“Feather beds are saft,Pentit rooms are bonnie,But ae kiss o' my dear loveBetter's far than ony.”
The rain was still falling, the sea was loud, the mighty breath of night was shaking the walls of the house and rioting through the town. He was wet and tired, longing for a dry skin and a warm bed and rest.
“Yet fain wad I rise and rinIf I tho't I would meet my dearie.”
The long-strained rapture of faith and confidence was breaking down. He saw it breaking. He could deceive himself no more. She was gone, she was lost, she would lie on his breast no more.
“God help me! O, Lord, help me,” he cried in his crushed and breaking heart.
When Kate thought of her husband after she had left him, it was not with any crushing sense of shame. She had injured him, but she had gained nothing by it. On the contrary, she had suffered, she had undergone separation from her child. To soften the hard blow inflicted, she had outraged the tenderest feelings of her heart. As often as she thought of Pete and the deep wrong she had done him, she remembered this sacrifice, she wept over this separation. Thus she reconciled herself to her conduct towards her husband. If she had bought happiness at the cost of Pete's sufferings, her remorse might have been deep; but she had only accepted shame and humiliation and the severance of the dearest of her ties.
When she had said in the rapture of passionate confidence that if she possessed Philip's love there could be no humiliation and no shame, she had not yet dreamt of the creeping degradation of a life in the dark, under a false name, in a false connection: a life under the same roof with Philip, yet not by his side, unacknowledged, unrecognised, hidden and suppressed. Even at the moment of that avowal, somewhere in the secret part of her heart, where lay her love of refinement and her desire to be a lady, she had cherished the hope that Philip would find a way out of the meanness of their relation, that she would come to live openly beside him, she hardly knew how, and she did not care at what cost of scandal, for with Philip as her own she would be proud and happy.
Philip had not found that way out, yet she did not blame him. She had begun to see that the deepest shame of their relation was not hers but his. Since she had lived in Philip's house the man in him had begun to decay. She could not shut her eyes to this rapid demoralisation, and she knew well that it was the consequence of her presence. The deceptions, the subterfuges, the mean shifts forced upon him day by day, by every chance, every accident, were plunging him in ever-deepening degradation. And as she realised this a new fear possessed her, more bitter than any humiliation, more crushing than any shame—the fear that he would cease to love her, the terror that he would come to hate her, as he recognised the depth to which she had dragged him down.
Back from Tynwald, Philip was standing in his room. From time to time he walked to the window, which was half open, for the air was close and heavy. A misty rain was falling from an empty sky, and the daylight was beginning to fail. The tombstones below were wet, the treed were dripping, the churchyard was desolate. In a corner under the wall lay the angular wooden lid which is laid by a gravedigger over an open grave. Presently the iron gates swung apart, and a funeral company entered. It consisted of three persons and an uncovered deal coffin. One of the three was the sexton of the church, another was the curate, the third was a policeman. The sexton and the policeman carried the coffin to the church-door, which the curate opened. He then went into the church, and was followed by the other two. A moment later there were three strokes of the church bell. Some minutes after that the funeral company reappeared. It made for the open grave in the corner by the wall. The cover was removed, the coffin was lowered, the policeman half lifted his helmet, and the sexton put a careless hand to his cap. Then the curate opened a book and closed it again. The burial service was at an end. Half an hour longer the sexton worked alone in the drenching rain, shovelling the earth back into the grave.
“Some waif,” thought Philip; “some friendless, homeless, nameless waif.”
He went noiselessly up the stairs to the floor above, slinking through the house like a shadow. At a door above his own he knocked with a heavy hand, and a woman's voice answered him from within—
“Is any one there?”
“It is!,” he said. “I am coming to see you.”
Then he opened the door and slipped into the room. It was a room like his own at all points, only lower in the ceiling, and containing a bed. A woman was standing with her back to the window, as if she had just turned about from looking into the churchyard. It was Kate. She had been expecting Philip, and waiting for him, but she seemed to be overwhelmed with confusion. As he crossed the floor to go to her, he staggered, and then she raised her eyes to his face.
“You are ill,” she said. “Sit down. Shall I ring for the brandy?”
“No,” he answered. “We have had a hard day at Tyn-wald—some trouble—some excitement—I'm tired, that's all.”
He sat on the end of the bed, and gazed out on the veil of rain, slanting across the square church tower and the sky.
“I was at Ramsey two days ago,” he said; “that's what I came to tell you.”
“Ah!” She linked her hands before her, and gazed out also. Then, in a trembling voice, she asked, “Is mother well?”
“Yes; I did not see her, but—yes, she bears up bravely.”
“And—and—” the words stuck in her throat, “and Pete?”
“Well, also—in health, at all events.”
“You mean that he is broken-hearted?”
With a deep breath he answered, “To listen to him you would think he was cheerful enough.”
“And little Katherine?”
“She is well too. I did not see her awake. It was late, and she was in her cradle. So rosy, and fresh, and beautiful!”
“My sweet darling! She was clean too? They take care of her, don't they?”
“More care they could not take.”
“My darling baby! Has she grown?”
“Yes; they talk of taking her out of the long clothes soon. Nancy is like a second mother to her.”
Kate's foot was beating the floor. “Oh, why can't her own mother——” she began, and then in a faltering voice, “but that cannot be, I suppose.... Do her eyes change? Are they still blue? But she was asleep, you say. My dear baby! Was it very late? Nine o'clock? Just nine? I was thinking of her at that moment. It is true I am always thinking of her, but I remember, because the clock was striking. 'She will be in her little cot now,' I thought, 'bathed and clean, and so pretty in her nightdress, the one with the frill!' My sweet, sweet angel!”
Her speech was confused and broken. “Do you think if I never see her until... Will I know her if... It's useless to think of that, though. Is her hair like... What is the colour of her hair, Philip?”
“Fair, quite fair; as fair as mine was——”
She swirled round, came face to face with him, and cried, “Philip, Philip, why can't I have my darling to myself? She would be well enough here. I could keep her quiet. Oh, she would not disturb you. And I should be so happy with my little Kate for company. The time is long with me sometimes, Philip, and I could play with her all the day. And then at night, when she would be in the cot, I could make her little stock of clothes—her frocks and her little pinafores, and——”
“Impossible, Kate, impossible!” said Philip.
She turned to the window. “Yes,” she said, in a choking voice, “I suppose it would even be stealing to fetch her away now. Only think! A mother stealing her own child! O gracious heaven, have I sinned myself so far from my innocent baby! My child, my child! My little Katherine!”
Her bosom heaved, and she said in a hard tone, “I daresay they think I'm a bad mother because I left her to others to nurse her and to love her, to see her every day and all day, to bathe her sweet body, and to comb her yellow hair, to look into her little blue eyes, and to watch all her pretty, pretty ways—Oh, yes, yes.” she said, with increasing emotion, “I daresay they think that of me.”
“They think nothing but what is good of you, Kate—nothing but what is good and kind.”
She looked out on the rain which fell unceasingly, and said in a low voice, “Is Pete still telling the same story—that I am only away for a little while—that I am coming back?”
“He is writing letters to himself now, and saying they come from you.”
“From me?”
“Such simple things—all in his own way—full of love and happiness—I am so happy and comfortable—it is pitiful. He is like a child—he never suspects anything. You are better and enjoying yourself and looking forward to coming home soon. Sending kisses and presents for the baby, too, and greetings for everybody. There are messages for me also.Your true and loving wife—it is terrible.”
She covered her face with both hands. “And is he telling everybody?”
“Yes; that's what the letters are meant for. He thinks he is keeping your name sweet and your place clean, so that you may return at any time, and scandal may not touch you.”
“Oh, why do you tell me that, Philip? It is dragging me back. And the child is dragging me back also... Does he show the letters to you?”
“Worse than that, Kate—much worse—he makes me answer them. I answered one the other night. Oh, when I think of it!Dear wife, glad to get your welcome letters. God knows how I held the pen—I was giddy enough to drop it. He gave you all the news—about your father, and Grannie, and everybody. All in his own bright way—poor old Pete, the cheeriest, sunniest soul alive.The Dempster is putting a sight on us regular—trusts you are the better for leaving home. It was awful—awful!Dearest Kirry, I'm missing you mortal—worse than Kimberley. So come home soon, my true lil wife, to your foolish ould husband, for his heart is losing him.”
He leapt up, and began to tramp the floor. “But why do I tell you this? I should bear my own burdens.”
Her hands had come down from her face, which was full of a great compassion. “And didyouhave to write all that?” she asked.
“Oh, he meant no harm. He had no thought of hurting anybody! He never dreamt that every word was burning and blistering me to the heart of hearts.”
His voice deepened, and his face grew hard and ugly. “But it was the same as if some devil out of hell had entered into the man and told him how to torture me—as if the cruellest tyrant on earth had made me take up the pen and write down my own death-warrant. I could have killed him—I could not help it—yes, I felt at that moment as if—— Oh, what am I saying?”
He stopped, sat on the end of the bed again, and held his head between his hands.
She came and sat by his side. “Philip,” she said, “I am ruining you. Yes, I am corrupting you. I who would have had you so high and pure—and you so pure-minded—I am bringing you to ruin. Having me here is destroying you, Philip. No one visits you now. You are shutting the door on everybody.... I heard you come in last night, Philip. I hear you every night. Yes, I know everything. Oh, you will end by hating me—I know you will. Why don't you send me away? It will be better to send me away in time, Philip. Besides, it will make no difference. We are in the same house, yet we never meet. Send me away now, before it is too late.”
He dropped his hand and felt for her hand; he was trying not to look into her face. “We have both suffered, Kate. We can never hate one another—we have suffered for each other's sake.”
She clung tightly to the hand he gave her, and said, “Then you will never forsake me, whatever happens?”
“Never, Kate, never,” he answered; and with a smothered cry she threw her arms about his neck.
The rain continued to pour down on the roofs and on the tombs with a monotonous plash. “But what is to be done?” she said.
“God knows,” he answered.
“What is to become of us, Philip? Are we never to smile on each other again? We cannot carry a burden like this for ever. To-day, to-morrow, the next day, the next year—is it to go on like this for a lifetime? Is this life? Is there nothing that will end it?”
“Yes, Kate, yes; there is one thing that will end it—one thing only.”
“Do you mean—death?”
He did not answer. She rose slowly from his side and returned to the window, rested her forehead against the pane, and looked down on the desolate churchyard and the sexton at his work in the rain. Suddenly she broke the silence. “Philip,” she said, “I know now what we ought to do. I wonder we have never thought of it before.”
“What is it?” he asked.
She was standing in front of him. Her breath came quickly. “Tell Pete that I am dead.”
“No, no, no.”
She took both his hands. “Yes, yes,” she said.
He kept his face away from her. “Kate, what are you saying?”
“What is more natural, Philip? Only think—if you had been anybody else, it would have come to that already. You must have hated me for dragging you down into this mire of deceit, you must have forsaken me, and I must have gone to wreck and ruin. Oh, I see it all—just as if it had really happened. A solitary room somewhere—alone—sinking—dying—unknown, unnamed—forgotten——”
His eyes were wandering about the room. “It will kill him. If his heart can break, it will break it,” he said.
“He has lived after a heavier blow than that, Philip. Do you think he is not suffering? For all his bright ways and hopeful talk and the letters and the presents, do you think he is not suffering?”
He liberated his hands, and began to tramp the room as before, but with head down dud hands linked behind him.
“It will be cruel to deceive him,” he said.
“No, Philip, but kind. Death is not cruel. The wound it makes will heal. It won't bleed for ever. Once he thinks I am dead he will weep a little perhaps, and then “—she was stifling a sob—“then it will be all over. 'Poor girl,' he will say, 'she was much to blame. I loved her once, and never did her any wrong. But she is gone, and she was the mother of little Katherine—let us forget her faults'——”
He had not heard her; he was standing before the window looking down. “You are right, Kate, I think you must be right.”
“I'm sure I am.”
“He will suffer, but he will get over it.”
“Yes, indeed. And you, Philip—he will torture you no longer. No more letters, no more presents, no more messages——”
“I'll do it—I'll do it to-morrow,” he said.
She opened her arms wide, and cried, “Kiss me, Philip, kiss me. We shall live again. Yes, we shall laugh together still—kiss me, kiss me.”
“Not yet—when I come back.”
“Very well—when you come back.”
She sank into a chair, crying with joy, and he went out as he had entered, noiselessly, stealthily, like a shadow.
When a man who is not a criminal is given over to a deep duplicity of life, he will clutch at any lie, wearing the mask of truth, which seems to shield him from shame and pain. He may be a wise man in every other relation, a shrewd man, a far-seeing and even a cunning man, but in this relation—that of his own honour, his own fame, his own safety—he is certain to be a blunderer, a bungler, and a fool. Such is the revenge of Nature, such is God's own vengeance!
Philip was walking from Ballure House to Elm Cottage. It was late, and the night was dark and silent—a muggy, dank, and stagnant night, without wind or air, moon or stars. The road was quiet, the trees were still, the sea made only a far-off murmur.
And as he walked he struggled to persuade himself that in what he was about to do he would be doing well. “It will not be wrong to deceive him,” he thought. “It will only be for his own good. The suspense would kill him. He would waste away. The sap of the man's soul would dry up. Then why should I hesitate? Besides, it is partly true—true in its own sense, and that is the real sense. Sheisdead—dead to him. She can never return to him; she is lost to him for ever. So it is true after all—it is true.”
“It is a lie,” said a voice at his ear.
He started. He could have been sure that somebody had spoken. Yet there was nobody by his side. He was alone in the road. “It must have been my own voice,” he thought. “I must have been thinking aloud.” And then he resumed his walk and his meditation.
“And if it is a lie, is it therefore a crime?” he asked himself. “Sure it is—how very sure!—it was a wise man that said so—a great fault once committed is the first link in a chain. The other links seem to be crimes also, but they are not—they are consequences.Ourfault was long ago, and even then it was partly the fault of Fate. If the past could be recalled we could not act differently unless our fates were different. And what has followed has been only the consequence. It was the consequence when Kate was married to Pete; it was the consequence when she left him—andthisis the consequence.”
“It is a lie,” said the same voice by his side.
He stopped. The darkness was gross around him—he could see nothing.
“Who's there?” he demanded.
There was no answer. He stretched his hand out nervously. There was no one at his side. “It must have been the wind in the trees,” he thought; but there could be no wind in the stagnant dampness of that air. “It was like my own voice,” he thought. Then he remembered how his man in Douglas had told him that he had contracted a habit of talking to himself of late. “It was my own voice,” he thought, and he went on again.
“A lie is a bad foundation to build on—that's certain. The thing that should be cannot rest on the thing that is not. It will topple down; it will come to ruin; it will wreck everything. Still——”
“It is a lie,” said the voice again. There could be no mistaking it this time. It was a low, deep whisper. It seemed to be spoken in the very cavity of his ear. It was not his own voice, and yet it struck upon his sense with the sound as of his own. It must be his own voice speaking to himself!
When this idea took hold of him, he was seized with a deadly shuddering. His heart knocked against his ribs, and an icy coldness came over him. “Only the same tormenting dream,” he thought. “Before it was a vision; now it is a voice. It is generated by solitude and separation. I must resist it I must be strong. It will drive me into an oppression as of madness. Men do not 'see their souls' until they are bordering on madness from religious mania or crime.”
“A lie! a lie!” said the voice.
“This is madness itself. To paint faces on the darkness, to hear voices in the air, is madness. The madman can do no more.”
“A lie!” said the voice again. He cast a look over his shoulder. It was the same as if some one had touched him and spoken.
He walked faster. The voice seemed to walk with him. “I will hold myself firm,” he thought; “I will not be afraid. Reason does not fail a man until he allows himself tobelievethat it is failing. 'I am going mad,' he thinks; and then he shrieks and is mad indeed. I will not depart from my course. If I do so now, I shall be lost. The horror will master me, and I shall be its slave for ever.”
He had turned out of Ballure into the Ramsey Road, and he could see the town lights in the distance. But the voice continued to haunt him persistently, besiegingly, despotically.
“Great God!” he thought, “what is the imaginary devil to the horror of this presence? Your own eye, your own voice, always with you, always following you! No darkness so dense that it can hide the sight, no noise so loud that it can deaden the sound!”
He walked faster. Still the voice seemed to stride by his side, an invisible thing, with deliberate and noiseless step, from which there was no escape.
He drew up suddenly and walked slower. His knees were tottering, he was treading as on waves; yet he went on. “I will not yield. I will master myself. I will do what I intended. I am not mad,” he thought.
He was at the gate of Elm Cottage by this time, and, with a strong glow of resolution, he walked boldly to the door and knocked.
Pete had not awakened until late that morning. While still in bed he had heard Grannie and Nancy in the room below. The first sound of their voices told him that something was amiss.
“Aw, God bless me, God bless me!” said Nancy, as though with uplifted hands.
“It was Kelly the postman,” said Grannie in a doleful tone—the tone in which she had spoken between the puffs of her pipe.
“The dirt!” said Nancy.
“He was up at Cæsar's before breakfast this morning,” said Grannie.
“There now!” cried Nancy. “There's men like that, though. Just aiger for mischief. It's sweeter than all their prayers to them.... But where can she be, then? Has she made away with herself, poor thing?”
“That's what I was asking Cæsar,” said Grannie. “If she's gone with the young Ballawhaine, what for aren't you going to England over and fetching her home?” says I.
“And what did Cæsar say?”
“'No,' says he, 'not a step,' says he. 'If she's dead,' says he, 'we'll only know it a day the sooner, and if she's in life, it'll be a disgrace to us the longest day we live.'”
“Aw, bolla veen, bolla veen!” said Nancy. “When some men is getting religion there's no more inside at them than a gutted herring, and they're good for nothing but to put up in the chimley to smook.”
“It's Black Tom, woman,” said Grannie. “Cæsar's freckened mortal of the man's tongue going. 'It's water to his wheel,' he's saying. 'He'll be telling me to set my own house in order, and me a local preacher, too.' But how's the man himself?”
“Pete?” said Nancy. “Aw, tired enough last night, and not down yet.... Hush!... It's his foot on the loft.”
“Poor boy! poor boy!” said Grannie.
The child cried, and then somebody began to beat the floor to the measure of a long-drawn hymn. Grannie must have been sitting before the fire with the baby across her knees.
“Something has happened,” thought Pete as he drew on his clothes. A moment later something had happened indeed. He had opened a drawer of the dressing-table and found the wedding-ring and the earrings where Kate had left them. There was a commotion in the room below by this time, but Pete did not hear it. He was crying in his heart. “It is coming! I know it! I feel it! God help me! Lord forgive me! Amen! Amen!”
Cæsar, the postman, and the constable, as a deputation from “The Christians,” had just entered the house. Black Tom was with them. He was the ferret that had fetched them out of their holes.
“Get thee home, woman,” said Cæsar to Grannie, “This is no place for thee. It is the abode of sin and deception.”
“It's the home of my child's child, and that's enough for me,” said Grannie.
“Get thee back, I tell thee,” said Cæsar, “and come thee to this house of shame no more.”
“Take her, Nancy,” said Grannie, giving up the child. “Shame enough, indeed, I'm thinking, when a woman has to shut her heart to her own flesh and blood if she's not to disrespect her husband,” and she went off, weeping.
But Cæsar's emotions were walled in by his pietistical views. “Every one that hath forsaken houses, or brethren, or sisters, or father, or mother, or wife, or children, or land, for My name's sake, shall receive an hundredfold,” said Cæsar, with a cast of his eye towards Black Tom.
“Well, if I ever!” said Nancy. “The husband that wanted the like of that from me now.... A hundredfold, indeed! No, not for a hundred hundredfolds, the nasty dirt.”
“Don't he turning up your nose, woman, but call your master,” said Cæsar.
“It's more than some ones need do, then, and I won't call my master, neither—no, thank you,” said Nancy.
“I've something to tell him, and I've come, too, for to do it,” said Cæsar.
“The devil came farther than ever you did, and it was only a lie he was bringing for all that,” said Nancy.
“Hould your tongue, Nancy Cain,” said Cæsar, “and take that Popish thing off the child's head.” It was the scarlet hood.
“Pity the money that's wasted on the like wasn't given to the poor.”
“I've heard something the same before, Cæsar Cregeen,” said Nancy. “It was Judas Iscariot was saying it first, and you're just thieving it from a thief.”
“Chut!” cried Cæsar, goaded by the laughter of Black Tom. “I'll call the man myself. Peter Quilliam!” and he made for the staircase door.
“Stand back,” cried Nancy, holding the child like a pillow over one of her arms, and lifting the other threateningly.
“Aw, you'll never be raising your hand to the man of God, woman,” giggled Black Tom.
“Won't I, though?” said Nancy grimly, “or the man of the devil either,” she added, flashing at himself.
“The woman's not to trust, sir,” snuffled the constable. “She's only an infidel, anyway. I've heard tell of her saying she didn't believe the whale swallowed Jonah.”
“That's the diff'rance between us, then,” said Nancy; “for there's some of you Manx ones would believe if Jonah swallowed the whale.”
The staircase door opened at the back of Nancy, and Pete stepped into the room. “What's this, friends?” he asked, in a careworn voice.
Cæsar stepped forward with a yellow envelope in his hand. “What'sthat, sir?” he answered.
Pete took the envelope and opened it.
“That's your letter back to you through the dead letter office, isn't it?” said Cæsar.
“Well?” said Pete.
“There's nobody of that name in that place, is there!” said Cæsar.
“Well?” said Pete again.
“Letters from England don't come through Peel, but your first letter had the Peel postmark, hadn't it?”
“Well?”
“Parcels from England don't come through Port St. Mary, but your parcel was stamped in Port St. Mary, wasn't it?”
“Anything else?”
“The handwriting inside the letter wasn't your own handwriting, was it? The address on the outside of the parcel wasn't your own address—no?”
“Is that all?”
“Enough to be going on, I'm thinking.”
“What about Uncle Joe?” said Black Tom, with another giggle.
“Your mistress is not in Liverpool. You don't know where she is. She has gone the way of all sinners,” said Cæsar.
“Is that what you're coming to tell me?” said Pete.
“No; we're coming to tell you,” said Cæsar, “that, as a notorious loose liver, we must be putting her out of class. And we're coming to call on yourself to look to your own salvation. You've deceaved us, Mr. Quilliam. You've grieved the Spirit of the Lord,” with another “glime” in the direction of Black Tom; “you've brought contempt on the fellowship that counts you for one of the fold. You've given the light of your countenance to the path of an evildoer, and you've brought down the head of a child of God with sorrow to the grave.”
Cæsar was moved by his self-satisfied piety, and began to make' noises in his nostrils. “Let us lay the case before the Lord,” he said; and he went down on his knees and prayed—
“Our brother has deceived us, O Lord, but we forgive him freely. Forgive Thou also his trespasses, so that at the last he escape hell-fire. Count not Thy handmaid for a daughter of Belial, wherever she is this day. May it be good for her to be cut off from the body of the righteous. Grant that she feel this mercy in her carnal body before her eternal soul be called to everlasting judgment. Lord, strengthen Thy servant. Let not his natural affections be as the snare of the fowler unto his feet. Though it grieve him sore, even to tears and tribulation, help him to pluck out the gourd that groweth in his own bosom——”
“Dear heart alive!” cried Nancy, clattering her clogs, “it's a wonder in the world the man isn't thinking shame to blacken his own daughter before the Almighty Himself.”
“Be merciful, O Lord,” continued Cæsar, “to all rank unbelievers, and such as live in heathen darkness in a Christian land, and don't know Saturday from Sunday, and are imper-ent uncommon and bad with the tongue——”
“Stop that now.” cried Nancy, “that's meant for me.”
Pete had stood through this in silence, but with an angry, miserable face.
“Beg pardon all,” he said. “I'm not going for denying to what you say. I'm like the fish at the heel of the trawl-boat—the net's closing in on me and I'm caught. The game's up. I did deceave you. Ididwrite those letters myself. I've no Uncle Joe, nor no Auntie Joney neither. My wife's left me. I'm not knowing where she is, or what's becoming of her. I'm done, and I'm for throwing up the sponge.”
There were grunts of satisfaction. “But don't you feel the need of pardon, brother,” said Cæsar.
“I don't,” said Pete. “What I was doing I was doing for the best, and, if I was doing wrong, the Almighty will have to forgive me—that's about all.”
Cæsar shot out his lip. Pete raised himself to his full height and looked from face to face, until his eyes settled on the postman.
“But it takes a thief to catch a thief,” he said. “Which of you was the thief that catcht me? Maybe I've been only a blundering blockhead, and perhaps you've been clever, and smart uncommon, but I'm thinking there's some of you hasn't been rocked enough for all that.”
He held out the yellow envelope. “This letter was sealed when you gave it to me, Mr. Cregeen—how did you know what was inside of it? 'On Her Majesty's Sarvice,' you say. But it isn't dead letters only that's coming with words same as that.”
The postman was meddling with his front hair.
“The Lord has His own wayses of doing His work, has He, Cæsar? I never heard tell, though, that opening other people's letters was one of them.”
Mr. Kelly's ferret eyes were nearly twinkling themselves out.
Pete threw letter and envelope into the fire. “You've come to tell me you're going to turn my wife out of class. All right! You can turn me out, too, and if the money I gave you is anywhere handy, you can turn that out at the same time and make a clane job.”
Black Tom was doubling with suppressed laughter at the corner of the dresser, and Cæsar was writhing under his searching glances.
“You're knowing a dale about the ould Book and I'm not knowing much,” said Pete, “but isn't it saying somewhere, 'Let him that's without sin amongst you chuck the first stone?' I'm not worth mentioning for a saint myself, so I lave it with you.”
His voice began to break. “You're thinking a dale about the broken law seemingly, but I'm thinking more about the broken heart. There's the like in somewhere, you go bail. The woman that's gone may have done wrong—I'm not saying she didn't, poor thing; but if she comes home again, you may turn her out, but I'll take her back, whatever she is and whatever she's done—so help me God I will—and I'll not wait for the Day of Judgment to ask the Almighty if I'm doing right.”
Then he sat down with his back to them on a chair before the fire.
“Now you can go home to nurse,” said Nancy, wiping her eyes, “and lave me to sweeten the kitchen—it's wanting water enough after dirts like you.”
Cæsar also was wiping his eye—the one nearest to Black Tom. “Come,” he said with plaintive resignation, “our errand was useless. The Ethiopian cannot change his skin, nor the leopard his spots.”
“No, but he can get a topcoat to cover them, though,” said Nancy. “Oh, that flea sticks, does it, Cæsar? Don't blame the looking-glass if your face is ugly.”
Cæsar pretended not to hear her. “Well,” he said, with a sigh discharged at Pete's back, “we'll pray, spite of appearances, that we may all go to heaven together some day.”
“No, thank you, not me,” said Nancy. “I wouldn't be-mane myself going anywhere with the like of you.”
The Job in Cæsar could bear up no longer. “Vain and ungrateful woman,” he cried, “who hath eaten of my bread and drunken of my cup——”
“Cursing me, are you?” said Nancy. “Sakes! you must have been found in the bulrushes at Pharaoh's daughter and made a prophet of.”
“No use bandying words, sir, wid a single woman dat lives alone wid a single man,” said Mr. Niplightly.
Nancy flopped the child from her right arm to her left, and with the back of her hand she slapped the constable across the face. “Take that for the cure of a bad heart,” she said, “and tell the Dempster I gave it you.”
Then she turned on the postman and Black Tom. “Out of it, you lil thief, your mouth's only a dirty town-well and your tongue's the pump in it. Go home and die, you big black spider—you're ould enough for it and wicked enough, too. Out of it, the lot of you!” she cried, and clashed the door at their backs, and then opened it again for a parting shot. “And if it's true you're on your way to heaven together, just let me know, and I'll see if I can't put up with the other place myself.”
That evening Pete was sitting with one foot on the cradle rocker, one arm on the table, and the other hand trifling tenderly with the ring and the earrings which he had found in the drawer of the dressing-table, when there was a hurried knock on the door. It had the hollow reverberation of a knock on the lid of a coffin.
“Come in,” called Pete.
It was Philip, but it was almost as if Death had entered, so thin and bony were his cheeks, so wild his eyes, so cold his hands.
Pete was prepared for anything. “You've found me out, too, I see you have,” he said defiantly. “You needn't tellme—it's chasing caught fish.”
“Be brave, Pete,” said Philip. “It will be a great shock to you.”
Pete looked up and his manner changed. “Speak it out, sir. It's a poor man that can't stand——”
“I've come on the saddest errand,” said Philip, taking a seat as far away as possible.
“You've found her—you've seen her, sir. Where is she?”
“She is——” began Philip, and then he stopped.
“Go on, mate; I've known trouble before to-day,” said Pete.
“Can you bear it?” said Philip. “She is——” and he stopped again.
“She is—where?” said Pete.
“She is dead,” said Philip at last.
Pete rose to his feet. Philip rose also, and now poured out his message with the headlong rush of a cataract.
“In fact, it all happened some time ago, Pete, but I couldn't bring myself to tell you before. I tried, but I couldn't. It was in Douglas—of a fever—in a lodging—alone—unattended——”
“Hould hard, sir! Give me time,” said Pete. “I'd a gunshot wound at Kimberley, and since then I've a stitch in my side at whiles and sometimes a bit of a catch in my breathing.”
He staggered to the porch door and threw it open, then came back panting—“Dead! dead! Kate is dead!”
Nancy came from the kitchen at the moment, and hearing what he was saying, she lifted both hands and uttered a piercing shriek. He took her by the shoulders and turned her back, shut the door behind her, and said, holding his right hand hard at his side, “Women are brave, sir, but when the storm breaks on a man——” He broke off and muttered again, “Dead! Kirry is dead!”
The child, awakened by Nancy's cry, was now whimpering fretfully. Pete went to the cradle and rocked it with one foot, crooning in a quavering treble, “Hush-a-bye! hush-a-bye!”
Philip's breathing was oppressed. He felt like a man at the edge of a precipice, with an impulse to throw himself over. “God forgive me,” he said. “I could kill myself. I've broken your heart;——”
“No fear of me, sir,” said Pete. “I'm an ould hulk that's seen weather. I'll not go to pieces from inside at all. Give me time, mate, give me time.” And then he went on muttering as before, “Dead! Kirry dead! Hush-a-bye! My Kirry dead!”
The little one slept, and Pete drew back in his chair, nodded into the fire, and said in a weak, childish voice, “I've known her all my life, d'ye know? She's been my lil sweetheart since she was a slip of a girl, and slapped the schoolmaster for bating me wrongously. Swate lil thing in them days, mate, with her brown feet and tossing hair. And now she's a woman and she's dead! The Lord have mercy upon me!”
He got up and began to walk heavily across the floor, dipping and plunging as if going upstairs. “The bright and happy she was when I started for Kimberley, too; with her pretty face by the aising stones in the morning, all laughter and mischief. Five years I was seeing it in my drames like that, and now it's gone. Kirry is gone! My Kirry! God help me! O God, have mercy upon me!”
He stopped in his unsteady walk, and sat and stared into the fire. His eyes were red; blotches of heart's blood seemed to be rising to them; but there was not the sign of a tear. Philip did not attempt to console him. He felt as if the first syllable would choke in his throat.
“I see how it's been, sir,” said Pete. “While I was away her heart was changing her, and when I came back she thought she must keep her word. My poor lamb! She was only a child anyway. But I was a man—I ought to have seen how it was. I'm like a drowning man, too—things are coming back on me. I'm seeing them plain enough now. But it's too late! My poor Kirry! And I thought I was making her so happy!” Then, with a helpless look, “You wouldn't believe it, sir, but I was never once thinking nothing else. No, I wasn't; it's a fact. I was same as a sailor working all the voyage home, making a cage, and painting it goold, for the love-bird he's catcht in the sunny lands somewhere; but when he's putting it in, it's only wanting away, poor thing.”
With a sense of grovelling meanness, Philip sat and listened. Then, with eyes wandering across the floor, he said, “You have nothing to reproach yourself with. You did everything a man could do—everything. And she was innocent also. It was the fault of another. He came between you. Perhaps he thought he couldn't help it—perhaps he persuaded himself—God knows what lie he told himself—but she's innocent, Pete; believe me, she's——”
Pete brought his fist down heavily on the table, and the rings that lay on it jumped and tingled. “What's that to me?” he cried hoarsely. “What do I care if she's innocent or guilty? She's dead, isn't she? and that's enough. Curse the man! I don't want to hear of him. She's mine now. What for should he come here between me and my own?”
The torn heart and racked brain could bear no more. Pete dropped his head on the table. Presently his anger ebbed. Without lifting his head, he stretched his hand across the rings to feel for Philip's hand. Philip's hand trembled in his grasp. He took that for sympathy, and became the more ashamed.
“Give me time, mate,” he said. “I'll be my own man soon. My head's moithered dreadful—I'm not knowing if I heard you right. In Douglas, you say? By herself, too? Not by herself, surely? Not quite alone neither? She found you out, didn't she?You'dbe there, Phil? You'd be with her yourself? She'd be wanting for nothing?”
Philip answered huskily, his eyes still wandering. “If it will be any comfort to you... yes, Iwaswith her—she wanted for nothing.”
“My poor girl!” said Pete. “Did she send—had she any—maybe she said a word or two—at the last, eh?”
Philip clutched at the question. There was something at last that he could say without falsehood. “She sent a prayer for your forgiveness,” he said. “She told me to tell you to think of her as little as might be; not to grieve for her too much, and to try to forget her, so that her sin also might be forgotten.”
“And the lil one—anything about the lil one?” asked Pete.
“That was the bitterest grief of all,” said Philip. “It was so hard that you must think her an unnatural mother. 'My Katherine! My little Katherine! My sweet angel!' It was her cry the whole day long.”
“I see, I see,” said Pete, nodding at the fire; “she left the lil one for my sake, wanting it with her all the while. Poor thing! You'd comfort her, Philip? You'd let her go aisy?”
“'The child is well and happy,' I told her. 'He's thinking nothing of yourself but what is good and kind,' I said.”
“God's peace rest on her! My darling! My wife!” said Pete solemnly. Then suddenly in another tone, “Do you know where she's buried?”
Philip hesitated. He had not foreseen this question. Where had been his head that he had never thought of it? But there was no going back now. He was compelled to go on. He must tell lie on lie. “Yes,” he faltered.
“Could you take me to the grave?”
Philip gasped; the sweat broke out on his forehead.
“Don't be freckened, sir,” said Pete; “I'm my own man again. Could you take me to my wife's grave?”
“Yes,” said Philip. He was in the rapids. He was on the edge of precipitation. He was compelled to go over. He made a blindfold plunge. Lie on lie; lie on lie!
“Then we'll start by the coach to-morrow,” said Pete.
Philip rose with rigid limbs. He had meant to tell one lie only, and already he had told many. Truly “a lie is a cripple;” it cannot stand alone. “Good night, Pete; I'll go home. I'm not well to-night.”
“We'll stop the coach at your aunt's gate in the morning,” said Pete.
They stepped to the door together, and stood for a moment in the dank and lifeless darkness.
“The world's getting wonderful lonely, man, and you're all that's left to me now, Phil—you and the child. I'm not for wailing, though. When I got my gun-shot wound out yonder, I was away over the big veldt, hundreds of miles from anywhere, behind the last bush and the last blade of grass, with the stones and the ashes and the dust—about as far, you'd say, as the world was finished, and never looking to see herself and the ould island and the ould faces no more. I'm not so lonesome as that at all. Good-night, ould fellow, and God bless you!”
The gate opened and closed, Philip went stumbling up the road. He was hating Pete. To hate this open-hearted man who had dragged him into an entanglement of lies was the only resource of his stifled conscience.
Pete went back to the house, muttering, “Kirry is dead! Kirry is dead!” He put the catch on the door, said, “Close the shutters, Nancy,” and then returned to his chair by the cradle.