Later the same night Pete carried the news to Sulby. Grannie was in the bar-room, and he broke it to her gently, tenderly, lovingly.
Loud voices came from the kitchen. Cæsar was there in angry contention with Black Tom. An open Bible was between them on their knees. Tom tugged it towards him, bobbed his blunt forefinger down on the page, and cried, “There's the text—that'll pin you—publicans and sinners.”
Cæsar leaned back'in his seat, and said with withering scorn, “It's a bad business—I'll give you lave to say that. It's men like you that's making it bad. But whether is it better for a bad business to be in bad hands or in good ones? There's a big local praicher in London, they're telling me, that's hot for joining the public-house to the church, and turning the parsons into the publicans. That's what they all were on the Isle of Man in ould days gone by, and pity they're not so still. Oh, I've been giving it my sarious thoughts, sir. I've been making it a subject for prayer. 'Will I give up my public or hould fast to it to keep it out of worse hands?' And I'm strong to believe the Lord hath spoken. 'It's a little vineyard—a little work in a little vineyard. Stick to it, Cæsar,' and so I will.”
Pete stepped into the kitchen and flung his news at Cæsar with a sort of wild melancholy, as who would say, “There, is that enough for you? Are you satisfied now?”
“Mair yee shoh—it's the hand of God,” said Cæsar.
“A middling bad hand then,” said Pete; “I've seen better, anyway.”
A high spiritual pride took hold of Cæsar—Black Tom was watching him, and working his big eyebrows vigorously. With mouth firmly shut and head thrown back, Cæsar said in a sepulchral voice, “The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away. Blessed be the name of the Lord!”
Pete made a crack of savage laughter.
“Aren't you feeling it, sir?” said Cæsar.
“Not a feel near me,” said Pete. “I never did the Lord no harm that I know of, but He's taken my young wife and left my poor innocent lil one motherless.”
“Unsearchable the wisdom and justice of God,” said Cæsar.
“Unsearchable?” said Pete. “It's all that. But I don't know if you're calling it justice. I'm not myself. It isn't my tally. Blasphemy? I lave it with you. A scoffer, am I? So be it. The Lord's licked me, and I've had enough. But I'm not going down on my knees for it, anyway. The Almighty and me is about quits.”
With that word on his lips he strode out of the place, grim, implacable, almost savage, a fierce smile fluttering on his ashy face.
Grannie came to Elm Cottage next morning with two duck eggs for Pete's breakfast. She was boiling them in a saucepan when Pete came downstairs.
“Come now,” she said coaxingly, as she laid them on the table, with the water smoking off the shells. But Pete could not eat.
“He hasn't destroyed any food these days,” said Nancy. A little before she had rolled her apron, slipped out into the street, and brought back a tiny packet screwed up in a bit of newspaper.
“Perhaps he'll ate them on the road,” said Grannie. “I'll put them in the hankerchief in his hat anyway.”
“My faith, no, woman!” cried Nancy. “He's the mischief for sweating. He'll be mopping his forehead and forgetting the eggs. But here—where's your waistcoat pocket, Pete? Have you room for a hayseed anywhere? There!... It's a quarter of twist, poor boy,” she whispered behind her hand to Grannie.
Thus they vied with each other in little attentions to the down-hearted man. Meantime Crow, the driver of the Douglas coach, a merry old sinner with a bulbous nose and short hair, standing erect like the steel pins of an electric brush, was whistling as he put his horses to in the marketplace. Presently he swirled round the corner and drew up at the gate. The women then became suddenly quiet, and put their aprons to their mouths, as if a hearse had stopped at the door; but Pete bustled about and shouted boisterously to cover the emotion of his farewell.
“Good-bye, Grannie; I'll say a word for you when I get there. Good-bye, Nancy; I'll not be forgetting yourself neither. Good bye, lil bogh,” dropping on one knee at the side of the cradle. “What right has a man's heart to be going losing him while he has a lil innocent like this to live for? Good-bye!”
There was a throng of women at the gate talking of Kate. “Aw, a civil person, very—a civiller person never was.”—“It's me that'll be missing her too. I served her eggs to the day of her death, as you might say. 'Good morning, Christian Anne,' says she—just like that. Welcome, you say? I was at home at the woman's door.”—“And the beautiful she came home in the gig with the baby! Only yesterday you might say. And now, Lord-a-massy!”—“Hush! it's himself! I'm fit enough to cry when I look at the man. The cheerful heart is broke at him.”—“Hush!”
They dropped their heads so that Pete might avoid their gaze, and held the coach-door open for him, expecting that he would go inside, as to a funeral. But he saluted them with “Good morning all,” and leapt to the box-seat with Crow.
The coach stopped to take up the Deemster at the gate of Ballure House. Philip looked thin and emaciated, and walked with a death-like weakness, but also a feverish resolution. Behind him, carrying a rag, came Aunty Nan in her white cap, with little nervous attentions, and a face full of anxiety.
“Drive inside to-day, Philip,” she said.
“No, no,” he answered, and kissed her, pushed her to the other side of the gate with gentle protestation, and climbed to Pete's side. Then the old lady said—
“Good-morning, Peter. I'm so sorry for your great trouble, and trust... But you'll not let the Deemster ride too long outside if it grows... He's had a sleepless night and——”
“Go on, Crow,” said Philip, in a decisive voice.
“I'll see to that, Miss Christian, ma'am,” shouted Crow over his shoulder. “His honour's studdying a bit too hard—that's whatheis. But a gentleman's not much use if his wife's a widow, as the man said—eh? Looking well enough yourself, though, Miss Christian, ma'am. Getting younger every day, in fact. I'll have to be fetching that East Indee capt'n up yet. I will that. Ha! ha! Get on, Boxer!” Then, with a flick of the whip, they were off on their journey.
The day was calm and beautiful. Old Barrule wore his yellow skull-cap of flowering gorse, the birds sang on the trees, and the sea on the shore sang also with the sound of far-off joy-bells. It was a heart-breaking day to Pete, but he tried to bear himself bravely.
He was seated between Philip and the driver. On the farther side of Crow there were two other passengers, a farmer and a fisherman. The farmer, a foul-mouthed fellow with a long staff and two dogs racing and barking on the road, was returning from Midsummer fair, at which he had sold his sheep; the fisherman, a simple creature, was coming home from the mackerel-fishing at Kinsale, with a box of the fish between his legs.
“The wife's been having a lil one since I was laving in March,” said the fisherman, laughing all over his bronzed face. “A boy, d'ye say? Aw, another boy, of coorse. Three of them now—all men. Got a letter at Ramsey post-office coming through. She's getting on as nice as nice, and the ould woman's busy doing for her.”
“Gee up, Boxer—we'll wet its head at the Hibernian,” said Crow.
“I'm not partic'lar at all,” said the fisherman cheerily. “The mack'rel's been doing middling this season, anyway.”
And then in his simple way he went on to paint home, and the joy of coming back to it, with the new baby, and the mother in child-bed, and the grandmother as housekeeper, and the other children waiting for new frocks and new jackets out of the earnings of the fishing, and himself going round to pay the grocer what had been put on “strap” while he was at Kin-sale, till Pete was melted, and could listen no longer.
“I'm persuaded still she wasn't well when she went away,” he whispered, turning his shoulder to the men and his face to Philip. He talked in a low voice, just above the rumble of the wheels, trying to extenuate Kate's fault and to excuse her to Philip.
“It's no use thinking hard of anybody, is it, sir?” he said. “We can't crawl into another person's soul, as the saying is.”
After that he asked many questions—about Kate's illness, about the doctor, about the funeral, about everything except the man—of him he asked nothing. Philip was compelled to answer. He was like a prisoner chained at the galleys—he was forced to go on. They crossed the bridge over the top of Ballaglass, which goes down to the mill at Cornaa.
“There's the glen, sir,” said Pete. “Aw, the dear ould days! Wading in the water, leaping over the stones, clambering on the trunks—aw, dear! aw, dear! Bareheaded and barefooted in those times, sir; but smart extraordinary, and a terble notion of being dressy, too. Twisting ferns about her lil neck for lace, sticking a mountain thistle, sparkling with dew, on her breast for a diamond, twining a trail of fuchsia round her head for a crown—aw, dear! aw, dear! And now—well, well, to think! to think!”
There was laughter on the other side of the coach.
“What doyousay, Capt'n Pete?” shouted Crow.
“What's that?” asked Pete.
The fisherman had treated the driver and the farmer at the Hibernian, and was being rewarded with robustious chaff.
“I'm telling Dan Johnny here these childers that's coming when a man's away from home isn't much to trust. Best put a sight up with the lil one to the wise woman of Glen Aldyn, eh? A man doesn't like to bring up a cuckoo in the nest—what d'ye say, Capt'n?”
“I say you're a dirty ould divil, Crow; and I don't want to be chucking you off your seat,” said Pete; and with that he turned back to Philip. *
The driver was affronted, but the farmer pacified him by an appeal to his fear. “He'd be coarse to tackle, the same fellow—I saw him clane out a tent with one hand at Tyn-wald.”
“It's a wonder she didn't come home for all,” said Pete at Philip's ear—“at the end, you know. Couldn't face it out, I suppose? Nothing to be afraid of, though, if she'd only known. I had kept things middling straight up to then. And I'd have broke the head of the first man that'd wagged a tongue. But maybe it was myself she was freckened of! Freckened of me! Poor thing! poor thing!”
Philip was in torment. To witness Pete's simple grief, to hear him breathe a forgiveness for the erring woman, and to be trusted with the thoughts of his heart as a father might be trusted by a young child—it was anguish, it was agony, it was horror. More than once he felt an impulse to cast off his load, to confess, to tell everything. But he reflected that he had no right to do this—that the secret was not his own to give away. His fear restrained him also. He looked into Pete's face, so full of manly sorrow, and shuddered to think of it transformed by rage.
“Sit hard, gentlemen. Breeches' work here,” shouted Crow.
They were at the top of the steep descent going down to Laxey. The white town lay sprinkled over the green banks of the glen, and the great water-wheel stood in the depths of the mountain gill behind it.
“She's there! She's yonder! It's herself at the door. She's up. She's looking out for the coach,” cried the fisherman, clambering up on to the seat.
“Aisy all,” shouted Crow.
“No use, Mr. Crow. Nothing will persuade me but that's herself with the lil one in a blanket at the door.”
Before the coach had drawn up at the bridge, the fisherman had leapt to the ground, shouldered his keg, shouted “Good everin' all,” and disappeared down an alley of the town.
The driver alighted. A crowd gathered around. There were parcels to take up, parcels to set down, and the horses to water. When the coach was ready to start again, the farmer with his dogs had gone, but there was a passenger for an inside place. It was a girl, a bright young thing, with a comely face and laughing black eyes. She was dressed smartly, after her country fashion, in a hat covered with scarlet poppies, and with a vast brooch at the neck of her bodice. In one hand she carried a huge bunch of sweet-smelling gilvers. A group of girl companions came to see her off, and there was much giggling and chatter and general excitement.
“Are you forgetting the pouch and pipe, Emma?”
“Let me see; am I? No; it's here in my frock.”
“Well, you'll be coming together by the coach at nine, it's like?”
“It's like we will, Liza, if the steamer isn't late.”
“Now then, ladies, off the step! Any room for a lil calf' in the straw with you, missy? Freckened? Tut! Only a lil calf, as clane as clane—and breath as swate as your own, miss. There you are—it'll be lying quiet enough till we get to Douglas. All ready? Ready we are then. Collar work now, gentlemen. Aise the horse, sir. Thank you! Thank you! Not you, your Honour—sit where you are, Dempster.”
Pete got down to walk up the hill, but Philip, though he made some show of alighting also, was glad of the excuse to remain in his seat. It relieved him of Pete's company for a while, at all events. He had time to ask himself again why he was there, where he was going to, and what he was going to do. But his brain was a cloudy waste. Only one picture emerged from the maze. It was that of the burial of the nameless waif in the grave at the foot of the wall. If he was conscious of any purpose, it was a vague idea of going to that grave. But it lay ahead of him only as an ultimate goal. He was waiting and watching for an opportunity of escape. If it came, God be praised! If it did not come, God help and forgive him!
Meanwhile Pete walked behind, and caught fragments of a conversation between the girl and Crow.
“So you're going to meet himself coming home, miss, eh?”
“My faith, how d'ye know that? But it's yourself for knowing things, Mr. Crow. Has he been sailing foreign? Yes, sir; and nine months away for a week come Monday. But spoken at Holyhead in Tuesday's paper, and paid off in Liverpool yesterday. That's his 'nitials, if you want to know—J. W. I worked them on the pouch myself. I've spun him a web for a jacket, too. Sweethearting with the miner fellows while Jemmy's been away? Have I, d'ye say? How peoplewillbe talking!”
“Aw, no offence at all. But sorry you're not keeping another string to your bow, missy. These sailor lads aren't partic'lar, anyway. Bless your heart, no; but getting as tired of one swateheart as a pig of brewer's grain. Constant? Chut! When the like of that sort is away foreign, he lays up of the first girl he comes foul of.”
The girl laughed, and shook her head bravely, but the tears were beginning to trickle from her eyes, and the hand that held the flowers was trembling.
“Don't listen to the man, my dear,” said Pete. “There's too much comic in these ould bachelor bucks. Your boy is dying to get home to you. Go bail on that, Emma. The packet isn't making half way enough for him, and he's bad dreadful wanting to ship aloft and let out the topsail.”
At the crest of the hill Pete climbed back to Philip's side, and said, “The heart's a quare thing, sir. Got its winds and tides same as anything else. The wind blows contrary ways in one day, and it's the same with the heart itself. Changeable? Well, maybe! We shouldn't be too hard on it for all.... If I'd only known now.... She wasn't much better than a child when I left for Kimberley... and then what was I? I was only common stuff anyway... not much fit for the likes of herself, when you think of it, sir.... If I'd only guessed when I came back.... I could have done it, sir—I was loving the woman like life, but if I'd only known, now.... Well, and what's love if it's thinking of nothing but itself? If I'd thought she was loving another man by the time I came home, I could have given her up to him—yes, I could; I'm persuaded I could—-so help me God, I could.”
Philip was wasting on that journey like a piece of wax. Pete saw his face melting away till it looked more like a skeleton than the face of à man really alive.
“You mustn't be taking it so bad at all, Phil,” said Pete. “She'll be middling right where she's gone to, sir. She'll be right enough yonder,” he said, rolling his head sideways to where the sun was going round to its setting. And then softly, as if half afraid she might not be, he muttered into his beard, “God be good to my poor broken-hearted girl, and forgive her sins for Christ's sake.”
An elderly gentleman got on the coach at Onchan.
“Helloa, Deemster!” he cried. “You look as sober as an old crow. Sober! Old Crow! Ha, ha!”
He was a facetious person of high descent in the island.
“Crow never goes home without getting off the box once or twice to pick up the moonlight on the road—do you, Crow?”
“That'll do, parson, that'll do!” roared Crow. And then his reverence leaned across the driver and directed the shaft of his wit at Philip.
“And how's the young housekeeper, Deemster?”
Philip shuddered visibly, and made some inarticulate reply—
“Good-looking young woman, they're telling me. Jem-y-Lord's got taste, seemingly. But take care, your Honour; take care! 'Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's wife, nor his ox, nor his ass'——”
Philip laughed noisily. The miserable man was writhing in his seat.
“Take an old fiddler's advice, Deemster—have nothing to do with the women. When they're young they're kittens to play with you, but when they're old they're cats to scratch you.”
Pete twisted his body until the whole breadth of his back blocked the parson from Philip's face.
“A fortnight ago, you were saying, sir?”
“A fortnight,” muttered Philip.
“There'll be daisies growing on her grave by this time,” said Pete softly.
The parson had put up his nose-glasses. “Who's this fellow, Crow? Captain—what? His honour's cousin?Cousin?Oh, of course—yes—I remember—Tynwald—ah—h'm!”
The coach set down its passengers in the market-place. Pete inquired the hour of its return journey, and was told that it started back at six. He helped the girl to alight, and directed her to the pier, where a crowd of people' were awaiting the arrival of the steamer. Then he rejoined Philip, who led the way through the town.
The Deemster was observed by everybody. As he passed along the streets there was much whispering and nudging, and some bowing and lifting of hats. He responded to none of it He recognised no one. He, who was famous for courtesy, renowned for gracious manners, beloved for a smile like sunshine—the brighter and more winsome when it broke as from a cloud—returned no man's salutation that day, and replied to no woman's greeting. His face was set hard like a marble mask. It passed along without appearing to see.
Pete walked one step behind. They did not speak as they went through the town. Not a word or a sign passed between them. Philip turned into a side street, and drew up at an iron gate which opened on to a churchyard. They were at the churchyard of St. George's.
“This is the place,” said Philip huskily.
Pete took off his hat.
The gate was partly open. It was Saturday, and the organist was alone in the church practising hymns for Sunday's services. They passed through.
The churchyard was an oblong enclosure within high walls, overlooked on its long sides by rows of houses. One of these rows was Athol Street, and one of the houses was the Deemster's.
It was late afternoon by this time. Long shadows were cast eastward from the tombstones; the horizontal sunlight was making the leaves very light.
Philip walked noisily, jerkily, irregularly, like a man conscious of weakness and determined to conquer it. Pete walked behind, so softly that his foot on the gravel was hardly to be heard. The organist was playing Cowper's familiar hymn—
“God moves in a mysterious wayHis wonders to perform.”
There was a broad avenue, bordered by railed tombs, leading to the church-door. Philip turned out of this into a narrow path which went through a bare green space, that was dotted with pegs of wood and little unhewn slabs of slate, like an abandoned quoit ground. At the farthest corner of this space he stopped before a mound near to the wall. It was the new-made grave. The scars of the turf were still unhealed, and the glist of the spade was on the grass.
Philip hesitated a moment, and looked round at Pete, as if even then, even there, he would confess. But he saw no escape from the mesh of his own lies, and with a deep, breath of submission he pointed down, turned his head over his shoulder, and said in a strange voice—
“There.”
The silence was long and awful. At length Pete said in a broken whisper—
“Lave me, sir, lave me.”
Philip turned away, breathing audibly. A moment longer Pete stood where he was, gripping his hat with both hands in front of him. Then he went down on his knees. “Oh, forgive me my hard thoughts of thee,” he said. “Jesus, forgive me my hard thoughts of my poor Kirry.”
Philip heard no more. The organ was very loud and triumphant.
“Deep in unfathomable minesOf never-failing skill,He treasures up His bright designsAnd works His sovereign will.”
A red shaft of sunlight tipped down on Pete's uncovered head from the top of the wall. The blessed tears had come to him. He was sobbing aloud; he was alone with his love at last.
He was alone with her indeed. At that moment Kate was looking down from the window of her room. She saw him kneeling and praying by another's grave.
Philip never knew how he got out of the churchyard. He crawled out—creeping along by the wall, and slinking through the gate—heart-sick and all but heart-dead. When he came to himself, he was standing in Athol Street, and a company of jolly fellows in a jaunting-car, driving out of the golden sunset, were rattling past him with shouts and peals of laughter.
Kate was standing in her room with the door open, beating her hands together in the first helpless stupor of fear, when she saw a man coming up the stairs. His legs seemed to be giving way as he ascended; he was bent and feeble, and had all the look of great age. As he approached he lifted his face, which was old and withered. Then she saw who it was. It was Philip.
She made an involuntary cry, and he smiled upon her—a hard, frozen, terrible smile. “He is lost,” she thought. Her scared expression penetrated to his soul. He knew that she had seen everything. At first he tried to speak, but he could utter nothing. Then a mad desire seized him to lay hold of her—by the arms, by the shoulders, by the throat. Conquering this impulse, he stood motionless, passing his hands through his hair. She dropped her eyes and hung her head. Their abasement in each other's eyes was complete. He was ashamed before her, she was ashamed before him. One moment they faced each other thus, in silence, in pitiless and awful silence, and then slowly, very slowly, stupefied and crushed, he turned away and crept out of the house.
“It is the end—the end.” What was the use of going farther? He had fallen too low. His degradation was abject. It was hopeless, irreparable, irremediable. “End it all—end it all.” The words clamoured in his inmost soul.
Halting down the quay, he made for the ferry steps, where boats were waiting for hire. He had lately hired one of an evening, and pulled round the Head for the sake of the breath and the silence of the sea.
“Going far out this evening, your Honor?” the boatman asked.
“Farther than ever,” he answered.
Pull, pull! Away from the terrible past. Away from the horrible present. The steamer had arrived, and had discharged her passengers. She was still pulsing at the end of the red pier like a horse that pants after running a race.
A band was playing a waltz somewhere on the promenade. Pleasure boats were darting about the bay. Sea-birds were sitting on the water where the sewers of the gay little town empty into the sea.
Pull, pull! He was flying from remorse, from despair, from the deep duplicity of a double life, from the lie that had slain the heart of a living man. How low he had fallen! Could he fall lower without falling into crime?
Pull, pull! He would be a criminal next. When a man had been degraded in his own eyes, and in the eyes of her he loved, crime stood beckoning him. He might try, but he could not resist; he must yield, he must fall. It was the only degradation remaining. Better end everything before dropping into that last abyss.
Pull, pull! He was the judge of his island, and he had outraged justice. Holding a false title, living on a false honour, he was safe of no man's respect, secure of no woman's goodwill. Exposure hung over him. He would be disgraced, the law would be disgraced, the island would be disgraced. Pull, pull, pull, before it is too late; out, far out, farther than tide returns, or sea tells stories to the shore.
He had rowed like a slave escaping from his chains, in terror of being overtaken and dragged back. The voices of the harbour were now hushed, the music of the band was deadened, the horses running along the promenade seemed to creep like ants, and the traffic of the streets was no louder than a dull subterranean rumble. He had shot out of the margin of smooth blue water in which the island lay as on a mirror, and out of the shadow of the hill upon the bay. The sea about him now was running green and glistening, and the red sun-? light was coming down on it like smoke. Only the steeples and towers and glass domes of the town reached up into luminous air. He could see the squat tower of St. George's silhouetted against the dying glory of the sky. Seven years he had been its neighbour, and it had witnessed such happy and such cruel hours. All the joy of work, the sweetness of success, the dreams of greatness, the rosy flushes of love, and then—the tortures of conscience, the visions, the horror, the secret shame, the self-abandonment, and, last of all, the twofold existence as of husband with wife, hidden, incomplete, unfulfilled, yet full of tender ties which had seemed like galling bonds so many a time, but were now so sweet when the hour had come to break them.
How distant it all appeared to be! And was he flying from the island like this? The island that had honoured him, that had rewarded him beyond his deserts, and earlier than his dreams, that had suffered no jealousy to impede him, no rivalry to fret him, no disparity of age and service to hold him back—the little island that had seemed to open its arms to him, and to cry, “Philip Christian, son of your father, grandson of your grandfather, first of Manxmen, come up!”
Oh, for what might have been! Useless regrets! Pull, pull, and forget.
But the home of his childhood! Ballure—Auntie Nan—his father's death brightened by one hope—the last, but ah! how vain!—Port Mooar—Pete, “The sea's calling me.” Pull, pull! The sea was calling him indeed. Calling him to the deep womb that is death, not birth.
He was far out. The sun had gone, the island was like a bird of ashy grey stretched across the horizon; the great wing of night was coming down from the sky, and up out the mysterious depths of the sea came the profound hum, the mighty voice that is the organ of the world.
He took in the oars, and his tiny shell began to drift At that moment his eye caught something at the bottom of the boat. It was a flower, a broken stem, a torn rose, and a few scattered rose leaves. Only a relic of the last occupants, but it brought back the perfume of love, a sense of tenderness, of bright eyes, of a caress, a kiss. His mind went back to Sulby, to the Melliah, to the glen, to the days so full of tremulous love, when they hovered on the edge of the precipice. They had been hurled over it since then. It was some relief that between love and honour he would not have to struggle any longer.
And Kate? When all was over and word went round, “The Deemster is gone,” what would happen to Kate? She would still be at his house in Athol Street. That would be the beginning of evil! She would wait for him, and when hope of his return was lost, she would weep for him. That would be the key of discovery! The truth would become known. Though he might be at the bottom of the sea, yet the cloud that hung over his life would break. It was inevitable. And she would be there to bear the storm alone—alone with the island which had been deceived, alone with Pete, who had been lied to and betrayed. Was that just? Was that brave?
And then—what then? What would become of her? Openly shamed, charged, as she must be, with the whole weight of the crime from whose burden he had fled, accused of his downfall, a Delilah, a Jezebel, what fate should befall her? Where would she go? Down to what depths? He saw her sinking lower than ever man sinks; he heard her appeals, her supplications.
“Oh, what have I done,” he cried, “that I can neither live nor die?”
Then in that delirium of anguish in which the order of nature is reversed, and external objects no longer produce sensation, but sensation produces, as it were, external objects, he thought he saw something at the bottom of the boat where the broken rose had been. It was the figure of a man, stretched out, still and lifeless. His eyes went up to the face. The face was his own. It was ashy grey, and it stared up at the grey sky. The brain image was himself, and he was dead. He watched it, and it faded away. There was nothing left but the scattered rose-leaves and the torn flower on the broken stem.
The terrible shadow was gone; he felt that it was gone for ever. It was dead, and it would haunt him no longer. It had lived on an empire of evil-doing, and his evil-doing was at an end. He would “see his soul” no more. The tears gushed to his eyes and blinded him. They were the first he could remember since he was a boy. Alone between the two mirrors of sea and sky, the chain that he had dragged so long fell: away from him. He was a free man again.
“Go back! your place is by her side. Don't sneak out of life, and leave another to pay. Suffering is a grand thing. It is the struggle of the soul to cast off its sin. Accept it, go through with it, come out of it purged. Go back to the island. Your life is not ended yet.”
“We were just going sending a lil yawl after you, Dempster, when we were seeing you a bit overside the head yonder coming back. 'He's drifting home on the flowing tide,' says I, and so you were. Must have been a middling stiff pull for all. We were thinking you were lost one while there.”
“Iwasalmost lost, but I'm here again, thank God,” said Philip.
He spoke cheerily, and went away with a light step. It was now full night; the town was lit up, and the musicians of the pavement were twanging their banjos and harps. Philip felt a sort of physical regeneration, a renewal of youth, a new birth of heart and hope. He was like a man coming out of some hideous Gehenna of delirious illness; he though he had never been so light, so buoyant, so happy in his life before. The future was vague. He did not yet know what he would do. It would be something radical, something that would go down to the heart of his condition. Oh, he would be strong, he would be resolute, he would pay the uttermost farthing, he would not wait to count the cost. And she—she would be with him. He could do nothing without her. The partner of his fault would share his redemption also. God bless her!
He let himself into the house and shut the door firmly behind him. The lights were still burning in the hall, so it was not very late. He mounted the stairs with a loud step and swung into his room. The lamp was on the table, and within the circle cast by its blue shade a letter was lying. He took it up with dismay. It was in Kate's handwriting:—
“Forgive me! I am going away. It is all my fault. I have broken the heart of one man, and I am destroying the soul of another. If I stay here any longer you will be ruined and lost. I am only a millstone about your neck. I see it, I feel it. And yet I have loved you so, and wished to be so proud of you. Your heart is brave enough, though I have sunk it down so low. You will live to be strong and good and true, though that can never be while I am with you. I have been far below you from the first. All along I have only been thinking how much I loved you, but you have had so many other things to consider. My life seems to have been one long battle for love. I think it has been a cruel battle too. Anyway, I am beaten, and oh! so tired.
“Do not follow me. I pray of you do not try to find me. It is my last request. Think of me as on a long journey. I may be—the Great God of heaven knows.
“I am taking the little cracked medallion from the bottom of the oak box. It is the only picture I can find, and it will remind me of some one else as well—my little Katherine, my motherless baby.
“I have nothing to leave with you but this (it was a lock of her hair). At first I thought of the wedding-ring that you gave me when I came here, but it would not come off, and besides, I could not part with it.
“Good-bye! I ought to have done this long ago. But you will not hate me now? We could never be happy together again. Good-bye!”
The summer had gone, the gorse had dried up, the herring-fishing had ended, and Pete had become poor. His Nickey had done nothing, his last hundred pounds had been spent, and his creditors in scores, quiet as mice until then, were baying about him like bloodhounds. He sold his boat and satisfied everybody, but fell, nevertheless, to the position of a person of no credit and little consequence. On the lips of the people he descended from “Capt'n Pete” to Peter Bridget. When he saluted the rich with “How do!” they replied with a stare, a lift of the chin, and “You've the odds of me, my good man.” To this he replied, with a roll of the head and a peal of laughter, “Have I now? But you'll die for all.”
Ballajora Chapel had been three months rehearsing a children's cantata entitled “Under the Palms,” and building an arbour of palm branches on a platform for Pete's rugged form to figure in; but Cæsar sat there instead.
Still, Pete had his six thousand pounds in mortgage on Ballawhaine. Only three other persons knew anything of that—Cæsar, who had his own reasons for saying nothing; Peter Christian himself, who was hardly likely to tell; and the High Bailiff, who was a bachelor and a miser, and kept all business revelations as sacred as are the secrets of another kind of confessional. When Pete's evil day came and the world showed no pity, Cæsar became afraid.
“I wouldn't sell out, sir,” said he. “Hould on till Martinmas, anyway. The first half year's interest is due then. There's no knowing what'll happen before that. What's it saying, 'He shall give His angels charge concerning thee.' The ould man has had a polatic stroke, they're telling me. Aw, the Lord's mercy endureth for ever.”
Pete began to sell his furniture. He cleared out the parlour as bare as a vault. “Time for it, too,” he said. “I've been wanting the room for a workshop.”
Martinmas came, and Cæsar returned in high feather. “No interest,” he said. “Give him the month's grace, and hould hard till it's over. The Lord will provide. Isn't it written, 'In the world ye shall have tribulation'? Things are doing wonderful, though. Last night going home from Ballajora, I saw the corpse-lights coming from the big house to Kirk Christ's Churchyard, with the parson psalming in front of them. The ould man's dying—-I've seen his soul. To thy name, O Lord, be all the glory.”
Pete sold out a second room, and turned the key on it. “Mortal cosy and small this big, ugly mansion is getting, Nancy,” he said.
The month's grace allowed by the deed of mortgage expired, and Cæsar came to Elm Cottage rubbing both hands. “Turn him out, neck and crop, sir. Not a penny left to the man, and six thousand goolden pounds paid into his hands seven months ago. But who's wondering at that? There's Ross back again, carrying half a ton of his friends over the island, and lashing out the silver like dust.Yoursilver, sir,yours. And here's yourself, with the world darkening round you terrible. But no fear of you now. The meek shall inherit the earth. Aw, God is opening His word more and more, sir, more and more. There's that Black Tom too. He was talking big a piece back, but this morning he was up before the High Bailiff for charming and cheating, and was put away for the Dempster. Lord keep him from the gallows and hell-fire! Oh, it's a refreshing saison. It was God spaking to me by Providence when I tould you to put money on that mortgage. What's the Scripture saying, 'For brass I bring thee goold'? Turn him out, sir, turn him out.”
“Didn't you tell me that ould Ballawhaine had a polatic stroke?” said Pete.
“I did; but he's a big man; let him pay his way,” said Cæsar.
“Samson was a strong man, and Solomon was a wise one, but they couldn't pay money when they hadn't got it,” said Pete.
“Let him look to his son then,” said Cæsar”.
“That's just what he's going to do,” said Pete. “I'll let him die in his bed, God forgive him.”
The winter came, and Pete began to think of buying a Dandie, which being smaller than a Nickey, and of yawl rig, he could sail of himself, and so earn a living by fishing the cod. To do this he had a further clearing of furniture, thereby reducing the size of the house to three rooms. The featherbed left his own bedstead, the watch came out of his pocket, and the walls of the hall-kitchen gaped and yawned in the places where the pictures had been.
“The bog-bane to the rushy curragh, say I, Nancy,” said Pete. “Not being used of such grandeur, I was taking it hard. Never could remember to wind that watch. And feathers, bless you! Don't I remember the lil mother, with a sickle and a bag, going cutting the long grass on the steep brews for the cow, and drying a handful for myself for a bed. Sleeping on it? Never slept the like since at all.”
The result of Pete's first week's fishing was twenty cod and a gigantic ling. He packed the cod in boxes and sent them by Crow and the steam-packet to the market in Liverpool. The ling he swung on his back over his oilskin jacket and carried it home, the head at his shoulder and the tail dangling at his legs.
“There!” he cried, dropping it on the floor, “split it and salt it, and you've breakfas'es for a month.”
When the remittance came from Liverpool it was a postal order for seven-and-sixpence.
“Never mind,” said Pete; “we're bating Dan Hommy anyway—the ould muff has only made seven-and-a-penny.”
The weather was rough, the fishing was bad, the tackle got broken, and Pete began to extol plain living.
“Gough bless me,” he said, “I don't know in the world what's coming to the ould island at all. When I was for a man-servant with Cæsar the farming boys were ateing potatoes and herrings three times a day. But now! butcher's mate every dinner-time, if you plaze. And tay! the girls must be having it reg'lar—and taking no shame with them neither. My sake, I remember when the mother would be whispering, 'Keep an eye on the road, boy, while I'm brewing myself a cup of tay.' Truth enough, Nancy. An ounce a week and a pound of sugar, and people wondering at the woman for that.”
The mountains were taken from the people, and they were no longer allowed “to cut turf for fuel; coals were dear, the winter was cold, and Pete began to complain of a loss of appetite.
“My teeth must be getting bad, Nancy,” he whined. They were white as milk and faultless as a negro's. “Don't domesticate my food somehow. What's the odds, though I Can't ate suppers at all, and that's some constilation. Nothing like going to bed hungry, Nancy, if you're wanting to get up with an appetite for breakfast. Then the beautiful drames, woman! Gough bless me, the dinners and the feasts and the bankets you're ateing in your sleep! Now, if you filled your skin like a High Bailiff afore going to bed, ten to one you'd have a buggane riding on your breast the night through and drame of dying for a drink of water. Aw, sleep's a reg'lar Radical Good for levelling up, anyway.”
Christmas approached, servants boasted of the Christmas boxes they got from their masters, and Pete remembered Nancy.
“Nancy,” said he, “they're telling me Liza Billy-ny-Clae is getting twenty pound per year per annum at her new situation in Douglas. She isn't nothing to yourself at cooking. Mustn't let the lil one stand in your way, woman. She's getting a big girl now, and I'll be taking her out in the Dandie with me and tying her down on the low deck there and giving her a pig's bladder, and she'll be playing away as nice as nice. See?”
Nancy looked at him, and he dropped his eyes before her.
“Is it wanting to get done with me, you are, Pete?” she said in a quavering voice. “There's my black—I can sell it for something—it's never been wore at me since I sat through the sarvice with Grannie the Sunday after we got news of Kirry. And I'm not a big eater, Pete—never was—you can clear me of that anyway. A bit of bread and cheese for my dinner when you are out at the fishing, and I'm asking no better——”
“Hould your tongue, woman,” cried Pete. “Hould your tongue afore you break my heart I've seen my rich days and I've seen my poor days. I've tried both, and I'm content.”