It was Saturday, and the market-place was covered with the carts and stalls of the country people. After some feint of eating breakfast, Pete lit his pipe, called for a basket, and announced his intention of doing the marketing.
“Coming for the mistress, are you, Capt'n?”
“I'm a sort of a grass-widow, ma'am. What's your eggs to-day, Mistress Cowley?”
“Sixteen this morning, sir, and right ones too. They were telling me you've been losing her.”
“Give me a shilling's worth, then. Any news over your side, Mag?”
“Two—four—eight—sixteen—it's every appearance we'll be getting a early harvest, Capt'n.”
“Is it yourself, Liza? And how's your butter to-day?”
“Bad to bate to-day, sir, and only thirteen pence ha'penny. Is the lil one longing for the mistress, Capt'n?”
“I'll take a couple of pounds, then. What for longing at all when it's going bringing up by hand it is? Put it in a cabbage leaf, Liza.”
Thus, with his basket on his arm and his pipe in his mouth, Pete passed from stall to stall, chatting, laughing, bargaining, buying, shouting his salutations over the general hum and hubbub, as he ploughed his way through the crowd, but listening intently watching eagerly, casting out grapples to catch the anchor he had lost, and feeling all the time that if any eye showed sign of knowledge, if any one began with “Capt'n, I can tell you where she is,” he must leap on the man like a tiger, and strangle the revelation in his throat.
Next day, Sunday, his friends from Sulby came to quiz and to question. He was lounging in his shirt-sleeves on a deck-chair in his ship's cabin, smoking a long pipe, and pretending to be at ease and at peace with all the world.
“Fine morning, Capt'n,” said John the Clerk.
“Itisdoing a fine morning, John,” said Pete.
“Fine on the sea, too,” said Jonaique.
“Wonderful fine on the sea, Mr. Jelly.”
“A nice fair wind, though, if anybody was going by the packet to Liverpool. Was it as good, think you, for the mistress on Friday night, Mr. Quilliam?”
“I'll gallantee,” said Pete.
“Plucky, though—I wouldn't have thought it of the same woman—I wouldn't raelly,” said Jonaique.
“Alone, too, and landing on the other side so early in the morning,” said John the Clerk.
“Smart, uncommon! It isn't every woman would have done it,” said Kelly the Postman.
“Aw, we've mighty boys of women deese days—we have dough,” snuffled the constable, and then they all laughed together.
Pete watched their wheedling, fawning, and whisking of the tail, and then he said, “Chut! What's there so wonderful about a woman going by herself to Liverpool when she's got somebody waiting at the stage to meet her?”
The laughing faces lengthened suddenly. “And had she, then,” said John the Clerk.
Pete puffed furiously, rolled in his seat, laughed like a man with a mouth full of water, and said, “Why, sartenly—my uncle, of coorse.”
Jonaique wrinkled his forehead. “Uncle,” he said, with a click in his throat.
“Yes, my Uncle Joe,” said Pete.
Jonaique looked helplessly across at John the Clerk. John the Clerk puckered up his mouth as if about to whistle, and then said, in a faltering way, “Well, I can't really say I've ever heard tell of your Uncle Joe before, Capt'n.”
“No?” said Pete, with a look of astonishment. “Not my Uncle Joseph? The one that left the island forty years ago and started in the coach and cab line? Well, that's curious. Where's he living? Bless me, where's this it is, now? Chut! it's clane forgot at me. But I saw him myself coming home from Kimberley, and since then he's been writing constant. 'Send her across,' says he; 'she'll be her own woman again like winking.' And you never heard tell of him? Not Uncle Joey with the bald head? Well, well! A smart ould man, though. Man alive, the lively he is, too, and the laughable, and the good company. To look at that man's face you'd say the sun was shining reg'lar. Aw, it's fine times she'll be having with Uncle Joe. No woman could be ill with yonder ould man about. He'd break your face with laughing if it was bursting itself with a squinsey. And you never heard tell of my Uncle Joe, of Scotland Road, down Clarence Dock way? To think of that now!”
They went off with looks of perplexity, and Pete turned into the house. “They're trying to catch me; they're wanting to shame my poor lil Kirry. I must keep her name sweet,” he thought.
The church bells had begun to ring, and he was telling himself that, heavy though his heart might be, he must behave as usual.
“She'll be going walking to church herself this morning, Nancy,” he said, putting on his coat, “so I'll just slip across to chapel.”
He was swinging up the path on his return home to dinner, when he heard voices inside the house.
“It's shocking to see the man bittending this and bittending that.” It was Nancy; she was laying the table; there was a rattle of knives and forks. “Bittending to ate, but only pecking like a robin; bittending to sleep, but never a wink on the night; bittending to laugh and to joke and wink, and a face at him like a ghose's, and his hair all through-others. Walking about from river to quay, and going on with all that rubbish—it's shocking, ma'am, it's shocking!”
“Hush-a-bye, hush-a-bye!” It was the voice of Grannie, low and quavery; she was rocking the cradle.
“You can't spake to him neither but he's scolding you scandalous. 'I'm not used of being cursed at,' I'm saying, 'and is it myself that has to be tould to respect my own Kitty?' But cry shame on her I must when I look at the lil bogh there, and it so helpless and so beautiful. 'Stericks, you say? Yes, indeed, ma'am, and if I stay here much longer, it's losing myself I will be, too, with his bittending and bittending.”
“Lave him to it, Nancy. His poor head's that moidered and mixed it's like a black pudding—there's no saying what's inside of it. But he's good, though; aw, right good he is for all, and the world's cold and cruel. Lave him alone, woman; lave him alone, poor boy.”
The child awoke and cried, and, under cover of this commotion and the crowing and cooing of the two women, Pete stepped back to the gate, clashed it hard, swung noisily up the gravel, and rolled into the house with a shout and a laugh.
“Well, well! Grannie, my gough! Who'd have thought of seeing Grannie, now? And how's the ould angel to-day? So you've got the lil one there? Aw, you rogue, you. You're on Grannie's lap, are you? How's Cæsar? And how's Mrs. Gorry doing? Look at that now—did you ever? Opening one eye first to make sure if the world's all right. The child's wise. Coo—oo—oo! Smart with the dinner, Nancy—wonderful hungry the chapel's making a man. Coo—oo! What's she like, now, Grannie?”
“When I set her to my knee like this I can see my own lil Kirry again,'' said Grannie, looking down ruefully, rocking the child with one knee and doubling over it to kiss it.
“So she's like the mammy, is she?” said Pete, blowing at the baby and tickling its chin with his broad forefinger. “Mammy's gone to the ould uncle's—hasn't she, my lammie?”
At that Grannie fell to rocking herself as well as the child, and to singing a hymn in a quavery voice. Then with a rattle and a rush, throwing off his coat and tramping the floor in his shirt-sleeves, while Nancy dished up the dinner, Pete began to enlarge on Kate's happiness in the place where she had gone.
“Tremenjous grand the ould man's house is—you wouldn't believe. A reg'lar Dempster's palace. The grandeur on it is a show and a pattern. Plenty to ate, plenty to drink, and a boy at the door with white buttons dotting on his brown coat, bless you like—like a turnip-field in winter. Then the man himself; goodness me, the happy that man is—Happy Joe they're calling him. Wouldn't trust but he'll be taking Kate to a theaytre. Well, and why not, if a person's down a bit? A merry touch and go—where's the harm at all? Fact is, Grannie, that's why we couldn't tell you Kate was going. Cæsar would have been objecting. He's fit enough for it—ha, ha, ha!”
Grannie looked up at Pete as he laughed, and the broad rose withered on his face.
“H'm! h'm!” he said, clearing his throat; “I'm bad dreadful wanting a smook.” And past the dinner-table, now smoking and ready, he slithered out of the house.
Cæsar was Pete's next visitor. He said nothing of Kate, and neither did Pete mention Uncle Joe. The interview was a brief and grim one. It was a lie that Ross Christian had been sent by his father to ask for a loan, but it was true that Peter Christian was in urgent need of money. He wanted six thousand pounds as mortgage on Ballawhaine. Had Pete got so much to lend? No need for personal intercourse; Cæsar would act as intermediary.
Pete took only a moment for consideration. Yes, he had got the money, and he would lend it. Cæsar looked at Pete; Pete looked at Cæsar. “He's talking all this rubbish,” thought Cæsar, “but he knows where the girl has gone to. He knows who's taken her; he manes to kick the rascal out of his own house neck and crop; and right enough, too, and the Lord's own vengeance.”
But Pete's thoughts were another matter. “The ould man won't live to redeem it, and the young one will never try—it'll do for Philip some day.”
For three days Pete bore himself according to his wont, thinking to silence the evil tongues of the little world about him, and keep sweet and alive the dear name which they were waiting to befoul and destroy. By Tuesday morning the strain had become unbearable. On pretences of business, of pleasure, of God knows what folly and nonsense, he began to scour the island. He visited every parish on the north, passed through every village, climbed every glen, found his way into every out-of-the-way hut, and scraped acquaintance with every old woman living alone. Sometimes he was up in the vague fore-dawn, creeping through the quiet streets like a thief, going silently, stealthily, warily, until he came to the roads, or the fields, or the open Curragh, and could give swing to his step, and breath to his lungs, and voice to the cries that hurst from him.
Two long weeks he spent in this wild quest, and meanwhile he was as happy as a boy to all outward seeming—whistling, laughing, chaffing, bawling, talking nonsense, any nonsense, and kicking up his heels like a kid. But wheresoever he went, and howsoever early he started on his errands, he never failed to be back at home at seven o'clock in the evening—washed, combed, in his slippers and shirt-sleeves, smoking a long clay over the garden gate as the postman went by with the letters.
“She'll write,” he told himself. “When she's mending a bit she'll aise our mind and write. 'Dear ould Pete, excuse me for not writing afore'—that'll he the way of it. Aw, trust her, trust her.”
But day followed day, and no letter came from Kate. Ten evenings running he smoked over the gate, leisurely, largely, almost languidly, hut always watching for the peak of the postman's cap as it turned the corner by the Court-house, and following the toes of his foot as they stepped off the curb, to see if they pointed in his direction—and then turning aside with a deep breath and a smothered moan that ended in a rattle of the throat and a pretence at spitting.
The postman saw him as he went by, and his little eyes twinkled treacherously.
“Nothing for you yet, Capt'n,” he said at length.
“Chut!” said Pete, with a mighty puff of smoke; “my business isn't done by correspondence, Mr. Kelly.”
“Aw, no; but when a man's wife's away——” began the postman.
“Oh, I see,” said Pete, with a look of intelligence, and then, with a lofty wave of the hand, “She's like her husband, Mr. Kelly—not bothering much with letters at all.”
“You'll be longing for a line, though, Capt'n—that's only natural.”
“No news is good news—I can lave it with her.”
“Of coorse, that's truth enough, yes! But still and for all, a taste of a letter—it's doing no harm, Capt'n—aisy writ, too, and sweet to get sometimes, you know—shows a woman isn't forgetting a man when she's away.”
“Mr. Kelly! Mr. Kelly!” said Pete, with his hand before his face, palm outwards.
“Not necessary? Well, I lave it with you. Good-night, Capt'n.”
“Good-night to you, sir,” said Pete.
He had laughed and tut-tutted, and lifted his eyebrows and his hands in mock protest and a pretence of indifference, but the postman's talk had cut him to the quick. “People are suspecting,” he thought. “They're saying things.”
This made him swear, but a thought came behind that made him sweat instead. “Philip will be hearing them. They'll be telling him she doesn't write to me; that I don't know where she is; that she has left me, and that she's a bad woman.”
To make Kate stand well with Philip was an aim that had no rival but one in Pete's reckoning—to make Philip stand well with Kate. Out of the shadow-land of his memory of the awful night of his bereavement, a recollection, which had been lying dead until then, came back now in its grave-clothes to torture him. It was what Cæsar had said of Philip's fight with Ross Christian. Philip himself had never mentioned it—that was like him. But when evil tongues told of Ross and hinted at mischief, Philip would know something already; he would be prepared, perhaps he would listen and believe.
Two days longer Pete sat in the agony of this new terror and the dogged impatience of his old hope. “She'll write. She'll not lave me much longer.” But she did not write, and on the second night, before returning to the house from the gate, he had made his plan. He must silence scandal at all hazards. However his own heart might bleed with doubts and fears and misgivings, Philip must never cease to think that Kate was good and sweet and true.
“Off to bed, Nancy,” he cried, heaving into the hall like a man in drink. “I've work to do to-night, and want the house to myself.”
“Goodness me, is it yourself that's talking of bed, then?” said Nancy. “Seven in the everin', too, and the child not an hour out of my hands? And dear knows what work it is if you can't be doing it with good people about you.”
“Come, get off, woman; you're looking tired mortal. The lil one's ragging you ter'ble. But what's it saying, Nancy—bed is half bread. Truth enough, too, and the other half is beauty. Get off, now. You're spoiling your complexion dreadful—I'll never be getting that husband for you.”
Thus coaxing her, cajoling her, watching her, dodging her, nagging her, driving her, he got her off to bed at last. Being alone, he looked around, listened, shut the doors of the parlour and the kitchen, put the bolt on the door of the stairs, the chain on the door of the porch, took off his boots, and went about on tiptoe. Then he blew out the lamp, filled and trimmed and relit it, going down on the hearthrug to catch the light of the fire. After that he settled the table, drew up the armchair, took from a corner cupboard pens and ink, a blotting pad, a packet of notepaper and envelopes, a stick of sealing wax, a box of matches, a postage stamp, the dictionary, and the exercise-book in which Kate had taught him to write.
As the clock was striking nine, Pete was squaring himself at the table, pen in hand, and his tongue in his left cheek. Half an hour later he was startled, by an interruption.
“Who's there?” he shouted in a ferocious voice, leaping up with a look of terror, like a man caught in a crime. It was only Nancy, who had come creeping down the stairs under pretence of having forgotten the baby's bottle. He made a sort of apologetic growl, handed the flat bottle through an opening like a crack, and ordered her back to bed.
“Goodness sakes!” said Nancy, going upstairs. “Is it coining money the man is? Or is it whisky itself that's doing on him?”
Two hours afterwards Pete fancied he saw a face at the window, and he caught up a stick, unchained the door, and rushed into the garden. It was no one; the town lay asleep; the night was all but airless; only the faintest breeze moved the leaves of the trees; there was no noise anywhere, except the measured beat of the sea in its everlasting coming and going on the shore.
Stepping back into the house, where the fire chirped and the kettle sang and all else was quiet, he resumed his task, and somewhere in the dark hours before the dawn he finished it. The fingers of his right hand were then inky up to the first joint, his collar was open, his neck was bare, his eyes were ablaze, the cords on his face were big and blue, great beads of cold sweat were standing on his forehead, and the carpet around his chair was littered as white as if a snowstorm had fallen on it.
He went down on his knees and gathered up these remnants and burnt them, with the air of a man destroying the evidences of his guilt. Then he put back the ink and the dictionary, the blotting pad and sealing wax, and replaced them with a loaf of bread, a table knife, a bottle of brandy, and a drinking glass. After that he made up the fire with a shovel of slack, that it might burn until morning; removed the lamp from the table to the window recess that it might cast its light into the darkness outside; and unchained the outer door that a wanderer of the night, if any such there were, might enter without knocking.
He did all this in the absent manner of a man who did it nightly. Then unbolting the staircase door, and listening a moment for the breathing of the sleepers overhead, he crept into the dark parlour overlooking the road, and lay down on the sofa to sleep.
It was done! Pete's great scheme was afoot! The mighty secret which he had enshrouded with such awful mystery lay in an envelope in the inside breast-pocket of his monkey-jacket, signed, sealed, stamped, and addressed.
Pete had written a letter to himself.
Next day the crier was crying: “Great meeting—Manx fishermen—on Zigzag at Peel when boats come in to-morrow morning—protest agen harbour taxes.”
“The thing itself,” thought Pete, with his hand pressed hard on the outside of his breast-pocket. At five o'clock in the afternoon he went down to the harbour, where his Nickey lay by the quay, shouted to the master, “Take an odd man tonight, Mr. Kemish?” then dropped to the deck and helped to fetch the boat into the bay.
They had to haul her out by poles alone the quay wall, for the tide was low, and there was no breakwater. It was still early in the herring season, but the fishing was in full swing. Five hundred boats from all parts were making for the fishing round. It lay off the south-west tail of the island. Before Pete's boat reached it the fleet were sitting together, like a flight of sea-fowl, and the sun was almost gone.
The sun went down that night over the hills of Mourne very angry and red in its setting; the sky to the north-west was dark and sullen; the round line of the sea was bleared and broken, but there was little wind, and the water was quiet.
“Bring to and shoot,” cried Pete, and they dropped sail to the landward of the fleet, off the shoulder of the Calf Island, with its two lights making one. The boat was brought head to the wind, with the flowing tide veering against her; the nets were shot over the starboard quarter, and they dropped astern; the bow was swung round to the line of the floating mollags, and boat and nets began to drift together.
Supper was served, the pump was worked, the lights were run up, the small boat was sent round with a flare to fright away the evil spirits, and then the night came down—a dark night, without moon or stars, shutting out the island, though it stood so near, and even the rocks of the Hen and Chicken. The first man for the look-out took up his one hour's watch at the helm, and the rest went below.
Pete's bunk was under the binnacle, and the light of its lamp fell on a stamped envelope which he took out of his breast-pocket from time to time that he might read the inscription. It ran—
Capn Peatr Quilliam,Lm Cottig Ramsey I O Man.
He looked at it lovingly, fondly, yearningly, yet with a certain awe, too, as if it were the casket of some hidden treasure, and he hardly knew what it contained. The dim-lit cabin was quiet, the net boiler sparched drops of hot water at intervals, the fire of the cooking stove slid and fell, the men breathed heavily from unseen beds, and the sea washed as the boat rolled.
“What's she saying, I wonder! I wonder! God bless her!” he mumbled, and then he, too, fell asleep.
Two hours before hauling, they proved the fishing by taking in a “pair” of the net, found good herring, and blew the horn as signal that they were doing well. Then out of the black depths around, wherein no boat could be seen, the lights of other boats came floating silently astern, until the company about them in the darkness was like a little city of the sea and the night.
At the first peep of morning over the round shoulder of the Calf, the little city awoke. There were the clicks of the capstan, and the shouts of the men as the nets came back to the boats, heavy and white with fish. All being aboard, the men went down on the deck, according to their wont, every man on his knee with his face in his cap, and then leapt up with a shout (perhaps an oath), swung to the wind, hoisted the square sails, and made for home. The dark northwest was lowering by this time, and the sea was beginning to jump.
“Breakfast, boys,” sang out Pete, with his head above the companion, and all but the helmsman went below. There was a pot full of the drop-fish, and every man ate his warp of herring. It had been a great night's fishing. Some of the boats were full to the mouth, and all had plenty.
“We'll do middling if we get a market,” said Pete.
“We've got to get home first,” said the master, and at the same moment a sea struck the windward quarter with the force of a sledge-hammer, and the block at the masthead began to sing.
“We'll run for Peel this morning, boys,” said Pete, smothering his voice in a mouthful.
“Peel?” said the master, shooting out his lip. “They've got no harbour there at all with a cat's paw of a breeze, let alone a northwester.”
“I'm for going up to the meeting,” said Pete in an incoherent way.
Then they tacked before the rising gale, and went off with the fleet as it swirled like a flight of gulls abreast of the wind. The sea came tumbling down like a shoal of seahogs, and washed the faces of the men as they sat in oilskins on the hatch-head, shaking the herring out of the nets into the hold.
But their work only began when they came into Peel. The tide was down; there was no breakwater; the neck of the harbour was narrow, and four hundred boats were coming to take shelter and to land their cargoes. It was a scene of tumult and confusion—shouting, swearing, and fighting among the men, and crushing and cranching among the boats as they nosed their way to the harbour mouth, threw ropes on to the quay, where fifty ropes were round one post already, or cast anchors up the bank of the castle rock, which was steep and dangerous to lie on.
Pete got landed somehow, but his Nickey with half the fleet turned tail and went round the island. As he leapt ashore, the helpless harbour-master, who had been bellowing over the babel through a cracked trumpet, turned to him and said, “For the Lord's sake, Capt'n Quilliam, if you've got a friend that can lend us a hand, go off to the meeting at seven o'clock.”
“I mane to,” said Pete, but he had something else to do first. It was the task that had brought him to Peel, and no eye must see him do it. Slowly and slyly, like one who does a doubtful thing and pretends to be doing nothing, he went stealing through the town—behind the old Court-house and up Castle Street, into the market-place, and across it to the line of shops which make the principal thoroughfare.
At one of these shops, a little single-roomed place, with its small shutter still up, but the door half open and a noise of stamping going on inside, he stopped in a lounging way, half twisting on his heel as if idly looking back. It was the Post-Office.
With a stealthy look around, he put a trembling hand into his breast-pocket, drew out the letter, screened it by the flat of his big palm, and posted it. Then he turned hurriedly away, and was gone in a moment, like a man who feared pursuit, down a steep and tortuous alley that led to the shore. The morning was early; the shops were not yet open; only the homes of the fishermen were putting out curling wreaths of smoke; the silent streets echoed to his lightest footstep.
But the shore road was busy enough. Fishermen in sea-boots and sou'westers, with oilskin over one arm and a string of herring in the other hand, were trooping from the harbour up to the Zigzag by the rock called the Creg Malin. It was at the end of the bay, where cliff and beach and sea together form a bag like the cod-end of the trawl net.
“It's not the fishermen at all—it's the farmers they're thinking of,” said one.
“You're right,” said Pete, “and it's some of ourselves that's to blame for it.”
“How's that?” said somebody.
“Aisy enough,” said Pete. “When I came home from Kimberly I met an ould fisherman—youknow the man, Billy—well,youdo, Dan—Phil Nelly, of Ramsey. 'How's the fishing, Phil?' says I. He gave me a Hm! and a heise of his neck, and 'I'm not fishing no more,' says he. 'The wife's keeping a private hotel,' says he. 'And what are you doing yourself,' says I. 'I'm walking about,' says he, and, gough bless me, if the man wasn't wearing a collar and carrying a stick, and prating about advertising the island, if you plaze.”
At the sound of Pete's voice a group of the men gathered about him. “That's not the worst neither,” said he. “The other day I tumbled over Tom Hommy—youknow Tom Hommy, yes, you do, the lil deaf man up Ballure. He was lying in the hedge by the public-house, three sheets in the wind. 'Why aren't you out with the boats, Tom?' says I. 'Wash for should I go owsh wish the boash, when the childer can earn more on the roads?' says the drunken wastrel. 'And is yonder your boys and girls tossing summersaults at the tail of the trippers' car?' says I. 'Yesh,' says he; 'and they'll earn more in a day at their caperings than their father in a week at the herrings.'”
“I believe it enough,” said one. “The man's about right,” said another; and a querulous voice behind said, “Wonderful the prosperity of the island since the visitors came to it.”
“Get out with you, there, for a disgrace to the name of Manxman,” sang out Pete over the heads of those that stood between. “With the farming going to the dogs and the fishing going to the divil, d'ye know what the ould island's coming to? It's coming to an island of lodging-house keepers and hackney-car drivers. Not the Isle of Man at all, but the Isle of Manchester.”
There was a tremendous shout at this last word. In another minute Pete was lifted shoulder high over the crowd on to the highest turn of the zigzag path, and bidden to go on. There were five hundred faces below him, putting out hot breath in the cool morning air. The sun was shooting over the cliffs a canopy as of smoke above their heads. On the top of the crag the sea-fowl were jabbering, and the white sea itself was climbing on the beach.
“Men,” said Pete, “there's not much to say. This morning's work said everything. We'd a right fishing last night, hadn't we? Four hundred boats came up to Peel, and we hadn't less than ten maise apiece. That's—you that's smart at your figguring and ciphering, spake out now—that's four thousand maise isn't it?” (Shouts of “Right.”) “Aw, you're quick wonderful. No houlding you at all when it's money that's in. Four thousand maise ready and waiting for the steamers to England—but did we land it? No, nor half of it neither. The other half's gone round to other ports, too late for the day's sailing, and half of that half will be going rotten and getting chucked back into the sea. That's what the Manx fishermen have lost this morning because they haven't harbours to shelter them, and yet they're talking of levying harbour dues.”
“Man veen, he's a boy!”—“He's all that”—“Go it, Capt'n. What are we to do?”
“Do?” cried Pete. “I'll tell you what you're to do. This is Friday. Next Thursday is old Midsummer Day. That's Tynwald Coort day. Come to St. John's on Thursday—every man of you come—come in your sea-boots and your jerseys—let the Governor see you mane it. 'Give us raisonable hope of harbour improvement and we'll pay,' says you. 'If you don't, we won't; and if you try to make us, we're two thousand strong, and we'll rise like one man.'Don't be freckened; you've a right to be bould in a good cause. I'll get somebody to spake for you. You know the man I mane. He's stood the fisherman's friend before to-day, and he isn't going taking off his cap to the best man that's setting foot on Tynwald Hill.”
It was agreed. Between that day and Tynwald day Pete was to enlist the sympathy of Philip, and to go to Port St. Mary to get the co-operation of the south-side fishermen. The town was astir by this time, the sun was on the beach, and the fishermen trooped off to bed.
Pete was back in his ship's cabin in the garden the same evening with a heart the heavier because for one short hour it had forgotten its trouble. The flowers were opening, the roses were creeping over the porch, the blackbird was singing at the top of the tree; but his own flower of flowers, his rose of roses, his bird of birds—where was she? Summer was coming, coming, coming—coming with its light, coming with its music, coming with its sweetness—but she came not.
The clock struck seven inside the house, and Pete, pipe in hand, swung over to the gate. No need to-night to watch for the postman's peak, no need to trace his toes.
“A letter for you, Mr. Quilliam.”
Hearing these words, Pete, his eyes half shut as if dosing in the sunset, wakened himself with a look of astonishment.
“What? For me, is it? A letter, you say? Aw, I see,” taking it and turning it in his hand, “just'a line from the mistress, it's like. Well, well! A letter for me, if you plaze,” and he laughed like a man much tickled.
He was in no hurry. He rammed his dead pipe with his finger, lit it again, sucked it, made it quack, drew a long breath, and then said quietly, “Let's see what's her news at all.”
He opened the letter leisurely, and read bits of it aloud, as if reading to himself, but holding the postman while he did so in idle talk on the other side of the gate. “And how are you living to-day, Mr. Kelly? Aw, h'm—getting that much betterit's extraordinary—Yes, a nice everin', very, Mr. Kelly, nice, nice—that happy and comfortable and Uncle Joe is that good—heavy bag at you to-night, you say? Aw, heavy, yes, heavy—love to Grannie and all inquiring friends—nothing, Mr. Kelly, nothing—just a scribe of a line, thinking a man might be getting unaisy. She needn't, though—she needn't. But chut! It's nothing. Writing a letter is nothing to her at all. Why, she'd be knocking that off, bless you,” holding out a half sheet of paper, “in less than an hour and a half. Truth enough, sir.” Then, looking at the letter again, “What's this, though? PN. They're always putting a P.N. at the bottom of a letter, Mr. Kelly. P.N.—I was expecting to be home before, but I wouldn't get away for Uncle Joe taking me to the theaytres. Ha, ha, ha! A mighty boy is Uncle Joe. But, Mr. Kelly, Mr. Kelly,” with a solemn look, “not a word of this to Cæsar?”
The postman had been watching Pete out of the corners of his ferret eyes. “Do you know, Capt'n, what Black Tom is saying?”
“What's that?” said Pete, with a sudden change of tone.
“He's saying thereisno Uncle Joe.”
“No Uncle Joe?” cried Pete, lifting voice and eyebrows together.
The postman signified assent with a nod of his peak.
“Well, that's rich,” said Pete, in a low breath, raising his face as if to invoke the astonishment of the sky itself. “No Uncle Joe?” he repeated, in a tone of blank incredulity. “Ask the man if it's in bed he is. Why,” and Pete's eyes opened and closed like a doll's, “he'll be saying there's no Auntie Joney next.”
The postman looked up inquiringly.
“Never heard of Auntie Joney—Uncle Joe's wife? No? Well, really, really—is it sleeping I am? Not Auntie Joney, the Primitive? Aw, a good ould woman as ever lived. A saint, if ever the like was in, and died a triumphant death, too. No theaytres for her, though. She won't bemane herself. No, but she's going to chapel reg'lar, and getting up in the middle of every night of life to say her prayers. 'Deed she is. So Black Tom says there is no Uncle Joe?”
Pete gave a long whistle, then stopped it sudden with his mouth agape, and said from his throat, “I see.”
He put his mouth close to the postman's ear and whispered, “Ever hear Black Tom talk of the fortune he's expecting through the Coort of Chancery?” The postman's peak bobbed downwards. “You have? Tom's thinking to grab it all for himself. Ha, ha! That's it! Ha, ha!”
The postman went off blinking and giggling, and Pete reeled up the path, biting his lip, and muttering, “Keep it up, Pete, keep it up—it's ploughing a hard furrow, though.” Then aloud, “A letter from the mistress, Nancy.”
Nancy met him in the porch, clearing her fingers, thick with dough.
“There you are,” said Pete, flapping the letter on one hand.
“Good sakes alive!” said Nancy. “Did it come by the post, though, Pete?”
“Look at the stamp, woman, and see for yourself,” said Pete.
“My goodness me! From Kirry, you say?”
“Let me in, then, and I'll be reading you bits.”
Nancy went back to her kneading with looks of bewilderment, and Pete followed her, opening the letter.
“She's well enough, Nancy—no need to read that part at all. But see,” running his forefinger along the writing “'Kisses for the baby, and love to Nancy, and tell Grannie not to be fretting?et setterer, et setterer. See?”
Nancy looked up at her thumping and thunging, and said, “Did Mr. Kelly give it you?”
“He did that,” said Pete, “this minute at the gate. It's his time, isn't it?”
Nancy glanced at the clock. “I suppose it must be right,” she said.
“Take it in your hand, woman,” said Pete.
Nancy cleaned her hands and took the letter, turned it over and felt it in her fingers as if it had been linen. “And this is from Kirry, is it? It's nice, too. I haven't much schooling, Pete, but I'm asking no better than a letter myself. It's like a peppermint in your frock on Sunday—if you're low you're always knowing it's there, anyway.” She looked at it again, and then she said, like one who says a strange thing, “I once had a letter myself—'deed I had, Pete. It was from father. He went down in theBlack Sloop, trading oranges with the blacks in their own island somewhere. They put into the port of London one day when they were having a funeral there. What's this one they were calling after the big boots—Wellingtons, that's the man. They were writing home all about it—the people, and the chariots, and the fighting horses, and the music in the streets and the Cateedrals—and we were never hearing another word from them again—never. 'To Miss Annie Cain—your affecshunet father, Joe Cain.' I knew it all off—every word—and I kept it ten years in my box under the lavender.”
Philip came later. He was looking haggard and tired; his face was pallid and drawn; his eyes were red, quick, and wandering; his hair was neglected and ragged; his step was wavering and uncertain.
“Gough alive, man,” cried Pete, “didn't you take oath to do justice between man and man?”
Philip looked up with alarm. “Well?” he said.
“Well,” cried Pete, with a frown and a clenched fist, “there's one man you're not doing justice to.”
“Who's that?” said Philip with eyes down.
“Yourself,” said Pete, and Philip drew a long breath. Pete laughed, protested that Philip must not work so hard, and then plunged into an account of the morning's meeting.
“Tremenjous! Talk of enthusiasm! Man veen, man veen! Didn't I say we'd rise as one man? We will, too. We're going up to Tynwald Coort on Tynwald day, two thousand strong. Tynwald Coort? Yes, and why not? Drum and fife bands, bless you—two of them. Not much music, maybe, but there'll be noise enough. It's all settled. Southside fishermen are coming up Foxal way; north-side men going down by Peel. Meeting under Harry Delany's tree, and going up to the hill on mass (en masse). No bawling, though—no singing out—no disturbing the Coort at all.”
“Well, well! What then?” said Philip.
“Then we're wanting you to spake for us, Dempster. Aw, nothing much—nothing to rag you at all. Just tell them flat we won't—that'll do.”
“It's a serious matter, Pete. I must think it over.”
“Aw, think and think enough, Dempster—but mind you do it, though. The boys are counting on you. 'He's our anchor and he'll hould,' they're saying; But, bother the harbours, anyway,” reaching his hand for something on the mantelpiece. “What do you think?”
“Nay,” said Philip, with a long breath of weariness and relief.
“Guess, then,” said Pete, putting his hand behind him.
Philip shook his head and smiled feebly. Then, with the expression of a boy on his birthday, Pete leaned over Philip, and said in a half-whisper across the top of his head, “I've heard from Kate.”
Philip turned ghastly, his lip trembled, and he stammered, “You've—you've—heard from Kate, have you?”
“Look at that,” cried Pete, and round came the letter with a triumphant sweep.
Philip's respiration grew difficult and noisy. Slowly, very slowly, he reached out his hand, took the letter, and looked at its superscription.
“Read it—read it,” said Pete; “no secrets at all.”
With head down and eyebrows hiding his eyes, with trembling hands that tore the envelope, Philip took out the letter and read it in passages—broken, blurred, smudged, as by the smoke of a fo'c'stle lamp.