“... He, the Spirit Himself, may comeWhen all the nerve of sense is numb.”
Philip had not slept at Ballure. The house was in darkness as he passed. He was riding to Douglas. It is sixteen miles between town and town, six of them over the steep headland of Kirk Maughold. Before he reached the top of the ascent he had been an hour on the road, and the night was near to morning. He had seen no one after leaving Ramsey, except a drunken miner with his bundle on his stick, marching home to a tipsy travesty of some brave song.
His self-righteousness was overthrown; his pride was in the dust. Since he returned home, he had struggled to feel strong and easy in the sense of being an honourable man; but now he was thrown violently out of the path in which he had meant to walk rightly. What he was about to do was necessary, was inevitable, yet in his relation to Kate he was in the position of an immoral man, a betrayer, an adulterer, with a vulgar secret, which he must support by lying and share with servants. And what was the outlook? What would be the end? Here was a situation from which there was no escape. Let there be no false glamour, no disguise, no self-deception. On the eve of his promotion to the dignities and responsibilities of a Judge, he was taking the first step down on the course of the criminal!
The moon was shining at the full. It was low down in the sky, on his right, and casting his shadow on to the road. He walked his horse up the long hill. The even pace, the quiet of the night, the drowsy sounds of unseen stream and far-off murmuring sea overcame him in spite of himself, and he dozed in the saddle. As he reached the hilltop the level step of the horse awoke him, and he knew that he was passing that desolate spot on the border of parish and parish which is known as Tom Alone's.
Opening his eyes, without realising that he had slept, he thought he became aware of another horse and another rider walking by his side. They were on the left of him, going pace for pace, stepping along with him like his shadow. “Itismy shadow,” he thought, and he forced up his head to look. Nothing was there but a whitewashed wall that fenced a sheepfold. The moon had gone under the mountains on the right, and the night would have been dark but for the stars. With an astonishment near to terror, Philip gripped the saddle with his quaking knees, and broke his horse into a trot.
When the hard ride had brought warmth to his blood and a glow to his cheeks, he told himself he had been the victim of fancy. It was nothing; it was a delusion of the sight; a mere shadow cast off by his distempered brain. He was passing at a walking pace through Laxey by this time, and as the horse's feet beat up the echoes of the sleeping town, his heart grew brave.
Next day, at noon, he was talking with his servant, Jem-y-Lord, in his rooms in Athol Street. He had lately become tenant of the entire house. They were in his old chambers on the first floor, looking on to the churchyard.
“I may rely on you, Jemmy?”
“You may, Deemster.”
His voice was low and husky, his eyes were down, he was fumbling the papers on the table. “Get the carriage, a landau, from Shimmin's, but drive it yourself. Be at Government offices at four—we'll go by St. John's. If there is any attempt at Ramsey to take the horse out of the carriage, resist it. I will alight at the head of the town. Then drive on to the lane between the chapel and Elm Cottage. The moment the lady joins you, start away. Return to Laxey—are the rooms upstairs ready?”
“They will be.”
“The two in front of your own, and the little parlour behind this. We shall need no other servants—the lady will be housekeeper.”
“I quite understand, Deemster.”
Philip turned his face aside and spoke thickly, “And you know what name——”
“I know what name, Deemster.”
“You have no objection?”
“None whatever, Deemster.”
Phillip drew a long breath. “I am not Deemster yet, Jemmy. Perhaps it might have been... but God knows. You are a good fellow—I shall not forget it.”
He made a motion as if to dismiss the man, but Jemmy did not go.
“Beg pardon, your honor—”
“Yes?”
“Your honour has eaten nothing at breakfast—and the bed wasn't slept in last night.”
“I was riding late—then I had work to do.”
“But I heard your foot on the floor—-it woke me times.”
“I may have speeches to make to-day.... Fetch me a glass of water.”
Jemmy brought water-bottle and glass. As Philip took the water an icy numbness seemed to seize his arm. “I—well, I—I declare I can't lift—ah! thanks.”
The man raised Philip's arm to his mouth; the glass rattled against his teeth while he drank.
“Pardon, your honour. You're looking ten years older lately. The sooner this day is over the better.”
“Sleep, Jemmy—I only want sleep. I must have a long, long sleep at Ballure to-night.”
He left the house at three minutes to three, carrying his cloak over his arm. It was a hot day at the beginning of June, and when he stepped out at the door the air of the street smote his face like a blast from an open furnace. He reeled and almost fell. The sun's heat was like a load on his head, its dazzling rays made his sight dim, and he had a sound in his ears like running water. As he walked down the street he caught his wandering reflection in the shop windows. “Jemmy was right,” he thought. “My worst enemy would not accuse me of looking too young to-day.”
There was a small crowd about the entrance to Government offices. Carriages were driving up, discharging their occupants and going on. The Bishop, the Attorney-General, finally the Governor with his wife and daughter passed into the house. In the commotion of these arrivals Philip reached the door unobserved. When he was recognised, there was a sudden hush of voices, and then a low buzz of gossip. He walked through with a firm step, going in alone, all eyes upon him.
The doorway opens on a narrow passage, which is neither wide nor very light, and the sunshine without made the gloom within more grey and uncertain. As Philip stepped over the threshold he was conscious that somebody was coming out. When he had taken two paces more, he drew up sharply with the sense of walking into a mirror. At the next instant he saw that what he had taken for the reflection of his own face in a glass was the actual face of another man.
The man was coming out as he went in. They were approaching each other. At two paces more they were side by side. He looked at the man with creeping horror. The man looked at him with amazement and dread. Thus, eye to eye, they crossed and passed. Then each turned his head over his shoulder and looked after the other, Philip stepping into the gloom, the stranger striding into the light.
At the next moment the narrow doorway was darkened by a ponderous figure rolling through. Then a heavy hand fell on Philip's shoulder, and a hearty voice exclaimed, “Hilloa, Christian; proud to see you, boy! You've outstripped old stick-in-the-mud; but I always knew you would lead me the way though.... Funking a bit, are you? Hands like ice, anyway. Come along—nothing to be nervous about—we're not going to give you the dose of Illiam Dhone—-don't martyr the Christians these days, you know.”
Is was Philip's old master, the Clerk of the Rolls. Taking Philip's arm, he was for swinging him along; but Philip, still looking towards the street, said falteringly, “Did you, perhaps, see a man—a young man—going out at the door?”
“When?”
“As you came in.”
“Was there?” said the Clerk dubiously; then, as by a sudden light, “Did he wear a round hat and a monkey-jacket?”
“Maybe—I hardly know—I didn't observe.”
“That'll be the man. He's been at me half the morning for admission to the Council. Said he'd known you all his life. Bough as a thorn-bush, but somehow I couldn't say no to the fellow at last. He ought to be inside, though.”
“It's nothing,” thought Philip. “Only another shadow from a tired brain. Jemmy's talk about my altered looks—the reflection in the shop-windows—the sudden gloom after the dazzling sunlight—that's all, that's all. Sleep, I want sleep.”
When the Governor took his seat with the first Deemster on his right, and motioned Philip to the chair on his left, an involuntary murmur passed over the chamber at the contrast there presented—the one Deemster very old, with round, russet face, quick, gleaming eyes, and a comfortable, youthful, even merry expression; the other, very young, with long, pallid, powerful face, large eyes, and a tired look of age.
Philip presented his commission received from the Home Secretary, and the oath of office was administered to him. Kissing a stained copy of a leather-bound Testament, he repeated the words after the Governor in a thick croak that seemed to hack the air—
“By this book, and by the holy contents thereof, and by the wonderful works that God hath miraculously wrought in heaven above and on the earth beneath in six days and seven nights, I, Philip Christian, do swear that I will, without respect of favour or friendship, love or hate, loss or gain, consanguinity or affinity, envy or malice, execute the laws of this Isle justly, betwixt our Sovereign Lady the Queen and her subjects within this Isle, and betwixt party and party, as indifferently as the herring backbone doth lie in the midst of the fish.”
As Philip pronounced these words, he was conscious of only one face in that assembly. It was not the face of the Governor, of the Bishop, of any dignitary of Church or State—but a rugged, eager, dark face over a black beard in the grip of a great brown hand, with sparkling eyes, parted lips, and a look of boyish pride—it was the face of Pete.
“It only remains for me,” said the Governor, “to congratulate your Honour on the high office to which it has pleased Her Majesty to appoint you, and to wish you long life and health to fulfil its duties, with blameless credit to yourself and distinction to your country.”
There was some other speaking, and then Philip replied. He spoke clearly, firmly, and well. A reference to his grandfather provoked applause. His modesty and natural manner made a strong impression. “His Excellency is not so far wrong, after all,” was the common whisper.
Some further business, and the Council broke up for general gossip. Then, on the pavement outside, while the carriages were coming in line, there were renewed congratulations, invitations, and warnings. The Governor invited Philip to dinner. He excused himself, saying he had promised to dine with his aunt at Ballure. The ladies warned him to spare himself, and recommended a holiday; and then the Clerk of the Rolls, proud as a peacock, strutting here and there and everywhere, and assuming the airs of a guardian, cried, “Can't yet, though, for he holds his first court in Ramsey tomorrow morning.... Put on the cloak, Christian. It will be cold driving. Good men are scarce.”
An open landau came up at length, with Jem-y-Lord on the box-seat, and Pete walking by the horse's head, smoothing its neck and tickling its ears.
“Why, you were talking of the young man, Christian, and behold ye, here's the great fellow himself. Well, young chap,” slapping Pete on the back, “see your Deemster take the oath, eh?”
“He's my cousin,” said Philip.
“Cousin! Is he, then—can he perhaps be—Ah! yes, of course, certainly———” The good man stammered and stopped, remembering the marriage of Philip's father. He opened the carriage door and stood aside for Philip, but Philip said—
“Step in, Pete;” and, with a shamefaced look, Pete rolled into the carriage. Philip took the seat beside him, amid a buzz of voices from the people standing about the door.
“Well, as you like; good day, then, boy, good day,” said the Clerk of the Rolls, clashing the door back. The carriage began to move.
“Good day, your Honour,” cried several out of the crowd.
Philip raised his hat. The hats of the men went up to him. Some of the girls were wiping their eyes.
While Pete and Philip were driving over the road from Douglas, Kate was sitting with the child on her lap before the fire in Elm Cottage. Her eyes were restless, her manner agitated. She looked out at the window from time to time. The setting sun behind the house still held the day with horizontal shafts of light in the spring green of the transparent leaves.
“Wouldn't you like to see the procession to-night, Nancy?” she said.
“Aw, mortal,” said Nancy. “But I won't get lave, though. 'Take care of my two girls,' says he——”
“You may go, Nancy; I'll see to baby,” said Kate.
“But the man himself, woman; he'll be coming home as hungry as a hunter.”
“I'll see to his supper, too,” said Kate. “Carry the key with you that you may let yourself in, and be back at half-past seven.”
Then Nancy began to fly about the kitchen like sputter-ings out of the frying-pan—filling the kettle, lighting the lamp, and getting together the baby's night-clothes. Kate watched her and glanced at the clock.
“Was the town quiet when you were out for the bacon, Nancy?” she said.
“Quiet enough,” said Nancy. “Everybody flying off Le-zayre way already—except what were making for the quay.”
“Is the steamer sailing to-night, then?''
“Yes, thePeveril; but not water enough to float her till half-past seven, they were saying. Here's the lil one's nightdress, and here's her binder, bless her—just big enough for a bandage for a person's wrist if she sprained it churning.”
“Lay them on the fender to air, Nancy—I'll not undress baby yet awhile. And see—it's nearly seven.”
“I'll be pinning my shawl on and away like the wind,” said Nancy. “The bogh!” she said, with the pin between her teeth. “She's off again. Do you really think, now, the angels in heaven are as sweet and innocent, Kirry? I don't. They can't if they're grown up. And having to climb Jacob's ladder, poor things, they must be. Then, if they're men—but that's ridiculous, anyway.”
“The clock is striking, Nancy. No use going when everything's over,” said Kate, and the foot with which she rocked the child went faster now that the little one was asleep.
“Sakes alive! Let me tie the strings of my bonnet, woman. Pity you can't come yourself, Kitty. But if they're worth their salt they'll be whipping round this way and giving you a lil tune, anyway.”
“Have you got the key, Nancy?”
“Yes, and I'll be back in an hour. And mind you put baby to bed soon, and mind you—and mind you——”
With as many warnings as if she had been mistress and Kate the servant, Nancy backed herself out of the house. It was now dark outside.
Kate rose immediately, put the child in the cradle, and began to lay the table for Pete's supper—the cruet, the plates, the teapot on the hob to warm, and then—by force of habit—two cups and saucers. But sight of the cups awakened her to painful consciousness. She put one of them back in the cupboard, broke the coal on the fire, settled the kettle up to the blaze, fixed the Dutch oven with three rashers of bacon before the bars, then lit a candle, and, with a nervous look around, turned to go upstairs.
In the bedroom she drew on her cloak, pinned her hat and veil with trembling fingers, then took her purse from her pocket and emptied its contents onto the dressing-table.
“Not mine,” she thought. And standing before the mirror at that moment, she caught sight of her earrings. “I must take nothing of his,” she told herself, and she raised her hands to her ears. Then her heart smote her. “As if Pete would ever think of such things,” she thought. “No, not if I took everything he has in the world. And mustIbe thinking of them?... Yet I cannot—I will not take them with me.”
She opened a drawer and hurried everything into it—the money, the earrings, the keeper off her finger, and then she paused at the touch of the wedding-ring. A superstitious instinct restrained her. Yet the ring was the badge of her broken covenant. “With this ring I thee wed——” She tore off the wedding-ring also, and cast it with the rest.
“He will find them,” she thought. “There will be nothing else to tell him what has happened. He will come, and I shall be gone. He will call, and there will be no answer. He will look for me, and I shall be lost to him for ever. Not a word left behind. Not a line to say, 'Thank you and good-bye and God bless you, dear Pete, for all your love and goodness to rae.”'
It was cruel—very cruel—yet what could she write? What could she say that had not better be left unsaid? The least syllable—no, the uncertainty would be kinder. Perhaps Pete would think she was dead—perhaps that she had destroyed herself. Even that would not be so bitter as the truth. He would get over it—he would become reconciled. “No,” she thought, “I can write nothing—I can leave no message.”
She shut the drawer quickly, and picked up the candle. As she did so, the shadow of herself moved about her. It mounted from the floor to the wall, from the wall to the ceiling. When she walked it seemed to be on top of her, hanging over her, pressing down on her, crushing her. She grew cold and sick, and hastened to the door. The room was full of other shadows—the memories of sleepless nights and of painful awakenings. These stared at her from every familiar thing—the watch ticking in its stand on the mantelpiece, the handle of the wardrobe, the pink curtains of the bed, the white pillow beneath them. She felt like a frightened child. With a terrified glance over her shoulder she crept out of the room.
Being downstairs again, she breathed more freely. There was light all about her, and the hall-parlour was bright and warm. The kettle was now singing in the cheerful blaze, the cat was purring on the rug, and there was a smell of bacon slowly frying. She looked at the clock—it was a quarter after seven. “Time to waken baby,” she thought.
She took from a chest the child's outdoor clothes—a robe, a pelisse, and a white hood. Her fingers had touched a scarlet hood in a cardboard box, but “not that” she thought, and left it. She spread the clothes about her chair, and then lifted the little one from the cradle to her pillowing arm. The child awoke as she raised it, and made a fretful cry, which she smothered in a gurgling kiss.
“I can love the darling without shame now,” she thought. “It's sweet face will reproach me no more.”
With soft cooings at the baby's cheek, she was stooping to take the robe that lay at her feet, when her eyes fell on the round place in the cradle where the child had been. That made her think again of Pete. He would come home and find the little nest cold and empty. It would kill him; it would be a second bereavement. Was it not enough that she should go away herself? Must she rob him of the child as well? He loved it; he doted on it. It was the light of his eyes, the joy of his life. To lose it would be a blow like the blow of death.
Yet could a mother leave her child behind her? Impossible! The full tide of motherhood came over her, and its tender selfishness swept down everything. “I cannot,” she thought; “come what may, I cannot and I will not leave her.” And then she reached her hand for the child's pelisse.
“It would be a kind of atonement, though,” she thought. To leave the little one to Pete would be making amends in some sort for the wrong that she was doing him. To deny herself the sight of the child's sweet face day by day and hour by hour—that would be a punishment also, and she deserved to be punished. “Can I leave her?” she thought. “Can I? Oh, what mother could bear it? No, no—never, never! And yet I ought—I must—Oh, this is terrible!”
In the midst of this agony of uncertainty, thinking of Pete and of the wrong she had done him, yet pressing the child to her breast with trembling arms, as if some one were tearing it away, the babe itself settled everything. Making some inarticulate whimper of communication, it nuzzled up to her, its eyes closed, but its head working against her bosom with the instinct of suckling, though it had never sucked.
“I'm only half a mother, after all,” she thought.
The highest joys, the deepest rights of motherhood had been denied to her—the child taking from the mother, the mother giving to the child, the child and the mother one—: this had not been hers.
“My little baby can live without me,” she thought. “If I leave her, she will never miss me.”
She nearly broke down at that thought, and almost let her purpose slip. It was like God's punishment in advance, God's hand directing her—thus to withdraw the child from dependence on herself.
“Yes, I must leave her with Pete,” she thought.
She put the child back into the cradle, half dressed as it was, and rocked it until it slept again. Then she hung over the tiny bed as a mother hangs over the little coffin that is soon to be shut up from her eyes for ever. Her tears rained down on the small counterpane. “My sweet baby I my little Katherine! I may never kiss you again—never see you any more'—you may grow up to be a woman and know nothing of your mother!”
The clock ticked loud in the quiet room—it was twenty-five minutes past seven.
“One kiss more, my little darling. If they ever tell you... they'll say because your mother left you... Oh, will she think I did not love her? Hush!”
Through the walls of the house there came the sound of a band playing at a distance. She looked at the clock again—it was nearly half-past seven. Almost at the same moment there was the rumble of carriage-wheels on the road. They stopped in the lane that ran between the chapel and the end of the garden.
Kate rose from her knees and opened the door softly. The house had been as a dungeon to her, and she was flying from it like a prisoner escaping. A shrill whistle pierced the air. ThePeverilwas leaving the quay. Through the streets there was a sound as of water running over stones. It was the scuttling of the feet of the townspeople as they ran to meet the procession.
She stepped out. The garden was dark and quiet as a prison yard; Hardly a leaf stirred, but the moon was breaking through the old fir-tree as she lifted her troubled face to the untroubled sky. She stood and listened. The band was coming nearer. She could hear the thud of the big drum.
Boom! Boom! Boom!
Pete was there. He was helping at Philip's triumph. That was the beat of his great heart made audible.
At this her own heart stopped for a moment. She grew chill at the thought of the brave man who asked no better lot than to love and cherish her, and at the memory of the other upon whose mercy she had cast herself. The band stopped. There was a noise like the breaking of a mighty rocket in the sky. The people were cheering and clapping hands. Then a clearer sound struck her ear. It was the clock inside the house chiming the half-hour.
Nancy would be back soon.
Kate listened intently, inclining her head inwards. If the child had awakened at that instant, if it had stirred and cried, she must have gone back for good. She returned for one moment and flung herself over the cradle again. One spasm more of lingering tenderness. “Good-bye, my little one! I am leaving you with him, darling, because he loves you dearly. You will grow up and be a good, good girl to him always. Good-bye, my pet! My precious, my precious! You will reward him for all he has done for me. You are half of myself, dearest—the innocent half. Yes, you will wipe out your mother's sin. You will be all he thinks I am, but never have been. Farewell, my sweet Katherine, my little, darling baby—good-bye—farewell—good-bye!”
She leapt up and fled out of the house at last, on tiptoe, like a thief, pulling the door after her.
When she heard the click of the lock she felt both wretchedness and exultation—immense agony and immense relief. If little Katherine were to cry now, she could not return to her. The door was closed, the house was shut, the prison was left behind. And behind her, too, were the treachery, the duplicity, and deceit of ten stifling months.
She hurried through the garden to a side-door in the wall leading to the lane. The path was like a wave of the sea to her stumbling feet. Her breathing was short, her sight was weak, her temples were beating audibly. Half across the garden something touched her dress, and she made a faint scream. It was Pete's dog, Dempster. He was looking up at her out of the darkness of the bushes. By the light through the blind of the house she could see his bat's ears and watchful eyes.
Boom! Boom! Boom!
The band had begun again. It was coming nearer. Philip! Philip! He was her only refuge now. All else was a blank.
The side-door had been little used. Its hinges and bolt were rusty and stiff. She broke her nails in opening it. From the other side came the light jingle of a curb chain, and over the wall hovered a white sheet of smoking light.
The carriage was in the lane, and the driver—Philip's servant, Jem-y-Lord—stood with the door open. Kate stumbled on the step and fell into the seat. The door was closed.
Then a new thought smote her. It was about the child, about Philip, about Pete. In leaving the little one behind her, though she had meant it so unselfishly, she had done the one thing that must be big with consequences. It would bring its penalty, its punishment, its retribution. Stop! She would go back even yet. Her face was against the glass; she was struggling with the strap. But the carriage was moving. She heard the rumble of the wheels; it was like a deafening reverberation from the day of doom. Then her senses dwaled away and the carriage drove on.
Outside Ballure House there was a crowd which covered the garden, the fence, the high-road, and the top of the stone wall opposite. The band had ceased to play, and the people were shouting, clapping hands, and cheering. At the door—which was open—Philip stood bareheaded, and a shaft of the light in the house behind him lit up a hundred of the eager faces gathered in the darkness. He raised his hand for silence, but it was long before he was allowed to speak. Salutations rugged, rough—almost rude—but hearty to the point of homeliness, and affectionate to the length of familiarity, flew at his head from every side. “Good luck to you, boy!”—“Bravo for Ramsey!”—“The Christians for your life!”—“A chip of the ould block—Dempster Christian the Sixth!”—“Hush, man, he's spaking!”—“Go it, Phil!”—“Give it fits, boy!”—“Hush! hush!”
“Fellow-townsmen,” said Philip—his voice swung like a quivering bell over a sea,—“you can never know how much your welcome has moved me. I cannot say whether in my heart of hearts I am more proud of it or more ashamed. To be ashamed of it altogether would dishonouryou, and to be too proud of it would dishonourme, I am not worthy of your faith and good-fellowship. Ah!”—he raised his hand to check a murmur of dissent (the crowd was now hushed from end to end)—“let me utter the thought of all. In honouring me you are thinking of others also ('No,' 'Yes'); you are thinking of my people—above all, of one who was laid under the willows yonder, a wrecked, a broken, a disappointed man—my father, God rest him! I will not conceal it from you—his memory has been my guide, his failures have been my lightship, his hopes my beacon, his love my star. For good or for evil, my anchor has been in the depths of his grave. God forbid that I should have lived too long under the grasp of a dead hand. It was my aim to regain what he had lost, and this day has witnessed its partial reclamation. God grant I may not have paid too dear for such success.”
There were cries of “No, sir, no.”
He smiled faintly and shook his head. “Fellow-countrymen, you believe I am worthy of the name I bear. There is one among you, an old comrade, a tried and trusted friend, whose faith would be a spur if it were not a reproach——”
His voice was breaking, but still it pealed over the sea of heads. “Well, I will try to do my duty—from this hour onwards you shall see me try. Fellow-Manxmen, you will help me for the honour of the place I fill, for the sake of our little island, and—yes, and for my own sake also, I know you will—to be a good man and an upright judge. But”—he faltered, his voice could barely support itself—“but if it should ever appear that your confidence has been misplaced—if in the time to come I should seem to be unworthy of this honour, untrue to the oath I took to-day to do God's justice between man and man, a wrongdoer, not a righter of the wronged, a whited sepulchre where you looked for a tower of refuge—remember, I pray of you, my countrymen, remember, much as you may be suffering then, there will be one who will be suffering more—that one will be myself.”
The general impression that night was that the Deemster's speech had not been a proper one. Breaking up with some damp efforts at the earlier enthusiasm, the people complained that they were like men who had come for a jig and were sent home in a wet blanket. There should have been a joke or two, a hearty word of congratulation, a little natural glorification of Ramsey, and a quiet slap at Douglas and Peel and Castletown, a few fireworks, a rip-rap or two, and some general illumination. “But sakes alive! the solemn the young Dempster was! And the melancholy! And the mystarious!”
“Chut!” said Pete. “There's such a dale of comic in you, boys. Wonder in the world to me you're not kidnapped for pantaloonses. Go home for all and wipe your eyes, and remember the words he's been spaking. I'm not going to forget them myself, anyway.”
Handing over the big drum to little Jonaique, Pete turned to go into the house. Auntie Nan was in the hall, hopping like a canary about Philip, in a brown silk dress that rustled like withered ferns, hugging him, drawing him down to the level of her face, and kissing him on the forehead. The tears were raining over the autumn sunshine of her wrinkled cheeks, and her voice was cracking between a laugh and a cry.
“My boy! My dear boy! My boy's boy! My own boy's own boy!”
Philip freed himself at length, and went upstairs without turning his head, and then Auntie Nan saw Pete standing in the doorway.
“Is it you, Pete?” she said with an effort. “Won't you come in for a moment? No?”
“A minute only, then—just to wish you joy, Miss Christian, ma'am,” said Pete.
“And you, too, Peter. Ah!” she said, with a bird-like turn of the head, “you must be a proud man to-night, Pete.”
“Proud isn't the word for it, ma'am—I'm clane beside myself.”
“He took a fancy to you when you were only a little barefooted boy, Pete.”
“So he did, ma'am.”
“And now that he's Deemster itself he owns you still.”
“Aw, lave him alone for that, ma'am.”
“Did you hear what he said about you in his speech. It isn't everybody in his place would have done that before all, Pete.”
“'Deed no, ma'am.”
“He's true to his friends, whatever they are.”
“True as steel.”
The maid was carrying the dishes into the dining-room, and Auntie Nan said in a strained way, “You won't stay to dinner, Pete, will you? Perhaps you want to get home to the mistress. Well, home is best for all of us, isn't it? Martha, I'll tell the Deemster myself that dinner is on the table. Well, good-night, Peter. I'm always so glad to see you.”
She was whisking about to go upstairs, but Pete had taken one step into the dining-room, and was gazing round with looks of awe.
“Lord alive, Miss Christian, ma'am, what feelings now-barefooted boy, you say? You're right there, and cold and hungry too, sleeping in the gable-house with the cow, and not getting much but the milk I was staling from her, and a leathering at the ould man for that. Philip fetched me in here one evenin'—that was the start, ma'am. See that pepper-and-salt egg on the string there? It's a Tommy Noddy's. Philip got it nesting up Gob-ny-Garvain. Nearly cost him his life, though. You see, ma'am, Tommy Noddy has only one, and she fights like mad for it. We were up forty fathom and better, atop of a cave, and had two straight rocks below us in the sea, same as an elephant's hoofs, you know, walking out on the blue floor. And Phil was having his lil hand on the ledge where the egg was keeping, when swoop came the big white wings atop of his bare head. If I hadn't had a stick that day, ma'am, it would have been heaven help the pair of us. The next minute Tommy Noddy was going splash down the cliffs, all feathers and blood together, or Philip wouldn't have lived to be Dempster.... Aw, frightened you, have I, ma'am, for all it's so long ago? The heart's a quare thing, now, isn't it? Got no yesterday nor to-morrow neither. Well, good-night, ma'am.” Pete was making for the door, when he looked down and said, “What's this, at all? Down, Dempster, down!”
The dog had came trotting into the hall as Pete was going out. He was perking up his big ears and wagging his stump of a tail in front of him.
“My dog, ma'am? Yes, ma'am, and like its master in some ways. Not much of itself at all, but it has the blood in it, though, and maybe it'll come out better in the next generation. Looking for me, are you, Dempster? Let's be taking the road, then.”
“Perhaps you're wanted at home, Pete?”
“Wouldn't trust. Good night, ma'am.” Auntie Nan hopped upstairs in her rustling dress, relieved and glad in the sweet selfishness of her love to get rid of Pete and have Philip to herself.
Pete went off whistling in the darkness, with the dog driving ahead of him. “I'm to blame, though,” he thought. “Should have gone home directly.”
The town was now quiet, the streets were deserted, and Pete began to run. “She'd be alone, too. That must have been Nancy in the crowd yonder by Mistress Beatty's. 'Lowed her out to see the do, it's like. Ought to be back now, though.”
As Pete came near to Elm Cottage, the moon over the tree-tops lit up the panes of the upper windows as with a score of bright lamps. One step more, and the house was dark.
“She'll be waiting for me. Listening, too, I'll go bail.”
He was at the gate by this time, and the dog was panting at his feet with its nose close to the lattice.
“Be quiet, dog, be quiet.”
Then he raised the latch without a sound, stepped in on tiptoe, and closed the gate as silently behind him.
“I'll have a game with her; I'll take her by surprise.”
His eyes began to dance with mischief, like a child's, and he crept along the path with big cat strides, half doubled up, and holding his breath, lest he should laugh aloud.
“The sweet creatures! A man shouldn't frighten them, though,” he thought.
When he reached the porch he went down on all fours, and began mewing like a mournful tom-cat near to the bottom of the door. Then he listened with his ear to the jamb. He expected a faint cry of alarm, the raucous voice of Nancy Joe, and the clatter of feet towards the porch. There was not a sound.
“She's upstairs,” he thought, and stepped back to look up at the front of the house. There was no light in the rooms above.
“I know what it is. Nancy is not home yet, and Kirry's fallen asleep at the rocking.”
He stole up to the window and tried to look into the hall, but the blind was down, and he could not see much through the narrow openings at the sides of it.
“She's sleeping, that's it. The house was quiet and she dropped off, rocking the lil one, that's all.”
He scraped a handful of the light gravel and flung a little of it at the window. “That'll remind her of something,” he thought, and he laughed under his breath.
Then he listened again with his ear at the sill. There was no noise within. He flung more gravel and waited, thinking he might catch her breathing, but he could hear nothing.
Then rising hurriedly and throwing off his playfulness, he strode to the door and tried to open it. The door was locked. He returned to the window.
“Kate!” he called softly. “Kate! Are you there? Do you hear me? It's Pete. Don't be frightened, Kate, bogh!”
There was no response. He could hear the beat of the sea on the shore. The dog had perched himself on one end of the window sill and was beginning to whine.
“What's this at all? She can't be out. Couldn't take the child anyway. Where's that Nancy? What right had the woman to lave her? She has fainted, being left alone; that's what's going doing.”
He tried to open the window, but the latch was shot. Then he tried the other windows, and the back door, and the window above the hall, which he reached from the roof of the porch; but they would not stir. When he returned to the hall window, the white blind was darker. The lamp inside the room was going out.
The moonlight was dripping down on him through the leaves of the trees. He found some matches beside his pipe in his side pocket, struck one, and looked at the sash, then took out his clasp knife to remove the pane under the latch. His hand trembled and shook and burst through the glass with a jerk. It cut his wrist, but he felt the wound no more than if it had been the glass instead of his arm that bled. He thrust his hand through, shot back the latch, then pushed up the sash, and clambered into the room past the blind. The cat, sitting on the ledge inside, rubbed against his hand and purred.
“Kirry! Kate!” he whispered.
The lamp had given up its last gleam with the puff of wind from the window, and, save for the slumbering fire, all was dark within the house. He hardly dared to drop to his feet for fear of treading on something. When he was at last in the middle of the floor he stood with legs apart, struck another match, held the light above his head, and looked down and around, like a man in a cave.
There was nothing. The child, awakened by the draught of the night air, began to cry from the cradle. He took it up and hushed it with baby words of tenderness in a breaking voice. “Hush, bogh, hush! Mammie will come to it, then. Mammie will come for all.”
He lit a candle and crept through the house, carrying the light about with him. There was no sign anywhere until he came to the bedroom, when he saw that the hat and cloak of Kate's daily wear had gone. Then he knew that he was a broken-hearted man. With a cry of desolation he stopped in his search and came heavily downstairs.
He had been warding off the moment of despair, but he could do so no longer now. The empty house and the child, the child and the empty house; these allowed of only one interpretation. “She's gone, bogh, she's left us; she wasn't willing to stay with us, God forgive her!”
Sitting on a stool with the little one on his knees, he sobbed while the child cried—two children crying together. Suddenly he leapt up. “I'm not for believing it,” he thought. “What woman alive could do the like of it? There isn't a mother breathing that hasn't more bowels. And she used to love the lil one, and me too—and does, and does.”
He saw how it was. She was ill, distraught, perhaps even—God help her I—perhaps even mad. Such things happened to women after childbirth—the doctor himself had said as much. In the toils of her bodily trouble, beset by mental terrors, she had fled away from her baby, her husband, and her home, pursued by God knows what phantoms of disease. But she would get better, she would come back.
“Hush, bogh, hush, then,” he whimpered tenderly. “Mammie will come home again. Still and for all she'll come back.”
There was the click of a key in the lock, and he crept back to the stool. Nancy came in, panting and perspiring.
“Dear heart alive! what a race I've had to get home,” she said, puffing the air of the night.
She was throwing off her bonnet and shawl, and talking before looking round.
“Such pushing and scrooging, you never seen the like, Kirry. Aw, my best Sunday bonnet, only wore at me once, look at the crunched it is! But what d'ye think now? Poor Christian Killip's baby is dead for all. Died in the middle of the rejoicings. Aw, dear, yes, and the band going by playing 'The Conquering Hero' the very minute. Poor thing! she was distracted, and no wonder. I ran round to put a sight on the poor soul, and——why, what's going wrong with the lamp, at all? Is that yourself on the stool, Kirry? Pete, is it? Then where's the mistress?”
She plucked up the poker, and dug the fire into a blaze. “What's doing on you, man? You've skinned your knuckles like potato peel. Man, man, what for are you crying, at all?”
Then Pete said in a thick croak, “Hould your bull of a tongue, Nancy, and take the child out of my arms.”
She took the baby from him, and he rose to his feet as feeble as an old man.
“Lord save us!” she cried. “The window broke, too. What's happened?”
“Nothing,” growled Pete.
“Then what's coming of Kirry? I left her at home when I went out at seven.”.
“I'm choking with thirst, woman. Can't you be giving a man a drink of something?”
He found a dish of milk on the table, where the supper had been laid, and he gulped it down at a mouthful.
“She's gone—that's what it is. I see it in your face.” Then going to the foot of the stairs, she called, “Kirry! Kate! Katherine Cregeen!”
“Stop that!” shouted Pete, and he drew her back from the stairs.
“Why aren't you spaking, then?” she cried. “If you're man enough to bear the truth, I'm woman enough to hear it.”
“Listen to me, Nancy,” said Pete, with uplifted fist. “I'm going out for an hour, and till I'm back, stay you here with the child, and say nothing to nobody.”
“I knew it!” cried Nancy. “That's what she hurried me out for. Aw, dear! Aw, dear! What for did you lave her with that man this morning?”
“Do you hear me, woman?” said Pete; “say nothing to nobody. My heart's lying heavy enough already. Open your lips, and you'll kill me straight.”
Then he went out of the house, staggering, stumbling, bent almost double. His hat lay on the floor; he had gone bareheaded.
He turned towards Sulby. “She's there,” he thought “Where else should she be? The poor, wandering lamb wants home.”