Chapter V: Part II: Boy and Girl (2)

“Well--very well.”

Ross looked on with jealous rage. His horse, frightened by the fight, had twirled round and round till the reins were twisted into a knot about the gorse stump, and as he liberated the beast he flogged it back till it flew around him. Then he vaulted to the saddle, tugged at the curb, and the horse reared. “Down,” he cried with an oath, and lashed brutally at the horse's head.

Meantime Kate, going past him with Philip on her arm, was saying softly, “Are you feeling better, Philip?”

And Ross, looking on in sulky meditation, sent a harsh laugh out of his hot throat, and said, “Oh, you can make your mind easy about _him_, if your other man fights for you like that you'll do. Thought you'd have three of them, did you? Or perhaps you only wanted me for your decoy? Why don't you kiss him now, when he can know it? But he's a beauty to take care of you for somebody else. Fighting for the other one, eh? Stuff and humbug! Take him home, and the curse of Judas on the brace of you.”

So saying, he burst into wild, derisive laughter, flogged his horse on the ears and the nose, shouted “Down, you brute, down!” and shot off at a gallop across the open Curragh.

Philip and Kate stood where he had left them till he had disappeared in the mist rising off the marshy land, and the hud of his horse's hoofs could be no more heard. Their heads were down, and though their arms were locked, their faces were turned half aside. There was silence for some time. The girl's eyelids quivered; her look was anxious and helpless. Then Philip said, “Let us go home,” and they began to walk together.

Not another word did they speak. Neither looked into the other's eyes. Their entwined arms slackened a little in a passionless asundering, yet both felt that they must hold tight or they would fall. It was almost as if Ross's parting taunt had uncovered their hearts to each other, and revealed to themselves their secret. They were like other children of the garden of Eden, driven out and stripped naked.

At the bridge they met Cæsar, Grannie, Nancy Joe, and half the inhabitants of Sulby, abroad with lanterns in search of them.

“They're here,” cried Cæsar. “You've chastised him, then! You'd bait his head off, I'll go bail. And I believe enough you'll be forgiven, sir. Yonder blow was almost bitterer than flesh can bear. Before my days of grace--but, praise the Lord for His restraining hand, the very minute my anger was up He crippled me in the hip with rheumatics. But what's this?” holding the lantern over his head; “there's blood on your face, sir?”

“A scratch--it's nothing,” said Philip.

“It's the women that's in every mischief,” said Cæsar.

“Lord bless me, aren't the women as good as the men?” said Nancy.

“H'm,” said Cæsar. “We're told that man was made a little lower than the angels, but about women we're just left to our own conclusions.”

“Scripture has nothing to do with Ross Christian, father,” said Grannie.

“The Lord forbid it,” said Cæsar. “What can you get from a cat but his skin? And doesn't the man come from Christian Ballawhaine!”

“If it comes to that, though, haven't we all come from Adam?” said Grannie.

“Yes; and from Eve too, more's the pity,” said Cæsar.

VI.

For some time thereafter Philip went no more to Sulby. He had a sufficient excuse. His profession made demand of all his energies. When he was not at work in Douglas he was expected to be at home with his aunt at Ballure. But neither absence nor the lapse of years served to lift him out of the reach of temptation. He had one besetting provocation to remembrance--one duty which forbade him to forget Kate--his pledge to Pete, his office as _Dooiney Molla_. Had he not vowed to keep guard over the girl? He must do it. The trust was a sacred one.

Philip found a way out of his difficulty. The post was an impersonal and incorruptible go-between, so he wrote frequently. Sometimes he had news to send, for, to avoid the espionage of Cæsar, intelligence of Pete came through him; occasionally he had love-letters to enclose; now and then he had presents to pass on. When such necessity did not arise, he found it agreeable to keep up the current of correspondence. At Christmas he sent Christmas cards, on Midsummer Day a bunch of moss roses, and even on St. Valentine's Day a valentine. All this was in discharge of his duty, and everything he did was done in the name of Pete. He persuaded himself that he sank his own self absolutely. Having denied his eyes the very sight of the girl's face, he stood erect in the belief that he was a true and loyal friend.

Kate was less afraid and less ashamed. She took the presents from Pete and wore them for Philip. In her secret heart she thought no shame of this. The years gave her a larger flow of life, and made out of the bewitching girl a splendid woman, brought up to the full estate of maidenly beauty.

This change wrought by time on her bodily form caused the past to seem to her a very long way off. Something had occurred that made her a different being. She was like the elder sister of that laughing girl who had known Pete. To think of that little sister as having a kind of control over her was impossible. Kate never did think of it.

Nevertheless, she held her tongue. Her people were taken in by the episode of Ross Christian. According to their view, Kate loved the man and still longed for him, and that was why she never talked of Pete. Philip was disgusted with her unfaithfulness to his friend, and that was the reason of his absence. She never talked of Philip either, but they, on their part, talked of him perpetually, and fed her secret passion with his praises. Thus for three years these two were like two prisoners in neighbouring cells, very close and yet very far apart, able to hear each other's voices, yet never to see each other's faces, yearning to come together and to touch, but unable to do so because of the wall that stood between.

Since the fight, Cæsar had removed her from all duties of the inn, and one day in the spring she was in the gable house peeling rushes to make tallow candles when Kelly, the postman, passed by the porch, where Nancy Joe was cleaning the candle-irons.

“Heard the newses, Nancy?” said Kelly. “Mr. Philip Christian is let off two years' time and called to the bar.”

Nancy looked grave. “I'm sure the young gentleman is that quiet and studdy,” she said. “What are they doing on him?”

“Only making him a full advocate, woman,” said Kelly.

“You don't say?” said Nancy.

“He passed his examination before the Govenar's man yesterday.”

“Aw, there now!”

“I took the letter to Ballure this evening.”

“It's like you would, Mr. Kelly. That's the boy for you. I'm always saying it. 'Deed I am, though, but there's ones here that won't have it at all, at all.”

“Miss Kate, you mane? We know the raison. He's lumps in her porridge, woman. Good-day to you, Nancy.”

“Yes, it's doing a nice day enough, Mr. Kelly,” said Nancy, and the postman passed on.

Kate came gliding out with a brush in her hand. “What was the postman saying?”

“That--Mr.--Philip--Christian--has been passing--for an advocate,” said Nancy deliberately.

Kate's eyes glistened, and her lips quivered with delight; but she only said, with an air of indifference, “Was that all his news, then?”

“All? D'ye say all?” said Nancy, digging away at the candle-irons. “Listen to the girl! And him that good to her while her promist man's away!”

Kate shelled her rush, and said, with a sigh and a sly look, “I'm afraid you think a deal too much of him, Nancy.”

“Then I'll be making mends,” said Nancy, “for some that's thinking a dale too little.”

“I'm quite at a loss to know what you see in him,” said Kate.

“Now, you don't say!” said Nancy with scorching irony. Then, banging her irons, she added, “I'm not much of a woman for a man myself. They're only poor helpless creatures anyway, and I don't approve of them. But if I was for putting up with one of the sort, he wouldn't have legs and arms like a dolly, and a face like curds and whey, and coat and trousers that loud you can hear them coming up the street.”

With this parting shot at Ross Christian, Nancy flung into the house, thinking she had given Kate a dressing that she would never forget. Kate was radiant. Such abuse was honey on her lips, such scoldings were joy-bells in her ears. She took silent delight in provoking these attacks. They served her turn both ways, bringing her delicious joy at the praise of Philip, and at the same time preserving her secret.

VII.

Latter that day Cæsar came in from the mill with the startling intelligence that Philip was riding up on the highroad.

“Goodness mercy!” cried Nancy, and she fled away to wash her face. Grannie with a turn of the hand settled her cap, and smoothed her grey hair under it. Kate herself had disappeared like a flash of light; but as Philip dismounted at the gate, looking taller, and older, and paler, and more serious, but raising his cap from his fair head and smiling a smile like sunshine, she was coming leisurely out of the porch with a bewitching hat over her wavy black hair and a hand-basket over her arm.

Then there was a little start of surprise and recognition, a short catch of quick breath and nervous salutations.

“I'm going round to the nests,” she said. “I suppose you'll step in to see mother.”

“Time enough for that,” said Philip. “May I help you with the eggs first? Besides, I've something to tell you.”

“Is it that you're 'admitted?'” said Kate.

“That's nothing,” said Philip. “Only the A B C, you know. Getting ready to begin, so to speak.”

They walked round to the stackyard, and he tied up his horse and gave it hay. Then, while they poked about for eggs on hands and knees among the straw, under the stacks and between the bushes, she said she hoped he would have success, and he answered that success was more than a hope to him now--it was a sort of superstition. She did not understand this, but looked up at him from all fours with brightening eyes, and said, “What a glorious thing it is to be a man!”

“Is it?” said Philip. “And yet I remember somebody who said she wasn't sorry to be a girl.”

“Did I?” said Kate. “But that was long ago. And _I_ remember somebody else who pretended he was glad I was.”

“That was long ago too,” said Philip, and both laughed nervously.

“What strange things girls are--and boys!” said Kate with a matronly sigh, burying her face in a nest where a hen was clucking and two downy chicks were peeping from her wing.

They went through to the orchard, where the trees were breaking into eager blossoms.

“I've another letter for you from Pete,” said Philip.

“So?” said Kate.

“Here it is,” said Philip.

“Won't you read it?” said Kate.

“But it's yours; surely a girl doesn't want anybody else----”

“Ah! but you're different, though; you know everything--and besides--read it aloud, Philip.”

With her basket of eggs on one arm, and the other hand on the outstretched arm of an apple-tree, she waited while he read:

“Dearest Kitty,--How's yourself, darling, and how's Philip, and how's Grannie? I'm getting on tremendous. They're calling me Captain now--Capt'n Pete. Sort of overseer at the Diamond Mines outside Kimberley. Regular gentleman's life and no mistake. Nothing to do but sit under a monstrous big umbrella, with a paper in your fist, like a chairman, while twenty Kaffirs do the work. Just a bit of a tussle now and then to keep you from dropping off. When a Kaffir turns up a diamond, you grab it, and mark it on the time-sheet against his name. They've got their own outlandish ones, but we always christen them ourselves--Sixpence, Seven Waistcoats, Shoulder-of-Mutton, Twopenny Trotter--anything you like. When a Kaffir strikes a diamond, he gets a commission, and so does his overseer. I'm afraid I'm going to be getting terrible rich soon. Tell the old man I'll be buying that har-monia yet. They are a knowing lot, though, and if they can get up a dust to smuggle a stone when you're not looking, they will. Then they sell it to the blackleg Boers, and you've got to raise your voice like an advocate to get it back somehow. But the Boers can't do no harm to you with their fists at all--it's playing. They're a dirty lot, wonderful straight like some of the lazy Manx ones, especially Black Tom. When they see us down at the river washing, they say, 'What dirty people the English must be if they have to wash themselves three times a day--we only do it once a week.' When a Kaffir steals a stone we usually court-martial him, but I don't hold with it, as the floggers on the compound can't be trusted; so I always lick my own niggers, being more kinder, and if anybody does anything against me, they lynch him.”

Kate made a little patient sigh and turned away her head, while Philip, in a halting voice, went on--

“Darling Kitty, I am longing mortal for a sight of your sweet face. When the night comes, and I'll be lying in the huts--boards on the ground, and good canvas, and everything comfortable--says I to the boys, 'Shut your faces, men, and let a poor chap sleep;' but they never twig the darkness of my meaning. I'll only be wanting a bit of quiet for thinking of.... with the stars atwinkling down.... She's looking at that one.... Shine on my angel....”

“Really, Kate,” faltered Philip, “I can't----”

“Give it to me, then,” said Kate.

She was tugging with her trembling hand at the arm of the apple-tree, and the white blossom was raining over her from the rowels of the thin boughs overhead, like silver fish falling from the herring-net. Taking the letter, she glanced over the close--

“darlin Kirry how is the mackral this saison and is the millin doing middling and I wonder is the hens all layin and is the grace gone out of the mares leg yet and how is the owl man and is he still playin hang with the texes. Theer is a big chap heer that is strait like him he hath swallowed the owl Book and cant help bring it up agen but dear Kirry no more at present i axpect to be Home sune bogh, to see u all tho I dont no azactly With luv your luving swateart peat.”

When she had finished the letter, she turned it over in her fingers, and gave another patient little sigh. “You didn't read it as it was spelled, Philip,” she said.

“What odds if the spelling is uncertain when the love is as sure as that?” said Philip.

“Did he write it himself, think you?” said Kate.

“He signed it, anyway, and no doubt indited it too; but perhaps one of the Gills boys held the pen.”

She coloured a little, slipped the letter down her dress into her pocket, and looked ashamed.

VIII.

This shame at Pete's letter tormented Philip, and he stayed away again. His absence stimulated Kate and made Philip himself ashamed. She was vexed with him that he did not see that all this matter of Pete was foolishness. It was absurd to think of a girl marrying a man whom she had known when he was a boy. But Philip was trying to keep the bond sacred, and so she made her terms with it. She used Pete as a link to hold Philip.

After the lapse of some months, in which Philip had not been seen at Sulby, she wrote him a letter. It was to say how anxious she had been at the length of time since she had last heard from Pete, and to ask if he had any news to relieve her fears. The poor little lie was written in a trembling hand which shook honestly enough, but from the torment of other feelings.

Philip answered the letter in person. Something had been speaking to him day and night, like the humming of a top, finding him pretexts on which to go; but now he had to make excuses for staying so long away. It was evening. Kate was milking, and he went out to her in the cowhouse.

“We began to think we were to see no more of you,” she said, over the rattle of the milk in the pail.

“I've--I've been ill,” said Philip.

The rattle died to a thin hiss. “Very ill?” she asked.

“Well, no--not seriously,” he answered.

“I never once thought of that,” she said. “Something ought to have told me. I've been reproaching you, too.”

Philip felt shame of his subterfuge, but yet more ashamed of the truth; so he leaned against the door and watched in silence. The smell of hay floated down from the loft, and the odour of the cow's breath came in gusts as she turned her face about. Kate sat on the milking-stool close by the ewer, and her head, on which she wore a sun-bonnet, she leaned against the cow's side.

“No news of Pete, then? No?” she said.

“No,” said Philip.

Kate dug her head deeper in the cow, and muttered, “Dear Pete! So simple, so natural.”

“He is,” said Philip.

“So good-hearted, too.”

“Yes.”

“And such a manly fellow--any girl might like him,” said Kate.

“Indeed, yes,” said Philip.

There was silence again, and two pigs which had been snoring on the manure heap outside began to snort their way home. Kate turned her head so that the crown of the sun-bonnet was toward Phillip, and said--

“Oh, dear! Can there be anything so terrible as marrying somebody you don't care for?”

“Nothing so bad,” said Philip.

The mouth of the sun-bonnet came round. “Yes, there's one thing worse, Philip.”

“No?”

“Not having married somebody you do,” said Kate, and the milk rattled like hail.

In the straw behind. Kate there was a tailless Manx cat with three tailed kittens, and Philip began to play with them. Being back to back with Kate, he could keep his countenance.

“This old Horney is terrible for switching,” said Kate, over her shoulder. “Don't you think you could hold her tail?”

That brought them face to face again. “It's so sweet to have some one to talk to about Pete,” said Kate.

“Yes?”

“I don't know how I could bear his long absence but for that.”

“Are you longing so much, Kate?”

“Oh, no, not longing--not to say longing. Only you can't think what it is to be... have you never been yourself, Philip?”

“What?” “Hold it tight... in love? No?”

“Well,” said Philip, speaking at the crown of the sun-bonnet. “Ha! ha! well, not properly perhaps--I don't--I can hardly say, Kate.”

“There! You've let it go, after all, and she's covered me with the milk! But I'm finished, anyway.”

Kate was suddenly radiant. She kissed Horney, and hugged her calf in the adjoining stall; and as they crossed the haggard, Philip carrying the pail, she scattered great handfuls of oats to a cock and his two hens as they cackled their way to roost.

“You'll be sure to come again soon, Philip, eh? It's so sweet to have some one to remind me of----” but Pete's name choked her now. “Not that I'm likely to forget him--now is that likely? But it's such a weary time to be left alone, and a girl gets longing. Did I now? Give me the milk, then. Did I say I wasn't? Well, you can't expect a girl to be _always_ reasonable.”

“Good-bye, Kate.”

“Yes, you had better go now--good-bye.”

Philip went away in pain, yet in delight, with a delicious thrill, and a sense of stifling hypocrisy. He had felt like a fool. Kate must have thought him one. But better she should think him a fool than a traitor. It was all his fault. Only for him the girl would have been walled round by her love for Pete. He would come no more.

IX.

Philip held to his resolution for three months, and grew thin and pale. Then another letter came from Pete--a letter for himself, and he wondered what to do with it. To send it by post, pretending to be ill again, would be hypocrisy he could not support. He took it.

The family were all at home. Nancy had just finished a noisy churning, and Kate was in the dairy, weighing the butter into pounds and stamping it. Philip read the letter in a loud voice to the old people in the kitchen, and the soft thumping and watery swishing ceased in the damp place adjoining. Pete was in high feather. He had made a mortal lot of money lately, and was for coming home quickly. Couldn't say exactly when, for some rascally blackleg Boers, who had been corrupting his Kaffirs and slipped up country with a pile of stones, had first to be followed and caught. The job wouldn't take long though, and they might expect to see him back within a twelvemonth, with enough in his pocket to drive away the devil and the coroner anyway.

“Bould fellow!” said Cæsar.

“Aw, deed on Pete!” said Grannie.

“Now, if it wasn't for that Ross----” said Nancy.

Philip went into the dairy, where Kate was now skimming the cream of the last night's milking. He was sorry there was nothing but a message for her this time. Had she answered Pete's former letters? No, she had not.

“I must be writing soon, I suppose,” she said, blowing the yellow surface. “But I wish--_puff_--I could have something to tell him--_puff, puff_--about you.”

“About me, Kate?”

“Something sweet, I mean “--_puff, puff, puff_.

She shot a sly look upward. “Aren't you sure yet? Can't say still? Not properly? No?”

Philip pretended not to understand. Kate's laugh echoed in the empty cream tins. “How you want people to say things!”

“No, really--” began Philip.

“I've always heard that the girls of Douglas are so beautiful. You must see so many now. Oh, it would be delicious to write a long story to Pete. Where you met--in church, naturally. What she's like--fair, of course. And--and all about it, you know.”

“That's a story you will never tell to Pete, Kate,” said Philip.

“No, never,” said Kate quite as light, and this being just what she wished to hear, she added mournfully. “Don't say that, though. You can't think what pleasure you are denying me, and yourself, too. Take some poor girl to your heart, Philip. You don't know how happy it will make you.”

“Are _you_ so happy, then, Kate?”

Kate laughed merrily. “Why, what do _you_ think?”

“Dear old Pete--how happy _he_ should be,” said Philip.

Kate began to hate the very name of Pete. She grew angry with Philip also. Why couldn't he guess? Concealment was eating her heart out. The next time she saw Philip, he passed her in the market-place on the market-day, as she stood by the tipped-up gig, selling her butter. There was a chatter of girls all round as he bowed and went on. This vexed her, and she sold out at a penny a pound less, got the horse from the “Saddle,” and drove home early.

On the way to Sulby she overtook Philip and drew up. He was walking to Kirk Michael to visit the old Deemster, who was ill. Would he not take a lift? He hesitated, half declined, and then got into the gig. As she settled herself comfortably after this change, he trod on the edge of her dress. At that he drew quickly away as if he had trodden on her foot.

She laughed, but she was vexed; and when he got down at “The Manx Fairy,” saying he might call on his way back in the evening, she had no doubt Grannie would be glad to see him.

The girls of the market-place were standing by the mill-pond, work done, and arms crossed under their aprons, twittering like the pairing birds about them in the trees, when Philip returned home by Sulby. He saw Kate coming down the glen road, driving two heifers with a cushag for switch and flashing its gold at them in the horizontal gleams of sunset. She had recovered her good-humour, and was swinging along, singing merry snatches as she came--all life, all girlish blood and beauty.

She pretended not to see him until they were abreast, and the heifers were going into the yard. Then she said, “I've written and told him.”

“What?” said Philip.

“That you say you are a confirmed old bachelor.”

“That _I_ say so?”

“Yes; and that _I_ say you are so distant with a girl that I don't believe you have a heart at all.”

“You don't?”

“No; and that he couldn't have left anybody better to look after me all these years, because you haven't eyes or ears or a thought for any living creature except himself.”

“You've never written that to Pete?” said Philip.

“Haven't I, though?” said Kate, and she tripped off on tiptoe.

He tripped after her. She ran into the yard. He ran also. She opened the gate of the orchard, slipped through, and made for the door of the dairy, and there he caught her by the waist.

“Never, you rogue! Say no, say no!” he panted.

“No,” she whispered, turning up her lips for a kiss.

X.

Grannie saw nothing of Philip that night. He went home tingling with pleasure, and yet overwhelmed with shame. Sometimes he told himself that he was no better than a Judas, and sometimes that Pete might never come back. The second thought rose oftenest. It crossed his mind like a ghostly gleam. He half wished to believe it. When he counted up the odds against Pete's return, his pulse beat quick. Then he hated himself. He was in torment. But under his distracted heart there was a little chick of frightened joy, like a young cuckoo hatched in a wagtail's nest.

After many days, in which no further news had come from Pete, Kate received this brief letter from Philip:

“I am coming to see you this evening. Have something of grave importance to tell you.”

It was afternoon, and Kate ran upstairs, hurried on her best frock, and came down to help Nancy to gather apples in the orchard. Black Tom was there, new thatching the back of the house, and Cæsar was making sugganes (straw rope) for him with a twister. There was a soft feel of autumn in the air, pigeons were cooing in the ledges of the mill-house gable, and everything was luminous and tranquil. Kate had climbed to the fork of a tree, and was throwing apples into Nancy's apron, when the orchard gate clicked, and she uttered a little cry of joy unawares as Philip entered. To cover this, she pretended to be falling, and he ran to help her.

“Oh, it's nothing,” she said. “I thought the bough was breaking. So it's you!” Then, in a clear voice, “Is your apron full, Nancy? Yes? Bring another basket, then; the white one with the handles. Did you come Laxey way by the coach? Bode over, eh? Nancy, do you really think we'll have sugar enough for all these Keswicks?”

“Good evenin', Mr. Christian, sir,” said Cæsar. And Black Tom, from the ladder on the roof, nodded his wide straw brim.

“Thatching afresh, Mr. Cregeen?”

“Covering it up, sir; covering it up. May the Lord cover our sins up likewise, or how shall we cover ourselves from His avenging wrath?”

“How vexing!” said Kate, from the tree. “Half of them get bruised, and will be good for nothing but preserving. They drop at the first touch--so ripe, you see.”

“May we all be ripe for the great gathering, and good for preserving, too,” said Cæsar. “Look at that big one, now--knotted like a blacksmith's muscles, but it'll go rotten as fast as the least lil one of the lot. It's taiching us a lesson, sir, that we all do fall--big mountains as aisy as lil cocks. This world is changeable.”

Philip was not listening, but looking up at Kate, with a face of half-frightened tenderness.

“Do you know,” she said, “I was afraid you must be ill again--your apron, Nancy--that was foolish, wasn't it?”

“No; _I_ have been well enough,” said Philip.

Kate looked at him. “Is it somebody else?” she said. “I got your letter.”

“Can I help?” said Philip. “What is it? I'm sure there's something,” said Kate.

“Set your foot here,” he said.

“Let me down, I feel giddy.”

“Slowly, then. Hold by this one. Give me your hand.”

Their fingers touched, and communicated fire.

“Why don't you tell me?” she said, with a passionate tightening of his hand. “It's bad news, isn't it? Are you going away?”

“Somebody who went away will never come back,” he answered.

“Is it--Pete?”

“Poor Pete is gone,” said Philip.

Her throat fluttered. “Gone?”

“He is dead,” said Philip.

She tottered, but drew herself up quickly. “Stop!” she said. “Let me make sure. Is there no mistake? Is it true?”

“Too true.”

“I can bear the truth now--but afterwards--to-night--tomorrow--in the morning it might kill me if----”

“Pete is dead, Kate; he died at Kimberley.”

“Philip!”

She burst into a wild fit of hysterical weeping, and buried her face his his breast.

He put his arms about her, thinking to soothe her. “There! be brave! Hold yourself firm. It's a terrible blow. I was too sudden. My poor girl. My brave girl!”

She clung to him like a terrified child; the tears came from under her eyelids tightly closed; the flood-gates of four years' reserve went down in a moment, and she kissed him on the lips.

And, throbbing with bliss and a blessed relief from four years hypocrisy and treason, he kissed her back, and they smiled through their tears.

Poor Pete! Poor Pete! Poor Pete!

XI.

At the sound of Kate's crying, Cæsar had thrown away the twister and come close to listen, and Black Tom had dropped from the thatch. Nancy ran back with the basket, and Grannie came hurrying from the house.

Cæsar lifted both hands solemnly. “Now, you that are women, control yourselves,” said he, “and listen while I spake. Peter Quilliam's dead in Kimberley.”

“Goodness mercy!” cried Grannie.

“Lord alive!” cried Nancy.

And the two women went indoors, threw their aprons over their heads, and rocked themselves in their seats.

“Aw boy veen! boy veen!”

Kate came tottering in, ghostly white, and the women fell to comforting her, thereby making more tumult with their soothing moans than Kate with her crying.

“Chut'! Put a good face on it, woman,” said Black Tom. “A whippa of a girl like you will be getting another soon, and singing, 'Hail, Smiling Morn!' with the best.”

“Shame on you, man. Are you as drunk as Mackillya?” cried Nancy. “Your own grandson, too!”

“Never another for Kate, anyway,” wept Grannie. “Aw boy veen, aw boy veen!”

“Maybe he had another himself, who knows?” said Black Tom. “Out of sight out of mind, and these sailor lads have a rag on lots of bushes.”

Kate was helped to her room upstairs, Philip sat down in the kitchen, the news spread like a curragh fire, and the barroom was full in five minutes. In the midst of all stood Cæsar, solemn and expansive.

“He turned his herring yonder night when he left goodbye to the four of us,” he said. “My father did the same the night he was lost running rum for Whitehaven, and I've never seen a man do it and live.”

“It's forgot at you father,” wept Grannie. “It was Mr. Philip that turned it. Aw boy veen! boy veen!”

“How could that be, mother?” said Cæsar. “Mr. Philip isn't dead.”

But Grannie heard no more. She was busy with the consolations of half-a-dozen women who were gathered around her. “I dreamt it the night he sailed. I heard a cry, most terrible, I did. 'Father,' says I, 'what's that?' It was the same as if I had seen the poor boy coming to his end un-timeously. And I didn't get a wink on the night.”

“Well, he has gone to the rest that remaineth,” said Cæsar. “The grass perisheth, and the worm devoureth, and well all be in heaven with him soon.”

“God forbid, father; don't talk of such dreadful things,” said Grannie, napping her apron. “Do you say his mother, ma'am? Is she in life? No, but under the sod, I don't know the years. Information of the lungs, poor thing.”

“I've known him since I was a slip of a boy,” said one. “It was whip-top time--no, it was peg-top time----”

“I saw him the morning he sailed,” said another. “I was standing _so_----”

“Mr. Christian saw him last,” moaned Grannie, and the people in the bar-room peered through at Philip with awe.

“I felt like a father for the lad myself,” said Cæsar, “he was always my white-headed boy, and I stuck to him with life. He desarved it, too. Maybe his birth was a bit mischancy, but what's the ould saying, 'Don't tell me what I was, tell me what I am.' And Pete was that civil with the tongue--a civiller young man never was.”

Black Tom _tsht_ and spat. “Why, you were shouting out of mercy at the lad, and knocking him about like putty. He wouldn't get lave to live with you, and that's why he went away.”

“You're bad to forget, Thomas--I've always noticed it,” said Cæsar.

“You'll be putting the bell about, and praiching his funeral, eh, Cæsar?” said somebody.

“'Deed, yes, man, Sabbath first,” said Cæsar.

“That's impossible, father,” said Grannie. “How's the girl to have her black ready?”

“Sunday week, then, or Sunday fortnight, or the Sunday after the Melliah (harvest-home),” said Cæsar; “the crops are waiting for saving, but a dead man is past it. Oh, I'll be faithful, I'll give it them straight, it's a time for spaking like a dying man to dying men; I'll take a tex' that'll be a lesson and a warning, 'Ho, every one that thirsteth----”

Black Tom _tsht_ and spat again. “I wouldn't, Cæsar; they'll think you're going to trate them,” he muttered.

Philip was asked for particulars, and he brought out a letter. Jonaique Jelly, John the Clerk, and Johnny the Constable had come in by this time. “Read it, Jonaique,” said Cæsar.

“A clane pipe first,” said Black Tom. “Aren't you smook-ing on it, Cæsar? And isn't there a croppa of rum anywhere? No! Not so much as a plate of crackers and a drop of tay going? Is it to be a totaller's funeral then?”

“This is no time for feasting to the refreshment of our carnal bodies,” said Cæsar severely. “It's a time for praise and prayer.”

“I'll pud up a word or dwo,” said the Constable meekly.

“Masther Niplightly,” said Cæsar, “don't be too ready to show your gift. It's vanity. I'll engage in prayer myself.” And Cæsar offered praise for all departed in faith and fear.

“Cæsar is nod a man of a liberal spirit, bud he is powerful in prayer, dough,” whispered the Constable.

“He isn't a prodigal son, if that's what you mane,” said Black Tom. “Never seen him shouting after anybody with a pint, anyway.”

“Now for the letter, Jonaique,” said Cæsar.

It was from one of the Gills' boys who had sailed with Pete, and hitherto served as his letter-writer.

“'Respected Sir,'” read Jonaique, “'with pain and sorrow I write these few lines, to tell you of poor Peter Quilliam----'”

“Aw boy veen, boy veen!” broke in Grannie.

“'Knowing you were his friend in the old island, and the one he talked of mostly, except the girl----'”

“Boy ve----”

“Hush, woman.”

“'He made good money out here, at the diamond mines----'”

“Never a yellow sovereign he sent to me, then,” said Black Tom, “nor the full of your fist of ha'pence either. What's the use of getting grand-childers?”

Cæsar waved his hand. “Go on, Jonaique. It's bad when the deceitfulness of riches is getting the better of a man.”

“Where was I? Oh, 'good money ------' 'Yet he was never for taking joy in it----'”

“More money, more cares,” muttered Cæsar.

“'But talking and talking, and scheming for ever, for coming home.'”

“Ah! home is a full cup,” moaned Grannie. “It was a show the way that lad was fond of it. 'Give me a plate of mate, bolstered with cabbage, and what do I care for their buns and sarves, Grannie,' says he. Aw, boy veen, boy bogh!”

“What does the nightingale care for a golden cage when he can get a twig?” said Cæsar.

“Is the boy's chest home yet?” asked John the Clerk.

“There's something about it here,” said Jonaique, “if people would only let a man get on.”

“It's mine,” said Black Tom.

“We'll think of that by-and-bye,” said Cæsar, waving his hand to Jonaique.

“'He had packed his chest for going, when four blacklegs, who had been hanging round the compound, tempting and plaguing the Kaffirs, made off with a bag of stones. Desperate gang, too; so nobody was running to be sent after them. But poor Peter, being always a bit bull-necked, was up to the office in a jiffy, and Might he go? And off in chase in the everin' with the twenty Kaffirs of his own company to help him--not much of a lot neither, and suspected of dealing diamonds with the blacklegs times; but Peter always swore their love for him was getting thicker and stronger every day like sour cream. “The captain's love has been their theme, and shall be till they die,” said Peter.'”

“He drank up the Word like a thirsty land the rain,” said Cæsar. “Peter Quilliam and I had mortal joy of each other. 'Good-bye, father,' says he, and he was shaking me by the hand ter'ble. But go on, Jonaique.”

“'That was four months ago, and a fortnight since eight of his Kaffirs came back.'”

“Aw dear!” “Well, well!” “Lord-a-massy!” “Hush!”

“'They overtook the blacklegs far up country, and Peter tackled them. But they had Winchester repeaters, and Peter's boys didn't know the muzzle of a gun from the neck of a gin-bottle. So the big man of the gang cocked his piece at Peter, and shouted at him like a high bailiff, “You'd better go back the way you came.” “Not immajetly,” said Peter, and stretched him. Then there was smoke like a smithy on hooping-day, and “To your heels, boys,” shouted Peter. And if the boys couldn't equal Peter with their hands, they could bate him with their toes, and the last they heard of him he was racing behind them with the shots of the blacklegs behind him, and shouting mortal, “Oh, oh! All up! I'm done! Home and tell, boys! Oh, oh.”'”

“Rejoice not against me, O mine enemy. When I fall I shall arise. Selah,” said Cæsar.

Amid the tumult of moans which followed the reading, Philip, sitting with head on his hand by the ingle, grew hot and cold with the thought that after all there was no actual certainty that Pete was dead. Nobody had seen him die, nobody had buried him; the story of the returned Kaffirs might be a lie to cover their desertion of Pete, their betrayal of him, or their secret league with the thieving Boers. At one awful moment Philip asked himself how he had ever believed the letter. Perhaps he had _wanted_ to believe it.

Nancy Joe touched him on the shoulder. “Kate is waiting for a word with you alone, sir,” she said, and Philip crossed the kitchen into the little parlour beyond, chill with china and bowls of sea-eggs and stuffed sea-birds.

“He's feeling it bad,” said Nancy.

“Never been the same since Pete went to the Cape,” said Cæsar.

“I don't know for sure what good lads are going to it for,” moaned Grannie. “And calling it Good Hope of all names! Died of a bullet in his head, too, aw dear, aw dear! Discussion of the brain it's like. And look at them black-heads too, as naked as my hand, I'll go bail. I hate the nasty dirts! Cæsar may talk of one flesh and brethren and all to that, but for my part I'm not used of black brothers, and as for black angels in heaven, it's ridiculous.”

“When you're all done talking I'll finish the letter,” said Jonaique.

“They can't help it, Mr. Jelly, the women can't help it,” said Cæsar.

“'Respected Sir, I must now close, but we are strapping up the chest of the deceased, just as he left it, and sending it to catch the steamer, the _Johannesburg_, leaving Cape Town Wednesday fortnight----'”

“Hm! Johannesburg. I'll meet her at the quay--it's my duty to meet her,” said Cæsar.

“And I'll board her in the bay,” shouted Black Tom.

“Thomas Quilliam,” said Cæsar, “it's borne in on my spirit that the devil of greed is let loose on you.”

“Cæsar Cregeen, don't make a nose of wax of me,” bawled Tom, “and don't think because you're praiching a bit that religion is going to die with you. Your head's swelling tre-menjous, and-you won't be able to sleep soon without somebody to tickle your feet. You'll be forgiving sins next, and taking money for absolution, and these ones will be making a pope of you and paying you pence. Pope Cæsar, the publican, in his chapel hat and white choker! But that chiss is mine, and if there's law in the land I'll have it.”

With that Black Tom swept out of the house, and Cæsar wiped his eyes.

“No use smoothing a thistle, Mr. Cregeen,” said Jonaique soothingly.

“I've a conscience void of offence.” said Cæsar. “I can only follow the spirit's leading. But when Belial----”

He was interrupted by a most mournful cry of “Look here! Aw, look, then, look!”

Nancy was coming out of the back-kitchen with something between the tips of her fingers. It was a pair of old shoes, covered with dirt and cobwebs.

“These were his wearing boots,” she said, and she put them on the counter.

“Dear heart, yes, the very ones,” said Grannie. “Poor boy, they'd move a heart of stone to see them. Something to remember him by, anyway. Many a mile his feet walked in them; but they're resting now in Abraham's bosom.”

Then Cæsar's voice rose loud over the doleful tones around the counter. “'Vital Spark of Heavenly Flame'--raise it, Mr. Niplightly. Pity we haven't Peter and his fiddle here--he played with life.”

“I can'd sing to-day, having a cold, bud I'll whisle id,” said the Constable.

“Pitch it in altoes, then,” said Cæsar. “I'm a bit of a base myself, but not near so base as Peter.”

Meanwhile a little drama of serious interest was going on upstairs. There sat Kate before the looking-glass, with flushed cheeks and quivering mouth. The low drone of many voices came to her through the floor. Then a dull silence and one voice, and Nancy Joe coming and going between the kitchen and bedroom.

“What are they doing now, Nancy?” said Kate.

“First one's praying, and then another's praying,” said Nancy. “Lord-a-massy, thinks I, it'll be my turn next, and what'll I say?”

“Where's Mr. Christian?”

“Gone into the parlour. I whispered him you wanted him alone.”

“You never said that, Nancy,” said Kate, at Nancy's reflection in the glass.

“Well, it popped out,” said Nancy.

Kate went down, with a look of softened sorrow, and Philip, without lifting his eyes, began bemoaning Pete. They would never know his like--so simple, so true, so brave; never, never.

He was fighting against his shame at first seeing the girl after that kiss, which seemed to him now like treason at the mouth of a grave.

But, with the magic of a woman's art, Kate consoled him. He had one great comfort--he had been a loyal friend; such fidelity, such constancy, such affection, forgetting the difference of place, of education--everything.

Philip looked up at last, and there was the lovely face with its beaming eyes. He turned to go, and she said, softly, “How we shall miss you!”

“Why so?” said Philip.

“We can't expect to see you so often now--now that you've not the same reason for coming.”

“I'll be here on Sunday,” said Philip.

“Then you don't intend to desert us yet--not just yet, Philip?”

“Never!” said Philip.

“Well, good-night! Not that way--not by the porch. Good-night!”

As Philip went down the road in the darkness, he heard the words of the hymn that was being sung inside:

“Thy glory why didst Thou enshrine In such a clod of earth as mine, And wrap Thee in my clay.”

XII.

At that moment day was breaking over the plains of the Transvaal. The bare Veldt was opening out as the darkness receded, depth on depth, like the surface of an unbroken sea. Not a bush, not a path, only a few log-houses at long distances and wooden beacons like gibbets to define the Boer farms. No sound in the transparent air, no cloud in the unveiling sky; just the night creeping off in silence as if in fear of awakening the sleeping morning.

Across the soulless immensity a covered waggon toiled along with four horses rattling their link chains, and a lad sideways on the shaft dangling his legs, twiddling the rope reins and whistling. Inside the waggon, under a little window with its bit of muslin curtain, a man lay in the agony of a bullet-wound in his side, and an old Boer and a woman stood beside him. He was lying hard on the place of his pain and rambling in delirium.

“See, boys? Don't you see them?”

“See what, my lad?” said the Boer simply, and he looked through the waggon window.

“There's the head-gear of the mines. Look! the iron roofs are glittering. And yonder's the mine tailings. We'll be back in a jiffy. A taste of the whip, boys, and away!”

Untouched by visions, the old Boer could see nothing.

“What does he see, wife, think you?”

“What can he see, stupid, with his face in the pillow like that?”

With the rushing of blood in his ears the sick man called out again:

“Listen! Don't you hear it? That's the noise of the batteries. Whip up, and away! Away!” and he tore at the fringe of the blanket covering him with his unconscious fingers.

“Poor boy! he's eager to get to the coast But will he live to cover another morgen, think you?”

“God knows, Jan--God only knows.”

And the Veldt was very wide, and the sea and its ships were far away, and over the weary stretch of grass, and rock, and sand, there was nothing on the horizon between desolate land and dominating sky but a waste looking like a chaos of purple and green, where no bird ever sang and no man ever lived, and God Himself was not.

XIII.

“She loves me! She loves me! She loves me!” The words sang in Philip's ears like a sweet tune half the way back to Ballure. Then he began to pluck at the brambles by the wayside, to wound his hand by snatching at the gorse, and to despise himself for being glad when he should have been in grief. Still, he was sure of it; there was no making any less of it. She loved him, he was free to love her, there need be no hypocrisy and no self-denial; so he wiped the blood from his fingers, and crept into the blue room of Auntie Nan.

The old lady, in a dainty cap with flying streamers, was sitting by the fireside spinning. She had heard the news of Pete as Philip passed through to Sulby, and was now wondering if it was not her duty to acquaint Uncle Peter. The sweet and natty old gentlewoman, brought up in the odour of gentility, was thinking on the lines of poor Bridget, Black Tom when dying under the bare scraas, that a man's son was his son in spite of law or devil.

She decided against telling the Ballawhaine by remembering an incident in the life of his father. It was about Philip's father, too; so Philip stretched his legs from the sofa towards the hearth, and listened to the old Auntie's voice over the whirr of her wheel, with another voice--a younger voice, an unheard voice--breaking: in at the back of his ears when the wheel stopped, and a sweet undersong inside of him always, saying, “Be sensible; there is no disloyalty; Pete is dead. Poor Pete! Poor old Pete!”

“Though he had cast your father off, Philip, for threatening to make your mother his wife, he never believed there was a parson on the island would dare to marry them against his wish.”

“No, really?”

“No; and when Uncle Peter came in at dinner-time a week after and said, 'It's all over,' he said, 'No, sir, no,' and threw down his spoon in the plate, and the hot broth splashed on my hand, I remember. But Peter said, 'It's past praying for, sir,' and then grandfather cried, 'No, I tell you no.' 'But I tell you yes, sir,' said Peter. 'Maughold Church yesterday morning before service.' Then grandfather lost himself, and called Peter 'Liar,' and cried that your father couldn't do it. 'And, besides, he's my own son after all, and would not,' said grandfather. But I could see that he believed what Uncle Peter had told him, and, when Peter began to cry, he said, 'Forgive me, my boy; I'm your father for all, and I've a right to your forgiveness.' All the same, he wouldn't be satisfied until he had seen the register, and I had to go with him to the church.”

“Poor old grandfather!”

“The vicar in those days was a little dotty man named Kissack, and it was the joy of his life to be always crushing and stifling somebody, because somebody was always depriving him of his rights or something.”

“I remember him--the Cockatoo. His favourite text was, 'Jesus said, then follow Me,' only the people declared he always wanted to go first.”

“Shocking, Philip. It was evening when we drove up to Maughold, and the little parson was by the Cross, ordering somebody with a cane. 'I am told you married my son yesterday; is it true?' said grandfather. 'Quite true,' said the vicar. 'By banns or special license?' grandfather asked. 'License, of course,' the vicar answered.”

“Curt enough, any way.”

“'Show me the register,' said grandfather, and his face twitched and his voice was thick. 'Can't you believe me?' said the vicar. 'The register,' said grandfather. Then the vicar turned the key in the church door and strutted up the aisle, humming something. I tried to keep grandfather back even then. 'What's the use?' I said, for I knew he was only fighting against belief. But, hat in hand, he followed to the Communion rail, and there the vicar laid the open book before him. Oh, Philip, shall I ever forget it? How it all comes back--the little dim church, the smell of damp and of velvet under the holland covers of the pulpit, and the empty place echoing. And grandfather fixed his glasses and leaned over the register, but he could see nothing--only blurr, blurr, blurr.

“'_You_ look at it, child,' he said, over his shoulder. But I daren't face it; so he rubbed his glasses and leaned over the book again. Oh dear! he was like one who looks down the list of the slain for the name he prays he may not find. But the name was there, too surely: 'Thomas Wilson Christian... to Mona Crellin... signed Wm. Crellin and something Kissack.'”

Philip's breath came hot and fast.