Six days passed as with feet of lead, and Capt’n Davy and Mrs. Quiggin were still in Douglas. They could not tear themselves away. Morning and night the good souls were seized by a morbid curiosity about their servants’ sweethearts. “Seen Peggy lately?” Capt’n Davy would say. “I suppose you’ve not come across Willie Quarrie lately?” Mrs. Quiggin would ask. Thus did they squeeze to the driest pulp every opportunity of hearing anything of each other.
Jenny Crow, with Mrs. Quiggin at Castle Mona, had not yet set eyes on Captain Davy, and Lovibond, with Captain Davy at Fort Ann, had never once seen Mrs. Quiggin. Jenny had said nothing of Lovibond to Nelly, and Lovibond had said nothing of Jenny to Davy.
Matters stood so when one evening Peggy Quine was dressing up her mistress’s hair for dinner, and answering the usual question.
“Seen Willie Quarrie, ma’am? Aw ‘deed, yes, ma’am; and it’s shocking the stories he’s telling me. The Capt’n’s making the money fly. Bowls and beer, and cards and betting—it’s ter’ble, ma’m, ter’ble. Somebody should hould him. He’s distracted like. Giving to everybody as free as free. Parsons and preachers and the like—they’re all at him, same as flies at a sheep with the rot.”
“And what do people say, Peggy?”
“They say fools and their money is quickly parted ma’am.”
“How dare you call anybody a fool, Peggy?”
“Aw it’s not me, ma’am. It’s them that’s seeing him wasting his money like water through a pitchfork. And the dirts that’s catching most is shouting loudest. ‘Deed, ma’am, but his conduct is shocking.”
“And what do people say is the cause of it, Peggy?”
“Lumps in his porridge, ma’am.”
“What?”
“Yes, though, that’s what Willie Quarrie is telling me. When a woman isn’t just running even with her husband they call her lumps in his porridge. Aw, Willie’s a feeling lad.”
There was a pause after this disclosure, and then Mrs. Quiggin said in another voice, “Peggy, there’s a strange gentleman staying with the Captain at Forte Ann, is there not?”
“Yes, ma’am; Mr. Loviboy.”
“What is he like, Peggy?”
“Pepper and salt trowis, ma’am, and a morsel of hair on the tip of his chin.”
“Tall, Peggy?”
“No, a long wisp’ry man.”
“I suppose he helps the Captain to spend his money?”
“Never a ha’po’th, ma’am, ‘deed no; but ter’ble onaisy at it, and rigging him constant But no use at all, at all. The Capt’n’s intarmined to ruin hisself. Somebody should just take him and wallop him, ding dong, afore he’s wasted all he’s got, and hasn’t a penny left at him.”
“How dare you, Peggy?”
Peggy was dismissed in anger, and Mrs. Quiggin sat down to write a letter to Lovibond. She begged him to pardon the liberty of one who was no stranger, though they had never met, in asking him to come to her without delay. This done, and markedprivate, she called Peggy back and bade her to take the letter to Willie Quarrie, and tell him to give it to the gentleman before the Captain came down to breakfast in the morning.
The day was Sunday, the weather was brilliant, the window was open, and the salt breath of the sea was floating into the room. With the rustle of silk like a breeze in a pine tree Jenny Crow came back from a walk, swinging a parasol by a ring about her wrist.
“Such an adventure!” she said, sinking into a chair. “A man, of course! I saw him first on the Head at the skirts of the crowd that was listening to the Bishop’s preaching. Such a manly fellow! Broad-shouldered, big-chested, standing square on his legs like a rock. Dark, of course, and such eyes, Nelly! Brown—no black-brown. I like black-brown eyes in a man, don’t you?”
Captain Davy’s eyes were of the darkest brown. Mrs. Quiggin gave no sign.
“Then his dress—so simple. None of your cuffs and ruffs, and great high collars like a cart going for coke. Just a blue serge suit, and a monkey jacket. I like a man in a monkey jacket.”
Captain Davy wore a monkey jacket; Mrs. Quiggin colored slightly.
“A sailor, thinks I. There’s something so free and open about a sailor, isn’t there?”
“Do you think so, Jenny?” said Mrs. Quiggin in a faint voice.
“I’m sure of it, Nelly. The sailor is just like the sea. He’s noisy—so is the sea. Liable to storms—so is the sea. Blusters and boils, and rocks and reels—so does the sea. But he’s sunny too, and open and free, and healthy and bracing, and the sea is all that as well.”
Mrs. Quiggin was thinking of Captain Davy, and tingling with pleasure and shame, but she only said, falteringly, “Didn’t you talk of some adventure?”
“Oh, of course, certainly,” said Jenny. “After he had listened a moment he went on, and I lost sight of him. Presently I went on, too, and walked across the Head until I came within sight of Port Soderick. Then I sat down by a great bowlder. So quiet up there, Nelly; not a sound except the squeal of the sea birds, the boo-oo of the big waves outside, and the plash-ash of the little ones on the beach below. All at once I heard a sigh. At that I looked to the other side of the bowlder, and there was my friend of the monkey jacket. I was going to rise, but he rose instead, and begged me not to trouble. Then I was vexed with myself, and said I hoped he wouldn’t disturb himself on my account.”
“You never said that, Jenny Crow?”
“Why not, my dear? You wouldn’t have had me less courteous than he was. So he stood and talked. You never heard such a voice, Nelly. Deep as a bell, and his Manx tongue was like music. Talk of the Irish brogue! There’s no brogue in the world like the Manx, is there now, not if the right man is speaking it.”
“So he was a Manxman,” said Mrs. Quiggin, with a far-away look through the open window.
“Didn’t I say so before? But he has quite saddened me. I’m sure there’s trouble hanging over him. ‘I’ve been sailing foreign, ma’am,’ said he, ‘and I don’t know nothing—‘.”
“Oh, then he wasn’t a gentleman?” said Mrs. Quiggin.
Jenny fired up sharply. “Depends on what you call a gentleman, my dear. Now, any man is a gentleman to me who can afford to dispense with the first two syllables of the name.”
Mrs. Quiggin looked down at her feet.
“I only meant,” she said meekly, “that your friend hasn’t as much education—.”
“Then, perhaps, he has more brains,” said Jenny. “That’s the way they’re sometimes divided, you know, and education isn’t everything.”
“Doyouthink that, Jenny?” said Mrs. Quiggin, with another long look through the window.
“Of course I do,” said Jenny.
“And what did he say?”
“’ I’ve been sailing foreign, ma’am,’ he said. ‘And I don’t know nothing that cut’s a man’s heart from its moorings like coming home same as a homing pigeon, and then wishing yourself back again same as a lost one.’”
“Poor fellow!” said Mrs. Quiggin. “He must have found things changed since he went away.”
“He must,” said Jenny.
“Perhaps he has lost some one who was dear to him,” said Mrs. Quiggin.
“Perhaps,” said Jenny, with a sigh.
“His mother may be, or his sister—” began Mrs. Quiggin.
“Yes, or his wife.” continued Jenny, with a moan.
Mrs. Quiggin drew up suddenly. “What’s his name?” she asked sharply.
“Nay, how could I ask him that?” said Jenny.
“Where does he live?” said Mrs. Quiggin.
“Or that either?” said Jenny.
Mrs. Quiggin’s eyes wandered slowly back to the window. “We’ve all got our troubles, Jenny,” she said quietly.
“All,” said Jenny. “I wonder if I shall ever see him again.”
“Tell me if you do, Jenny?” said Mrs. Quiggin.
“I will, Nelly,” said Jenny.
“Poor fellow, poor fellow,” said Mrs. Quiggin.
As Jenny rose to remove her bonnet she shot a sly glance out of the corners of her eyes, and saw that Mrs. Quiggin was furtively wiping her own.
Meanwhile Lovibond at Fort Ann was telling a similar story to Captain Davy. He had left the house for a walk before Davy had come down to breakfast, and on returning at noon he found him immersed in the usual occupation of his mornings. This was that of reading and replying to his correspondence. Davy read with difficulty, and replied to all letters by check. His method of business was peculiar and original. He was stretched on the sofa with a pipe in his mouth, and the morning’s letters pigeonholed between his legs. Willie Quarrie sat at a table with a check-book before him. While Davy read the letters one by one he instructed Willie as to the nature of the answer, and Willie, with his head aslant, his mouth awry, and his tongue in his cheek, turned it into figures on the check-book.
As Lovibond came in Davy was knocking off the last batch for the day. “‘Respected sir,’ he was reading, ‘I know you’ve a tender heart’... Send her five pounds, Willie, and tell her to take that talk to the butchers.”
“‘Honored Captain, we are going to erect a new school in connection with Ballajora chapel, and if you will honor us by laying the foundation stone....’ Never laid a stone in my life ‘cept one, and that was my mawther’s sink-stone. Twenty pounds, Willie. ‘Sir, we are to hold a bazaar, and if you will consent to open it....’ Bazaar! I know: a sort of ould clothes shop in a chapel where you’re never tooken up for cheating, because you always says your paternoster-ings afore you begin. Ten pounds, Willie. Helloa, here’s Parson Quiggin. Wish the ould devil would write more simpler; I was never no good at the big spells myself. ‘Dear David....’ That’s good—he walloped me out of the school once for mimicking his walk—same as a coakatoo esactly. ‘Dear David, owing to the lamentable death of brother Mylechreest it has been resolved to ask you to become a member of our committee....’ Com-mittee! I know the sort—kind of religious firm where there’s three partners, only two of them’s sleeping ones. Dirty ould hypocrite! Fifteen pounds, Willie.”
This was the scene that Lovibond interrupted by his entrance. “Still bent on spending your money, Captain?” he said. “Don’t you see that the people who write you these begging letters are impostors?”
“Coorse I do,” said Davy. “What’s it saying in the Ould Book? ‘Where the carcass is, there will the eagles be gathered together.’ Only, as Parson Howard used to say, bless the ould angel, ‘Summat’s gone screw with the translation theer, friends, should have been vultures.”
“Half of them will only drink your money, Captain,” said Lovibond.
“And what for shouldn’t they? That’s what I’m doing,” said Davy.
“It’s poor work, Captain, poor work. You didn’t always think: money was a thing to pitch into a ditch.”
“Always? My goodness, no!” said Davy. “Time was once when I thought money was just all and Tommy in this world. My gough, yes, when I was a slip of a lad, didn’t I?” said he, sobering very suddenly. “The father was lost in a gale at the herrings, and the mawther had to fend for the lot of us. They all went off except myself—the sisters and brothers. Poor things, they wasn’t willing to stay with us, and no wonder. But there’s mostly an ould person about every Manx house that sees the young ones out, and the mawther’s father was at us still. Lame though of his legs with the rheumatics, and wake in his intellecs for all. Couldn’t do nothing but lie in by the fire with his bit of a blanket hanging over his head, same as snow atop of a hawthorn bush. Just stirring the peats, and boiling the kettle, and lifting the gorse when there was any fire. The mawther weeded for Jarvis Kewley—sixpence a day dry days, and fourpence all weathers. Middling hard do’s, mate. And when she’d give the ould man his basin of broth he’d be saying, squeaky-like, ‘Give it to the boy, woman; he’s a growing lad?’ ‘Chut! take it, man,’ the mawther would say, and then he’d be whimpering, ‘I’m keeping you long, Liza, I’m keeping you long.’ And there was herself making a noise with her spoon in the bottom of a basin, and there was me grinding my teeth, and swearing to myself like mad, ‘As sure as the living God I’ll be ruch some day.’ And now—”
Davy snapped his fingers, laughed boisterously, rolled to his feet, and said shortly, “Where’ve you been to?”
“To church—the church with a spire at the end of the parade,” said Lovibond.
“St. Thomas’s—I know it,” said Davy.
St. Thomas’s was half way up to Castle Mona.
The men strolled out at the window, which opened on to the warm, soft turf of the Head, and lay down there with their faces to the sun-lit bay.
“Who preached?” said Davy, clasping hands at the back of his head.
“A young woman,” said Lovibond.
Davy lifted his head out of its socket, “My goodness!” he said.
“Well, at all events,” explained Lovi-bond, “it was a girl who preached tome. The moment I went into the church I saw her, and I saw nothing else until I came out again.”
Davy laughed, “Ay, that’s the way a girl slips in,” said he. “Who was she?”
“Nay; I don’t know,” said Lovibond; “but she sat over against me on the opposite side of the aisle, and her face was the only prayer-book I could keep my eyes from wandering from.”
“And what was her tex’, mate?”
“Beauty, grace, truth, the tenderness of a true heart, the sweetness of a soul that is fresh and pure.”
Davy looked up with vast solemnity. “Take care,” said he. “There’s odds of women, sir. They’re like sheep’s broth is women. If there’s a heart and head in them they’re good, and if there isn’t you might as well be supping hot water. Faces isn’t the chronometer to steer your boat to the good ones. Now I’ve seen some you could swear to——.”
“I’ll swear to this one,” said Lovibond with an appearance of tremendous earnestness.
Davy looked at him, gravely. “D’ye say so?” said he.
“Such eyes, Capt’n—big and full, and blue, and then pale, pale blue, in the whites of them too, like—like——.”
“I know,” said Davy; “like a blackbird’s eggs with the young birds just breaking out of them.”
“Just,” said Lovibond, “And then her hair, Capt’n—brown, that brown with a golden bloom, as if it must have been yellow when she was a child.”
“I know the sort, sir,” said Davy, proudly; “like the ling on the mountains in May, with the gorse creeping under it.”
“Exactly. And then her voice, Cap tain, her voice—.”
“So you were speaking to her?” said Davy.
“No, but didn’t she sing?” said Lovi-bond. “Such tones, soft and tremulous, rising and falling, the same as—as—.”
“Same as the lark’s, mate,” said Davy, eagerly; “same as the lark’s—first a burst and a mount and then a trimble and a tumble, as if she’d got a drink of water out of the clouds of heaven, and was singing and swallowing together—I know the sort; go on.”
Lovibond had kept pace with Davy’s warmth, but now he paused and said quietly, “I’m afraid she’s in trouble.”
“Poor thing!” said Davy. “How’s that, mate?”
“People can never disguise their feelings in singing a hymn,” said Lovibond.
“You say true, mate,” said Davy; “nor in giving one out neither. Now, there was old Kinvig. He had a sow once that wasn’t too reg’lar in her pigging. Sometimes she gave many, and sometimes she gave few, and sometimes she gave none. She was a hit-and-a-missy sort of a sow, you might say. But you always know’d how the ould sow done, by the way Kinvig gave out the hymn. If it was six he was as loud as a clarnet, and if it was one his voice was like the tram-bones. But go on about the girl.”
“That’s all,” said Lovibond. “When the service was over I walked down the aisle behind her, and touched her dress with my hand, and somehow—”
“I know,” cried Davy. “Gave you a kind of ‘lectricity shock, didn’t it? Lord alive, mate, girls is quare things.”
“Then she walked off the other way,” said Lovibond.
“So you don’t know where she comes from?” said Davy.
“I couldn’t bring myself to follow her, Capt’n.”
“And right too, mate. It’s sneaking. Following a girl in the streets is sneaking, and the man that done it ought to be wallopped till all’s blue. But you’ll see her again, I’ll go bail, and maybe hear who she is. Rael true women is skess these days, sir; but I’m thinking you’ve got your flotes down for a good one. Give her line, mate—give her line—and if I wasn’t such a downhearted chap myself I’d be helping you to land her.”
Lovibond observed that Capt’n Davy was more than usually restless after this conversation, and in the course of the afternoon, while he lay in a hazy dose on the sofa, he overheard this passage between the captain and his boy:—
“Willie Quarrie, didn’t you say there was an English lady staying with Mistress Quiggin at Castle Mona?”
“Miss Crows; yes,” said Willie. “So Peggy Quine is telling me—a little person with a spyglass, and that fond of the mistress you wouldn’t think.”
“Then just slip across in the morning, and spake to herself, and say can I see her somewheres, or will she come here, and never say nothing to nobody.”
Davy’s uneasiness continued far into the evening. He walked alone to and fro on the turf of the Head in front of the house, until the sun set behind the hills to the west, where a golden rim from its falling light died off on the farthest line of the sea to the east, and the town between lay in a haze of deepening purple. Lovibond knew where his thoughts were, and what new turn they had taken; but he pretended to see nothing, and he gave no sign.
Sunday as it was, Capt’n Davy’s cronies came as usual at nightfall. They were a sorry gang, but Davy welcomed them with noisy cheer. The lights were brought in, and the company sat down to its accustomed amusements. These were drinking and smoking, with gambling in disguise at intervals. Davy lost tremendously, and laughed with a sort of wild joy at every failure. He was cheated on all hands, and he knew it. Now and again he called the cheaters by hard name, but he always paid them their money. They forgave the one for the sake of the other, and went on without shame. Lovibond’s gorge rose at the spectacle. He was an old gambler himself, and could have stripped every rascal of them all as naked as a lettuce after a locust. His indignation got the better of him at last, and he went out on to the Head.
The calm sea lay like a dark pavement dotted with the reflection of the stars overhead. Lights in a wide half-circle showed the line of the bay. Below was the black rock of the island of the Tower of Refuge, and the narrow strip of the old Red pier; beyond was the dark outline of the Head, and from the seaward breast of it shot the light of the lighthouse, like the glow of a kiln. It was as quiet and beautiful out there as it had been noisy and hideous within.
Lovibond had been walking to and fro for more than an hour listening to the slumberous voices of the night, and hearing at intervals the louder bellowing from the room where Captain Davy and his cronies were sitting, when Davy himself came out.
“I can’t stand no more of it, and I’ve sent them home,” he said. “It’s like saying your prayers to a hornpipe, thinking of her and carrying on with them wastrels.”
He was sober in one sense only.
“Tell me more about the little girl in church. Aw, matey, matey! Something under my waistcoat went creep, creep, creep, same as a sarpent, when you first spake of her; but its easier to stand till that jaw inside anyway. Go on, sir. Love at first sight, was it? Aw, well, the eyes isn’t the only place that love is coming in at, or blind men would all be bachelors. Now mine came in at the ear.”
“Did you fall in love with her singing, Capt’n?” said Lovibond.
“Yes, did I,” said Davy, “and her spaking, too, and her whispering as well, but it wasn’t music that brought love in at my ear—my left ear it was, Matey.”
“Whatever was it then, Capt’n,” said Lovibond.
“Milk,” said Davy.
“Milk?” cried Lovibond, drawing up in their walk.
“Just milk,” said Davy again. “Come along and I tell you. It was this way. Ould Kinvig kep’ two cows, and we were calling the one Whitie and the other Brownie. Nelly and me was milking the pair of them, and she was like a young goat, that full of tricks, and I was same as a big calf, that shy. One evening—it was just between the lights—that’s when girls is like kittens, terr’ble full of capers and mischievousness—Nelly rigged up her kopie—that’s her milking-stool—agen mine, so that we sat back to back, her milking Brownie and me milking Whitie. ‘What she agate of now?’ thinks I, but she was looking as innocent as the bas’es themselves, with their ould solem faces when they were twisting round. Then we started, and there wasn’t no noise in the cow-house, but just the cows chewing constant, and, maybe, the rope running on their necks at whiles and the rattle of the milk in the pails. And I got to draeming same as I was used of, with the smell of the hay stealing down from the loft and the breath of the cows coming puff when they were blowing, and the tits in my hands agoing, when the rattle-rattle aback of me stopped sudden, and I felt a squish in my ear like the syringe at the doctor’s. ‘What’s that?’ thinks I. ‘Is it deaf I’m going?’ But it’s deaf I’d been and blind, too, and stupid for all down to that blessed minute, for there was Nessy laughing like fits, and working like mad, and drops of Brownie’s milk going trickling out of my ear on to my shoulder. ‘It’s not deafness,’ thinks I; ‘it’s love’; and my breath was coming and going and making noises like the smithy bellows. So I twisted my wrist and blazed back at her, and we both fired away, ding-dong, till the cows was as dry as Kinvig when he was teetotal, and the cow-house was like a snowstorm with a gale of wind through it, and you couldn’t see a face at the one of us for swansdown. That’s how Nelly and me ‘came engage.”
He was laughing noisily by this time, and crying alternately, with a merry shout and a husky croak, “Aw, dear, aw, dear; the days that was, sir—the days that was!”
Lovibond let him rattle on, and he talked of Nelly for an hour. He had stories without end of her, some of them as simple as a baby’s prattle, some as deep as the heart of man, and splitting open the very crust of the fires of buried passion.
It was late when they turned in for the night. The lights on the line of the land were all put out, and save for the reflection of the stars only the lamps of ships at anchor lit up the waters of the bay.
“Good night, capt’n,” said Lovi-bond. “I suppose you’ll go to bed now?”
“Maybe so, maybe no,” said Davy. “You see, I’m like Kinvig these days, and go to bed to do my thinking. The ould man’s cart-wheel came off in the road once, and we couldn’t rig it on again no how. ‘Hould hard, boys,’ says Kinvig; and he went away home and up to the loft, and whipped off his clothes, and into the blankets and stayed there till he’d got the lay of that cartwheel. Aw, yes, though—thinking, thinking, thinking constant—that’s me when I’m in bed. But it isn’t the lying awake I’m minding. Och, no; it’s the wakening up again. That’s like nothing in the world but a rusty nail going driving into your skull afore a blacksmith’s seven-pound sledge. Good night, mate; good night.”
Next day Lovibond saw Mrs. Quiggin at Castle Mona. He had come at once in obedience to her summons, and she took his sympathies by storm. It was hard for him to realize that he had not seen her somewhere before. Hehadseen her—in his own description of the girl in church, helped out, led on, directed, vivified, and transfigured by Capt’n Davy’s own impetuous picture, just as the mesmerist sees what he pretends to show by aid of the eye of the mesmerized. There she sat, like one for whom life had lost its savor. Her great slow eyes, her pale and quivering face,’ her long deep look as she took his hand, and her softly tightening grasp of it went through him like a knife. Not all his loyalty to Capt’n Davy could crush the thought that the man who had thrown away a jewel such as this must be a brute and a blockhead. But the sweet woman was not so lost to life that she did not see her advantage. There were some weary sighs and then she said:—
“I am in great, great trouble about my husband. They say he is wasting his money. Is it true?”
“Too true,” said Lovibond.
“And that if he goes on as he is now going he will be penniless?”
“Not impossible,” said Lovibond, “provided the mad fit last long enough.”
“Is remonstrance quite useless, Mr. Lovibond?”
“Quite, Mrs. Quiggin.”
The great slow eyes began to fill, and Lovibond’s gaze to seek the laces of his boots.
“It is sorrow enough to me, Mr. Lovibond, that my husband and I have quarreled and parted, but it will be the worst grief of all if some day I should have to think that I came into his life to wreck it.”
“Don’t blame yourself for that, Mrs. Quiggin. It will be his own fault if he ruins himself.”
“You are very good, Mr. Lovi-bond.”
“Your husband will never blame you either.”
“That will hardly reconcile me to his misfortunes.”
[“The man’s an ass,” thought Lovibond.]
“I shall not trouble him much longer with my presence here,” Mrs. Quiggin continued, and Lovibond looked up inquiringly.
“I am going back home soon,” she added. “But if before I go some friend would help me to save my husband from himself——”
Lovibond rose in an instant. “I am at your service, Mrs. Quiggin,” he said briskly. “Have you thought of anything?”
“Yes. They tell me that he is gambling, and that all the cheats of the island are winning from him.”
“Well?”
The pale face turned very red, and quivered visibly about the lips.
“I have heard him say, when he has spoken of you, Mr. Lovibond, that—that—but will you forgive what I am going to tell you?”
“Anything,” said Lovibond.
“That out on the coastyoucould win from anybody. I remembered this when they told me that he was gambling, and I thought if you would play against my husband—forme———”
“I see what you mean, Mrs. Quiggin,” said Lovibond.
“I don’t want the money, though he was so cruel as to say I had only married him for sake of it. But you could put it back into Dumbell’s Bank day by day as you got it.”
“In whose name?” said Lovibond.
The great eyes opened very wide. “His, surely,” she said falteringly.
Lovibond saw the folly of that thought, but he also recognized its tenderness.
“Very well,” he said; “I’ll do my best.”
“Will it be wrong to deceive him, Mr. Lovibond?”
“It will be mercy itself, Mrs. Quiggin.”
“To be sure, it is only to save him from ruin. But you will not believe that I am thinking of myself, Mr. Lovibond?”
“Trust me for that, Mrs. Quiggin.”
“And when the wild fit is over, and my husband hears of what has been done, you will be careful not to let him know that it was I who thought of it?”
“You shall tell him yourself, Mrs. Quiggin.”
“Ah! that can never, never be,” she said, with a sigh. And then she murmured softly, “I don’t know what my husband may have told you about me, Mr. Lovibond—”
Lovibond’s ardor overcame his prudence. “He has told me that you were an angel once—and he has wronged you, the dunce and dulbert—you are an angel still.”
While Lovibond was with Mrs. Quig-gin Jenny Crow was with Capt’n Davy. She had clutched at his invitation with secret delight. “Just the thing,” she thought. “Now, won’t I give the other simpleton a piece of my mind, too?” So she had bowled off to Fort Ann with a heart as warm as toast, and a tongue that was stinging hot. But when she had got there her purpose had suddenly changed. The first sight of Capt’n Davy’s face had conquered her. It was so child-like, and yet so manly, so strong and yet so tender, so obviously made for smiles like sunshine, and yet so full of the memories of recent tears! Jenny recalled her description of the sailor on the Head, and thought it no better than a vulgar caricature.
Davy wiped down a chair for her with the outside of his billycock and led her up to it with rude but natural manners. “The girl was a ninny to quarrel with a man like this,” she thought. Nevertheless she remembered her purpose of making him smart, and she stuck to her guns for a round or two.
“It’s rael nice of you to come, ma’am,” said Davy.
“It’s more than you deserve,” said Jenny.
“I shouldn’t wonder but you think me a blundering blocket,” said Davy.
“I didn’t think you had sense enough to know it,” said Jenny.
With that second shot Jenny’s powder was spent. Davy looked down into her face and said—
“I’m terr’ble onaisy about herself, ma’am, and can’t take rest at nights for thinking what’s to come to her when I am gone.”
“Gone?” said Jenny, rising quietly.
“That’s so ma’am,” said Davy. “I’m going away—back to that ould Nick’s oven I came from, and I’ll want no money there.”
“Is that why you’re wasting it here, Captain Quiggin?” said Jenny. Her gayety was gone by this time.
“No—yes! Wasting? Well maybe so, ma’am, may be so. It’s the way with money. Comes like the droppings out of the spout at the gable, ma’am; but goes like the tub when the bull has tipped it. Now I was thinking ma’am——”
“Well, Captain?”
“She won’t take any of it, coming from me, but I was thinking, ma’am—”
“Yes?” Davy was pawing the carpet with one foot, and Jenny’s eyes were creeping up the horn buttons of his waistcoat.
“I was thinking, ma’am, if you could take a mossle of it yourself before it’s all gone, and go and live with her—you and she together somewheres—some quiet place—and make out somehow—women’s mortal clever at rigging up yarns that do no harm—make out that somebody belonging to you is dead—it can’t kill nobody to say that ma’am—and left you a bit of a fortune out of hand——”
Davy’s restless foot was digging away at the carpet while he was stammering out these broken words:
“Haven’t you no ould uncle, ma’am, that would do for the like of that?”
Jenny had to struggle with herself not to leap up and hug Capt’n Davy then and there, “What a ninny the girl was!” she thought. But she said aloud, as well as she could for her throat that was choking her, “I see what you mean, Captain Quiggin. But, Cap tain——”
“Ma’am?” said Davy.
“If you have so much thought—(gulp, gulp)—for your wife’s welfare (gulp), you—must love her still (gulp, gulp)?
“I daren’t say no, ma’am,” said Davy, with downcast eyes.
“And if you love her, however deeply she may have offended you, surely you should never leave her. Come, now, Captain, forgive and forget; she is only a woman, you know.”
“That’s just where the shoe pinches, ma’am, so I’m taking it off. Out yonder it’ll be easier to forgive. And if it’ll be harder to forget, what matter?”
Jenny’s eyes were beginning to fill.
“No use crying over spilled milk, is it, ma’am? The heart-ache is a sort of colic that isn’t cured by drops.”
Jenny was breaking down fast.
“Aw, the heart’s a quare thing, ma’am. Got its hunger same as anything else. Starve it, and it’ll know why. Gives you a kind of a sinking at the pit of your stomach, ma’am. Did you never feel it, ma’am?”
Davy’s speech was rude enough, but that only made its emotion the more touching to Jenny. Between gulp and gulp she tried to say that if he went away he would never be happy again.
“Happy, ma’am? D’ye say happy? I’m not happynow,” said Davy.
“It isn’t everybody would think so, Captain,” said Jenny, “considering how you spend your evenings—singing and laughing——”
“Laughing! More cry till wool, ma’am, same as clipping a pig.”
“So your new friends, Captain, those that your riches have brought you—”
“Friends? D’ye say friends? Them wastrels! What are they? Nothing but a parcel of Betty Quilleash’s baby’s stepmothers. And I’m nothing but Betty Quilleash’s baby myself, ma’am; that’s what I am.”
The stalwart fellow did not look much like anybody’s infant, but Davy could not laugh, and Jenny’s eyes were streaming.
“Betty lived at Michael, ma’am, and died when her baby was suckling. There wasn’t no feeding-bottles in them days, and the little one was missing the poor dead mawther mortal. But babies is like lammies, ma’am, they’ve got their season, and mostly all the women of the parish had babies that year. So first one woman would whip up Betty’s baby and give it a taste of the breast, and then another would whip it up and do likewise, until the little baby cuckoo was in every baby nest in the place, and living all over the street, like the rum-butter bowl and the preserving pan. But no use at all, at all. The little mite wasted away. Poor thing, poor thing. Twenty mawthers wasn’t making up to it for the right one it had lost. That’s me, ma’am; that’s me.”
Jenny Crow went away, crying openly, having promised to be a party to the innocent deception which Captain Davy had suggested. “That Nelly Kinvig is as hard as a flint,” she told herself, bitterly. “I’ve no patience with such flinty people; and won’t I give it her piping hot at the very next opportunity?”
Jenny’s opportunity was a week in coming, and various events of some consequence in this history occurred in the mean time. The first of these was that Capt’n Davy’s fortune changed hands.
Davy’s savings had been invested in two securities—the Liverpool Dock Trust and Dumbell’s Manx Bank. His property in the former he made over by help of the advocates, and with vast show of secrecy, to the name of Jenny Crow; and she, on her part, by help of other advocates, and with yet more real secrecy, transferred it to the name of Mrs. Quiggin.
The remains of his possessions in the latter he lost to Lovibond, who gambled with him constantly, beginning with a sovereign, which Mrs. Quiggin had lent him for the purpose, and going on by a process of doubling until the stakes were prodigious. Every night he discharged his debt by check on Dumbell’s, and every morning Lovibond repaid it into the same bank to the account of his wife. Thus, within a week, unknown to either of the two persons chiefly concerned, the money which had been the immediate cause of strife between them passed from the offender to the offended, from the strong to the weak.
That was the more material of the changes that had come to pass, and the more spiritual were of still greater consequence.
Lovibond and Jenny met constantly. They made various excursions through the island—to the Tynwald Hill, to Peel Castle, to Castle Rushen, the Chasms, and the Calf. Of course they persuaded each other that these trips were taken solely in the interests of their friends. It was necessary to meet; it was desirable to do so where they would be unobserved; what else was left to them but to steal away together on these little jaunts and journeys?
Then their talk was of love and estrangement and reconciliation, and how easy to quarrel, and how hard to come together again. Capt’n Davy and Mrs. Quiggin provided all their illustrations to these interesting themes, for naturally they never spoke of themselves.
“It’s astonishing what geese some people can be,” said Jenny.
“Astonishing,” echoed Lovibond.
“Just for sake of a poor little word of confession to hold off like this,” said Jenny.
“Just a poor little word,” said Lovibond.
“He has only to say ‘My dear, I behaved like a brute,’ but——”
“Only that,” said Lovibond. “And she has merely to say, ‘My love, I behaved like a cat,’ but——”
“That’s all,” said Jenny. “But he doesn’t—men never do.”
“Never,” said Lovibond. “And she won’t—women never will.”
Then there would be innocent glances on both sides, and sly hints cast out as grappling hooks for jealousy.
“Ah, well, he’s the dearest, simplest, manliest fellow in the world, and there are women who would give their two ears for him,” said Jenny.
“And she’s the sweetest, tenderest, loveliest woman alive, and there are men who would give their two eyes for her,” said Lovibond.
“Pity they don’t,” said Jenny, “for all the use they make of them.”
Amid such bouts of thrust and counter-thrust, the affair of Capt’n Davy and Mrs. Quiggin nevertheless made due progress.
“She’s half in love with my Manx sailor on the Head,” said Jenny.
“And he’s more than half in love with my lady in the church,” said Lovibond.
“And now that we’ve made each of them fond of each other in disguise, we have just to make both of them ashamed of themselves in reality,” said Jenny.
“Just that,” said Lovibond.
“Ah me,” said Jenny. “It isn’t every pair of geese that have friends like us to prevent them from going astray.”
“It isn’t,” said Lovibond. “We’re the good old ganders that keep the geese together.”
“Speak for yourself, sir,” said Jenny.
Then came Jenny’s opportunity. She had been out on one of her jaunts with Lovibond, leaving Mrs. Quiggin alone in her room at Castle Mona. Mrs. Quiggin was still in her room, and still alone. Since the separation a fortnight before that had been the constant condition of her existence. Never going out, never even going down for her meals, rarely speaking of her husband, always thinking of him, and eating out her heart with pride and vexation, and anger and self-reproach.
It was the hour when the life of the island rises to the fever point; the hour of the arrival of the steamers from England. All day long the town had droned and dosed under a drowsy heat. The boatmen and carmen, with both hands in their breeches’ pocket, had been burning the daylight on the esplanade; the band on the pier had been blowing music out of lungs that snored between every other blast; and the visitors had been lolling on the seats of the parade and watching the sea gulls disporting on the bay with eyes that were drawing straws. But the first trail of smoke had been seen across the sea by the point of the lighthouse, and all the slugs and marmots were wide awake: promenade deserted, streets quiet and pothouses empty; but every front window of every front house occupied, and the pier crowded with people looking seaward. “She’s the Snaefell?” “No, but the Ben-my-Chree—see, she has four funnels.” Then, the steaming up, the firing of the gun, the landing of the passengers, the mails and newspapers, the shouting of the touts, the bawling of the porters, the salutations, the welcomes, the passings of the time of day, the rattling of the oars, the tinkling of the trams, and the cries of the newsboys: “This way for Castle Mona!” “Falcon Cliff this way!” “Echo!” “Evening Express!” “Good passage, John?” “Good.” “Five hours?” “And ten minutes.” “What news over the water?” “They’ve caught him.” “Never.” “Express!” “Fort Anne here—here for Villiers.” “Comfortable lodgings, sir.” “Take a card, ma’am.” “What verdict d’ye say?” “She’s got ten years.” “Had fine weather in the island?” “Fine.” “Echo! Evening Echo!” “Fort Anne this way!” “Gladstone in Liverpool?” “Yes, spoke at Hengler’s last night—fearful crush.” “Castle Mona!” “Evening News!” “Peveril!” “This way Falcon Cliff!” “Ex-press!”
Thus, leaving the pier and the steamers behind them, through the streets and into the hotels, the houses, the cars, and the trains go, the new comers, and the newspapers, and the letters from England, all hot and active, bringing word of the main land, with its hub-bub and hurly-burly, to the island that has been four-and-twenty hours cut off from it—like the throbbing and bounding globules of fresh blood fetching life from the fountain-head to some half-severed limb. It is an hour of tremendous vitality, coming once a day, when the little island pulsates like a living thing. But that evening, as always since the time of the separation, Mrs. Quiggin was unmoved by it. With a book in her hand she was sitting by the open window fingering the pages, but looking listlessly over the tops of them to the line of the sea and sky, and asking herself if she should not go home to her father’s house on the morrow. She had reached that point of her reverie at which something told her that she should, and something else told her that she should not, when down came Jenny Crow upon her troubled quiet, like the rush of an evening breeze.
“Such news!” cried Jenny. “I’ve seen him again.”
Mrs. Quiggin’s book dropped suddenly to her lap. “Seen him?” she said with bated breath.
“You remember—the Manx sailor on the Head,” said Jenny.
“Oh!” said Mrs. Quiggin, languidly, and her book went back to before her face.
“Been to Laxey to look at the big wheel,” said Jenny; “and found the Manxman coming back in the same coach. We were the only passengers, and so I heard everything. Didn’t I tell you that he must be in trouble?”
“And is he?” said Mrs. Quiggin, monotonously.
“My dear,” said Jenny, “he’s married.”
“I’m very sorry,” said Mrs. Quiggin, with a listless look toward the sea. “I mean,” she added more briskly, “that I thought you liked him yourself.”
“Liked him!” cried Jenny. “I loved him. He’s splendid, he’s glorious, he’s the simplest, manliest, tenderest, most natural creature in the world. But it’s just my luck—another woman has got him. And such a woman, too! A nagger, a shrew, a cat, a piece of human flint, a thankless wretch, whose whole selfish body isn’t worth the tip of his little finger.”
“Is she so bad as that?” said Mrs. Quiggin, smiling feebly above the top edge of her book, which covered her face up to the mouth.
“My dear,” said Jenny, solemnly, “she has turned him out of the house.”
“Good gracious!” said Mrs. Quiggin; and away went the book on to the sofa.
Then Jenny told a woeful tale, her eyes flashing, her lips quivering, and her voice ringing with indignation. And, anxious to hit hard, she hovered so closely over the truth as sometimes to run the risk of uncovering it. The poor fellow had made long voyages abroad and saved some money. He had loved his wife passionately—that was the only blot on his character. He always dreamt of coming home, and settling down in comfort for the rest of his life. He had come at last, and a fine welcome had awaited him. His wife was as proud as Lucifer—the daughter of some green-grocer, of course. She had been ashamed of her husband, apparently, and settling down hadn’t suited her. So she had nagged the poor fellow out of all peace of mind and body, taken his money, and turned him adrift.
Jenny’s audacity carried her through, and Mrs. Quiggin, who was now wide awake, listened eagerly. “Can it be possible that there are women like that?” she said, in a hushed whisper.
“Indeed, yes,” said Jenny; “and men are simple enough to prefer them to better people.”
“But, Jenny,” said Mrs. Quiggin, with a far-away look, “we have only heard one story, you know. If we were inside the Manxman’s house—if we knew all—might we not find that there are two sides to its troubles?”
“There are two sides to its street-door,” said Jenny, “and the husband is on the outside of it.”
“She took his money, you say, Jenny?”
“Indeed she did, Nelly, and is living on it now.”
“And then turned him out of doors?”
“Well, so to speak, she made it impossible for him to live with her.”
“What a cat she must be!” said Mrs. Quiggin.
“She must,” said Jenny. “And, would you believe it, though she has treated him so shamefully yet he loves her still.”
“Why do you think so, Jenny,” said Mrs. Quiggin.
“Because,” said Jenny, “though he is always sober when I see him I suspect that he is drinking himself to death. He said as much.”
“Poor fellow!” said Mrs. Quiggin. “But men should not take these things so much to heart. Such women are not worth it.”
“No, are they?” said Jenny.
“They have hardly a right to live,” said Mrs. Quiggin.
“No, have they?” said Jenny.
“There should be a law to put down nagging wives the same as biting dogs,” said Mrs. Quiggin.
“Yes, shouldn’t there?” said Jenny.
“Once on a time men took their wives like their horses on trial for a year and a day, and really with some women there would be something to say for the old custom.”
“Yes, wouldn’t there?” said Jenny.
“The woman who is nothing of herself apart from her husband, and has no claim to his consideration, except on the score of his love, and yet uses him only to abuse him, and takes his very ‘money, having none of her own, and still——”
“Did I say she took his money, Nelly?” said Jenny. “Well of course—not to be unfair—some men are such generous fools, you know—he may have given it to her.”
“No matter; taken or given, she has got it, I suppose, and is living on it now.”
“Oh, yes, certainly, that’s very sure,” said Jenny; “but then she’s his wife, you see, and naturally her maintenance——”
“Maintenance!” cried Mrs. Quig-gin. “How many children has she got?”
“None,” said Jenny. “At least I haven’t heard of any.”
“Then she ought to be ashamed of herself for thinking of such a thing.”
“I quite agree with you, Nelly,” said Jenny.
“If I were a man,” said Mrs. Quiggin, “and my wife turned me out of doors——”
“Did I say that, Nelly? Well not exactly that—no, not turned him out of doors exactly, Nelly.”
“It’s all one, Jenny. If a woman behaves so that her husband can not live with her what is she doing but turning him out of doors?”
“But, Nelly!” cried Jenny, rising suddenly. “What about Captain Davy?”
Then there was a blank silence. Mrs. Quiggin had been borne along on the torrent of her indignation, brooking no objection, and sweeping down every obstacle, until brought up sharply by Jenny’s question—like a river that flows fastest and makes most noise where the bowlders in its course are biggest, but breaks itself at last against the brant sides of some impassable rock. She drew her breath in one silent spasm, turned from feverish red to deadly pale, quivered about the mouth, twitched about the eyelids, rose stiffly on her half-rigid limbs, and then fell on Jenny with loud and hot reproaches.
“How dare you, Jenny Crow?” she cried.
“Dare what, my dear?” said Jenny.
“Say that I’ve turned my husband out of doors, and that I’ve taken his money, and that I am a cat and shrew, and a nagger, and that there ought to be a law to put me down.”
“My dear Nelly,” said Jenny, “it was yourself that said so. I was speaking of the wife of the Manx sailor.”
“Yes, but you were thinking of me,” said Mrs. Quiggin.
“I was thinking of her,” said Jenny.
“You were thinking of me as well,” said Mrs. Quiggin.
“I tell you that I was only thinking of her,” said Jenny.
“You were thinking of me, Jenny Crow—you know you were; and you meant that I was as bad as she was. But circumstances alter cases, and my case is different. My husband is turningmeout of doors: and, as for his money, I didn’t ask for it and I don’t want it. I’ll go back home to-morrow morning. I will—indeed, I will. I’ll bear this torment no longer.”
So saying, with many gasps and gulps, breaking at last into a burst of weeping, she covered her face with both hands and flounced out of the room. Jenny watched her go, then listened to the sobs that came from the other side of the door, and said beneath her breath, “Let her cry, poor girl. The crying has to be done by somebody, and it might as well be she. Crying is good for a woman sometimes, but when a man cries it hurts so much.”
Half an hour later, as Jenny was leaving the room for dinner, she heard Mrs. Quiggin telling Peggy Quine to ask at the office for her bill, and to order a carriage to be ready at the door for her at eleven o’clock in the morning.
When the first burst of her vexation was spent Mrs. Quiggin made a secret and startling discovery. The man whom Jenny Crow had stumbled upon, first on the Head and afterward on the Laxey coach, could be no one in the world but her own husband. A certain shadowy suspicion of this had floated hazily before her mind at the beginning, but she had dismissed the idea and forgotten it. Now she felt so sure of it that it was beyond contempt of question. So the Manx sailor in whom Jenny had found so much to admire—the simple, brave, manly, generous, natural soul, all fresh air and by rights all sunshine—was no other than Capt’n Davy Quiggin! That thought brought the hot blood tingling to Mrs. Quiggin’s cheeks with sensations of exquisite delight, and never before had her husband seemed so fine in her own eyes as now, when she saw him so noble in the eyes of another. But close behind this delicious reflection, like the green blight at the back of the apple blossom, lay a withering and cankering thought. The Manx sailor’s wife—she who had so behaved that it was impossible for him to live with her—she who was a cat, a shrew, a nagger, a thankless wretch, a piece of human flint, a creature that should be put down by the law as it puts down biting dogs—she whose whole selfish body was not worth the tip of his little finger—was no one else than herself!
Then came another burst of weeping, but this time the tears were of shame, not of vexation, and they washed away every remaining evil humor and left the vision clear. She had been in the wrong, she was judged out of her own mouth; but she had no intention of fitting on the cap of the unknown woman. Why should she? Jenny did not know who the woman was—that was as plain as a pickle. Then where was the good of confessing?