On the second morning afterwards the air was quiet and full of the odour of seaweed; the sky was round as the inside of a shell, and pale pink like the shadow of flame; the water was smooth and silent; the hills had lost the memory of the storm, and land and sea lay like a sleeping child.
In this broad and steady morning Kate came back to consciousness. She had slid out of delirium into sleep as a boat slides out of the open sea into harbour, and when she awoke there was a voice in her ears that seemed to be calling to her from the quay. It was a familiar voice, and yet it was unfamiliar; it was like the voice of a friend heard for the first time after a voyage. It seemed to come from a long way off, and yet to be knocking at the very door of her heart. She kept her eyes closed for a moment and listened; then she opened them and looked again.
The light was clouded and yet dazzling, as if glazed muslin were shaking before her eyes. Grannie was sitting by her bedside, knitting in silence.
“Why are you sitting there, mother?” she asked.
Grannie dropped her needles and caught at her apron. “Dear heart alive, the child's herself again!” she said.
“Has anything happened?” said Kate. “What time is it?”
“Monday morning, bogh, thank the Lord for all His mercies!” cried Grannie.
The familiar voice came again. It came from the direction of the stairs. “Who's that?” said Kate, whispering fearfully.
“Pete himself, Kirry. Aw well! Aw dear!”
“Pete!” cried Kate in terror.
“Aw, no, woman, but a living man come back again. No fear of him, bogh! Not dead at all, but worth twenty dead men yet, and he brought you safe out of the storm.”
“The storm?”
“Yes, the storm, woman. There warn such a storm on the island I don't know the years. He found you in the tholthan up the glen. Lost your way in the wind, it's like, and no wonder. But let me call father. Father! father! Chut! the man's as deaf as little Tom Hommy. Father!” called Grannie, bustling about at the stair-head in a half-demented way.
There was some commotion below, and the voice on the stairs was saying, “Thisway? No,sir. That way, ifyouplaze.”
“D'ye hear him, Kirry?” cried Grannie, putting her head back into the room. “That's the man himself. Sitting on the bottom step same as an ould bulldog, and keeping watch that nobody bothers you. The good-naturedst bulldog breathing, though, and he hasn't had a wink on the night. Saved your life, darling. He did; yes, he did, praise God.”
At mention of the tholthan, Kate had remembered everything. She dropped back on the pillow, and cried, in a voice of pain, “Why couldn't he leave me to die?”
Grannie chuckled knowingly at that, and wiped her eyes with the corner of her apron. “The bogh is herself, for sure. When they're wishing themselves dead they're always mending father! But I'll go down instead. Lie still, bogh, lie still!”
The voice of Grannie went muffled down the stairs with many “Aw dears, aw dears!” and then crackled from below through the floor and the unceiled joists, saying sharply but with a tremor, too, “Nancy Joe, why aren't you taking a cup of something upstairs, woman?”
“Goodness me, Mistress Cregeen, is it true for all?” said Nancy.
“Why, of course it's true. Do you think a poor child is going fasting for ever?”
“What's that?” shouted the familiar voice again. “Was it herself you were spaking to in the dairy loft, Grannie?”
“Who else, man?” said Grannie, and then there was a general tumult.
“Aw, the joy! Aw, the delight! Gough bless me, Grannie, I was thinking she was for spaking no more.”
“Out of the way,” cried Nancy, as if pushing past somebody to whip the kettle on to the fire. “These men creatures have no more rising in their hearts than bread without balm.”
“You're balm enough yourself, Nancy, for a quiet husband. But lend me a hould of the bellows there—I'll blow up like blazes.”
Cæsar came into the house on the top of this commotion, grumbling as he stepped over the porch, “The wind has taken half the stacks of my haggard, mother.”
“No matter, sir,” shouted Pete. “The best of your Melliah is saved upstairs.”
“Is she herself?” said Cæsar. “Praise His name!”
And over the furious puffing and panting and quacking of the bellows and the cracking and roaring of the fire, the voice of Pete came in gusts through the floor, crying, “I'll go mad with the joy! I will; yes, I will, and nobody shall stop me neither.”
The house, which seemed to have been holding its breath since the storm, now broke into a ripple of laughter. It began in the kitchen, it ran up the stairs, it crept through the chinks in the floor, it went over the roof. But Kate lay on her pillow and moaned, and turned her face to the wall.
Presently Nancy Joe appeared in the bedroom, making herself tidy at the doorway with a turn of the hand over her hair. “Mercy on me!” she cried, clapping her hands at the first sight of Kate's face, “who was the born blockhead that said the girl's wedding was as like to be in the churchyard as in the church?”
“That's me,” said a deep voice from the middle of the stairs, and then Nancy clashed the door back and poured Pete into Kate in a broadside.
“It was Pete that done it, though,” she said. “You can't expect much sense of the like, but still and for all he saved your life, Kitty. Dr. Mylechreest says so. 'If the girl had been lying out another hour,' says he——And, my goodness, the fond of you that man is; it's wonderful! Twisting and turning all day yesterday on the bottom step yonder same as a live conger on the quay, but looking as soft about the eyes as if he'd been a week out of the water. And now! my sakes,now!D'ye hear him, Kirry? He's fit to burst the bellows. No use, though—he's a shocking fine young fellow—he's all that.... But just listen!”
There was a fissing sound from below, and a sense of burning. “What do I always say? You can never trust a man to have sense enough to take it off. That's the kettle on the boil.”
Nancy went flopping downstairs, where with furious words she rated Pete, who laughed immoderately. Cæsar came next. He had taken off his boots and was walking lightly in his stockings; but Kate felt his approach by his asthmatic breathing. As he stepped in at the door he cried, in the high pitch of the preacher, “Praise the Lord, O my soul, and all that is within me praise His holy name!” Then he fell to the praise of Pete as well.
“He brought you out of the jaws of death and the mouth of Satan. It was a sign, Katherine, and we can't do better than follow the Spirit's leading. He saved your life, woman, and that's giving him the right to have and to hould it. Well, I've only one child in this life, but, if it's the Lord's will, I'm willing. He was always my white-headed boy, and he has made his independent fortune in a matter of five years' time.”
The church bell began to toll, and Kate started up and listened.
“Only the Dempster's funeral, Kitty,” said Cæsar. “They were for burying him to-morrow, but men that drink don't keep. They'll be putting him in the family vault at Lezayre with his father, the staunch ould Rechabite. Many a good cow has a bad calf, you see, and that's bad news for a man's children; but many a good calf is from a bad cow, and that's good news for the man himself. It's been the way with Peter anyway, for the Lord has delivered him and prospered him, and I'm hearing on the best authority he has five thousand golden sovereigns sent home to Mr. Dumbell's bank at Douglas.”
Grannie came up with a basin of beef-tea, and Cæsar was hustled out of the room.
“Come now, bogh; take a spoonful, and I'll lave you to yourself,” said Grannie.
“Yes, leave me to myself,” said Kate, sipping wearily; and then Grannie went off with the basin in her hand.
“Has she taken it?” said some one below.
“Look at that, if you plaze,” said Grannie in a jubilant tone; and Kate knew that the empty basin was being shown around.
Kate lay back on the pillow, listened to the tolling of the bell, and shuddered. She thought it a ghostly thing that the first voice she had heard on coming as from another world had been the voice of Pete, and the first name dinned into her ears had been Pete's name. The procession of the Deemster's funeral passed the house, and she closed her eyes and seemed to see it—the coffin on the open cart, the men on horseback riding beside it, and then the horses tied up to posts and gates about the churchyard, and the crowd of men of all conditions at the grave-side. In her mind's eye, Kate was searching through that crowd for somebody. Washethere? Had he heard what had happened to her?
She fell into a doze, and was awakened by a horse's step on the road, and the voices of two men talking as they came nearer.
“Man alive, the joy I'm taking to see you! The tallygraph? Coorse not. Knew I'd find you at the funeral, though.” It was Pete.
“But I meant to come over after it.” It was Philip, and Kate's heart stood still.
The voices were smothered for a moment (as the buzzing is when the bees enter the hive), and then began with as sharper ring from the rooms below.
“How's she now, Mrs. Cregeen?” said the voice of Philip.
“Better, sir—much better,” answered Grannie.
“No return of the unconsciousness?”
“Aw, no,” said Grannie.
“Was she”—Kate thought the voice faltered—“was she delirious?”
“Not rambling at all,” replied Grannie.
“Thank God,” said Philip, and Kate felt a long breath of relief go through the air.
“I didn't hear of it until this morning,” said Philip. “The postman told me at breakfast-time, and I called on Dr. Mylechreest coming out. If I had known——I didn't sleep much last night, anyway; but if I had ever imagined——”
“You're right good to the girl, sir,” said Grannie, and then Kate, listening intently, caught a quavering sound of protestation.
“'Deed you are, though, and always have been,” said Grannie, “and I'm saying it before Pete here, that ought to know and doesn't.”
“Don't I, though?” came in the other voice—the resounding voice—the voice full of laughter and tears together. “But I do that, Grannie, same as if I'd been here and seen it. Lave it to me to know Phil Christian. I've summered and wintered the man, haven't I? He's timber that doesn't start, mother, blow high, blow low.”
Kate heard another broken sound as of painful protest, and then with a sickening sense she covered up her head that she might hear no more.
She was weak and over-wrought, and she fell asleep as she lay covered. While she slept a babel of meaningless voices kept clashing in her ears, and her own voice haunted her perpetually. When she awoke it was broad morning again, and the house was full of the smell of boiling stock-fish. By that she knew it was another day, and the hour of early breakfast. She heard the click of cups and saucers on the kitchen table, the step of her father coming in from the mill, and then the heartsome voice of Pete talking of the changes in the island since he went away. New houses, promenades, iron piers, breakwaters, lakes, towers—wonderful I extraordinary! tre-menjous!
“But the boys—w here's the Manx boys at all?” said Pete. “Gone like a flight of birds to Austrillya and Cleveland and the Cape, and I don't know where. Not a Manx house now that hasn't one of the boys foreign. And the houses themselves—where's the ould houses and the crofts? Felled, all felled or boarded up. And the boats—where's the boats? Lying rotting at the top of the harbour.”
Grannie's step came into the kitchen, and Pete's loud voice drooped to a whisper. “How's herself this morning, mother?”
“Sleeping quiet and nice when I came downstairs,” said Grannie.
“Will I be seeing her myself to-day, think you?” asked Pete.
“I don't know in the world, but I'll ask,” answered Grannie.
“You're an angel, Grannie,” said Pete, “a reg'lar ould archangel.”
Kate shuddered with a new fear. It was clear that in the eyes of her people the old relations with Pete were to stand. Everybody expected her to marry Pete; everybody seemed anxious to push the marriage on.
Grannie came up with her breakfast, pulled aside the blind, and opened the window.
“Nancy will tidy the room a taste,” she said coaxingly, “and then I shouldn't wonder if you'll be sending for Pete.”
Kate raised a cry of alarm.
“Aw, no harm when a girl's poorly,” said Grannie, “and her promist man for all.”
Kate tried to protest and explain, but courage failed her. She only said, “Not yet, mother. I'm not fit to see him yet.”
“Say no more about it. Not to-day at all—to-morrow maybe,” said Grannie, and Kate clutched at the word, and answered eagerly—
“Yes, tomorrow, mother; to-morrow maybe.”
Before noon Philip had come again. Kate heard his horse's step on the road, trotting hard from the direction of Peel. He drew up at the porch, but did not alight, and Grannie went out to him.
“I'll not come in to-day, Mrs. Cregeen,” he said. “Does she continue to improve?”
“As nice as nice, sir,” said Grannie.
Kate crept out of bed, stole to the window, hid behind the curtains, and listened intently.
“What a mercy all goes well,” he said; Kate could hear the heaving of his breath. “Is Pete about?”
“No, but gone to Ramsey, sir,” said Grannie. “It's like you'll meet him if you are going on to Ballure.”
“I must be getting back to business,” said Philip, and the horse swirled across the road.
“Did you ride from Douglas on purpose, then?” said Grannie, and Philip answered with an audible effort—
“I was anxious. What an escape she has had! I could scarcely sleep last night for thinking of it.”
Kate put her hand to her throat to keep back the cry that was bubbling up, and her mother's voice came thick and deep.
“The Lord's blessing. Master Philip——” she began, but the horse's feet stamped out everything as it leapt to a gallop in going off.
Kate listened where she knelt until the last beat of the hoofs had died away in the distance, and then she crept back to bed and covered up her head in the clothes as before, but with a storm of other feelings. “He loves me,” she told herself with a thrill of the heart. “He loves me—he loves me still! And he will never, never, never see me married to anybody else.”
She felt an immense relief now, and suddenly found strength to think of facing Pete. It even occurred to her to send for him at once, as a first step towards removing the impression that the old relations were to remain. She would be quiet, she would be cold, she would show by her manner that Pete was impossible, she would break the news gently.
Pete came like the light at Nancy's summons. Kate heard him on the stairs whispering with Nancy and breathing heavily. Nancy was hectoring it over him and pulling him about to make him presentable.
“Here,” whispered Nancy, “take the redyng comb and lash your hair out, it's all through-others. And listen—you've got to be quiet. Promise me you'll be quiet. She's wake and low and nervous, so no kissing. D'ye hear me now, no kissing.”
“Aw, kissing makes no noise to spake of, woman,” whispered Pete; and then he was in the room.
Kate saw him come, a towering dark figure between her and the door. He did not speak at first, but slid down to the chair at the foot of the bed, modestly, meekly, reverently, as if he had entered a sanctuary. His hand rested on his knee, and she noticed that the wrist was hairy and tattooed with the three legs of Man.
“Is it you, Pete?” she asked; and then he said in a low tone, almost in a whisper, as if speaking to himself in a hush of awe—
“It's her own voice again! I've heard it in my drames these five years.”
He looked helplessly about him for a moment, fixed his watery eyes on Nancy as if he wanted to burst into sobs but dare not for fear of the noise, then turned on his chair and seemed on the point of taking to flight. But just at that instant his dog, which had followed him into the room, planted its forelegs on the counterpane and looked impudently into Kate's face.
“Down, Dempster, down!” cried Pete; and after that, the ice being broken by the sound of his voice, Pete was his own man once more.
“Is that your dog, Pete?” said Kate.
“Aw, no, Kate, but I'm his man,” said Pete. “He does what he likes with me, anyway. Caught me out in Kimber-ley and fetched me home.”
“Is he old?”
“Old, d'ye say? He's one of the lost ten tribes of dogs, and behaves as if he'd got to inherit the earth.”
She felt Pete's big black eyes shining on her.
“My gracious, Kitty, what a woman you're growing, though!” he said.
“Am I so much changed?” she asked.
“Changed, is it?” he cried. “Gough bless me heart! the nice little thing you were when we used to play fishermen together down at Cornaa Harbour—d'ye remember? The ould kipper-box rolling on a block for a boat at sea—do you mind it? Yourself houlding a bit of a broken broomstick in the rope handle for a mast, and me working the potato-dibber on the ground, first port and then starboard, for rudder and wind and oar and tide. 'Mortal dirty weather this, cap'n?' 'Aw, yes, woman, big sea extraordinary'—d'ye mind it, Kirry!”
Kate tried to laugh a little and to say what a long time ago it was since then. But Pete, being started, laughed uproariously, slapped his knee, and rattled on.
“Up at the mill, too—d'ye remember that now? Yourself with the top of a barrel for a flower basket, holding it 'kimbo at your lil hip and shouting, 'Violets! Swate violets! Fresh violets!'” (He mocked her silvery treble in his lusty baritone and roared with laughter.)
“And then me, woman, d'ye mind me?—me, with the pig-stye gate atop of my head for a fish-board, yelling, 'Mackerel! Fine ladies, fresh ladies, and bellies as big as bishops—Mack-er-el!' Aw, Kirry, Kirry! Aw, the dear ould times gone by! Aw, the changes, the changes!... Did Iknowyou then? Are you asking me did I know you when I found you in the glen? Did I know I was alive, Kitty? Did I know the wind was howling? Did I know my head was going round like a compass, and my heart thumping a hundred and twenty pound to the square inch? Did I kiss you and kiss you while you were lying there useless, and lift you up and hitch your poor limp arms around my neck, and carry you out of the dirty ould tholthan that was going to be the death of you—the first job I was doing on the island, too, coming back to it.... Lord save us, Kitty, what have I done?”
Kate had dropped back on the pillow, and was sobbing as if her heart would break, and seeing this, Nancy fell on Pete with loud reproaches, took the man by the shoulders and his dog by the neck, and pushed both out of the room.
“Out of it,” cried Nancy. “Didn't I tell you to be quiet? You great blethering omathaun, you shall come no more.”
Abashed, ashamed, humiliated, and quiet enough now, Pete went slowly down the stairs.
Late that night Kate heard Cæsar and her mother talking together as they were going to bed. Cæsar was saying—
“I got him on the track of a good house, and he went off to Ramsey this morning to put a sight on it.”
“Dear heart alive, father!” Grannie answered, “Pete isn't home till a week come Saturday.”
“The young man is warm on the wedding,” said Cæsar, “and he has money, and store is no sore.”
“But the girl's not fit for it, 'deed she isn't,” said Grannie.
“If she's wake,” said Cæsar, “shell be no worse for saying 'I will,' and when she's said it she'll have time enough to get better.”
Kate trembled with fear. The matter of her marriage with Pete was going on without her. A sort of supernatural power seemed to be pushing it along. Nobody asked if she wished it, nobody questioned that she did so. It was taken for granted that the old relations would stand. As soon as she could go about she would be expected to marry Pete. Pete himself would expect it, because he believed he had her promise; her mother would expect it, because she had always thought of it as a thing understood; her father would expect it, because Pete's prosperity had given him a new view of Pete's piety and pedigree; and Nancy Joe would expect it, too, if only because she was still haunted by her old bugbear, the dark shadow of Ross Christian. There was only one way to break down these expectations, and that was to speak out. But how was a girl to speak? What was she to say?
Kate pretended to be ill. Three days longer she lay, like a hunted wolf in its hole, keeping her bed from sheer dread of the consequences of leaving it. The fourth day was Sunday. It was morning, and the church bells were ringing. Cæsar had shouted from his bedroom for some one to tie his bow, then for some one to button his black gloves. He had gone off at length with the footsteps of the people stepping round to chapel. The first hymn had been started, and its doleful notes were trailing through the mill walls. Kate was propped up in bed, and the window of her room was open. Over the droning of the hymn she caught the sound of a horse's hoofs on the road. They stopped at a little distance, and then came on again, with the same two voices as before.
Pete was talking with great eagerness. “Plenty of house, aw plenty, plenty,” he was saying. “Elm Cottage they're calling it—the slate one with the ould fir-tree behind the Coort House and by the lane to Claughbane. Dry as a bone and clane as a gull's wing. You could lie with your back to the wall and ate off the floor. Taps inside and water as white as gin. I've been buying the cabin of the 'Mona's Isle' for a summer-house in the garden. Got a figurehead for the porch too, and I'll have an anchor for the gate before I'm done. Aw, I'm bound to have everything nice for her.”
There was a short silence, in which nothing was heard but the step of the horse, and then Philip said in a faltering voice, “But isn't this being rather in a hurry, Pete?”
“Short coorting's the best coorting, and ours has been long enough anyway,” said Pete. They had drawn up at the porch, and Pete's laugh came in at the window.
“But think how weak she is,” said Philip. “She hasn't even-left her bed yet, has she?”
“Well, yes, of coorse, sartenly,” said Pete, in a steadier voice, “if the girl isn't fit——”
“It's so sudden, you see,” said Philip. “Has she—has she—consented?”
“Not to say consented——” began Pete; and Philip took him up and said quickly, eagerly, hotly—
“She can't—I'm sure she can't.”
There was silence again, broken only by the horse's impatient pawing, and then Philip said more calmly, “Let Dr. Mylechreest see her first, at all events.”
“I'm not a man for skinning the meadow to the sod, no——” said Pete, in a doleful tone; but Kate heard no more.
She was trembling with a new thought. It was only a shadowy suggestion as yet, and at first she tried to beat it back. But it came again, it forced itself upon her, it mastered her, she could not resist it.
The way to break the fate that was pursuing her was to makePhilipspeak out! The way to stop the marriage with Pete was to compel Philip to marry her! He thought she would never consent to marry Pete—what if he were given to understand that she had consented. That was the way to gain the victory over Philip, the way to punish him!
He would not blame her—he would lay the blame at the door of chance, of fate, of her people. He would think they were forcing this marriage upon her—the mother out of love of Pete, the father out of love of Pete's money, and Nancy out of fear of Ross Christian. He would know that she could not struggle because she could not speak. He would believe she was yielding against her will, in spite of her love, in the teeth of their intention. He would think of her as a victim, as a martyr, as a sacrifice.
It was a deceit—a small deceit; it looked so harmless, too—so innocent, almost humorous, half ridiculous; and she was a woman, and she could not put it away. Love, love, love! It would be her excuse and her forgiveness. She had appealed to Philip himself and in vain. Now she would pretend to go on with her old relations. It was so little to do, and the effects were so certain. In jealousy and in terror Philip would step out of himself and claim her.
She had craft—all hungry things have craft. She had inklings of ambition, a certain love of luxury, and desire to be a lady. To get Philip was to get everything. Love would be satisfied, ambition fulfilled, the aims of refinement reached. Why not risk the great stake?
Nancy came to tidy the room, and Kate said, “Where's Pete all this time, I wonder?”
“Sitting in the fire-seat this half-hour,” said Nancy. “I don't know in the world what's come over the man. He's rocking and moaning there like a cow licking a dead calf.”
“Would he like to come up, think you?”
“Don't ask the man twice if you want him to say no,” said Nancy.
Blushing and stammering, and trying to straighten his black curls, Pete came at Nancy's call.
Kate had few qualms. The wound she had received from Philip had left her conscienceless towards Pete. Yet she turned her head a little sideways as she welcomed him.
“Are you better, then, Kirry?” said Pete timidly.
“I'm nearly as well as ever,” she answered.
“You are, though?” said Pete. “Then you'll be down soon, it's like, eh?”
“I hope so, Pete—quite soon.”
“And fit for anything, now—yes?”
“Oh, yes, fit for anything.”
Pete laughed from his heart like a boy. “I'll take a slieu round to Ballure and tell Philip immadiently.”
“Philip?” said Kate, with a look of inquiry.
“He was saying this morning you wouldn't be equal to it, Kirry.”
“Equal to what, Pete?”
“Getting—going—having—that's to say—well, you know, putting a sight on the parson himself one of these days, that's the fact.” And, to cover his confusion, Pete laughed till the scraas of the roof began to snip.
There was a moment's pause, and then Kate said, with a cough and a stammer and her head aside, “Is that soverytiring, Pete?”
Pete leapt from his chair and laughed again like a man demented. “D'ye say so, Kitty? The word then, darling—the word in my ear—as soft as soft——”
He was leaning over the bed, but Kate drew away from him, and Nancy pulled him back, saying, “Get off with you, you goosey gander! What for should you bother a poor girl to know if sugar's sweet, and if she's willing to change a sweetheart for a husband?”
It was done. One act—nay, half an act; a word—nay, no word at all, but only silence. The daring venture was afoot.
Grannie came up with Kate's dinner that day, kissed her on both cheeks, felt them hot, wagged her head wisely, and whispered, “I know—you needn't tellme!”
The last hymn was sung, Cæsar came home from chapel, changed back from his best to his work-day clothes, and then there was talking and laughing in the kitchen amid the jingling of plates and the vigorous rattling of knives and forks.
“Phil must be my best man,” said Pete. “He'll be back to Douglas now, but I'll get you to write me a line, Cæsar, and ask him.”
“Do you hold with long engagements, Pete?” said Grannie.
“A week,” said Pete, with the air of a judge; “not much less anyway—not of a rule, you know.”
“You goose,” cried Nancy, “it must be three Sundays for the banns.”
“Then John the Clerk shall get them going this evening,” said Pete. “Nancy had the pull of me there, Grannie. Not being in the habit of getting married, I clane forgot about the banns.”
John the Clerk came in the afternoon, and there was some lusty disputation.
“We must have bridesmaids and wedding-cakes, Pete—it's only proper,” said Nancy.
“Aw, yes, and tobacco and rum, and everything respectable,” said Pete.
“And the parson—mind it's the parson now,” said Grannie; “none of their nasty high-bailiffs. I don't know in the world how a dacent woman can rest in her bed——”
“Aw, the parson, of coorse—and the parson's wife, maybe,” said Pete.
“I think I can manage it for you for to-morrow fortnight,” said John the Clerk impressively, and there was some clapping of hands, quickly suppressed by Cæsar, with mutterings of—
“Popery! clane Popery, sir! Can't a person commit matrimony without a parson bothering a man?”
Then Cæsar squared his elbows across the table and wrote the letter to Philip. Pete never stood sponsor for anything so pious.
“Respected and Honoured Sir,—I write first to thee that it hath been borne in on my mind (strong to believe the Lord hath spoken) to marry on Katherine Cregeen, only beloved daughter of Cæsar Cregeen, a respectable man and a local preacher, in whose house I tarry, being free to use all his means of grace. Wedding to-morrow fortnight at Kirk Christ, Lezayre, eleven o'clock forenoon, and the Lord make it profitable to my soul.—With love and-reverence, thy servant, and I trust the Lord's, Peter Quilliam.”
Having written this, Cæsar read it aloud with proper elevation of pitch. Grannie wiped her eyes, and Pete said, “Indited beautiful, sir—only you haven't asked him.”
“My pen's getting crosslegs,” said Cæsar, “but that'll do for an N.B.”
“N. B.—Will you come for my best man?”
Then there was more talk and more laughter. “You're a lucky fellow, Pete,” said Pete himself. “My sailor, you are, though. She's as sweet as clover with the bumbees humming over it, and as warm as a gorse bush when the summer's gone.”
And then, affection being infectious beyond all maladies known to mortals, Nancy Joe was heard to say, “I believe in my heart I must be having a man myself before long, or I'll be losing the notion.”
“D'ye hear that, boys?” shouted Pete. “Don't all spake at once.”
“Too late—I've lost it,” said Nancy, and there was yet more laughter.
To put an end to this frivolity, Cæsar raised a hymn, and they sang it together with cheerful voices. Then Cæsar prayed appropriately, John the Clerk improvised responses, and Pete went out and sat on the bottom step in the lobby and smoked up the stairs, so that Kate in the bedroom should not feel too lonely.
Meanwhile Kate, overwhelmed with shame, humiliation, self-reproach, horror of herself, and dread of everything, lay with cheeks ablaze and her head buried in the bedclothes. She had no longer any need to pretend to be sick; she was now sick in reality. Fate had threatened her. She had challenged it. They were gambling together. The stake was her love, her life, her doom.
By the next day she had worked herself into a nervous fever. Dr. Mylechreest came to see her, unbidden of the family. He was one of those tall, bashful men who, in their eagerness to be gone, seem always to have urgent business somewhere else. After a single glance at her and a few muttered syllables, he went off hurriedly, as if some one were waiting for him round the corner. But on going downstairs he met Cæsar, who asked him how he found her.
“Feverish, very; keep her in bed,” he answered. “As for this marriage, it must be put off. She's exciting herself, and I won't answer for the consequences. The thing has fallen too suddenly. To tell you the truth—this way, Mr. Cregeen—I am afraid of a malady of the brain.”
“Tut, tut, doctor,” said Cæsar.
“Very well, if you know better. Good-day! But let the wedding wait.Traa dy liooar—time enough, Mr. Cregeen. A right good Manx maxim for once. Put it off—put it off!”
“It's not my putting off, doctor. What can you do with a man that's wanting to be married? You can't bridle a horse with pincers.”
But when the doctor was gone, Cæsar said to Grannie, “Cut out the bridesmaids and the wedding-cakes and the fiddles and the foolery, and let the girl be married immadiently.”
“Dear heart alive, father, what's all the hurry?” said Grannie.
“And Lord bless my soul, what's all the fuss?” said Cæsar. “First one objecting this, then another objecting that, as if everybody was intarmined to stop the thing. It's going on, I'm telling you; d'ye hear me? There's many a slip—but no matter. What's written with the pen can't be cut out with the axe, so lave it alone, the lot of you.”
Kate was in an ecstasy of exultation. The doctor had been sent by Philip. It was Philip who was trying to stop the marriage. He would never be able to bear it; he would claim her soon. It might be to-day, it might be to-morrow, it might be the next day. The odds were with her. Fate was being worsted. Thus she clung to her blind faith that Philip would intervene.
That was Monday, and on Tuesday morning Philip came again. He was very quiet, but the heart has ears, and Kate heard him. Pete's letter had reached him, and she could see his white face. After a few words of commonplace conversation, he drew Pete out of the house. What had he got to say? Was he thinking that Pete must be stopped at all hazards? Was he about to make a clean breast of it? Was he going to tell all? Impossible! He could not; he dared not; it washersecret.
Pete came back to the house alone, looking serious and even sad. Kate heard him exchange a few words with her father as they passed through the lobby to the kitchen. Cæsar was saying—
“Stand on your own head, sir, that's my advice to you.”
In the intensity of her torment she could not rest. She sent for Pete.
“What about Philip?” she said. “Is he coming? What has he been telling you?”
“Bad news, Kate—very bad,” said Pete.
There was a fearful silence for a moment. It was like the awful hush at the instant when the tide turns, and you feel as if something has happened to the world. Then Kate hardened her face and said, “What is it?”
“He's ill, and wants to go away in a week. He can't come to the wedding,'' said Pete.
“Is that all?” said Kate. Her heart leapt for joy. She could not help it—she laughed. She saw through Philip's excuse. It was only his subterfuge—he thought Pete would not marry without him.
“Aw, but you never seen the like, though, Kirry,” said Pete; “he was that white and wake and narvous. Work and worry, that's the size of it. There's nothing done in this world without paying the price of it, and that's as true as gospel. 'The sea's calling me, Pete,' says he, and then he laughed, but it was the same as if a ghost itself was grinning.”
In the selfishness of her enfeebled spirit, Kate still rejoiced. Philip was suffering. It was another assurance that he would come to her relief.
“When does he go?” she asked.
“On Tuesday,” answered Pete.
“Isn't there a way of getting a Bishop's license to marry in a week?” said Kate.
“But will you, though?” said Pete, with a shout of joy.
“Ask Philip first. No use changing if Philip can't come.”
“He shall—he must. I won't take No.”
“You may kiss me now,” said Kate, and Pete plucked her up into his arms and kissed her.
She was heart-dead to him yet, from the wound that Philip had dealt her, but at the touch of his lips a feeling of horror seemed to cramp all her limbs. With a shudder she crept down in the bed and hid her face, hating herself, loathing herself, wishing herself dead.
He stood a moment by her side, crying like a big boy in his great happiness. “I don't know in the world what she sees in me to be so fond of me, but that's the way with the women always, God bless them!”
She did not lift her face, and he stepped quietly to the door. Half-way through he turned about and raised one arm over his head. “God's rest and God's peace be with you, and may the man that gets you keep a clane heart and a clane hand, and be fit for the good woman he's won for his wife.”
At the next minute he went tearing down the stairs, and the kitchen rang with his laughter.