Chapter III: Part I: Boys Together (3)

So saying he threw back his chair, and was making for the door, when Cæsar rose and said softly, “Come into the bar and have something.” Then, looking back at Philip's plate, he forced a laugh, and said, “But you've turned over your herring, sir--that's bad luck.” And, putting a hand on Philip's shoulder, he added, in a lower tone, “No disrespeck to you, sir; and no harm to the lad, but take my word for it, Mr. Christian, if there's an amble in the mare it'll be in the colt.”

Philip went off without another word. The moon was rising and whitening as he stepped from the door. Outside the porch a figure flitted past him in the uncertain shadows with a merry trill of mischievous laughter. He found Pete in the road, puffing and blowing as before, but from a different cause.

“The living devil's in the girl for sartin,” said Pete; “I can't get my answer out of her either way.” He had been chasing her for his answer, and she had escaped him through a gate. “But what luck with the ould man, Phil?”

Then Phil told him of the failure of his mission--told him plainly and fully but tenderly, softening the hard sayings but revealing the whole truth. As he did so he was conscious that he was not feeling like one who brings bad news. He knew that his mouth in the darkness was screwed up into an ugly smile, and, do what he would; he could not make it straight and sorrowful.

The happy laughter died off Pete's, lips, and he listened at first in silence, and afterwards with low growls. When Phil showed him how his poverty was his calamity he said, “Ay, ay, I'm only a wooden-spoon man.” When Phil told him how Cæsar had ripped up their old dead quarrel he muttered, “I'm on the ebby tide, Phil, that's it.” And when Phil hinted at what Cæsar had said of his mother and of the impediment of his own birth, a growl came up from the very depths of him, and he scraped the stones under his feet and said, “He shall repent it yet; yes, shall he.”

“Come, don't take it so much to heart--it's miserable to bring you such bad news,” said Phil; but he knew the sickly smile was on his lips still, and he hated himself for the sound of his own voice.

Pete found no hollow ring in it. “God bless you, Phil,” he said; “you've done the best for me, I know that. My pocket's as low as my heart, and it isn't fair to the girl, or I shouldn't be asking the ould man's lave anyway.”

He stood a moment in silence, crunching the wooden laths of the garden fence like matchwood in his fingers, and then said, with sudden resolution, “I know what I'll do.”

“What's that?” said Philip.. “I'll go abroad; I'll go to Kimberley.”

“Never!”

“Yes, will I though, and quick too. You heard what the men were saying in the evening--there's Manx ones going by the boat in the morning? Well, I'll go with them.”

“And you talk of being low in your pocket,” said Phil. “Why, it will take all you've got, man.”

“And more, too,” said Pete, “but you'll lend me the lave of the passage-money. That's getting into debt, but no matter. When a man falls into the water he needn't mind the rain. I'll make good money out yonder.”

A light had appeared at the window of an upper room, and Pete shook his clenched fist at it and cried, “Good-bye, Master Cregeen. I'll put worlds between us. You were my master once, but nobody made you my master for ever--neither you nor no man.”

All this time Philip knew that hell was in his heart. The hand that had let him loose when his anger got the better of him with Cæsar was clutching at him again. Some evil voice at his ear was whispering, “Let him go; lend him the money.”

“Come on, Pete,” he faltered, “and don't talk nonsense!”

But Pete heard nothing. He had taken a few steps forward, as far as to the stable-yard, and was watching the light in the house. It was moving from window to window of the dark wall. “She's taking the father's candle,” he muttered. “She's there,” he said softly. “No, she has gone. She's coming back though.” He lifted the stocking cap from his head and fumbled it in his hands. “God bless her,” he murmured. He sank to his knees on the ground. “And take care of her while I'm away.”

The moon had come up in her whiteness behind, and all was quiet and solemn around. Philip fell back and turned away his face.

VIII.

When Cæsar came in after seeing Philip to the door, he said, “Not a word of this to the girl. You that are women are like pigs--we've got to pull the way we don't want you.”

On that Kate herself came in, blushing a good deal, and fussing about with great vigour. “Are you talking of the piggies, father?” she said artfully. “How tiresome they are, to be sure! They came out into the yard when the moon rose and I had such work to get them back.”

Cæsar snorted a little, and gave the signal for bed. “Fairies indeed!” he said, in a tone of vast contempt, going to the corner to wind the clock. “Just wakeness of faith,” he said over the clank of the chain as the weights rose; “and no trust in God neither,” he added, and then the clock struck ten.

Grannie had lit two candles--one for herself and her husband, the other for Nancy Joe. Nancy had slyly filled three earthenware crocks with water from the well, and had set them on the table, mumbling something about the kettle and the morning. And Cæsar himself, pretending not to see anything, and muttering dark words about waste, went from the clock to the hearth, and raked out the hot ashes to a flat surface, on which you might have laid a girdle for baking cakes.

“Good-night, Nancy,” called Grannie, from half-way up the stairs, and Cæsar, with his head down, followed grumbling. Nancy went off next, and then Kate was left alone. She had to put out the lamp and wait for her father's candle.

When the lamp was gone the girl was in the dark, save for the dim light of the smouldering fire. She began to tremble and to laugh in a whisper. Her eyes danced in the red glow of the dying turf. She slipped off her shoes and went to a closet in the wall. There she picked an apple out of a barrel, and brought it to the fire and roasted it. Then, down on her knees before the hearth, she took took two pinches of the apple and swallowed them. After that and a little shudder she rose again, and turned about to go to bed, backwards, slowly, tremblingly, with measured steps, feeling her way past the furniture, having a shock when she touched anything, and laughing to herself, nervously, when she remembered what it was.

At the door of her father's room and Grannie's she called, with a quaver in her voice, and a sleepy grunt came out to her. She reached one hand through the door, which was ajar, and took the burning candle. Then she blew out the light with a trembling puff, that had to be twice repeated, and made for her own bedroom, still going backwards.

It was a sweet little chamber over the dairy, smelling of new milk and ripe apples, and very dainty in dimity and muslin. Two tiny windows looked out from it, one on to the stable-yard and the other on to the orchard. The late moon came through the orchard window, over the heads of the dwarf trees, and the little white place was lit up from the floor to the sloping thatch.

Kate went backwards as far as to the bed, and sat down on it She fancied she heard a step in the yard, but the yard window was at her back, and she would not look behind. She listened, but heard nothing more except a see-sawing noise from the stable, where the mare was running her rope in the manger ring. Nothing but this and the cheep-cheep of a mouse that was gnawing the wood somewhere in the floor.

“Will he come?” she asked herself.

She rose and loosened her gown, and as it fell to her feet she laughed.

“Which will it be, I wonder--which?” she whispered.

The moonlight had crept up to the foot of the bed, and now lay on it like a broad blue sword speckled as with rust by the patchwork counterpane.

She freed her hair from its red ribbon, and it fell in a shower about her face. All around her seemed hushed and awful. She shuddered again, and with a back ward hand drew down the sheets. Then she took a long, deep breath, like a sigh that is half a smile, and lay down to sleep.

IX.

Somewhere towards the dawn, in the vague shadow-land between a dream and the awakening, Kate thought she was startled by a handful of rice thrown at her carriage on her marriage morning. The rattle came again, and then she knew it was from gravel dashed at her bedroom window. As she recognised the sound, a voice came as through a cavern, crying, “Kate!” She was fully awake by this time. “Then it's to be Pete,” she thought. “It's bound to be Pete, it's like,” she told herself. “It's himself outside, anyway.”

It was Pete indeed. He was standing in the thin darkness under the window, calling the girl's name out of the back of his throat, and whistling to her in a sort of whisper. Presently he heard a movement inside the room, and he said over his shoulder, “She's coming.”

There was the click of a latch and the slithering of a sash, and then out through the little dark frame came a head like a picture, with a face all laughter, crowned by a cataract of streaming black hair, and rounded off at the throat by a shadowy hint of the white frills of a night-dress.

“Kate,” said Pete again.

She pretended to have come to the window merely to look out, and, like a true woman, she made a little start at the sound of his voice, and a little cry of dismay at the idea that he was so close beneath and had taken her unawares. Then she peered down into the gloom and said, in a tone of wondrous surprise, “It must be Pete, surely.”

“And so it is, Kate,” said Pete, “and he couldn't take rest without spaking to you once again.”

“Ah!” she said, looking back and covering her eyes, and thinking of Black Tom and the fairies. But suddenly the mischief of her sex came dancing into her blood, and she could not help but plague the lad. “Have you lost your way, Pete?” she asked, with an air of innocence.

“Not my way, but myself, woman,” said Pete.

“Lost yourself! Have the lad's wits gone moon-raking, I wonder? Are you witched then, Pete?” she inquired, with vast solemnity.

“Aw, witched enough. Kate----”

“Poor fellow!” sighed Kate. “Did she strike you unknown and sudden?”

“Unknown it was, Kirry, and sudden, too. Listen, though----”

“Aw dear, aw dear! Was it old Mrs. Cowley of the Curragh? Did she turn into a hare? Is it bitten you've been, Pete?”

“Aw, yes, bitten enough. But, Kate----”

“Then it was a dog, it's like. Is it flying from the water you are, Pete?”

“No, but flying _to_ the water, woman. Kate, I say----”

“Is it burning they're doing for it?”

“Burning and freezing both. Will you hear me, though? I'm going away--hundreds and thousands of miles away.”

Then from the window came a tone of great awe, uttered with face turned upward as if to the last remaining star.

“Poor boy! Poor boy! it's bitten he is, for sure.”

“Then it's yourself that's bitten me. Kirry----”

There was a little crow of gaiety. “Me? Am I the witch? You called me a fairy in the road this evening.”

“A fairy you are, girl, and a witch too; but listen, now----”

“You said I was an angel, though, at the cowhouse gable; and an angel doesn't bite.”

Then she barked like a dog, and laughed a shrill laugh like a witch, and barked again.

But Pete could bear no more. “Go on, then; go on with your capers! Go on!” he cried, in a voice of reproach. “It's not a heart that's at you at all, girl, but only a stone. You see a man going away from the island----”

“From the island?” Kate gasped.

“Middling down in the mouth, too, and plagued out of his life between the ruck of you,” continued Pete; “but God forgive you all, you can't help it.”

“Did you say you were going out of the island, Pete?”

“Coorse I did; but what's the odds? Africa, Kimberley, the Lord knows where----”

“Kimberley! Not Kimberley, Pete!”

“Kimberley or Timbuctoo, what's it matter to the like of you? A man's coming up in the morning to bid you good-bye before an early sailing, and you're thinking of nothing but your capers and divilments.”

“It's you to know what a girl's thinking, isn't it, Mr. Pete? And why are you flying in my face for a word?”

“Flying? I'm not flying. It's driven I am.”

“Driven, Pete?”

“Driven away by them that's thinking I'm not fit for you. Well, that's true enough, but they shan't be telling me twice.”

“They? Who are they, Pete?”

“What's the odds? Flinging my mother at me, too--poor little mother! And putting the bastard on me, it's like. A respectable man's girl isn't going begging that she need marry a lad without a name.”

There was a sudden ejaculation from the window-sash. “Who dared to say that?”

“No matter.”

“Whoever they are, you can tell them, if it's me they mean, that, name or no name, when I want to marry I'll marry the man I like.”

“If I thought that now, Kitty----”

“As for you, Mr. Pete, that's so ready with your cross words, you can go to your Kimberley. Yes, go, and welcome; and what's more--what's more----”

But the voice of anger, in the half light overhead, broke down suddenly into an inarticulate gurgle.

“Why, what's this?” said Pete in a flurry. “You're not crying though, Kate? Whatever am I saying to you, Kitty, woman? Here, here--bash me on the head for a blockhead and an omathaun.”

And Pete was clambering up the wall by the side of the dairy window.

“Get down, then,” whispered Kate.

Her wrath was gone in a moment, and Pete, being nearer to her now, could see tears of laughter dancing in her eyes.

“Get down, Pete, or I'll shut the window, I will--yes, I will.” And, to show how much she was in earnest in getting out of his reach, she shut up the higher sash and opened the lower one.

“Darling!” cried Pete.

“Hush! What's that?” Kate whispered, and drew back on her knees.

“Is the door of the pig-sty open again?” said Pete.

Kate drew a breath of relief. “It's only somebody snoring,” she said.

“The ould man,” said Pete. “That's all serene! A good ould sheepdog, that snaps more than, he bites, but he's best when he's sleeping--more safer, anyway.”

“What's the good of going away, Pete?” said Kate. “You'd have to make a fortune to satisfy father.”

“Others have done it, Kitty--why shouldn't I? Manx ones too--silver kings and diamond kings, and the Lord knows what. No fear of me! When I come back it's a queen you'll be, woman--my queen, anyway, with pigs and cattle and a girl to wash and do for you.”

“So that's how you'd bribe a poor girl is it? But you'd have to turn religious, or father would never consent.”

“When I come home again, Kitty, I'll be that religious you never seen. I'll be just rolling in it. You'll hear me spaking like the Book of Genesis and Abraham, and his sons, and his cousins; I'll be coming up at night making love to you at the cowhouse door like the Acts of the Apostles.”

“Well, that will be some sort of courting, anyway. But who says I'll be wanting it? Who says I'm willing for you to go away at all with the notion that I must be bound to marry you when you come back?”

“I do,” said Pete stoutly.

“Oh, indeed, sir.”

“Listen. I'll be working like a nigger out yonder, and making my pile, and banking it up, and never seeing nothing but the goold and the girls----”

“My goodness! What do you say?”

“Aw, never fear! I'm a one-woman man, Kate; but loving one is giving me eyes for all. And you'll be waiting for me constant, and never giving a skute of your little eye to them drapers and druggists from Ramsey----”

“Not one of them? Not Jamesie Corrin, even--he's a nice boy, is Jamesie.”

“That dandy-divil with the collar? Hould your capers, woman!”

“Nor young Ballawhaine--Ross Christian, you know?”

“Ross Christian be--well, no; but, honour bright, you'll be saying, 'Peter's coming; I must be thrue!'”

“So I've got my orders, sir, eh? It's all settled then, is it? Hadn't you better fix the wedding-day and take out the banns, now that your hand is in? I have got nothing to do with it, seemingly. Nobody asks me.”

“Whist, woman!” cried Pete. “Don't you hear it?”

A cuckoo was passing over the house and calling.

“It's over the thatch, Kate. 'Cuckoo! Cuckoo! Cuckoo!' Three times! Bravo! Three times is a good Amen. Omen is it? Have it as you like, love.”

The stars had paled out by this time, and the dawn was coming up like a grey vapour from the sea.

“Ugh! the air feels late; I must be going in,” said Kate.

“Only a bit of a draught from the mountains--it's not morning yet,” said Pete.

A bird called from out of the mist somewhat far away.

“It is, though. That's the throstle up the glen,” said Kate.

Another bird answered from the eaves of the house.

“And what's that?” said Pete. “Was it yourself, Kitty? How straight your voice is like the throstle's!”

She hung her head at the sweet praise, but answered tartly, “How people will be talking!”

A dead white light came sweeping over the front of the house, and the trees and the hedges, all quiet until then, began to shudder. Kate shuddered too, and drew the frills closer about her throat. “I'm going, Pete,” she whispered.

“Not yet. It's only a taste of the salt from the sea,” said Pete. “The moon's not out many minutes.”

“Why, you goose, it's been gone these two hours. This isn't Jupiter, where it's moonlight always.”

“Always moonlight in Jubiter, is it?” said Pete. “My goodness! What coorting there must be there!”

A cock crowed from under the hen-roost, the dog barked indoors, and the mare began to stamp in her stall.

“When do you sail, Pete?”

“First tide--seven o'clock.”

“Time to be off, then. Good-bye!”

“Hould hard--a word first.”

“Not a word. I'm going back to bed. See, there's the sun coming up over the mountains.”

“Only a touch of red on the tip of ould Cronky's nose. Listen! Just to keep them dandy-divils from plaguing you, I'll tell Phil to have an eye on you while I'm away.”

“Mr. Christian?”

“Call him Philip, Kate. He's as free as free. No pride at all. Let him take care of you till I come back.”

“I'm shutting the window, Pete!”

“Wait! Something else. Bend down so the ould man won't hear.”

“I can't reach--what is it?”

“Your hand, then; I'll tell it to your hand.”

She hesitated a moment, and then dropped her hand over the window-sill, and he clutched at it and kissed it, and pushed back the white sleeve and ran up the arm with his lips as far as he could climb.

“Another, my girl; take your time, one more--half a one, then.”

She drew her arm back until her hand got up to his hand, and then she said, “What's this? The mole on your finger still, Pete? You called me a witch--now see me charm it away. Listen!--'Ping, ping, prash, Cur yn cadley-jiargan ass my chass.'”

She was uttering the Manx charm in a mock-solemn ululation when a bough snapped in the orchard, and she cried, “What's that?”

“It's Philip. He's waiting under the apple-tree,” said Pete.

“My goodness me!” said Kate, and down went the window-sash.

A moment later it rose again, and there was the beautiful young face in its frame as before, but with the rosy light of the dawn on it.

“Has he been there all the while?” she whispered.

“What matter? It's only Phil.”

“Good-bye! Good luck!” and then the window went down for good.

“Time to go,” said Philip, still in his tall silk hat and his knickerbockers. He had been standing alone among the dead brown fern, the withering gorse, and the hanging brambles, gripping the apple-tree and swallowing the cry that was bubbling up to his throat, but forcing himself to look upon Pete's happiness, which was his own calamity, though it was tearing his heart out, and he could hardly bear it.

The birds were singing by this time, and Pete, going back, sang and whistled with the best of them.

X.

In the mists of morning, Grannie had awakened in her bed with the turfy scraas of the thatch just visible above her, and the window-blind like a hazy moon floating on the wall at her side. And, fixing her nightcap, she had sighed and said, “I can't close my eyes for dreaming that the poor lad has come to his end untimeously.”

Cæsar yawned, and asked, “What lad?”

“Young Pete, of course,” said Grannie.

Cæsar _umpht_ and grunted.

“We were poor ourselves when we began, father.”

Grannie felt the glare of the old man's eye on her in the darkness. “'Deed, we were; but people forget things. We had to borrow to buy our big overshot wheel; we had, though. And when ould Parson Harrison sent us the first boll of oats, we couldn't grind it for want of----”

Cæsar tugged at the counterpane and said, “Will you lie quiet, woman, and let a hard-working man sleep?”

“Then don't be the young man's destruction, Cæsar.”

Cæsar made a contemptuous snort, and pulled the bedclothes about his head.

“Aw, 'deed, father, but the girl might do worse. A fine, strapping lad. And, dear heart, the cheerful face _at_ him! It's taking joy to look at--like drawing water from a well! And the laugh _at_ the boy, too--that joyful, it's as good to hear in the morning as six pigs at a lit----”

“Then marry the lad yourself, woman, and have done with it,” cried Cæsar, and, so saying, he kicked out his leg, turned over to the wall, and began to snore with great vigour.

XI.

The tide was up in Ramsey Harbour, and rolling heavily on the shore before a fresh sea-breeze with a cold taste of the salt in it. A steamer lying by the quay was getting up steam; trucks were running on her gangways, the clanking crane over her hold was working, and there was much shouting of name, and ordering and protesting, and general tumult. On the after-deck stood the emigrants for Kimberley, the Quarks from Glen Rushen, and some of the young Gills from Castletown--stalwart lads, bearing themselves bravely in the midst of a circle of their friends, who talked and laughed to make them forget they were on the point of going.

Pete and Phil came up the quay, and were received by a shout of incredulity from Quayle, the harbour-master. “What, are you going, too, Mr. Philip?” Philip answered him “No,” and passed on to the ship.

Pete was still in his stocking cap and Wellington boots, but he had a monkey-jacket over his blue guernsey. Except for a parcel in a red print handkerchief, this was all his kit and luggage. He felt a little lost amid all the bustle, and looked helpless and unhappy. The busy preparations on land and shipboard had another effect on Philip. He sniffed the breeze off the bay and laughed, and said, “The sea's calling me, Pete; I've half a mind to go with you.”

Pete answered with a watery smile. His high spirits were failing him at last. Five years were a long time to be away, if one built all one's hopes on coming back. So many things might happen, so many chances might befall. Pete had no heart for laughter.

Philip had small mind for it, either, after the first rush of the salt in his blood was over. He felt at some moments as if hell itself were inside of him. What troubled him most was that he could not, for the life of him, be sorry that Pete was leaving the island. Once or twice since they left Sulby he had been startled by the thought that he hated Pete. He knew that his lip curled down hard at sight of Pete's solemn face. But Pete never suspected this, and the innocent tenderness of the rough fellow was every moment beating it down with blows that cut like ice and burnt like fire.

They were standing by the forecastle head, and talking above the loud throbbing of the funnel.

“Good-bye, Phil; you've been wonderful good to me--better nor anybody in the world. I've not been much of a chum for the like of you, either--you that's college bred and ought to be the first gentry in the island if everybody had his own. But you shan't be ashamed for me, neither--no you shan't, so help me God! I won't be long away, Phil--maybe five years, maybe less, and when I come back you'll be the first Manxman living. No? But you will, though; you will, I'm telling you. No nonsense at all, man. Lave it to me to know.”

Philip's frosty blue eyes began to melt.

“And if I come back rich, I'll be your ould friend again as much as a common man may; and if I come back poor and disappointed and done for, I'll not claim you to disgrace you; and if I never come back at all, I'll be saying to myself in my dark hour somewhere, 'He'll spake up for you at home, boy; _he'll_ not forget you.'”

Philip could hear no more for the puffing of the steam and the clanking of the chains.

“Chut! the talk a man will put out when he's thinking of ould times gone by!”

The first bell rang on the bridge, and the harbour-master shouted, “All ashore, there!”

“Phil, there's one turn more I'll ask of you, and, if it's the last, it's the biggest.”

“What is it?”

“There's Kate, you know. Keep an eye on the girl while I'm away. Take a slieu round now and then, and put a sight on her. She'll not give a skute at the heirs the ould man's telling of; but them young drapers and druggists, they'll plague the life out of the girl. Bate them off, Phil. They're not worth a fudge with their fists. But don't use no violence. Just duck the dandy-divils in the harbour--that'll do.”

“No harm shall come to her while you are away.”

“Swear to it, Phil. Your word's your bond, I know that; but give me your hand and swear to it--it'll be more surer.”

Philip gave his hand and his oath, and then tried to turn away, for he knew that his face was reddening.

“Wait! There's another while your hand's in, Phil. Swear that nothing and nobody shall ever come between us two.”

“You know nothing ever will.”

“But swear to it, Phil. There's bad tongues going, and it'll make me more aisier. Whatever they do, whatever they say, friends and brothers to the last?”

Philip felt a buzzing in his head, and he was so dizzy that he could hardly stand, but he took the second oath also. Then the bell rang again, and there was a great hubbub. Gangways were drawn up, ropes were let go, the captain called to the shore from the bridge, and the blustering harbour-master called to the bridge from the shore.

“Go and stand on the end of the pier, Phil--just aback of the lighthouse--and I'll put myself at the stern. I want a friend's face to be the last thing I see when I'm going away from the old home.”?

Philip could bear no more. The hate in his heart was mastered. It was under his feet. His flushed face was wet.

The throbbing of the funnels ceased, and all that could be heard was the running of the tide in the harbour and the wash of the waves on the shore. Across the sea the sun came up boldly, “like a guest expected,” and down its dancing water-path the steamer moved away. Over the land old Bar-rule rose up like a sea king with hoar-frost on his forehead, and the smoke began to lift from the chimneys of the town at his feet.

“Good-bye, little island, good-bye! I'll not forget you. I'm getting kicked out of you, but you've been a good ould mother to me, and, God help me, I'll come back to you yet. So long, little Mona, s'long? I'm laving you, but I'm a Manxman still.”

Pete had meant to take off his stocking cap as they passed the lighthouse, and to dash the tears from his eyes like a man. But all that Philip could see from the end of the pier was a figure huddled up at the stern on a coil of rope.