voices in the hall. Some one was calling for the

Deemster. It was Nancy Joe. She was newly returned from Sulby. Something

had happened to Cæsar, and nobody could control him.

“Go to him, your Honour,” she cried from the doorway. “It's only

yourself that has power with him, and we don't know in the world what's

doing on the man. He's got a ram's horn at him, and is going blowing

round the house like the mischief, calling on the Lord to bring it down,

and saying it's the walls of Jericho.”

Philip sent for a carriage, and set off for Sulby immediately. The storm

had increased by this time. Loud peals of thunder echoed in the hills.

Forks of lightning licked the trunks of the trees and ran like serpents

along the branches. As they were going by the church at Lezayre, the

coachman reached over from the box, and said, “There's something going

doing over yonder, sir. See?”

A bright gleam lit up the dark sky in the direction they were taking. At

the turn of the road by the “Ginger,” somebody passed them running.

“What's yonder?” called the coachman.

And a voice out of the darkness answered him, “The 'Fairy' is struck by

lightning, and Cæsar's gone mad.”

It was the fact. While Cæsar in his mania had been blowing his ram's

horn around his public-house under the delusion that it was Jericho, the

lightning had struck it. The fire was past all hope of subduing. A great

hole had been burnt into the roof, and the flames were leaping through

it as through a funnel. All Sulby seemed to be on the spot. Some were

dragging furniture out of the burning house; others were running with

buckets to the river and throwing water on the blazing thatch.

But encircling everything was the figure of a man going round and

round with great plunging strides, over the road, across the river,

and through the mill-pond behind, blowing a horn in fierce, unearthly

blasts, and crying in a voice of triumph and mockery, first to this

worker and then to that, “No use, I tell thee. Thou can never put it

out. It's fire from heaven. Didn't I say I'd bring it down?”

It was Cæsar. His eyes glittered, his mouth worked convulsively, and his

cheeks were as black with the flying soot as the “colley” of the pot.

When he saw Philip, he came up to him with a terrible smile on his

fierce black face, and, pointing to the house, he cried above the babel

of voices, the roar of the thunder, and crackle of the fire, “An unclean

spirit lived in it, sir. It has been tormenting me these ten years.”

He seemed to listen and to hear something. “That's it roaring,” he

cried, and then he laughed with wild delight.

“Compose yourself, Mr. Cregeen,” said Philip, and he tried to take him

by the arm.

But Cæsar broke away, blew a terrific blast on his ram's horn, and went

striding round the house again. When he came back the next time

there was a deep roll of thunder in the air, and he said, “It's the

Ballawhaine. He had the stone five years, and he used to groan so.”

Again Philip entreated him to compose himself. It was useless. Round and

round the burning house he went, blowing his horn, and calling on the

workers to stop their ungodly labour, for the Lord had told him to blow

down the walls of Jericho, and he had burnt them down instead.

The people began to be afraid of his frenzy. “They'll have to put the

man in the Castle,” said one. “Or have him chained up in an outhouse,”

said another. “They kept the Kirk Maug-hold lunatic fifteen years on the

straw in the gable loft, and his children in the house grew up to be men

and women.” “It's the girl that's doing on Cæsar. Shame on the daughters

that bring ruin to their old fathers!”

Still Cæsar went careering round the fire, blowing his ram's horn and

crying, “No use! It's the Lord God!”

The more the fire blazed, the more it resisted the efforts of the people

to subdue it, the more fierce and unearthly were Cæsar's blasts and the

more triumphant his cries.

At last Grannie stepped out and stopped him. “Come home, father,” she

whimpered. He looked at her with bewildered eyes, then he looked at the

burning house, and he seemed to recover himself in a moment.

“Come home, bogh,” said Grannie tenderly.

“I've got no home,” said Cæsar in a helpless way. “And I've got no

money. The fire has taken all.”

“No matter, father,” said Grannie. “We had nothing when we began; we'll

begin again.”

Then Cæsar fell to mumbling texts of Scripture, and Grannie to soothing

him after her simple fashion.

“'My soul is passing through deep waters. I am feeble and sore broken.

Save me, O God, for the waters are come in unto my soul, I sink in deep

mire, where there is no standing.'”

“Aw, no Cæsar, we're on the road now. It's dry enough here, anyway.”

“'Many bulls have compassed me; great bulls of Bashan have beset me

round. Save me from the lion's mouth; for Thou hast heard me from the

horns of the unicorn.'”

“Never mind the lion and the unicorn, father, but come and we'll change

thy wet trousers.”

“'Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean; wash me, and I shall be

whiter than snow.'”

“Aw, yes, we'll wash thee enough when we get to Ramsey. Come, then,

bogh.”

He had dropped his ram's horn somewhere, and she took him by the hand.

Then he suffered himself to be led away, and the two old children went

off into the darkness.

XVII.

There was a letter waiting for Philip at home. It was from the Clerk of

the Rolls. Only a few lines scribbled on the back of a draft deposition,

telling him the petition for divorce had been heard that day within

closed doors. The application had been granted, and all was settled and

comfortable.

“I don't want to hurt your already much wounded feelings, Christian,”

wrote the Clerk of the Rolls, “or to add anything to your responsibility

when you come to make provision for the woman, but I must say she has

given up for your sake a deuced good honest fellow.”

“I know it,” said Philip aloud.

“When I told him that all was over, and that his erring wife would

trouble him no more, I thought he was going to burst out crying.”

But Philip had no time yet to think of Pete. All his heart was with

Kate. She would receive the official intimation of the divorce, and it

would fall on her in her prison like a blow. She would think of herself,

with all the world against her, and of him with all the world at his

feet. He wanted to run to her, to pluck her up in his arms, to kiss her

on the lips, and say, “Mine, mine at last!” His wife--her husband--all

forgiven--all forgotten!

Philip spent the rest of the night in writing a letter to Kate. He told

her he could not live without her; that now for the first time she was

his, and he was hers, and they were one; that their love was re-born,

and that he would spend the future in atoning for the wrongs he had

inflicted upon her in the past. Then he dropped to the sheer babble of

affection and poured out his heart to her--all the babydom of love, the

foolish prattle, the tender nonsense. What matter that he was Governor

now, and the first man in the island? He forgot all about it. What

matter that he was writing to a fallen woman in prison? He only

remembered it to forget himself the more.

“Just a little longer, my love, just a little longer. I am coming to

you, I am coming. Older, perhaps, perhaps sadder, and a boy no more, but

hopeful still, and ready to face whatever fate befall, with her I love

beside me.”

Next day Jem-y-Lord took this letter to Castle Rushen and brought back

an answer. It was one line only--“My darling! At last! At last! Oh,

Philip! Philip! _But what about our child?_”

XVIII.

The proclamation of Philip's appointment as Governor of the Isle of

Man had been read in the churches, and nailed up on the doors of the

Court-houses, and the Clerk of the Rolls was pushing on the arrangements

for the installation.

“Let it be on the Tuesday of Easter week,” he wrote, “and of course at

Castle Rushen. The retiring Governor is ready to return for that day to

deliver up his seals of office and to receive your commission.”

“P. S.--Private. And if you think that soft-voiced girl has been long

enough 'At Her Majesty's pleasure,' I will release her. Not that she

is taking any harm at all, but we had better get these little accounts

squared off before your great day comes. Meantime you may wish to

provide for her future. Be liberal, Christian; you can afford to treat

her liberally. But what am I saying? Don't I know that you will be

ridiculously over-generous?”

Philip answered this letter promptly. “The Tuesday of Easter week will

do as well as any other day. As to the lady, let her stay where she

is until the morning of the ceremony, when I will myself settle

everything.”

Philip's correspondence was now plentiful, and he had enough work

to cope with it The four towns of the island vied with each other in

efforts to show him honour. Douglas, as the scene of his career, wished

to entertain him at a banquet; Ramsey, as his birthplace, wanted to

follow him in procession. He declined all invitations.

“I am in mourning,” he wrote. “And besides, I am not well.”

“Ah! no,” he thought, “nobody shall reproach me when the times comes.”

There was no pause, no pity, no relenting rest in the world's kindness.

It began to take shapes of almost fiendish cruelty in his mind, as if

the devil's own laughter was behind it.

He inquired about Pete. Hardly anybody knew anything; hardly anybody

cared. The spendthrift had come down to his last shilling, and sold up

the remainder of his furniture. The broker was to empty the house on

Easter Tuesday. That was all. Not a word about the divorce. The poor

neglected victim, forgotten in the turmoil of his wrongdoer's glory,

had that last strength of a strong man--the strength to be silent and to

forgive.

Philip asked about the child. She was still at Elm Cottage in the care

of the woman with the upturned nose and the shrill voice. Every night

he devised plans for getting possession of Kate's little one, and

every morning he abandoned them, as difficult or cruel or likely to be

spurned.

On Easter Monday he was busy in his room at Ballure, with a mounted

messenger riding constantly between his gate and Government offices. He

had spent the morning on two important letters. Both were to the Home

Secretary. One was sealed with his seal as Deemster; the other was

written on the official paper of Government House. He was instructing

the messenger to register these letters when, through the open door,

he heard a formidable voice in the hall. It was Pete's voice. A moment

afterwards Jem-y-Lord came up with a startled face.

“He's here himself, your Excellency. Whatever _am_ I to do with him?”

“Bring him up,” said Philip.

Jem began to stammer. “But--but--and then the Bishop may be here any

minute.”

“Ask the Bishop to wait in the room below.”

Pete was heard coming upstairs. “Aisy all, aisy! Stoop your lil head,

bogh. That's the ticket!”

Philip had not spoken to Pete since the night of the drinking of the

brandy and water in the bedroom. He could not help it--his hand shook.

There would be a painful scene.

“Stoop again, darling. There you are.”

And then Pete was in the room. He was carrying the child on one

shoulder; they were both in their best clothes. Pete looked older and

somewhat thinner; the tan of his cheeks was fretted out in pale patches

under the eyes, which were nevertheless bright. He had the face of a

man who had fought a brave fight with life and been beaten, yet bore the

world no grudge. Jem-y-Lord and the messenger were gone from the room in

a moment, and the door was closed.

“What d'ye think of that, Phil? Isn't she a lil beauty?”

Pete was dancing the child on his knee and looking sideways down at it

with eyes of rapture.

“She's as sweet as an angel,” said Philip in a low tone.

“Isn't she now?” said Pete, and then he rattled on as if he were the

happiest man alive. “You've been wanting something like this yourself

this long time, Phil. 'Deed you have, though. It would be diverting you

wonderful. Ter'ble the fun there is in babies. Talk about play-actorers!

They're only funeral mutes where babies come. Bittending this and

bittending that--it's mortal amusing they are. You'd be getting up from

your books, tired shocking, and ready for a bit of fun, and going to the

stair-head and shouting down, 'Where's my lil woman?' Then up she'd be

coming, step by step, houlding on to the bannisters, dot and carry one.

And my gracious, the dust there'd be here in the study! You down on

the carpet on all fours, and the lil one straddled across your back and

slipping down to your neck. Same for all the world as the man in the

picture with the world atop of his shoulders. And your own lil world

would be up there, too, laughing and crowing mortal. And then at night,

Phil, at night--getting up from your summonses and your warrantees, and

going creeping to the lil one's room tippie-toe, tippie-toe, and 'Is

she sleeping comfor'bly?' thinks you; and listening at the crack of the

door, and hearing her breathing, and slipping in to look, and everything

quiet, and the red fire on her lil face, and 'Grod bless her, the

darling!' says you, and then back to your desk content. Aw, you'll have

to be having a lil one of your own one of these days, Phil.”

“He has come to say something,” thought Philip.

The child wriggled off Pete's knee and began to creep about the floor.

Philip tried to command himself and to talk easily.

“And how have you been yourself, Pete?” he asked.

“Well,” said Pete, meddling with his hair, “only middling, somehow.”

He looked down at the carpet, and faltered, “You'll be wondering at

me, Phil, but, you see “--he hesitated--“not to tell you a word of a

lie----” then, with a rush, “I'm going foreign again; that's the fact.”

“Again?”

“Well, I am,” said Pete, looking ashamed. “Yes, truth enough, that's

what I'm thinking of doing. You see,” with a persuasive air, “when a

man's bitten by travel it's like the hydrophobia ezactly, he can't rest

no time in one bed at all. Must be running here and running there--and

running reg'lar. It's the way with me, anyway. Used to think the ould

island would be big enough for the rest of my days. But, no! I'm longing

shocking for the mines again, and the compound, and the niggers, and

the wild life out yonder. 'The sea's calling me,' you know.” And then he

laughed.

Philip understood him--Pete meant to take himself out of the way. “Shall

you stay long?” he faltered.

“Well, yes, I was thinking so,” said Pete. “You see, the stuff isn't

panning out now same as it used to, and fortunes aren't made as fast

as they were in my time. Not that I'm wanting a fortune, neither--is

it likely now? But, still and for all--well, I'll be away a good spell,

anyway.”

Philip tried to ask if he intended to go soon.

“To-morrow, sir, by the packet to Liverpool, for the sailing on

Wednesday. I've been going the rounds saying 'goodbye' to the ould

chums--Jonaique, and John the Widow, and Niplightly, and Kelly the

postman. Not much heart at some of them; just a bit of a something

stowed away in their giblets; but it isn't right to be expecting too

much at all. This is the only one that doesn't seem willing to part with

me.”

Pete's dog had followed him into the room, and was sitting soberly by

the side of his chair. “There's no shaking him off, poor ould chap.”

The dog got up and wagged his stump.

“Well, we've tramped the world together, haven't we, Dempster? He

doesn't seem tired of me yet neither.” Pete's face lengthened. “But

there's Grannie, now. The ould angel is going about like a bit of a

thunder-cloud, and doesn't know in the world whether to burst on me or

not. Thinks I've been cruel, seemingly. I can't be explaining to her

neither. Maybe you'll set it right for me when I'm gone, sir. It's you

for a job like that, you know. Don't want her to be thinking hard of me,

poor ould thing.”

Pete whistled at the child, and halloed to it, and then, in a lower

tone, he continued, “Not been to Castletown, sir. Got as far as

Ballasalla, and saw the castle tower. Then my heart was losing me, and

I turned back. You'll say good-bye for me, Phil Tell her I forgave--no,

not that, though. Say I left her my love--that won't do neither.

_You'll_ know best what to say when the time comes, Phil, so I lave it

with you. Maybe you'll tell her I went away cheerful and content, and,

well, happy--why not? No harm in saying that at all. Not breaking my

heart, anyway, for when a man's a man--H'm!” clearing his throat, “I'm

bad dreadful these days wanting a smook in the mornings. May I smook

here? I may? You're good, too.”

He cut his tobacco with his discoloured knife, rolled it, charged his

pipe, and lit it.

“Sorry to be going away just before your own great day, Phil. I'll get

the skipper to fire a round as we're steaming by Castletown, and if

there's a band aboord I'll tip them a trifle to play 'Myle Charaine.'

That'll spake to you like the blackbird's whistle, as the saying is.

Looks like deserting you, though. But, chut! it would be no surprise

to me at all. I've seen it coming these years and years. 'You'll be

the first Manxman living,' says I the day I sailed before. You've not

deceaved me neither. D'ye remember the morning on the quay, and the oath

between the pair of us? Me swearing you same as a high bailiff--nothing

and nobody to come between us--d'ye mind it, Phil? And nothing has, and

nothing shall.”

He puffed at his pipe, and said significantly, “You'll be getting

married soon. Aw, you will, I know you will, I'm sarten sure you will.”

Philip could not look into his face. He felt little and mean.

“You're a wise man, sir, and a great man, but if a plain common chap may

give you a bit of advice--aw, but you'll be losing no time, though,

I'll not be here myself to see it. I'll be on the water, maybe, with the

waves washing agen the gun'ale, and the wind rattling in the rigging,

and the ship burrowing into the darkness of the sea. But I'll be

knowing it's morning at home, and the sun shining, and a sort of a warm

quietness everywhere, and you and her at the ould church together.”

The pipe was puffing audibly.

“Tell her I lave her my blessing. Tell her--but the way I'm smooking,

it's shocking. Your curtains will be smelling thick twist for a

century.”

Philip's moist eyes were following the child along the floor.

“What about the little one?” he asked with difficulty.

“Ah I tell you the truth, Phil, that's the for I came. Well, mostly,

anyway. You see, a child isn't fit for a compound ezactly. Not but

they're thinking diamonds of a lil thing out there, specially if it's a

girl. But still and for all, with niggers about and chaps as rough as a

thornbush and no manners to spake of----”

Philip interrupted eagerly--“Will you leave her with Grannie!”

“Well, no, that wasn't what I was thinking. Grannie's a bit ould getting

and she's had her whack. Wanting aisement in her ould days, anyway.

Then she'll be knocking under before the lil one's up--that's only to be

expected. No, I was thinking--what d'ye think I was thinking now?”

“What?” said Philip with quick-coming breath. He did not raise his head.

“I was thinking--well, yes, I was, then--it's a fact, though--I was

thinking maybe yourself, now----”

“Pete!”

Philip had started up and grasped Pete by the hand, but he could say no

more, he felt crushed by Pete's magnanimity. And Pete went on as if

he were asking a great favour. “'She's been your heart's blood to you,

Pete,' thinks I to my-. self, 'and there isn't nobody but himself you

could trust her with--nobody else you would give her up to. He'll love

her,'. thinks I; 'he'll cherish her; he'll rear her as if she was his

own; he'll be same thing as a father itself to her'----”

Philip was struggling to keep up.

“I've been laving something for her too,” said Pete.

“No, no!”

“Yes, though, one of the first Manx estates going. Cæsar had the deeds,

but I've been taking them to the High Bailiff, and doing everything

regular. When I'm gone, sir----”

Philip tried to protest.

“Aw, but a man can lave what he likes to his own, sir, can't he?”

Philip was silent. He could say nothing. The make-believe was to be kept

up to the last tragic moment.

“And out yonder, lying on my hunk in the sheds--good mattresses and

thick blankets, Phil, nothing to complain of at all--I'll be watching

her growing up, year by year, same as if she was under my eye constant.

'She's in pinafores now' thinks I. 'Now she's in long frocks, and is

doing up her hair.' 'She's as straight as an osier now, and red as a

rose, and the best looking girl in the island, and the spitting picture

of what her mother used to be.' Aw, I'll be seeing her in my mind's eye,

sir, plainer nor any potegraph.”

Pete puffed furiously at his pipe. “And the mother, I'll be seeing

herself, too. A woman every inch of her, God bless her. Wherever there's

a poor girl lying in her shame she'll be there, I'll go bail on that.

And yourself--I'll be seeing yourself, sir, whiter, maybe, and the sun

going down on you, but strong for all. And when any poor fellow has had

a knock-down blow, and the world is darkening round him, he'll be coming

to you for light and for strength, and you'll be houlding out the right

hand to him, because you're knowing yourself what it is to fall and get

up again, and because you're a man, and Grod has made friends with you.”

Pete rammed his thumb into his pipe, and stuffed it, still smoking, into

his waistcoat pocket. “Chut!” he said huskily. “The talk a man'll be

putting out when he's going away foreign! All for poethry then, or

something of that spacious. H'm! h'm!” clearing his throat, “must be

giving up the pipe, though. Not much worth for the voice at all.”

Philip could not speak. The strength and grandeur of the man overwhelmed

him. It cut him to the heart that Pete could never see, could never

hear, how he would wash away his shame.

The child had crawled across the room to an open cabinet that stood in

one corner, and there possessed herself of a shell, which she was making

show of holding to her ear.

“Well, did you ever?” cried Pete. “Look at that child now. She's knowing

it's a shell. 'Deed she is, though. Aw, crawling reg'lar, sir, morning

to night. Would you like to see the prettiest sight in the world, Phil?”

He went down on his knees and held out his arms. “Come here, you lil

sandpiper. Fix that chair a piece nearer, sir--that's the ticket. Good

thing Nancy isn't here. She'd be on to us like the mischief. Wonderful

handy with babies, though, and if anybody was wanting a nurse now--a

stepmother's breath is cold--but Nancy! My gough, you daren't look over

the hedge at her lammie but she's shouting fit for an earth wake. Stand

nice, now, Kitty, stand nice, bogh! The woman's about right, too--the

lil one's legs are like bits of qualebone. 'Come, now, bogh, come?”

Pete put the child to stand with its back to the chair, and then leaned

towards it with his arms outspread. The child staggered a step in

the sea of one yard's space that lay between, looked back at the

irrecoverable chair, looked down on the distant ground, and then plunged

forward with a nervous laugh, and fell into Pete's arms.

“Bravo! Wasn't that nice, Phil? Ever see anything prettier than a

child's first step? Again, Kitty, bogh! But go to your _new_ father this

time. Aisy, now, aisy!” (in a thick voice). “Grive me a kiss first!”

(with a choking gurgle). “One more, darling!” (with a broken laugh).

“Now face the _other_ way. One--two--are you ready, Phil?”

Phil held out his long white trembling hands.

“Yes,” with a smothered sob.

“Three--four--and away!”

The child's fingers slipped into Philip's palm; there was another

halt, another plunge, another nervous laugh, and then the child was

in Philip's arms, his head was over it, and he was clasping it to his

heart.

After a moment, Philip, without raising his eyes, said, “Pete!”

But Pete had stolen softly from the room.

“Pete! where are you?”

Where was he? He was on the road outside, crying like a boy--no, like a

man--at thought of the happiness he had left upstairs.

XIX.

The town of Peel was in a great commotion that night. It was the night

of St. Patrick's Day, and the mackerel fleet were leaving for Kinsale.

A hundred and fifty boats lay in the harbour, each with a light in its

binnacle, a fire in its cabin, smoke coming from its stove-pipe, and

its sails half-set. The sea was fresh; there was a smart breeze from the

northwest, and the air was full of the brine. At the turn of the tide

the boats began to drop down the harbour. Then there was a rush of women

and children and old men to the end of the pier. Mothers were seeing

their sons off, women their husbands, children their fathers, girls

their boys--all full of fun and laughter and joyful cries.

One of the girls remembered that the men were leaving the island before

the installation of the new Governor. Straightway they started a game of

make-believe--the make-believe of electing the Governor for themselves.

“Who are you voting for, Mr. Quayle?”--“Aw, Dempster Christian, of

coorse.”--“Throw us your rope, then, and we'll give you a pull.”--“Heave

oh, girls.” And the rope would be whipped round a mooring-post on the

quay, twenty girls would seize it, and the boat would go slipping past

the pier, round the castle rocks, and then away before the north-wester

like a gull.

“Good luck, Harry!”--“Whips of money coming home, Jem!”--“Write us a

letter--mind you write, now Î “--“Goodnight, father!”

No crying yet, no sign of tears--nothing but fresh young faces, bright

eyes, and peals of laughter, as one by one the boats slid out into the

fresh, green water of the bay, and the wind took them, and they shot

into the night. Even the dogs on the quay frisked about, and barked as

if they were going crazy with delight.

In the midst of this happy scene, a man, wearing a monkey-jacket and a

wide-brimmed soft hat, came up to the harbour with a little misshapen

dog at his heels. He stood for a moment as if bewildered by the strange

midnight spectacle before him. Then he walked through the throng of

young people, and listened awhile to their talk and laughter. No one

spoke to him, and he spoke to no one. His dog followed with its nose at

his ankles. If some other dog, in youthful frolic, frisked and barked

about it, it snarled and snapped, and then croodled down at his master's

feet and looked ashamed.

“Dempster, Dempster, getting a bit ould, eh?” said the man.

After a little while he went quietly away. Nobody missed him; nobody had

observed him. He had gone back to the town. At a baker's shop, which

was still open for the convenience of the departing fleet, he bought

a seaman's biscuit. With this he returned to the harbour by way of the

shore. At the slip by the Rocket House he went down to the beach and

searched among the shingle until he found a stone like a dumb-bell,

large at the ends and narrow in the middle. Then he went back to the

quay. The dog followed him and watched him.

The last of the boats was out in the bay by this time. She could be seen

quite plainly in the moonlight, with the green blade of a wave breaking

on her quarter. Somebody was carrying a light on her deck, and the giant

shadow of a man's figure was cast up on the new lugsail. There were

shouts and answers across the splashing water. Then a fresh young voice

on the boat began to sing “Lovely Mona, fare thee well.” The women took

it up, and the two companies sang it in turns, verse by verse, the women

on the quay and the men on the boat, with the sea growing wider between

them.

An old fisherman on the skirts of the crowd had a little girl on his

shoulder.

“You'll not be going to Kinsale this time, mate?” said a voice behind

him.

“Aw, no, sir. I've seen the day, though. Thirty years I was going, and

better. But I'm done now.”

“Well, that's the way, you see. It's the turn of the young ones now.

Let them sing, God bless them! We're not going to fret, though, are we?

There's one thing we can always do--we can always remember, and that's

some constilation, isn't it.”

“I'm doing it reg'lar.” said the old fisherman.

“After all, it's been a good thing to live, and when a man's time comes

it'll not be such a darned bad thing to die neither. Don't you hould

with me there, mate?”

“I do, sir, I do.”

The last boat had rounded the castle rock, and its topsail had

diminished and disappeared. On the quay the song had ended, and the

women and children were turning their faces with a shade of sadness

towards the town.

“Well,” with a deep universal inspiration, “wasn't it beautiful?”--

“Wasn't it?”--“Then what are you crying about?”

The girls laughed at each other with wet eyes, and went off with

springless steps. The mothers picked up their children and carried them

home whimpering; and the old men went a way with drooping heads and

shambling feet.

When all was gone, and the harbour-master had taken his last look round,

the man with the dog went to the end of the empty quay, and sat on the

mooring post that had served for the running of the ropes. All was quiet

enough now. The voices, the singing, the laughter were lost. There was

no sound but the gurgle of the ebbing tide, which was racing out with

the river's flow between the pier and the castle rock.

The man looked at his dog, stooped to it, gave it the biscuit, and

petted it and stroked it while it munched its supper. “Dempster, bogh!

Dempster! Getting ould, eh? Travelled far together, haven't we? Tired a

bit, aren't you? Couldn't go through another rough journey, anyway. Hard

to part, though, Machree! Machree!”

He took the stone out of his pocket, tied it to one end of the string,

made a noose on the ether end, slipped it about the dog's neck, and

without warning, picked up the dog and stone at once, and dropped them

over the pier. The old creature gave a piteous cry as it descended;

there was a splash, and then--the racing of the water past the pier.

The man had turned away quickly, and was going heavily along the quay.

XX.

It had been a night of pain to Philip. All the world seemed to be

conspiring to hold him back from what he had to do. “Thou shalt not”

was the legend that appeared to be written everywhere. Four persons

had learnt his secret, and all four seemed to call upon him to hide it.

First, the Clerk of the Rolls, who had heard the divorce proceedings

within closed doors; next Pete, who might have clamoured the scandal

on all hands, and plucked him down from his place, but had chosen to be

silent and to slip away unseen; then Cæsar, whose awful self-deception

was an assurance of his secrecy; and, finally. Auntie Nan, whose

provision for Kate's material welfare had been intended to prevent the

necessity for revelation. All these had seemed to say to him, whether

from affection or from fear, “Hold your peace. Say nothing. The past is

the past; it is dead; it does not exist. Go on with your career. It is

only beginning. What right have you to break it up? The island looks to

you, waits for you. Step forward and be strong.”

Thank God, it was too late to be moved by that temptation. Too late to

be bought by that bribe. Already he had taken the irrevocable course, he

had made the irrevocable step. He could not now go back.

But the awful penalty of the island's undeceiving! The pain of that

moment when everybody would learn that he had deceived the whole world!

He was a sham--a whited sepulchre. Every step he had gone up in his

quick ascent had been over the body of some one who had loved him too

well. First Kate, who had been the victim of the Deemstership, and now

Pete, who was paying the price that made him Governor.

He could see the darkened looks of the proud; he could hear the

execration of the disappointed; he could feel the tears of the

true-hearted at the downfall of a life that had looked so fair. In the

frenzy of that last hour of trial, it seemed as if he was contending,

not with man and the world, but with the devil, who was using both to

make this bitter irony of his position--who was bribing him with worldly

glory that he might damn his soul forever.

And therein lay a temptation that sat closer at his side--the temptation

to turn his face and fly away. It was midnight. The moon was shining on

the boundless plain of the sea. He was in the slack water of the soul,

when the ebb is spent, before the tide has begun to flow. Oh, to leave

everything behind--the shame and the glory together!

It was the moment when the girls on Peel Quay were pulling the rope for

the men on the boats who were ready to vote for Christian.

The pains of sleep were yet greater. He thought he was in Castletown,

skulking under the walls of the castle. With a look up towards

Parliament House and down to the harbour, he fumbled his private key

into the lock of the side entrance to the council chamber. The

old caretaker heard him creep-down the long corridor, and she came

clattering out with a candle, shaded behind her hand. “Something I've

forgotten,” he said. “Pardon, your Honour,” and then a deep courtesy.

He opened noiselessly the little door leading from the council chamber

to the keep, but in the dark shadow of the steps the turnkey challenged

him. “Who's there? Stop!”--“Hush!”--“The Deemster! Beg your Honour's

pardon.”--“Show me the female wards.”--“This way your Honour.”--“Her

cell.” “Here, your Honour.”--“The key; your lantern. Now go back to the

guard-room.” He was with Kate. “My love, my love!”--“My darling!”--

“Come, let us fly away from the island. I cannot face it. I thought I

could, but I cannot. I've got the child too. Come!” And then Kate--“I

would go anywhere with you, Philip, anywhere, anywhere. I only want your

love. But is this worthy of a man like you? Leave me. We have fallen too

low to drop into a pit like that. Away with you! Go!” And he slunk out

of the cell, before the wrathful love that would save him from himself.

He, the Deemster, the Governor, had slunk out like a dog.

It was only a dream. When he awoke, the birds were singing and the day

was blue over the sea. The temptation was past; it was under his feet.

He could hesitate no longer; his cup was brimming over; he would drink

it to the dregs.

Jem-y-Lord came with his mouth full of news. The town was decorated

with bunting. There was to be a general holiday. A grand stand had been

erected on the green in front of the Court-house. The people were not

going to be deterred by the Deemster's refusals. He who shrank from

honours was the more worthy of being honoured. They intended to present

their new Governor with an address.

“Let them--let them,” said Philip.

Jem looked up inquiringly. His master's face had a strange expression.

“Shall I drive you to-day, your Excellency?”

“Yes, my lad. It may be for the last time, Jemmy.”

What was amiss with the Governor? Had the excitement proved too much for

him?

XXI.

It was a perfect morning, soft and fresh, and sweet with the odours and

the colours of spring. New gorse flashed from the hedges, the violets

peeped from the banks; over the freshening green of the fields the young

lambs sported, and the lark sang in the thin blue air.

The town, as they dipped into it, was full of life. At the turn of the

Court-house the crowd was densest. A policeman raised his hand in front

of the horses and Jem-y-Lord drew up. Then the High Bailiff stepped to

the gate and read an address. It mentioned Iron Christian, calling him

“The Great Deemster”; the town took pride to itself that the first Manx

Governor of Man was born in Ramsey.

Philip answered briefly, confining himself to an expression of thanks;

there was great cheering and then the carriage moved on. The journey

thereafter was one long triumphal passage. At Sulby Street, and at

Ballaugh Street, there were flags and throngs of people. From time to

time other carriages joined them, falling into line behind. The Bishop

was waiting at Bishop's Court, and place was made for his carriage

immediately after the carriage of the Governor.

At Tynwald there was a sweet and beautiful spectacle. The children of

St. John's were seated on the four rounds of the mount, boys and girls

in alternate rows, and from that spot, sacred to the memory of their

forefathers for a thousand years, they sang the National Anthem as

Philip passed on the road.

The unhappy man lay back in his seat. His eyes filled, his throat rose.

“Oh, for what might have been!”

Under Harry Delany's tree a company of fishermen were waiting with a

letter. It was from their mates at Kinsale. They could not be at home

that day, but their hearts were there. Every boat would fly her flag at

the masthead, and at twelve o'clock noon every Manx fisherman on Irish

waters would raise a cheer. If the Irishmen asked them what they meant

by that, they would answer and say, “It's for the fisherman's friend,

Governor Philip Christian.”

The unhappy man was no longer in pain. His agony was beyond that. A sort

of divine madness had taken possession of him. He was putting the world

and the prince of the world behind his back. All this worldly glory

and human gratitude was but the temptation of Satan. With God's help he

would not succumb. He would resist. He would triumph over everything.

Jem-y-Lord twisted on the box-seat. “See, your Excellency! Listen!”

The flags of Castletown were visible on the Eagle Tower of the castle.

Then there was a multitudinous murmur. Finally a great shout. “Now,

boys! Three times three! Hip, hip, hurrah!”

At the entrance to the town an evergreen arch had been erected. It bore

an inscription in Manx: “_Dooiney Vannin, lhiat myr hoilloo_”--“Man of

Man, success as thou deservest.”

The carriage had slacked down to a walk.

“Drive quicker,” cried Philip.

“The streets are crowded, your Excellency,” said Jem-y-Lord.

Flags were flying from every window, from every roof, from every

lamp-post. The people ran by the carriage cheering. Their shout was a

deafening uproar.

Philip could not respond. “_She_ will hear it,” he thought. His head

dropped. He was picturing Kate in her cell with the clamour of his

welcome coming muffled through the walls.

They took the road by the harbour. Suddenly the carriage stopped. The

men were taking the horses out of the shafts. “No, no,” cried Philip.

He had an impulse to alight, but the carriage was moving again in a

moment. “It is the last of my punishment,” he thought, and again fell

back. Then the shouting and the laughter ran along the quay with the

crackle and roar of a fire.

A regiment of soldiers lined the way from the drawbridge to the

porlcullis. As the carriage drew up, they presented arms in royal

salute. At the same moment the band of the regiment inside the Keep

played “God save the Queen.”

The High Bailiff of the town opened the carriage-door and presented an

address. It welcomed the new Governor to the ancient castle wherein his

predecessors had been installed, and took fresh assurance of devotion

to the Crown from the circumstance that one of their own countrymen

had been thought worthy to represent it. No Manxman had ever been so

honoured in that island before since the days of the new Governor's

own great kinsman, familiarly and affectionately known to all Manxmen

through two centuries as Illiam Dhone (Brown William).

Philip replied in few words, the cheering broke out afresh, the band

played again, and they entered the castle by the long corridor that led

to the council chamber.

In an anteroom the officials were waiting. They were all elderly men and

old men, who had seen long and honourable service, but they showed no

jealousy. The Clerk of the Rolls received bis former pupil with a

shout wherein personal pride struggled with respect, and affection with

humility. Then the Attorney-General welcomed him in the name of the Bar,

as head of the Judicature, as well as head of the Legislature, taking

joy in the fact that one of their own profession had been elevated to

the highest office in the Isle of Man; glancing at his descent from

an historic Manx line, at his brief but distinguished career as judge,

which had revived the best traditions of judicial wisdom and eloquence,

and finally wishing him long life and strength for the fulfilment of the

noble promise of his young and spotless manhood.

“Mr. Attorney-General,” said Philip, “I will not accept your

congratulations, much as it would rejoice my heart to do so. It would

only be another grief to me if you were to repent, as too soon you may,

the generous warmth of your reception.”

There were puzzled looks, but the sage counsellors could not receive the

right impression; they could only understand the reply in the sense that

agreed with their present feelings. “It is beautiful,” they whispered,

“when a young man of real gifts is genuinely modest.”

“Excuse me, gentlemen,” said Philip, “I must go into my room.”

The Clerk of the Rolls followed him, saying--

“Ah! poor Tom Christian would have been a proud man this day--prouder

than if the honour had been his own--ten thousand thousand times.”

“Have mercy, have mercy, and leave me alone,” said Philip.

“I didn't mean to offend you, Christian,” said the Clerk.

Philip put one hand affectionately on his shoulder. The eyes of the

robustious fellow began to blink, and he returned to his colleagues.

There was a confused murmur beyond the farther wall of the room. It

was the room kept for the Deemster when he held court in the council

chamber. One of its two doors communicated with the bench. As usual,

a constable kept this door. The man loosened his chain and removed his

helmet. His head was grey.

“Is the Court-house full?” asked Philip.

The constable put his eye to the eye-hole. “Crowded, your Excellency.

“Keep the passages clear.”--“Yes, your Excellency.”

“Is the Clerk of the Court present?”--“He is, your Excellency.”

“And the jailor?”--“Downstairs, your Excellency.”

“Tell both they will be wanted.”

The constable turned the key of the door and left the room. Jem-y-Lord

came puffing and perspiring.

“The ex-Governor is coming over by the green, sir. He'll be here in a

moment.”

“My wig and gown, Jemmy,” said Philip.

“Deemster's wig, your Excellency?”--“Yes.”

“Last time you'll wear it, sir.”

“The last, indeed, my lad.”

There was a clash of steel outside, followed by the beat of drum.

“He's here,” said Jem-y-Lord.

Philip listened. The rattling noise came to him through opening doors

and reverberating corridors like the trampling of a wave to a man

imprisoned in a cave.

“She'll hear it, too.” That thought was with him constantly. In his

mind's eye he was seeing Kate, crouching in the fire-seat of the palace

room that was now her prison, and covering her ears to deaden the joyous

sounds that broke the usual silence of the gloomy walls.

Jem-y-Lord was at the eye-hole of the door. “He's coming on to the

bench, sir. The gentlemen of the council are following him, and the

Court-house is full of ladies.”

Philip was pacing to and fro like a man in violent agitation. At the

other side of the wall the confused murmur had risen to a sharp crackle

of many voices.

The constable came back with the Clerk of the Court and the jailor.

“Everything ready, your Excellency,” said the Clerk of the Court.

The constable turned the key of the door, and laid his hand on the knob.

“One moment--give me a moment,” said Philip.

He was going through the last throes of his temptation. Something was

asking him, as if in tones of indignation, what right he had to bring

people there to make fools of them. And something was laughing as if in

mockery at the theatrical device he had chosen for gathering together

the people of rank and station, and then dismissing them like naughty

school-children.

This idea clamoured loud in wild derision, telling him that he was

posing, that he was making a market of his misfortune, that he was

an actor, and that whatever the effect of the scene he was about to

perform, it was unnecessary and must be contemptible. “You talk of

your shame and humiliation--no atonement can wipe it out. You came here

prating to yourself of blotting out the past--no act of man can do so.

Vain, vain, and idle as well as vain! Mere mummery and display, and a

blow to the dignity of justice!”

Under the weight of such torment the thought came to him that he should

go through the ceremony after all, that he should do as the people

expected, that he should accept the Governorship, and then defy the

social ostracism of the island by making Kate his wife. “It's not yet

too late,” said the tempter.

Philip stopped in his walk and remembered the two letters of yesterday.

“Thank God! it _is_ too late,” he said.

He had spoken the words aloud, and the officers in attendance glanced up

at him. Jem-y-Lord was behind, trembling and biting his lip.

It was indeed too late for that temptation. And then the vanity of it,

the cruelty and insufficiency of it! He had been a servant of the world

long enough. From this day forth he meant to be its master. No matter

if all the devils of hell should laugh at him! He was going through with

his purpose. There was only one condition on which he could live in the

world--that he should renounce it. There was only one way of renouncing

the world--to return its wages and strip off its livery. His sin was

not only against Kate, against Pete; it was against the island, and the

island must set him free.

Philip approached the door, slackened his pace with an air of

uncertainty; at one step from the constable he stopped. He was breathing

noisily. If the officers had observed him at that moment they must have

thought he looked like a man going to execution. But the constable gazed

before him with a sombre expression, held his helmet in one hand, and

the knob of the door in the other.

“Now,” said Philip, with a long inspiration.

There was a flash of faces, a waft of perfume, a flutter of

pocket-handkerchiefs, and a deafening reverberation. Philip was in the

Court-house.

XXII.

It was remarked that his face was fearfully worn, and that it looked the

whiter for the white wig above it and the black gown beneath. His

large eyes flamed as with fire. “The sword too keen for the scabbard,”

whispered somebody.

There is a kind of aloofness in strong men at great moments. Nobody

approaches them. They move onward of themselves, and stand or fall

alone. Everybody in court rose as Philip entered, but no one offered his

hand. Even the ex-Governor only bowed from the Governor's seat under the

canopy.

Philip took his customary place as Deemster. He was then at the right

of the Governor, the Bishop being on the left. Behind the bishop sat the

Attorney-General, and behind Philip the Clerk of the Rolls. The cheers

that had greeted Philip on his entrance ended with the clapping of

hands, and died off like a wave falling back from the shingle. Then he

rose and turned to the Governor.

“I do not know if you are aware, your Excellency, that this is

Deemster's Court-day?”

The Governor smiled, and a titter went round the court. “We will

dispense with that,” he said. “We have better business this morning.” 34

“Excuse me, your Excellency,” said Philip; “I am still Deemster. With

your leave we will do everything according to rule.”

There was a slight pause, a questioning look, then a cold answer. “Of

course, if you wish it; but your sense of duty----”

The ladies in the galleries bad ceased to flutter their fans, and the

members of the House of Keys were shifting in their seats in the well

below.

The Clerk of the Deemster's Court pushed through to the space beneath

the bench. “There is only one case, your Honour,” he whispered up.

“Speak out, sir,” said Philip. “What case is it?”

The Clerk gave an informal answer. It was the case of the young woman

who had attempted her life at Ramsey, and had been kept at Her Majesty's

pleasure.

“How long has she been in prison?”--“Seven weeks, your Honour.”

“Give me the book and I will sign the order for her release.”

The book was handed to the bench. Philip signed it, handed it back to

the Clerk, and said with his face to the jailor--

“But keep her until somebody comes to fetch her.”

There had been a cold silence during these proceedings. When they were

over, the ladies breathed freely. “You remember the case--left her

husband and little child--divorced since, I'm told--a worthless

person.”--“Ah! yes, wasn't she first tried the day the Deemster fell ill

in court?”--“Men are too tender with such creatures.”

Philip had risen again. “Your Excellency, I have done the last of my

duties as Deemster.” His voice had hoarsened. He was a worn and stricken

figure.

The ex Governor's warmth had been somewhat cooled by the unexpected

interruption. Nevertheless, the pock-marks smoothed out of his forehead,

and he rose with a smile. At the same moment the Clerk of the Rolls

stepped up and laid two books on the desk before him--a New Testament

in a tattered leather binding, and the _Liber Juramentorum_, the Book of

Oaths.

“The regret I feel,” said the ex-Governor, “and feel increasingly,

day by day, at the severance of the ties which have bound me to this

beautiful island is tempered by the satisfaction I experience that the

choice of my successor has fallen upon one whom I know to be a gentleman

of powerful intellect and stainless honour. He will preserve that

autonomous independence which has come down to you from a remote

antiquity, at the same time that he will uphold the fidelity of a people

who have always been loyal to the Crown. I pray that the blessing of

Almighty God may attend his administration, and that, if the time ever

comes when he too shall stand in the position I occupy to-day, he may

have recollections as lively of the support and kindness he has met

with, and regrets as deep at his separation from the little Manx nation

which he leaves behind.”

Then the Governor took the staff of office, and gave the signal for

rising. Everybody rose. “And now, sir,” he said, turning to Philip with

a smile, “to do everything, as you say, according to rule, let us first

take Her Majesty's commission of your appointment.”

There was a moment's pause, and then Philip said in a cold clear voice--

“Your Excellency, I have no commission. The commission which I received

I have returned. I have, therefore, no right to be installed as

Governor. Also, I have resigned my office as Deemster, and, though my

resignation has not yet been accepted, I am, in reality, no longer in

the service of the State.”

The people looked at the speaker with eyes that were full of the

stupefaction of surprise. Somebody bad risen at the back of the bench.

It was the Clerk of the Rolls. He stretched out his hand as if to touch

Philip on the shoulder. Then he hesitated and sat down again.

“Gentlemen of the Council and of the Keys,” continued Philip, “you will

think you have assembled to see a man take a leap into an abyss

more dark than death. That is as it may be. You have a right to an

explanation, and I am here to make it. What I have done has been at the

compulsion of conscience. I am not worthy of the office I hold, still

less of the office that is offered me.”

There was a half-articulate interruption from behind Philip's chair.

“Ah! do not think, old friend, that I am dealing in vague self

depreciation. I should have preferred not to speak more exactly, but

what must be, must be. Your Excellency has spoken of my honour as

spotless. Would to God it were so; but it is deeply stained with sin.”

He stopped, made an effort to begin afresh, and stopped again. Then, in

a low tone, with measured utterance, amid breathless silence, he said--

“I have lived a double life. Beneath the life that you have seen there

has been another--God only knows how full of wrongdoing and disgrace and

shame. It is no part of my duty to involve others in this confession.

Let it be enough that my career has been built on falsehood and robbery,

that I have deceived the woman who loved me with her heart of hearts,

and robbed the man who would have trusted me with his soul.”

The people began to breathe audibly. There was the scraping of a chair

behind the speaker. The Clerk of the Rolls had risen. His florid face

was violently agitated.

“May it please your Excellency,” he began, faltering and stammering, in

a husky voice, “it will be within your Excellency's knowledge, and the

knowledge of every one on the island, that his Honour has only just

risen from a long and serious illness, brought on by overwork, by too

zealous attention to his duties, and that--in fact, that--well, not to

blink the plain truth, that----”

A sigh of immense relief had passed over the court, and the Governor,

grown very pale, was nodding in assent. But Philip only smiled sadly and

shook his head.

“I have been ill indeed,” he said, “but not from the cause you speak of.

The just judgment of God has overtaken me.”

The Clerk of the Rolls sank back into his seat.

“The moment came when I had to sit in judgment on my own sin, the moment

when she who had lost her honour in trusting to mine stood in the dock

before me. I, who had been the first cause of her misfortunes, sat on

the bench as her judge. She is now in prison and I am here. The same law

which has punished her failing with infamy has advanced me to power.”

There was an icy quiet in the court, such as comes with the first gleam

of the dawn. By that quick instinct which takes possession of a crowd

at great moments, the people understood everything--the impurity of

the character that had seemed so pure, the nullity of the life that had

seemed so noble.

“When I asked myself what there was left to me to do, I could see but

one thing. It was impossible to go on administering justice, being

myself unjust, and remembering that higher bar before which I too

was yet to stand. I must cease to be Deemster. But that was only my

protection against the future, not my punishment for the past. I could

not surrender myself to any earthly court, because I was guilty of no

crime against earthly law. The law cannot take a man into the court of

the conscience. He must take himself there.”

He stopped again, and then said quietly, “My sentence is this open

confession of my sin, and renunciation of the worldly advantages which

have been bought by the suffering of others.”

It was no longer possible to doubt him. He had sinned, and he had reaped

the reward of his sin. Those rewards were great and splendid, but he had

come to renounce them all. The dreams of ambition were fulfilled, the

miracle of life was realised, the world was conquered and at his feet,

yet he was there to give up all. The quiet of the court had warmed to a

hush of awe. He turned to the bench, but every face was down. Then his

own eyes fell.

“Gentlemen of the Council, you who have served the island so long and so

honourably, perhaps you blame me for permitting you to come together

for the hearing of this confession. But if you knew the temptation I

was under to fly away without making it, to turn my back on my past,

to shuffle, my fault on to Fate, to lay the blame on Life, to persuade

myself that I could not have acted differently, you would believe it was

not lightly, and God knows, not vainly, that I suffered you to come here

to see me mount my scaffold.”

He turned back to the body of the court.

“My countrymen and countrywomen, you who have been so much more kind to

me than my character justified or my conduct merited. I say good-bye;

but not as one who is going away. In conquering the impulse to go

without confessing, I conquered the desire to go at all. Here, where my

old life has fallen to ruin, my new life must be built up. That is the

only security. It is also the only justice. On this island, where my

fall is known, my uprising may come--as is most right--only with bitter

struggle and sorrow and tears. But when it comes, it will come securely.

It may be in years, in many years, but I am willing to wait--I am ready

to labour. And, meantime, she who was worthy of my highest honour will

share my lowest degradation. That is the way of all women--God love and

keep them!”

The exaltation of his tones infected everybody.

“It may be that you think I am to be pitied. There have been hours of my

life when I have been deserving of pity. But they have been the hours,

the dark hours, when, in the prodigality of your gratitude, you have

loaded me with distinctions, and a shadow has haunted me, saying,

'Philip Christian, they think you a just judge--you are not a just

judge; they think you an upright man--you are not an upright man.' Do

not pity me now, when the dark hours are passed, when the new life has

begun, when I am listening at length to the voice of my heart, which has

all along been the voice of God.”

His eyes shone, his mouth was smiling.

“If you think how narrowly I escaped the danger of letting things go

on as they were going, of covering up my fault, of concealing my true

character, of living as a sham and dying as a hypocrite, you will

consider me worthy of envy instead. Good-bye! good-bye! God bless you!”

Before any one appeared to be aware that his voice had ceased he was

gone from the bench, and the Deemster's chair stood empty. Then the

people turned and looked into each other's stricken faces. They were

still standing, for nobody had thought of sitting down.

There was no further speaking that day. Without a word or a sign the

Governor descended from his seat and the proceedings came to an end.

Every one moved towards the door. “A great price to pay for it, though,”

thought the men. “How he must have loved her, after all,” thought the

women.

At that moment the big Queen Elizabeth clock of the Castle was striking

twelve, and the fishermen on Irish waters were raising a cheer for their

friend at home. A loud detonation rang out over the town. It was the

report of a gun. There was another, and then a third. The shots were

from a steamer that was passing the bay.

Philip remembered--it was Pete's last farewell.

XXIII.

Half an hour later the Keep, the courtyard, and the passage to the

portcullis were filled with an immense crowd. Ladies thronged the two

flights of external steps to the prisoners' chapel and the council

chamber. Men had climbed as high as to the battlements, and were looking

down over the beetle-browed walls. All eyes were on the door to the

debtors' side of the prison, and a path from it was being kept clear.

The door opened and Philip and Kate came out. There was no other exit,

and they must have taken it. He was holding her firmly by the hand, and

half-leading, half-drawing her along. Under the weight of so many eyes,

her head was held down, but those who were near enough to see her face

knew that her shame was swallowed up in happiness and her fear in love.

Philip was like a man transfigured. The extreme pallor of his cheeks

was gone, his step was firm, and his face was radiant. It was the common

remark that never before had he looked so strong, so buoyant, so noble.

This was the hour of his triumph, not that within the walls; this, when

his sin was confessed, when conscience had no power to appal him, when

the world and the pride of the world were beneath his feet, and he was

going forth from a prison cell, hand in hand with the fallen woman by

his side, to face the future with their bankrupt lives.

And she? She was sharing his fiery ordeal. Before her outraged

sisters and all the world she was walking with him in the depth of his

humiliation, at the height of his conquest, at the climax of his shame

and glory.

Once for a moment she halted and stumbled as if under the hot breath

that was beating upon her head. But he put his arm about her, and in a

moment she was strong. The sun dipped down from the great tower on to

his upturned face, and his eyes were glistening through their tears.

THE END.