It was so far back home, so much farther than it had been to come. The course is short and easy going out to sea when the tide is with you, and the water is smooth, and the sun is shining, but long and hard coming back to harbour, when the waves have risen, and the sky is low, and the wind is on your bow.
So far, so very far. She thought everybody looked at her, and knew her for what she was—a broken, forsaken, fallen woman. And she was so tired too; she wondered if her limbs would carry her.
When Philip was left alone, the sky seemed to be lying on his shoulders. The English mountains were grey and ghostly now, and the storm, which had spent itself on the other coast, seemed to hang over the island. There were breakers where the long dead sea had been, and the petrel outside was scudding close to the white curves, and uttering its dismal note.
So heavy and confused had the storm and wreck of the last hour left him, that he did not at first observe by the backward tail of smoke that the steamer had passed round the Head, and that the cart he had met at the mouth of the port had come back empty to the cave for another load of sea-wrack. The lobster-fisher, too, had beached his boat near by, and was shouting through the hollow air, wherein every noise seemed to echo with a sepulchral quake, “The block was going whistling at the mast-head. We'll have a squall I was thinking, so in I came.”
That night Philip dreamt a dream. He was sitting on a dais with a wooden canopy above him, the English coat of arms behind, and a great book in front; his hands shook as he turned the leaves; he felt his leg hang heavily; people bowed low to him, and dropped their voices in his presence; he was the Deemster, and he was old. A young woman stood in the dock, dripping water from her hair, and she had covered her face with her hands. In the witness-box a young man was standing, and his head was down. The man had delivered the woman to dishonour; she had attempted her life in her shame and her despair. And looking on the man, the Deemster thought he spoke in a stern voice, saying, “Witness, I am compelled to punish her, but oh to heaven that I could punish you in her place! What have you to say for yourself?” “I have nothing to say for myself,” the young man answered, and he lifted his head and the old Deemster saw his face. Then Philip awoke with a smothered scream, for the young man's face had been his own.
When Cæsar got to the quay, he looked about with watchful eyes, as if fearing he might find somebody there before him. The coast was clear, and he gave a grunt of relief. After fixing the horse-cloth, and settling the mare in a nose-bag, he began to walk up and down the fore part of the harbour, still keeping an eager look-out. As time went on he grew comfortable, exchanged salutations with the harbour-master, and even whistled a little to while away the time.
“Quiet day, Mr. Quayle.”
“Quiet enough yet, Mr. Cregeen; but what's it saying? 'The greater the calm the nearer the south wind.'”
By the time that Cæsar, from the end of the pier, saw the smoke of the steamer coming round Kirk Maughold Head, he was in a spiritual, almost a mournful, mood. He was feeling how melancholy was the task of going to meet the few possessions, the clothes and such like, which were all that remained of a dear friend departed. It was the duty of somebody, though, and Cæsar drew a long breath of resignation.
The steamer came up to the quay, and there was much bustle and confusion. Cæsar waited, with one hand on the mare's neck, until the worst of it was over. Then he went aboard, and said in a solemn voice to the sailor at the foot of the gangway, “Anything here the property of Mr. Peter Quilliam?”
“That's his luggage,” said the sailor, pointing to a leather trunk of moderate size among similar trunks at the mouth of the hatchway.
“H'm!” said Cæsar, eyeing it sideways, and thinking how small it was. Then, reflecting that perhaps valuable papers were all it was thought worth while to send home, he added cheerfully, “I'll take it with me.”
Somewhat to Cæsar's surprise, the sailor raised no difficulties, but just as he was regarding the trunk with that faith which is the substance of things hoped for, a big, ugly hand laid hold of it, and began to rock it about like a pebble.
It was Black Tom, smoking with perspiration.
“Aisy, man, aisy,” said Cæsar, with lofty dignity. “I've the gig on the quay.”
“And I've a stiff cart on the market,” said Black Tom.
“I'm wanting no assistance,” said Cæsar; “you needn't trouble yourself.”
“Don't mention it, Cæsar,” said Black Tom, and he turned the trunk on end and bent his back to lift it.
But Cæsar put a heavy hand on top and said, “Gough bless me, man, but I am sorry for thee. Mammon hath entered into thy heart, Tom.”
“He have just popped out of thine, then,” said Black Tom, swirling the trunk on one of its corners.
But Cæsar held on, and said, “I don't know in the world why you should let the devil of covetousness get the better of you.”
“I don't mane to—let go the chiss,” said Black Tom, and in another minute he had it on his shoulder.
“Now, I believe in my heart,” said Cæsar, “I would be forgiven a little violence,” and he took the trunk by both hands to bring it down again.
“Let go the chiss, or I'll strek thee into the harbour,” bawled Black Tom under his load.
“The Philistines be upon thee, Samson,” cried Cæsar, and with that there was a struggle.
In the midst of the uproar, while the men were shouting into each other's faces, and the trunk was rocking between them shoulder high, a sunburnt man, with a thick beard and a formidable voice, a stalwart fellow in a pilot jacket and wide-brimmed hat, came hurrying up the cabin-stairs, and a dog came running behind him. A moment later he had parted the two men, and the trunk was lying at his feet.
Black Tom fell back a step, lifted his straw hat, scratched his bald crown, and muttered in a voice of awe. “Holy sailor!”
Cæsar's face was livid, and his eyes went up toward his forehead. “Lord have mercy upon me,” he mumbled; “have mercy on my soul, O Lord.”
“Don't be afraid,” said the stranger. “I'm a living man and not a ghost.”
“The man himself,” said Black Tom.
“Peter Quilliam alive and hearty,” said Cæsar.
“I am,” said Pete. “And now, what's the bobbery between the pair of you? Shuperintending the beaching of my trunk, eh?”
But having recovered from his terror at the idea that Pete was a spirit, Cæsar began to take him to task for being a living man. “How's this?” said he. “Answer me, young man, I've praiched your funeral.”
“You'll have to do it again, Mr. Cregeen, for I'm not gone yet,” said Pete.
“No, but worth ten dead men still,” said Black Tom. “And my goodness, boy, the smart and stout you're looking, anyway. Been thatching a bit on the chin, eh? Foreign parts has made a man of you, Peter. The straight you're like the family, too! You'll be coming up to the trough with me—the ould home, you know. I'll be whipping the chiss ashore in a jiffy, only Cæsar's that eager to help, it's wonderful. No, you'll not then?”
Pete was shaking his head as he went up the gangway, and seeing this, Cæsar said severely—
“Lave the gentleman alone, Mr. Quilliam. He knows his own business best.”
“So do you, Mr. Collecting Box,” said Black Tom. “But your head's as empty as a mollag, and as full of wind as well. It's a regular ould human mollag you are, anyway, floating other people's nets and taking all that's coming to them.”
They were ashore by this time; one of the quay porters was putting the trunk into the gig, and Cæsar was removing the horse-cloth and the nose-bag.
“Get up, Mr. Peter, and don't listen to him,” said Cæsar. “If my industry and integrity have been blessed with increase under Providence——”
“Lave Providence out of it, you grasping ould Ebenezer, Zachariah, Amen,” bawled Black Tom.
“You've been flying in the face of Providence all your life, Tom,” said Cæsar, taking his seat beside Pete.
“You haven't though, you miser,” said Black Tom; “you'd sell your soul for sixpence, and you'd raffle your ugly ould body if you could get anybody to take tickets.”
“Go home, Thomas,” said Cæsar, twiddling the reins, “go home and try for the future to be a better man.”
But that was too much for Black Tom. “Better man, is it? Come down on the quay and up with your fiss, and I'll show you which of us is the better man.”
A moment later Cæsar and Pete were rattling over the cobbles of the market-place, with the dog racing behind. Pete was full of questions.
“And how's yourself, Mr. Cregeen?”
“I'm in, sir, I'm in, sir, praise the Lord.”
“And Grannie?”
“Like myself, sir, not getting a dale younger, but caring little for spiritual things, though.”
“Going west, is she, poor ould angel? There ought to be a good piece of daylight at her yet, for all. And—and Nancy Joe?”
“A happy sinner still,” said Cæsar. “I suppose, sir, you'd be making good money out yonder now? We were hearing the like, anyway.”
“Money!” said Pete. “Well, yes. Enough to keep off the divil and the coroner. But how's—how's——”
“There now! For life, eh?” said Cæsar.
“Yes, for life; but that's nothing,” said Pete; “how's——”
“Wonderful!” cried Cæsar; “five years too! Boy veen, the light was nearly took out of my eyes when I saw you.”
“But Kate? How's Kate? How's the girl, herself?” said Pete nervously.
“Smart uncommon,” said Cæsar.
“God bless her!” cried Pete, with a shout that was heard across the street.
“We'll pick her up at Crellin's, it's like,” said Cæsar.
“What? Crellin's round the corner—Crellin the draper's I Woa! Let me down! The mare's tired, father;” and Pete was over the wheel at a bound.
He came out of the shop saying Kate had left word that her father was not to wait for her—she would perhaps be home before him. Amid a crowd of the “mob beg” children of the streets, to whom he showered coppers to be scrambled for, Pete got up again to Cæsar's side, and they set off for Sulby. The wind had risen suddenly, and was hooting down the narrow streets coming up from the harbour.
“And Philip? How's Philip?” shouted Pete.
“Mr. Christian? Well and hearty, and doing wonders, sir.”
“I knew it,” cried Pete, with a resounding laugh.
“Going like a flood, and sweeping everything before him,” said Cæsar.
“The rising day with him, is it?” said Pete. “I always said he'd be the first man in the island, and he's not going to deceave me neither.”
“The young man's been over putting a sight on us times and times—he was up at my Melliah only a week come Wednesday,” said Cæsar.
“Man alive!” cried Pete; “him and me are same as brothers.”
“Then it wasn't true what they were writing in the letter, sir—that your black boys left you for dead?”
“They did that, bad luck to them,” said Pete; “but I was thinking it no sin to disappoint them, though.”
“Well, well! lying began with the world, and with the world it will end,” said Cæsar.
As they passed Ballywhaine, Pete shouted into Cæsar's ear, above the wind that was roaring in the trees, and scattering the ripening leaves in clouds, “And how's Dross?”
“That wastrel? Aw, tearing away, tearing away,” said Cæsar.
“Floating on the top of the tide, is he?” shouted Pete.
“Maybe so, but the devil is fishing where yonder fellow's swimming,” answered Cæsar.
“And the ould man—the Ballawhaine—still above the sod?” bawled Pete behind his hand.
“Yes, but failing, failing, failing,” shouted Cæsar. “The world's getting too heavy for the man. Debts here, and debts there, and debts everywhere.”
“Not much water in the harbour then, eh?” cried Pete.
“No, but down on the rocks already, if it's only myself that knows it,” shouted Cæsar.
When they had turned the Sulby Bridge, and come in sight of “The Manx Fairy,” Pete's excitement grew wild, and he leaped up from his seat and shouted above the wind like a man possessed.
“My gough, the very place! You've been thatching, though—yes, you have. The street! Holy sailor, there it is! Brownie at you still? Her heifer, is it? Get up, Molly! A taste of the whip'll do the mare no harm, sir. My sakes, here's ould Flora hobbling out to meet us. Got the rheumatics, has she? Set me down, Cæsar. Here we are, man. Lord alive, the smell of the cowhouse. That warm and damp, it's grand! What, don't you know me, Flo? Got your temper still, if you've lost your teeth? My sakes, the haggard! The same spot again! It's turf they're burning inside! And, my gracious, that's herrings roasting in their brine! Where's Grannie, though? Let's put a sight in, Cæsar. Well, well, aw well, aw well!”
Thus Pete came home, laughing, shouting, bawling, and bellowing above the tumult of the wind, which had risen by this time to the strength of a gale.
“Mother,” cried Cæsar, going in at the porch, “gentleman here from foreign parts to put a word on you.”
“I never had nobody there belonging to me,” began Grannie.
“No, then, nobody?” said Cæsar.
“One that was going to be, maybe, if he'd lived, poor boy——”
“Grannie!” shouted Pete, and he burst into the bar-room.
“Goodness me!” cried Grannie; “it's his own voice anyway.”
“It's himself,” shouted Pete, and the old soul was in his arms in an instant.
“Aw dear! Aw dear!” she panted. “Pete it is for sure. Let me sit down, though.”
“Did you think it was his ghost, then, mother!” said Cæsar with an indulgent air.
“'Deed no,” said Grannie. “The lad wouldn't come back to plague nobody, thinks I.”
“Still, and for all the uprisement of Peter, it bates everything,” said Cæsar. “It's a sort of a resurrection. I thought I'd have a sight up to the packet for his chiss, poor fellow, and, behould ye, who should I meet in the two eyes but the man himself!”
“Aw, dear! It's wonderful I it's terrible! I'm silly with the joy,” said Grannie.
“It was lies in the letter the Manx ones were writing,” said Cæsar.
“Letters and writings are all lies,” said Grannie. “As long as I live I'll take no more of them, and if that Kelly, the postman, comes here again, I'll take the bellows to him.”
“So you thought I was gone for good, Grannie?” said Pete. “Well, I thought so too. 'Will I die?' I says to myself times and times; but I bethought me at last there wasn't no sense in a good man like me laving his bones out on the bare Veldt yonder; so, you see, I spread my wings and came home again.”
“It's the Lord's doings—it's marvellous in our eyes,” said Cæsar; and Grannie, who had recovered herself and was bustling about, cried—
“Let me have a right look at him, then. Goodness me, the whisker! And as soft as Manx carding from the mill, too. I like him best when he takes off his hat. Well, I'm proud to see you, boy. 'Deed, but I wouldn't have known you, though. 'Who's the gentleman in the gig with father?' thinks I. And I'd have said it was the Dempster himself, if he hadn't been dead and in his coffin.”
“That'll do, that'll do,” roared Pete. “That's Grannie putting the fun on me.”
“It's no use talking, but I can't keep quiet; no I can't,” cried Grannie, and with that she whipped up a bowl from the kitchen dresser and fell furiously to peeling the potatoes that were there for supper.
“But where's Kate?” said Pete.
“Aw, yes, where is she? Kate! Kate!” called Grannie, leaning her head toward the stairs, and Nancy Joe, who had been standing silent until now, said——
“Didn't she go to Ramsey with the gig, woman?”
“Aw, the foolish I am! Of course she did,” said Grannie; “but why hasn't she come back with father?”
“She left word at Crellin's not to wait,” said Cæsar.
“She'll be gone to Miss Clucas's to try on,” said Nancy.
“Wouldn't trust now,” said Grannie. “She's having two new dresses done, Pete. Aw, girls are ter'ble. Well, can you blame them either?”
“She shall have two-and-twenty if she likes, God bless her,” said Pete.
“Goodness me!” said Nancy, “is the man for buying frocks for a Mormon?”
“But you'll be empty, boy. Put the crow down and the griddle on, Nancy,” said Grannie. “We'll have cakes. Cakes? Coorse I said cakes. Get me the cloth and I'll lay it myself. The cloth, I'm saying, woman. Did you never hear of a tablecloth? Where is it? Aw, dear knows where it is now! It's in the parlour; no, it's in the chest on the landing; no, it's under the sheets of my own bed. Fetch it, bogh.”
“Will I bring you a handful of gorse, mother?” said Cæsar.
“Coorse you will, and not stand chattering there. But I'm laving you dry, Pete. Is it ale you'll have, or a drop of hard stuff? You'll wait for Kate? Now I like that. There's some life at these totallers. 'Steady abroad?' How dare you, Nancy Joe? You're a deal too clever. Of course he's been steady abroad—steady as a gun.”
“But Kate,” said Pete, tramping the sanded floor, “is she changed at all?”
“Aw, she's a woman now, boy,” said Grannie.
“Bless my soul!” said Pete.
“She was looking a bit white and narvous one while there, but she's sprung out of it fresh and bright, same as the ling on the mountains. Well, that's the way with young women.”
“I know,” said Pete. “Just the break of the morning with the darlings.”
“But she's the best-looking girl on the island now, Pete,” said Nancy Joe.
“I'll go bail on it,” cried Pete.
“Big and fine and rosy, and fit for anything.”
“Bless my heart!”
“You should have seen her at the Melliah; it was a trate.”
“God bless me!”
“Sun-bonnet and pink frock and tight red stockings, and straight as a standard rase.”
“Hould your tongue, woman,” shouted Pete. “I'll see herself first, and I'm dying to do it.”
Cæsar came back with the gorse; Nancy fed the fire and Grannie stirred the oatmeal and water. And while the cakes were baking, Pete tramped the kitchen and examined everything and recognised old friends with a roar.
“Bless me! the same place still. There's the clock on the shelf, with the scratch on its face and the big finger broke at the joint, and the lath—and the peck—and the whip—you've had it new corded, though——”
“'Sakes, how the boy remembers!” cried Grannie.
“And the white rumpy” (the cat had leapt on to the dresser out of the reach of Pete's dog, and from that elevation was eyeing him steadfastly), “and the slowrie—and the kettle—and the poker—my gracious, the very poker——”
“Now, did you ever!” cried Grannie with amazement.
“And—yes—no—it is, though—I'll swear it before the Dempster—that's,” said Pete, picking up a three-legged stool, “that's the very stool she was sitting on herself in the fire-seat in front of the turf closet. Let me sit there now for the sake of ould times gone by.”
He put the stool in the fireplace and sat on it, shouting as he did so between a laugh and a cry, “Aw, Grannie, bogh—Grannie, bogh! to think there's been half the world between us since I was sitting here before!”
And Grannie herself, breaking down, said, “Wouldn't you like the tongs, boy? Give the boy the tongs, woman, just to say he's at home.”
Pete plucked the tongs out of Nancy's hands, and began feeding the fire with the gorse. “Aw, Grannie, have I ever been away?” he cried, laughing, and his wet eyes gleaming.
“Nancy Joe, have you no nose at all?” cried Grannie. “The cake's burning to a cinder.”
“Let it burn, mother,” shouted Pete. “It's the way she was doing herself when she was young and forgetting. Shillings a-piece for all that's wasted. Aw, the smell of it's sweet!”
So saying he piled the gorse on the fire, ramming it under the griddle and choking it behind the crow. And while the oatcake crackled and sparched and went black, he sniffed up the burning odour, and laughed and cried in the midst of the smoke that went swirling up the chimney.
And meanwhile, Grannie herself, with the tears rolling down her cheeks, was flapping her apron before her face and saying, “He'll make me die of laughing, he will, though—yes, he will!” But behind the apron she was blubbering to Nancy, “It's coming home, woman, that's it—it's just coming home again, poor boy!”
By this time word of Pete's return had gone round Sulby? and the bar-room was soon thronged with men and women, who looked through the glass partition into the kitchen at the bronzed and bearded man who sat smoking by the fire, with his dog curled up at his feet. “There'll be a wedding soon,” said one. “The girl's in luck,” said another. “Success to the fine girl she always was, and lucky they kept her from the poor toot that was beating about on her port bow.”—“The young Ballawhaine, eh?”—“Who else?”
Presently the dog went out to them, and, in default of its master, became a centre of excited interest. It was an old creature, with a settled look of age, and a gravity of expression that seemed to say he had got over the follies of youth, and was now reserved and determined to keep the peace. His back was curved in as if a cart-wheel had gone over his spine, he had gigantic ears, a stump of a tail, a coat thin and prickly like the bristles of a pig, but white and spotted with brown.
“Lord save us! a queer dog, though—what's his breed at all?” said one; and then a resounding voice came from the kitchen doorway, saying—
“A sort of a Manxman crossed with a bat. Got no tail to speak of, but there's plenty of ears at him. A handy sort of a dog, only a bit spoiled in his childhood. Not fit for much company anyway, and no more notion of dacent behaviour than my ould shoe. Down, Dempster, down.”
It was Pete. He was greeted with loud welcomes, and soon filled the room all round with the steaming odour of spirits and water.
“You've the Manx tongue at you still, Mr. Quilliam,” said Jonaique; “and you're calling the dog Dempster; what's that for at all?”
“For sake of the ould island, Mr. Jelly, and for the straight he's like Dempster Mylrea when he's a bit crooked,” said Pete.
“The old man's dead, sir,” said John the Clerk.
“You don't say?” said Pete.
“Yes, though; the sun went down on him a Wednesday. The drink, sir, the drink! I've been cutting a sod of his grave to-day.”
“And who's to be Dempster now?” asked Pete. “Who are they putting in for it?”
“Well,” said John the Clerk, “they're talking and talking, and some's saying this one and others that one; but the most is saying your ould friend Philip Christian.”
“I knew it—I always said it,” shouted Pete; “best man in the island, bar none. Oh, he'll not deceave me.”
The wind was roaring in the chimney, and the light was beginning to fail. Pete became restless, and walked to and fro, peering out at intervals by the window that looked on to the road. At this there was some pushing and nudging and indulgent whispering.
“It's the girl! Aw, be aisy with the like! Five years apart, be aisy!”
“The meadow's white with the gulls sitting together like parrots; what's that a sign of, father?” said Pete.
“Just a slant of rain maybe, and a puff of wind,” said Cæsar.
“But,” said Pete, looking up at the sky, “the long cat tail was going off at a slant awhile ago, and now the thick skate yonder is hanging mortal low.”
“Take your time, sir,” said Cæsar. “No need to send round the Cross Vustha (fiery cross) yet. The girl will be home immadiently.”
“It'll be dark at her, though,” said Pete.
The company tried to draw him into conversation about the ways of life in the countries he had visited, but he answered absently and jerkily, and kept going to the door.
“Suppose there'll be Dempsters enough where you're coming from?” said Jonaique.
“Sort of Dempsters, yes. Called one of them Ould Necessity, because it knows no law. He rigged up the statute books atop of his stool for a high sate, and when he wanted them he couldn't find them high or low. Not the first judge that's sat on the law, though.... It's coming, Cæsar, d'ye hear it? That's the rain on the street.”
“Aisy, man, aisy, man,” said Cæsar. “New dresses isn't rigged up in no time. There'll be chapels now, eh? Chapels and conferences, and proper religious instruction?”
“Divil a chapel, sir, only a rickety barn, belonging to some-ones they're calling the Sky Pilots to. Wanted the ould miser that runs it to build them a new tabernacle, but he wouldn't part till a lump of plaster fell on his bald head at a love-feast, and then he planked down a hundred pound, and they all shouted, 'Hit him again, Lord—you might!'... D'ye hear that, then? That's the water coming down from the gill. I can't stand no more of it, Grannie.”
Grannie was at the door, struggling to hold it against the wind, while she looked out into the gathering darkness. “'Deed, but I'm getting afraid of it myself,” she said, “and dear heart knows where Kirry can be at this time of night.” “I'm off to find her,” said Pete, and, catching up his hat and whistling to the dog, in a moment he was gone.
The door was hard to close behind him, for it was now blowing a gale from the north-east. Cæsar slipped through the dairy to see if the outbuildings were safe, and came back with a satisfied look. The stable and cow-house were barred, the barns were shut up, the mill-wheel was on the brake, the kiln fire was burning gently, and all was snug and tight. Grannie was wringing her hands as he returned, crying “Kate! Oh, Kate!” and he reproved her for want of trust in Providence.
People were now coming in rapidly with terrible stories of damage done by the storm. It was reported that the Chicken Rock Lighthouse was blown down, that the tide had risen to twenty-five feet in Ramsey and torn up the streets, and that a Peel fisherman had been struck by his mainsail into the sea and drowned.
More came into the house at every minute, and among them were all the lonesome and helpless ones within a radius of a mile—Blind Jane, who charmed blood, but could not charm the wind; Shemiah, the prophet, with beard down to his waist and a staff up to his shoulder; and old Juan Vessy, who “lived on the houses” in the way of a tramp. The people who had been there already were afraid to go out, and Grannie, still wringing her hands and crying “Kate, Kate,” called everybody into the kitchen to gather about the fire. There they bemoaned their boys on the sea, told stories of former storms, and quarrelled about the years of wrecks and the sources of the winds that caused them.
The gale increased to fearful violence, and sometimes the wind sounded like sheets flapping against the walls, sometimes like the deep boom of the waves that roll on themselves in mid-ocean and never know a shore. It began to groan in the chimney as if it were a wild beast struggling to escape, and then the smoke came down in whorls and filled the kitchen. They had to put out the fire to keep themselves from suffocation, and to sit back from the fireplace to protect themselves from cold. The door of the porch flew open, and they barricaded it with long-handled brushes; the windows rattled in their frames, and they blocked them up with the tops of the tables. In spite of all efforts to shut out the wind, the house was like a basket, and it quaked like a ship at sea. “I never heard the like on the water itself, and I'm used of the sea, too,” said one. The others groaned and mumbled prayers.
Kelly the Thief, who had come in unopposed by Grannie, was on his knees in one corner with his face to the wall, calling on the Lord to remember that he had seen things in letters—stamps and such—but had never touched them. John the Clerk was saying that he had to bury the Deemster; Jonaique, the barber, that he had been sent for to “cut” the Bishop; and Claudius Kewley, the farmer, that he had three fields of barley still uncut and a stack of oats unthatched. “Oh, Lord,” cried Claudius, “let me not die till I've got nothing to do!”
Cæsar stood like a strong man amidst their moans and groans, their bowings of the head and clappings of the hands, and, when he heard the farmer, his look was severe.
“Cloddy,” said he, “how do you dare to doubt the providence of God?”
“Aisy to talk, Mr. Cregeen,” the farmer whined, “but you've got your own harvest saved,” and then Cæsar had no resource but to punish the man in prayer. “The Lord had sent His storm to reprove some that were making too sure of His mercies; but there was grace in the gale, only they wouldn't be patient and trust to God's providence; there was milk in the breast, only the wayward child wouldn't take time to find the teat. Lord, lead them to true stillness——”
In the midst of Cæsar's prayer there was a sudden roar outside, and he leapt abruptly to his feet with a look of vexation. “I believe in my heart that's the mill-wheel broken loose,” said he, “and if it is, the corn on the kiln will be going like a whirlingig.”
“Trust in God's providence, Cæsar,” cried the farmer.
“So I will,” said Cæsar, catching up his hat, “but I'll put out my kiln fire first.”
When Pete stepped out of the porch, he felt himself smitten as by an invisible wing, and he gasped like a fish with too much air. A quick pain in the side at that moment reminded him of his bullet-wound, but his heels had heart in them, and he set off to run. The night had fallen, but a green rent was torn in the leaden sky, and through this the full moon appeared.
When he got to Ramsey the tide was up to the old cross, slates were flying like kites, and the harbour sounded like a battlefield with its thunderous roar of rigging. He made for the dressmaker's, and heard that Kate had not been there for six hours. At the draper's he learned that at two o'clock in the afternoon she had been seen going up Ballure. The sound rocket was fired as he pushed through the town. A schooner riding to an anchor in the bay was flying her ensign for help. The sea was terrific—a slaty grey, streaked with white foam like quartz veins; but the men who had been idling on the quay when the water was calm were now struggling, chafing, and fighting to go out on it, for the blood of the old Vikings was in them.
Going by the water-trough, Pete called on Black Tom, who was civil and conciliatory until he heard his errand, then growled with disappointment, but nevertheless answered his question. Yes, he had seen the young woman. She went up early in the “everin,” and left him good-day. Giving this grateful news, Black Tom could not deny himself a word of bitterness to poison the pleasure. “And when you are finding her,” said he, “you'll be doing well to take her in tow, for I'm thinking there's some that's for throwing her a rope.”
“Who d'ye mane?” said Pete.
“I lave it with you,” said Black Tom; and Pete pulled the door after him.
On the breast of the hill there was the meeting of two roads, one of them leading up to the “Hibernian,” the other going down to Port Mooar. To resolve the difficulty of choice, Pete inquired at a cottage standing some paces beyond, and as Kate had not been seen to pass up the higher road, he determined to take the lower one. But he gathered no tidings by the way, for Billy by the mill knew nothing, and the woman by the sundial had gone to bed. At length he dipped into Port Mooar, and came to a little cottage like a child's Noah's ark, with its tiny porch and red light inside, looking out on the white breakers that were racing along the beach. It was the cottage of the lobster-fisher. Pete inquired if he had seen Kate. He answered no; he had seen nobody that day but Mr. Christian. Which of the Christians? Mr. Philip Christian.
The news carried only one message to Pete's mind. It seemed to explain something which had begun to perplex him—why Philip had not met him at the quay, and why Kate had not heard of his coming. Clearly Philip was at present at Ballure. He had not yet received the telegram addressed to Douglas.
Pete turned back. Surely Kate had called somewhere. She would be at home by this time. He tried to run, but the wind was now in his face. It was veering northwards every minute, and rising to the force of a hurricane. He tied his handkerchief over his head and under his chin to hold on his hat. His hair whipped his ears like rods. Sometimes he was swept into the hedge; often he was brought to his knees. Still he toiled along through sheets of spray that glistened with the colours of a rainbow, and ran over the ground like driven rain. His eyes smarted, and the taste on his lips was salt.
The moon was now riding at the full through a wild flecked sky, and Pete could clearly see, as he returned towards the bay, a crowd of human figures on the cliffs above Port Lewaige. Quaking with undefined fears, he pushed on until he had joined them. The schooner, abandoned by her crew, had parted her cable, and was rolling like a blinded porpoise towards the rocks. She fell on them with the groan of a living creature, and, the instant her head was down, the white lions of the sea leapt over her with a howl, the water swirled through her bulwarks and filled her hatches, her rudder was unshipped, her sails were torn from their gaskets, and the floating home wherein men had sailed, and sung, and slept, and laughed, and jested, was a broken wreck in the heavy wallowings of the waves.
Kate had not returned when Pete got back to Sulby, but the excitement of her absence was eclipsed for the time by the turmoil of Cæsar's trouble. Standing in the dark on the top of the midden, he was shouting to the dairy door in a voice of thunder, which went off at the end of his beard like the puling of a cat. The mill-wheel was going same as a “whirlingig”—was there nobody to “hould the brake?” The stable roof was stripped, and the mare was tearing herself to pieces in a roaring “pit of hell”—was there never a shoulder for the door? The cow-house thatch was flapping like a sail—was there nothing in the world but a woman (Nancy Joe) to help a man to throw a ladder and a stone over it?
Only when Cæsar had been pacified was there silence to speak of Kate. “I picked up news of her coming back by Claughbane,” said Pete, “and traced her as near home as the 'Ginger.' She can't be far away. Where is she?”
Those who were cool enough fell to conjecture. Grannie had no resource but groans. Nancy was moaning by her side. The rest were full of their own troubles. Blind Jane was bewailing her affliction.
“You can all see,” she cried, “but I'm not knowing the harm that's coming on me.”
“Hush, woman, hush,” said Pete; “we're all same as yourself half our lives—we're all blind at night.”
In the midst of the tumult a knock came to the door, and Pete made a plunge towards the porch.
“Wait,” cried Cæsar. “Nobody else comes here to-night except the girl herself. Another wind like the last and we'll have the roof off the house too.”
Then he called to the new-comer, with his face to the porch door, and the answer came back to him in a wail like the wind itself.
“Who's there?”
It was Joney from the glen.
“We're like herrings in a barrel—we can't let you in.”
She wasn't wanting to come in. But her roof was going stripping, and half her house was felled, and she couldn't get her son (the idiot boy) to leave his bed. He would perish; he would die; he was all the family she had left to her—wouldn't the master come and save him?
“Impossible!” shouted Cæsar. “We've our own missing this fearful night, Joney, and the Lord will protect His children.”
Was it Kate? She had seen her in the glen——
“Let me get at that door,” said Pete.
“But the house will come down,” cried Cæsar.
“Let it come,” said Pete.
Pete shut the door of the bar-room, and then the wind was heard to swirl through the porch.
“When did you see her, Joney, and where?” said the voice of Pete; and the voice of Joney answered him—
“Goings by my own house at the start of the storm this everin.”
“I'll come with you—go on,” said Pete, and Grannie shouted across the bar—
“Take Cæsar's topcoat over your monkey-jacket.”
“I've sail enough already for a wind like this, mother,” cried the voice of Pete, and then the swirling sound in the porch went off with a long-drawn whirr, and Cæsar came back alone to the kitchen.
Pete's wound ached again, but he pressed his hand on the place of it and struggled up the glen, dragging Joney behind him. They came to her house at last. One half of the thatch lay over the other half; the rafters were bare like the ribs of the wreck; the oat-cake peck was rattling on the lath; the meal-barrel in the corner was stripped of its lid, and the meal was whirling into the air like a waterspout; the dresser was stripped, the broken crockery lay on the uncovered floor, and the iron slowrie hanging over the place of the fire was swinging and striking against the wall, and ringing like a knell. And in the midst of this scene of desolation the idiot boy was placidly sleeping on his naked bed, and over it the moon was scudding through a tattered sky.
The night wore on, and the company in the kitchen listened long, and sometimes heard sounds as of voices crying in the wind, but Pete did not return. Then they fell to groaning again, to praying aloud without fear, and to confessing their undiscovered sins without shame.
“I'm searched terrible—I can see through me,” cried Kelly, the postman.
Some were chiefly troubled lest death should fall on them while they were in a public-house.
“I keep none,” cried Cæsar.
“But you wouldn't let us open the door,” whined the farmer.
If the door had been wide enough for a Bishop, not a soul would have stirred. For the first time within anyone's recollection, Nancy Joe was on her knees.
“O Lord,” she prayed, “Thou knowest well I don't often bother Thee. But save Kate, Lord; oh, save and prasarve my little Kirry! It's twenty years and better since I asked anything of Thee before and if Thou wilt only take away this wind, I'll promise not to say another prayer for twenty years more.”
“Say it in Manx, woman,” moaned Grannie. “I always say my prayers in Manx as well, and the Lord can listen to the one He knows best.”
“There's prayer as well as praise in singing,” cried Cæsar; and they began to sing, all down on their knees, their eyes tightly closed, and their hands clasped before their faces. They sang of heaven and its peaceful plains, its blue lakes and sunny skies, its golden cities and emerald gates, its temples and its tabernacles, where “congregations ne'er break up and Sabbaths never end.” It was some comfort to drown with the wild discord of their own voices the fearful noises of the tempest. When they finished the hymn, they began on it again, keeping it up without a break, sweeping the dying note of the last word into the rising pitch of the first one. In the midst of their singing, they thought a fiercer gust than ever was beating on the door, and, to smother the fear of it, they sang yet louder. The gust came a second time, and Cæsar cried—
“Again, brothers,” and away they went with another wild whoop through the hymn.
It came a third time, and Cæsar cried—
“Once more, beloved,” and they raced madly through the hymn again.
Then the door burst open as before a tremendous kick, and Pete, fierce and wild-eyed, and green with the drift of the salt foam caked thick on his face, stepped over the threshold with the unconscious body of Kate in his arms and the idiot boy peering over his shoulder.
“Thank the Lord for an answer to prayer,” cried Cæsar. “Where did you find her?”
“In the tholthan up the glen,” said Pete. “Up in the witch's tholthan.”