Philip held to his resolution for three months, and grew thin and pale. Then another letter came from Pete—a letter for himself, and he wondered what to do with it. To send it by post, pretending to be ill again, would be hypocrisy he could not support. He took it.
The family were all at home. Nancy had just finished a noisy churning, and Kate was in the dairy, weighing the butter into pounds and stamping it. Philip read the letter in a loud voice to the old people in the kitchen, and the soft thumping and watery swishing ceased in the damp place adjoining. Pete was in high feather. He had made a mortal lot of money lately, and was for coming home quickly. Couldn't say exactly when, for some rascally blackleg Boers, who had been corrupting his Kaffirs and slipped up country with a pile of stones, had first to be followed and caught. The job wouldn't take long though, and they might expect to see him back within a twelvemonth, with enough in his pocket to drive away the devil and the coroner anyway.
“Bould fellow!” said Cæsar.
“Aw, deed on Pete!” said Grannie.
“Now, if it wasn't for that Ross——” said Nancy.
Philip went into the dairy, where Kate was now skimming the cream of the last night's milking. He was sorry there was nothing but a message for her this time. Had she answered Pete's former letters? No, she had not.
“I must be writing soon, I suppose,” she said, blowing the yellow surface. “But I wish—puff—I could have something to tell him—puff, puff—about you.”
“About me, Kate?”
“Something sweet, I mean “—puff, puff, puff.
She shot a sly look upward. “Aren't you sure yet? Can't say still? Not properly? No?”
Philip pretended not to understand. Kate's laugh echoed in the empty cream tins. “How you want people to say things!”
“No, really—” began Philip.
“I've always heard that the girls of Douglas are so beautiful. You must see so many now. Oh, it would be delicious to write a long story to Pete. Where you met—in church, naturally. What she's like—fair, of course. And—and all about it, you know.”
“That's a story you will never tell to Pete, Kate,” said Philip.
“No, never,” said Kate quite as light, and this being just what she wished to hear, she added mournfully. “Don't say that, though. You can't think what pleasure you are denying me, and yourself, too. Take some poor girl to your heart, Philip. You don't know how happy it will make you.”
“Areyouso happy, then, Kate?”
Kate laughed merrily. “Why, what doyouthink?”
“Dear old Pete—how happyheshould be,” said Philip.
Kate began to hate the very name of Pete. She grew angry with Philip also. Why couldn't he guess? Concealment was eating her heart out. The next time she saw Philip, he passed her in the market-place on the market-day, as she stood by the tipped-up gig, selling her butter. There was a chatter of girls all round as he bowed and went on. This vexed her, and she sold out at a penny a pound less, got the horse from the “Saddle,” and drove home early.
On the way to Sulby she overtook Philip and drew up. He was walking to Kirk Michael to visit the old Deemster, who was ill. Would he not take a lift? He hesitated, half declined, and then got into the gig. As she settled herself comfortably after this change, he trod on the edge of her dress. At that he drew quickly away as if he had trodden on her foot.
She laughed, but she was vexed; and when he got down at “The Manx Fairy,” saying he might call on his way back in the evening, she had no doubt Grannie would be glad to see him.
The girls of the market-place were standing by the mill-pond, work done, and arms crossed under their aprons, twittering like the pairing birds about them in the trees, when Philip returned home by Sulby. He saw Kate coming down the glen road, driving two heifers with a cushag for switch and flashing its gold at them in the horizontal gleams of sunset. She had recovered her good-humour, and was swinging along, singing merry snatches as she came—all life, all girlish blood and beauty.
She pretended not to see him until they were abreast, and the heifers were going into the yard. Then she said, “I've written and told him.”
“What?” said Philip.
“That you say you are a confirmed old bachelor.”
“ThatIsay so?”
“Yes; and thatIsay you are so distant with a girl that I don't believe you have a heart at all.”
“You don't?”
“No; and that he couldn't have left anybody better to look after me all these years, because you haven't eyes or ears or a thought for any living creature except himself.”
“You've never written that to Pete?” said Philip.
“Haven't I, though?” said Kate, and she tripped off on tiptoe.
He tripped after her. She ran into the yard. He ran also. She opened the gate of the orchard, slipped through, and made for the door of the dairy, and there he caught her by the waist.
“Never, you rogue! Say no, say no!” he panted.
“No,” she whispered, turning up her lips for a kiss.
Grannie saw nothing of Philip that night. He went home tingling with pleasure, and yet overwhelmed with shame. Sometimes he told himself that he was no better than a Judas, and sometimes that Pete might never come back. The second thought rose oftenest. It crossed his mind like a ghostly gleam. He half wished to believe it. When he counted up the odds against Pete's return, his pulse beat quick. Then he hated himself. He was in torment. But under his distracted heart there was a little chick of frightened joy, like a young cuckoo hatched in a wagtail's nest.
After many days, in which no further news had come from Pete, Kate received this brief letter from Philip:
“I am coming to see you this evening. Have something of grave importance to tell you.”
It was afternoon, and Kate ran upstairs, hurried on her best frock, and came down to help Nancy to gather apples in the orchard. Black Tom was there, new thatching the back of the house, and Cæsar was making sugganes (straw rope) for him with a twister. There was a soft feel of autumn in the air, pigeons were cooing in the ledges of the mill-house gable, and everything was luminous and tranquil. Kate had climbed to the fork of a tree, and was throwing apples into Nancy's apron, when the orchard gate clicked, and she uttered a little cry of joy unawares as Philip entered. To cover this, she pretended to be falling, and he ran to help her.
“Oh, it's nothing,” she said. “I thought the bough was breaking. So it's you!” Then, in a clear voice, “Is your apron full, Nancy? Yes? Bring another basket, then; the white one with the handles. Did you come Laxey way by the coach? Bode over, eh? Nancy, do you really think we'll have sugar enough for all these Keswicks?”
“Good evenin', Mr. Christian, sir,” said Cæsar. And Black Tom, from the ladder on the roof, nodded his wide straw brim.
“Thatching afresh, Mr. Cregeen?”
“Covering it up, sir; covering it up. May the Lord cover our sins up likewise, or how shall we cover ourselves from His avenging wrath?”
“How vexing!” said Kate, from the tree. “Half of them get bruised, and will be good for nothing but preserving. They drop at the first touch—so ripe, you see.”
“May we all be ripe for the great gathering, and good for preserving, too,” said Cæsar. “Look at that big one, now—knotted like a blacksmith's muscles, but it'll go rotten as fast as the least lil one of the lot. It's taiching us a lesson, sir, that we all do fall—big mountains as aisy as lil cocks. This world is changeable.”
Philip was not listening, but looking up at Kate, with a face of half-frightened tenderness.
“Do you know,” she said, “I was afraid you must be ill again—your apron, Nancy—that was foolish, wasn't it?”
“No;Ihave been well enough,” said Philip.
Kate looked at him. “Is it somebody else?” she said. “I got your letter.”
“Can I help?” said Philip. “What is it? I'm sure there's something,” said Kate.
“Set your foot here,” he said.
“Let me down, I feel giddy.”
“Slowly, then. Hold by this one. Give me your hand.”
Their fingers touched, and communicated fire.
“Why don't you tell me?” she said, with a passionate tightening of his hand. “It's bad news, isn't it? Are you going away?”
“Somebody who went away will never come back,” he answered.
“Is it—Pete?”
“Poor Pete is gone,” said Philip.
Her throat fluttered. “Gone?”
“He is dead,” said Philip.
She tottered, but drew herself up quickly. “Stop!” she said. “Let me make sure. Is there no mistake? Is it true?”
“Too true.”
“I can bear the truth now—but afterwards—to-night—tomorrow—in the morning it might kill me if——”
“Pete is dead, Kate; he died at Kimberley.”
“Philip!”
She burst into a wild fit of hysterical weeping, and buried her face his his breast.
He put his arms about her, thinking to soothe her. “There! be brave! Hold yourself firm. It's a terrible blow. I was too sudden. My poor girl. My brave girl!”
She clung to him like a terrified child; the tears came from under her eyelids tightly closed; the flood-gates of four years' reserve went down in a moment, and she kissed him on the lips.
And, throbbing with bliss and a blessed relief from four years hypocrisy and treason, he kissed her back, and they smiled through their tears.
Poor Pete! Poor Pete! Poor Pete!
At the sound of Kate's crying, Cæsar had thrown away the twister and come close to listen, and Black Tom had dropped from the thatch. Nancy ran back with the basket, and Grannie came hurrying from the house.
Cæsar lifted both hands solemnly. “Now, you that are women, control yourselves,” said he, “and listen while I spake. Peter Quilliam's dead in Kimberley.”
“Goodness mercy!” cried Grannie.
“Lord alive!” cried Nancy.
And the two women went indoors, threw their aprons over their heads, and rocked themselves in their seats.
“Aw boy veen! boy veen!”
Kate came tottering in, ghostly white, and the women fell to comforting her, thereby making more tumult with their soothing moans than Kate with her crying.
“Chut'! Put a good face on it, woman,” said Black Tom. “A whippa of a girl like you will be getting another soon, and singing, 'Hail, Smiling Morn!' with the best.”
“Shame on you, man. Are you as drunk as Mackillya?” cried Nancy. “Your own grandson, too!”
“Never another for Kate, anyway,” wept Grannie. “Aw boy veen, aw boy veen!”
“Maybe he had another himself, who knows?” said Black Tom. “Out of sight out of mind, and these sailor lads have a rag on lots of bushes.”
Kate was helped to her room upstairs, Philip sat down in the kitchen, the news spread like a curragh fire, and the barroom was full in five minutes. In the midst of all stood Cæsar, solemn and expansive.
“He turned his herring yonder night when he left goodbye to the four of us,” he said. “My father did the same the night he was lost running rum for Whitehaven, and I've never seen a man do it and live.”
“It's forgot at you father,” wept Grannie. “It was Mr. Philip that turned it. Aw boy veen! boy veen!”
“How could that be, mother?” said Cæsar. “Mr. Philip isn't dead.”
But Grannie heard no more. She was busy with the consolations of half-a-dozen women who were gathered around her. “I dreamt it the night he sailed. I heard a cry, most terrible, I did. 'Father,' says I, 'what's that?' It was the same as if I had seen the poor boy coming to his end un-timeously. And I didn't get a wink on the night.”
“Well, he has gone to the rest that remaineth,” said Cæsar. “The grass perisheth, and the worm devoureth, and well all be in heaven with him soon.”
“God forbid, father; don't talk of such dreadful things,” said Grannie, napping her apron. “Do you say his mother, ma'am? Is she in life? No, but under the sod, I don't know the years. Information of the lungs, poor thing.”
“I've known him since I was a slip of a boy,” said one. “It was whip-top time—no, it was peg-top time——”
“I saw him the morning he sailed,” said another. “I was standingso——”
“Mr. Christian saw him last,” moaned Grannie, and the people in the bar-room peered through at Philip with awe.
“I felt like a father for the lad myself,” said Cæsar, “he was always my white-headed boy, and I stuck to him with life. He desarved it, too. Maybe his birth was a bit mischancy, but what's the ould saying, 'Don't tell me what I was, tell me what I am.' And Pete was that civil with the tongue—a civiller young man never was.”
Black Tomtshtand spat. “Why, you were shouting out of mercy at the lad, and knocking him about like putty. He wouldn't get lave to live with you, and that's why he went away.”
“You're bad to forget, Thomas—I've always noticed it,” said Cæsar.
“You'll be putting the bell about, and praiching his funeral, eh, Cæsar?” said somebody.
“'Deed, yes, man, Sabbath first,” said Cæsar.
“That's impossible, father,” said Grannie. “How's the girl to have her black ready?”
“Sunday week, then, or Sunday fortnight, or the Sunday after the Melliah (harvest-home),” said Cæsar; “the crops are waiting for saving, but a dead man is past it. Oh, I'll be faithful, I'll give it them straight, it's a time for spaking like a dying man to dying men; I'll take a tex' that'll be a lesson and a warning, 'Ho, every one that thirsteth——”
Black Tomtshtand spat again. “I wouldn't, Cæsar; they'll think you're going to trate them,” he muttered.
Philip was asked for particulars, and he brought out a letter. Jonaique Jelly, John the Clerk, and Johnny the Constable had come in by this time. “Read it, Jonaique,” said Cæsar.
“A clane pipe first,” said Black Tom. “Aren't you smook-ing on it, Cæsar? And isn't there a croppa of rum anywhere? No! Not so much as a plate of crackers and a drop of tay going? Is it to be a totaller's funeral then?”
“This is no time for feasting to the refreshment of our carnal bodies,” said Cæsar severely. “It's a time for praise and prayer.”
“I'll pud up a word or dwo,” said the Constable meekly.
“Masther Niplightly,” said Cæsar, “don't be too ready to show your gift. It's vanity. I'll engage in prayer myself.” And Cæsar offered praise for all departed in faith and fear.
“Cæsar is nod a man of a liberal spirit, bud he is powerful in prayer, dough,” whispered the Constable.
“He isn't a prodigal son, if that's what you mane,” said Black Tom. “Never seen him shouting after anybody with a pint, anyway.”
“Now for the letter, Jonaique,” said Cæsar.
It was from one of the Gills' boys who had sailed with Pete, and hitherto served as his letter-writer.
“'Respected Sir,'” read Jonaique, “'with pain and sorrow I write these few lines, to tell you of poor Peter Quilliam——'”
“Aw boy veen, boy veen!” broke in Grannie.
“'Knowing you were his friend in the old island, and the one he talked of mostly, except the girl——'”
“Boy ve——”
“Hush, woman.”
“'He made good money out here, at the diamond mines——'”
“Never a yellow sovereign he sent to me, then,” said Black Tom, “nor the full of your fist of ha'pence either. What's the use of getting grand-childers?”
Cæsar waved his hand. “Go on, Jonaique. It's bad when the deceitfulness of riches is getting the better of a man.”
“Where was I? Oh, 'good money ———' 'Yet he was never for taking joy in it——'”
“More money, more cares,” muttered Cæsar.
“'But talking and talking, and scheming for ever, for coming home.'”
“Ah! home is a full cup,” moaned Grannie. “It was a show the way that lad was fond of it. 'Give me a plate of mate, bolstered with cabbage, and what do I care for their buns and sarves, Grannie,' says he. Aw, boy veen, boy bogh!”
“What does the nightingale care for a golden cage when he can get a twig?” said Cæsar.
“Is the boy's chest home yet?” asked John the Clerk.
“There's something about it here,” said Jonaique, “if people would only let a man get on.”
“It's mine,” said Black Tom.
“We'll think of that by-and-bye,” said Cæsar, waving his hand to Jonaique.
“'He had packed his chest for going, when four blacklegs, who had been hanging round the compound, tempting and plaguing the Kaffirs, made off with a bag of stones. Desperate gang, too; so nobody was running to be sent after them. But poor Peter, being always a bit bull-necked, was up to the office in a jiffy, and Might he go? And off in chase in the everin' with the twenty Kaffirs of his own company to help him—not much of a lot neither, and suspected of dealing diamonds with the blacklegs times; but Peter always swore their love for him was getting thicker and stronger every day like sour cream. “The captain's love has been their theme, and shall be till they die,” said Peter.'”
“He drank up the Word like a thirsty land the rain,” said Cæsar. “Peter Quilliam and I had mortal joy of each other. 'Good-bye, father,' says he, and he was shaking me by the hand ter'ble. But go on, Jonaique.”
“'That was four months ago, and a fortnight since eight of his Kaffirs came back.'”
“Aw dear!” “Well, well!” “Lord-a-massy!” “Hush!”
“'They overtook the blacklegs far up country, and Peter tackled them. But they had Winchester repeaters, and Peter's boys didn't know the muzzle of a gun from the neck of a gin-bottle. So the big man of the gang cocked his piece at Peter, and shouted at him like a high bailiff, “You'd better go back the way you came.” “Not immajetly,” said Peter, and stretched him. Then there was smoke like a smithy on hooping-day, and “To your heels, boys,” shouted Peter. And if the boys couldn't equal Peter with their hands, they could bate him with their toes, and the last they heard of him he was racing behind them with the shots of the blacklegs behind him, and shouting mortal, “Oh, oh! All up! I'm done! Home and tell, boys! Oh, oh."'”
“Rejoice not against me, O mine enemy. When I fall I shall arise. Selah,” said Cæsar.
Amid the tumult of moans which followed the reading, Philip, sitting with head on his hand by the ingle, grew hot and cold with the thought that after all there was no actual certainty that Pete was dead. Nobody had seen him die, nobody had buried him; the story of the returned Kaffirs might be a lie to cover their desertion of Pete, their betrayal of him, or their secret league with the thieving Boers. At one awful moment Philip asked himself how he had ever believed the letter. Perhaps he hadwantedto believe it.
Nancy Joe touched him on the shoulder. “Kate is waiting for a word with you alone, sir,” she said, and Philip crossed the kitchen into the little parlour beyond, chill with china and bowls of sea-eggs and stuffed sea-birds.
“He's feeling it bad,” said Nancy.
“Never been the same since Pete went to the Cape,” said Cæsar.
“I don't know for sure what good lads are going to it for,” moaned Grannie. “And calling it Good Hope of all names! Died of a bullet in his head, too, aw dear, aw dear! Discussion of the brain it's like. And look at them black-heads too, as naked as my hand, I'll go bail. I hate the nasty dirts! Cæsar may talk of one flesh and brethren and all to that, but for my part I'm not used of black brothers, and as for black angels in heaven, it's ridiculous.”
“When you're all done talking I'll finish the letter,” said Jonaique.
“They can't help it, Mr. Jelly, the women can't help it,” said Cæsar.
“'Respected Sir, I must now close, but we are strapping up the chest of the deceased, just as he left it, and sending it to catch the steamer, theJohannesburg, leaving Cape Town Wednesday fortnight——'”
“Hm! Johannesburg. I'll meet her at the quay—it's my duty to meet her,” said Cæsar.
“And I'll board her in the bay,” shouted Black Tom.
“Thomas Quilliam,” said Cæsar, “it's borne in on my spirit that the devil of greed is let loose on you.”
“Cæsar Cregeen, don't make a nose of wax of me,” bawled Tom, “and don't think because you're praiching a bit that religion is going to die with you. Your head's swelling tre-menjous, and-you won't be able to sleep soon without somebody to tickle your feet. You'll be forgiving sins next, and taking money for absolution, and these ones will be making a pope of you and paying you pence. Pope Cæsar, the publican, in his chapel hat and white choker! But that chiss is mine, and if there's law in the land I'll have it.”
With that Black Tom swept out of the house, and Cæsar wiped his eyes.
“No use smoothing a thistle, Mr. Cregeen,” said Jonaique soothingly.
“I've a conscience void of offence.” said Cæsar. “I can only follow the spirit's leading. But when Belial——”
He was interrupted by a most mournful cry of “Look here! Aw, look, then, look!”
Nancy was coming out of the back-kitchen with something between the tips of her fingers. It was a pair of old shoes, covered with dirt and cobwebs.
“These were his wearing boots,” she said, and she put them on the counter.
“Dear heart, yes, the very ones,” said Grannie. “Poor boy, they'd move a heart of stone to see them. Something to remember him by, anyway. Many a mile his feet walked in them; but they're resting now in Abraham's bosom.”
Then Cæsar's voice rose loud over the doleful tones around the counter. “'Vital Spark of Heavenly Flame'—raise it, Mr. Niplightly. Pity we haven't Peter and his fiddle here—he played with life.”
“I can'd sing to-day, having a cold, bud I'll whisle id,” said the Constable.
“Pitch it in altoes, then,” said Cæsar. “I'm a bit of a base myself, but not near so base as Peter.”
Meanwhile a little drama of serious interest was going on upstairs. There sat Kate before the looking-glass, with flushed cheeks and quivering mouth. The low drone of many voices came to her through the floor. Then a dull silence and one voice, and Nancy Joe coming and going between the kitchen and bedroom.
“What are they doing now, Nancy?” said Kate.
“First one's praying, and then another's praying,” said Nancy. “Lord-a-massy, thinks I, it'll be my turn next, and what'll I say?”
“Where's Mr. Christian?”
“Gone into the parlour. I whispered him you wanted him alone.”
“You never said that, Nancy,” said Kate, at Nancy's reflection in the glass.
“Well, it popped out,” said Nancy.
Kate went down, with a look of softened sorrow, and Philip, without lifting his eyes, began bemoaning Pete. They would never know his like—so simple, so true, so brave; never, never.
He was fighting against his shame at first seeing the girl after that kiss, which seemed to him now like treason at the mouth of a grave.
But, with the magic of a woman's art, Kate consoled him. He had one great comfort—he had been a loyal friend; such fidelity, such constancy, such affection, forgetting the difference of place, of education—everything.
Philip looked up at last, and there was the lovely face with its beaming eyes. He turned to go, and she said, softly, “How we shall miss you!”
“Why so?” said Philip.
“We can't expect to see you so often now—now that you've not the same reason for coming.”
“I'll be here on Sunday,” said Philip.
“Then you don't intend to desert us yet—not just yet, Philip?”
“Never!” said Philip.
“Well, good-night! Not that way—not by the porch. Good-night!”
As Philip went down the road in the darkness, he heard the words of the hymn that was being sung inside:
“Thy glory why didst Thou enshrine In such a clod of earth as mine, And wrap Thee in my clay.”
At that moment day was breaking over the plains of the Transvaal. The bare Veldt was opening out as the darkness receded, depth on depth, like the surface of an unbroken sea. Not a bush, not a path, only a few log-houses at long distances and wooden beacons like gibbets to define the Boer farms. No sound in the transparent air, no cloud in the unveiling sky; just the night creeping off in silence as if in fear of awakening the sleeping morning.
Across the soulless immensity a covered waggon toiled along with four horses rattling their link chains, and a lad sideways on the shaft dangling his legs, twiddling the rope reins and whistling. Inside the waggon, under a little window with its bit of muslin curtain, a man lay in the agony of a bullet-wound in his side, and an old Boer and a woman stood beside him. He was lying hard on the place of his pain and rambling in delirium.
“See, boys? Don't you see them?”
“See what, my lad?” said the Boer simply, and he looked through the waggon window.
“There's the head-gear of the mines. Look! the iron roofs are glittering. And yonder's the mine tailings. We'll be back in a jiffy. A taste of the whip, boys, and away!”
Untouched by visions, the old Boer could see nothing.
“What does he see, wife, think you?”
“What can he see, stupid, with his face in the pillow like that?”
With the rushing of blood in his ears the sick man called out again:
“Listen! Don't you hear it? That's the noise of the batteries. Whip up, and away! Away!” and he tore at the fringe of the blanket covering him with his unconscious fingers.
“Poor boy! he's eager to get to the coast But will he live to cover another morgen, think you?”
“God knows, Jan—God only knows.”
And the Veldt was very wide, and the sea and its ships were far away, and over the weary stretch of grass, and rock, and sand, there was nothing on the horizon between desolate land and dominating sky but a waste looking like a chaos of purple and green, where no bird ever sang and no man ever lived, and God Himself was not.
“She loves me! She loves me! She loves me!” The words sang in Philip's ears like a sweet tune half the way back to Ballure. Then he began to pluck at the brambles by the wayside, to wound his hand by snatching at the gorse, and to despise himself for being glad when he should have been in grief. Still, he was sure of it; there was no making any less of it. She loved him, he was free to love her, there need be no hypocrisy and no self-denial; so he wiped the blood from his fingers, and crept into the blue room of Auntie Nan.
The old lady, in a dainty cap with flying streamers, was sitting by the fireside spinning. She had heard the news of Pete as Philip passed through to Sulby, and was now wondering if it was not her duty to acquaint Uncle Peter. The sweet and natty old gentlewoman, brought up in the odour of gentility, was thinking on the lines of poor Bridget, Black Tom when dying under the bare scraas, that a man's son was his son in spite of law or devil.
She decided against telling the Ballawhaine by remembering an incident in the life of his father. It was about Philip's father, too; so Philip stretched his legs from the sofa towards the hearth, and listened to the old Auntie's voice over the whirr of her wheel, with another voice—a younger voice, an unheard voice—breaking: in at the back of his ears when the wheel stopped, and a sweet undersong inside of him always, saying, “Be sensible; there is no disloyalty; Pete is dead. Poor Pete! Poor old Pete!”
“Though he had cast your father off, Philip, for threatening to make your mother his wife, he never believed there was a parson on the island would dare to marry them against his wish.”
“No, really?”
“No; and when Uncle Peter came in at dinner-time a week after and said, 'It's all over,' he said, 'No, sir, no,' and threw down his spoon in the plate, and the hot broth splashed on my hand, I remember. But Peter said, 'It's past praying for, sir,' and then grandfather cried, 'No, I tell you no.' 'But I tell you yes, sir,' said Peter. 'Maughold Church yesterday morning before service.' Then grandfather lost himself, and called Peter 'Liar,' and cried that your father couldn't do it. 'And, besides, he's my own son after all, and would not,' said grandfather. But I could see that he believed what Uncle Peter had told him, and, when Peter began to cry, he said, 'Forgive me, my boy; I'm your father for all, and I've a right to your forgiveness.' All the same, he wouldn't be satisfied until he had seen the register, and I had to go with him to the church.”
“Poor old grandfather!”
“The vicar in those days was a little dotty man named Kissack, and it was the joy of his life to be always crushing and stifling somebody, because somebody was always depriving him of his rights or something.”
“I remember him—the Cockatoo. His favourite text was, 'Jesus said, then follow Me,' only the people declared he always wanted to go first.”
“Shocking, Philip. It was evening when we drove up to Maughold, and the little parson was by the Cross, ordering somebody with a cane. 'I am told you married my son yesterday; is it true?' said grandfather. 'Quite true,' said the vicar. 'By banns or special license?' grandfather asked. 'License, of course,' the vicar answered.”
“Curt enough, any way.”
“'Show me the register,' said grandfather, and his face twitched and his voice was thick. 'Can't you believe me?' said the vicar. 'The register,' said grandfather. Then the vicar turned the key in the church door and strutted up the aisle, humming something. I tried to keep grandfather back even then. 'What's the use?' I said, for I knew he was only fighting against belief. But, hat in hand, he followed to the Communion rail, and there the vicar laid the open book before him. Oh, Philip, shall I ever forget it? How it all comes back—the little dim church, the smell of damp and of velvet under the holland covers of the pulpit, and the empty place echoing. And grandfather fixed his glasses and leaned over the register, but he could see nothing—only blurr, blurr, blurr.
“'Youlook at it, child,' he said, over his shoulder. But I daren't face it; so he rubbed his glasses and leaned over the book again. Oh dear! he was like one who looks down the list of the slain for the name he prays he may not find. But the name was there, too surely: 'Thomas Wilson Christian... to Mona Crellin... signed Wm. Crellin and something Kissack.'”
Philip's breath came hot and fast.
“The little vicar was swinging his cane to and fro on the other side of the rail and smiling, and grandfather raised his eyes to him and said, 'Do you know what you've done, sir? You've robbed me of my first-born son and ruined him.' 'Nonsense, sir,' said the vicar. 'Your son was of age, and his wife had the sanction of her father. Was I to go round by Ballawhaine for permission to do my duty as a clergyman?' 'Duty!' cried grandfather. 'When a young man marries, he marries for heaven or for hell. Your duty as a clergyman!' he cried, till his voice rang in the roof. 'If a son of yours had his hand at his throat, would you call it my duty as Deemster to hand him a knife.' 'Silence, sir,' said the vicar. Remember where you stand, or, Deemster though you are, you shall repent it.' 'Arrest me for brawling, will you?' cried grandfather, and he snatched the cane out of the vicar's hand and struck him across the breast. 'Arrest me now,' he said, and then tottered and stumbled out of the church by my arm and the doors of the empty pews.”
Philip went to bed that night with burning brow and throbbing throat. He had made a startling discovery. He was standing where his father had stood before him; he was doing what his father had done; he was in danger of his father's fate! Where was his head that he had never thought of this before?
It was hard—it was terrible. Now that he was free to love the girl, he realised what it meant to love her. Nevertheless he was young, and he rebelled, he fought, he would not deliberate, The girl conquered in his heart that night, and he lay down to sleep.
But next morning he told himself, with a shudder, that it was lucky he had gone no farther. One step more and all the evil of his father's life might have been repeated in his own. There had been nothing said, nothing done. He would go to Sulby no more.
That mood lasted until mid-day, and then a scout of the line of love began to creep into his heart in disguise. He reminded himself that he had promised to go on Sunday, and that it would be unseemly to break off the acquaintance too suddenly, lest the simple folks should think he had borne with them throughout four years merely for the sake of Pete. But after Sunday he would take a new turn.
He found Kate dressed as she had never been before. Instead of the loose red bodice and the sun-bonnet, the apron and the kilted petticoat, she wore a close-fitting dark green frock with a lace collar. The change was simple, but it made all the difference. She was not more beautiful, but she was more like a lady.
It was Sunday evening, and the “Fairy” was closed. Csesar and Grannie were at the preaching-house, Nancy Joe was cooking crowdie for supper, and Kate and Philip talked. The girl was quieter than Philip had ever known her—more modest, more apt to blush, and with the old audacity of word and look quite gone. They talked of success in life, and she said—
“How I should like to fight my way in the world as you are doing! But a woman can do nothing to raise herself. Isn't it hard? Whatever the place where she was born in, she must remain there all her days. She can see her brothers rise, and her friends perhaps, but she must remain below. Isn't it a pity? It isn't that she wants to be rich or great. No, not that; only she doesn't want to be left behind by the people she likes. She must be, though, and just because she's a woman. I'm sure it's so in the Isle of Man, anyway. Isn't it cruel?”
“But aren't you forgetting something?” said Philip.
“Yes?”
“If a woman can't rise of herself because the doors of life are locked to her, it is always possible for a man to raise her.”
“Some one who loves her, you mean, and so lifts her to his own level, and takes her up with him as he goes up?”
“Why not?” said Philip.
Kate's eyes beamed like sunshine. “That is lovely,” she said in a low voice. “Do you know, I never thought of that before! If it were my case, I should like that best of all. Side by side with him, and he doing all? Oh, that is beautiful!”
And she gazed up with a timid joy at the inventive being who had thought of this as at something supernatural.
Cæsar and Grannie came back, both in fearful outbursts of Sunday clothes. Nevertheless Cæsar's eyes, after the first salutation with Philip, fixed themselves on Kate's unfamliar costume.
“Such worldly attire!” he muttered, following the girl round the kitchen and blowing up his black gloves. “This caring for the miserable body that will one day be lowered into the grave! What does the Book say?—put my tall hat on the clane laff, Nancy. 'Let it not be the outward adorning of putting on of apparel, but let it be the hidden man of the heart.'”
“But sakes alive, father,” said Grannie, loosening a bonnet like a diver's helmet, “if it comes to that, what is Jeremiah saying, 'Can a maid forget her ornaments?'”
“It's like she can if she hasn't any to remember,” said Cæsar. “But maybe the prophet Jeremiah didn't know the mothers that's in now.”
“Chut, man! Girls are like birds, and the breed comes out in the feathers,” said Grannie.
“Where's she getting it then? Not from me at all,” said Cæsar.
“Deed, no, man,” laughed Grannie, “considering the smart she is and the rasonable good-looking.”
“Hould your tongue, woman; it'll become you better,” said Cæsar.
Philip rose to go. “You're time enough yet, sir,” cried Cæsar. “I was for telling you of a job.”
Some of the fishermen of Ramsey had been over on Saturday. Their season was a failure, and they were loud in their protests against the trawlers who were destroying the spawn. Cæsar had suggested a conference at his house on the following Saturday of Ramsey men and Peel men, and recommended Philip as an advocate to advise with them as to the best means to put a stop to the enemies of the herring. Philip promised to be there, and then went home to Auntie Nan.
He told himself on the way that Kate was completely above her surroundings, and capable of becoming as absolute a lady as ever lived on the island, without a sign of her origin in look or speech, except perhaps the rising inflexion in her voice which made the talk of the true Manxwoman the sweetest thing in the world to listen to.
Auntie Nan was sitting by the lamp, reading her chapter before going to bed.
“Auntie,” said Philip, “don't you think the tragedy in the life of father was accidental? Due, I mean, to the particular characters of grandfather and poor mother? Now, if the one had been less proud, less exclusive, or the other more capable of rising with her husband——”
“The tragedy was deeper than that, dear; let me tell you a story,” said Auntie Nan, laying down her book. “Three days after your father left Ballawhaine, old Maggie, the housemaid, came to my side at supper and whispered that some one was wanting me in the garden. It was Thomas. Oh dear! it was terrible to see him there, that ought to have been the heir of everything, standing like a stranger in the dark beyond the kitchen-door.”
“Poor father!” said Philip.
“'Whist, girl, come out of the light,' he whispered. 'There's a purse with twenty pounds odd in my desk upstairs; get it, Nan, here's the key.' I knew what he wanted the money for, but I couldn't help it; I got him the purse and put ten pounds more of my own in it. 'Must you do it?' I said. 'I must,' he answered. 'Your father says everybody will despise you for this marriage,' I said. 'Better they should than I should despise myself,' said he. 'But he calls it moral suicide,' I said. 'That's not so bad as moral murder,' he replied. 'He knows the island,' I urged, 'and so do you, Tom, and so do I, and nobody can hold up his head in a little place like this after a marriage like that.' 'All the worse for the place,' said he, 'if it stains a man's honour for acting honourably.'”
“Father was an upright man,” interrupted Philip. “There's no question about it, my father was a gentleman.”
“'She must be a sweet, good girl, and worthy of you, or you wouldn't marry her,' said I to father; 'but are you sure that you will be happy and make her happy?' We shall have each other, and it is our own affair,' said father.”
“Precisely,” said Philip.
“'But if there is a difference between you now,' I said, 'will it be less when you are the great man we hope to see you some day?' 'A man is not always thinking of success,' he answered.
“My father was a great man already, Auntie,” burst out Philip.
“He was shaken and I was ashamed, but I could not help it, I went on. 'Has the marriage gone too far?' I asked. 'It has never been mentioned between us,' said he. 'Your father is old, and can't live long,' I pleaded. 'He wants me to behave like a scoundrel,' he answered. 'Why that, if the girl has no right to you yet?' I said, and he was silent. Then I crept up and looked in at the window. 'See,' I whispered, 'he's in the library. We'll take him by surprise. Come!' It was not to be. There was a smell of tobacco on the air and the thud of a step on the grass. 'Who's that?' I said. 'Who should it be,' cried father, 'but the same spy again. I'll shake the life out of him yet as a terrier would a rat. No use, girl,' he shouted hoarsely, facing towards the darkness, 'they're driving me to destruction.' 'Hush!' I said, and covered his mouth with my hands, and his breath was hot, like fire. But it was useless. He was married three days afterwards.”
Philip resolved to see Kate no more. He must go to Sulby on Saturday to meet the fishermen, but that would be a business visit; he need not prolong it into a friendly one. All the week through he felt as if his heart would break; but he resolved to conquer his feelings. He pitied himself somewhat, and that helped him to rise above his error.