Chapter VIII: Part III: Man and Woman (1)

I.

Philip was vanquished, and he knew it, but he was not daunted, he was not distressed. To have resisted the self-abandonment of Kate's love would have been monstrous. Therefore, he had done no wrong, and there was nothing to be ashamed of. But when he reached Ballure he did not dash into Auntie Nan's room, according to his wont, though a light was burning there, and he could hear the plop and click of thread and needle; he crept upstairs to his own, and sat down to write a letter. It was the first of his love letters.

“I shall count the days, the hours, and the minutes until we meet again, my darling, and I shall be constantly asking what time it is. And seeing we must be so much apart, let us contrive a means of being together, nevertheless. Listen!--I whisper the secret in your ear. To-morrow night and every night eat your supper at eight o'clock exactly; I will do the same, and so we shall be supping in each other's company, my little wife, though twenty miles divide us. If any body asks me to supper, I will refuse in order that I may sup with you. 'I am promised to a friend,' I'll say, and then I'll sit down in my rooms alone, but you will be with me.”

Tingling with delight, he wrote this letter to Kate, though less than an hour parted from her, and went out to post it. He was going upstairs again, steadily, on tiptoe, his head half aside and his face over his shoulder, when Auntie Nan's voice came from the blue room--“Philip!”

He returned with a sheepish look, and a sense, never felt before, of being naked, so to speak. But Auntie Nan did not look at him. She was working a lamb on a sampler, and she reached over the frame to take something out of a drawer and hand it to him. It was a medallion of a young child--a boy, with long fair curls like a girl's, and a face like sunshine.

“Was it father, Auntie?”

“Yes; a French painter who came ashore with Thurlot painted it for grandfather.”

Philip laid it on the table. He was more than ever sure that Auntie Nan had heard something. Such were her tender ways of warning him. He could not be vexed.

“I'm sleepy to-night, Auntie, and you look tired too. You've been waiting up for me again. Now, you really must not. Besides, it limits one's freedom.”

“That's nothing, Philip. You said you would come home after calling on the poor Deemster, and so----”

“He's in a bad way, Auntie. Drink--delirium--such a wreck. Well, good night!”

“Did you read the letters, dear?”

“Oh, yes. Father's letters. Yes, I read them. Good night.”

“Aren't they beautiful? Haven't they the very breath of ambition and enthusiasm? But poor father! How soon the brightness melted away! He never repined, though. Oh, no, never. Indeed, he used to laugh and joke at our dreams and our castles in the air. 'You must do it all yourself, Nannie; you shall have all the cakes and ale.' Yes, when he was a dying man he would joke like that. But sometimes he would grow serious, and then he would say, 'Give little Philip some for all. He'll deserve it more than me. Oh, God,' he would say, 'let me think to myself when I'm _there_, you've missed the good things of life, but your son has got them; you are here, but he is on the heights; lie still, thou poor aspiring heart, lie still in your grave and rest.'”

Philip felt like a bird struggling in the meshes of a net.

“My father was a poet, Auntie, trying to be a man of the world. That was the real mischief in his life, if you think of it.”

Auntie Nan looked up with her needle at poise above the sampler, and said in a nervous voice, “The real mischief of your father's life, Philip, was love--what they call love. But love is not that. Love is peace and virtue, and right living, and that is only madness and frenzy, and when people wake up from it they wake up as from a nightmare. Men talk of it as a holy thing--it is unholy. Books are written in praise of it--I would have such books burnt. When anybody falls to it, he is like a blind man who has lost his guide, tottering straight to the precipice. Women fall to it too. Yes, good women as well as good men; I have seen them tempted----”

Philip was certain of it now. Some one had been prying upon him at Sulby. He was angry, and his anger spent itself on Auntie Nan in a torrent of words. “You are wrong, Aunt Anne, quite wrong. Love is the one lovely thing in life. It is beauty, it is poetry. Call it passion if you will--what would the world be like without it? A place where every human heart would be an island standing alone; a place without children, without joy, without merriment, without laughter. No, no; Heaven has given us love, and we are wrong when we try to put it away. We cannot put it away, and when we make the attempt we are punished for our pride and arrogance. It ought to be enough for us to let heaven decide whether we are to be great men or little men, and to decide for ourselves whether we are to be good men and happy men. And the greatest happiness of life is love. Heaven would have to work a miracle to enable us to live without it. But Heaven does not work such a miracle, because the greatest miracle of heaven is love itself.”

The needle hand of Auntie Nan was trembling above her sampler, and her lips were twitching.

“You are a young man yet, Philip,” she faltered, “but I am an old lady now, dear, and I have seen the fruits of the intoxication you call passion. Oh, have I not, have I not? It wrecks lives, ruins prospects, breaks up homes, sets father against son, and brother against brother----”

Philip would give her no chance. He was tramping across the room, and he burst out with, “You are wrong again, Auntie. You are always wrong in these matters, because you are always thinking from the particular to the general--you are always thinking of my father. What you have been calling my father's fall was really his fate. He deserved it. If he had been fit for the high destiny he aspired to--if he had been fit to be a judge, he would not have fallen. That he did fall is proof enough that he was not fit. God did not intend it. My father's aspirations were not the call of a stern vocation, they were mere poetic ambition. If he had ever by great ill-fortune lived to be made Deemster, he would have found himself out, and the island would have found him out, and you yourself would have found him out, and all the world would have been undeceived. As a poet he might have been a great man, but as a Deemster he must have been a mockery, a hypocrite, an impostor, and a sham.”

Auntie Nan rose to her feet with a look of fright on her sweet old face, and something dropped with a clank on to the floor.

“Oh, Philip, Philip, if I thought you could ever repeat the error----”

But Philip gave her no time to finish. Tossing his disordered hair from his forehead, he swung out of the room.

Being alone, he began to collect himself. Was it, in sober fact, he who had spoken like that? Of his father too? To Auntie Nan as well? He saw how it was; he had been speaking of his father, but he had been thinking of himself; he had been struggling to justify himself, to reconcile, strengthen, and fortify himself. But in doing so he had been breaking an idol, a life-long idol, his own idol and Auntie Nan's.

He stumbled downstairs in a rush of remorse, and burst again into the room crying in a broken voice, “Auntie! Auntie!”

But the room was empty; the lamp was turned down; the sampler was pushed aside. Something crunched under his foot, and he stooped and picked it up. It was the medallion, and it was cracked across. The accident terrified him. His skin seemed to creep. He felt as if he had trodden on his father's face. Putting the broken picture into his pocket, he turned about like a guilty man and crept silently to bed in the darkness.

But the morning brought him solace for the pains of the night--it brought him a letter from Kate.

“The Melliah is over at long, long last, and I am allowed to be alone with my thoughts. They sang 'Keerie fu Snaighty' after you left, and 'The King can only love his wife, And I can do the sa-a-me, And I can do the same.' But there is really nothing to tell you, for nothing happened of the slightest consequence. Good night! I am going to bed after I have posted this letter at the bridge. Two hours hence you will appear to me in sleep, unless I lie that long awake to think of you. I generally do. Good-bye, my dear lord and master! You will let me know what you think best to be done. Your difficulties alarm me terribly. You see, dear, we two are about to do something so much out of the common. Good night! I lift my head that you may give me another kiss on the eyes, and here are two for yours.”

Then there were empty brackets [ ], which Kate had put her lips to, expecting Philip to do the same.

II.

Philip was going into his chambers in Douglas that morning when he came upon a messenger from Government House in stately intercourse with his servant. His Excellency begged him to step up to Onchan immediately, and to remain for lunch.

The Governor's carriage was at the door, and Philip got into it. He was not excited; he remembered his agitation at the Governor's former message and smiled. On leaving his own rooms he had not forgotten to order supper for eight o'clock precisely.

He found the Governor polite and expansive as usual. He was sitting in a room hung round with ponderous portraits of former Governors, most of them in frills and ruffles, and one vast picture of King George.

“You will have heard,” he said, “that our northern Deemster is dead.”

“Is he so?” said Philip. “I saw him at one o'clock yesterday.”

“He died at two?” said the Governor.

“Poor man, poor man!” said Philip.

That was all. Not a tremble of the eyelid, not a quiver of the lip.

“You are aware that the office is a Crown appointment?” said the Governor. “Applications are made, you know, to the Home Office, but it is probable that my advice may be asked by the Secretary in his selection. I may, perhaps, be of use to a candidate.”

Philip gave no sign, and the Governor shifted his leg and continued with a smile, “Certainly that appears to be the impression of your brother advocates, Mr. Christian; they are about me already, like wasps at a glue-pot. I will not question but you'll soon be one of them.”

Philip made a gesture of protestation, and the Governor waved his hand and smiled again. “Oh, I shan't blame you; young men are ambitious. It is natural that they should wish to advance themselves in life. In your case, too, if I may say so, there is the further spur of a desire to recover the position your family once held, and lately lost through the mistake or misfortune of your father.”

Philip bowed gravely, but said nothing.

“That, no doubt,” said the Governor, “would be a fact in your favour. The great fact against you would be that you are still so young. Let me see, is it eight-and twenty?”

“Twenty-six,” said Philip.

“No more? Only six-and-twenty? And then, successful as your career has been thus far--perhaps I should say distinguished or even brilliant--you are still unsettled in life.”

Philip asked if his Excellency meant that he was still unmarried.

“And if I do,” the Governor replied, with pretended severity, “and if I do, don't smile too broadly, young man. You ought to know by this time that the personal equation counts for something in this old-fashioned island of yours. Now, the late Deemster was an example which it would be perilous to repeat. If it were repeated, I know who would hear of the blunder every day of his life, and it wouldn't be the Home Secretary either. Deemster Mylrea was called upon to punish the crimes of drink, and he was himself a drunkard; to try the offences of sensuality, and he was himself a sensualist.”

Philip could not help it--he gave a little crack of laughter.

“To be sure,” said the Governor hastily, “you are in no danger of his excesses; but you will not be a safe candidate to recommend until you have placed yourself to all appearances out of the reach of them. 'Beware of these Christians,' said the great Derby to his son; and pardon me if I revive the warning to a Christian himself.”

The colour came strong into Philip's face. Even at that moment he felt angry at so coarse a version of his father's fault.

“You mean,” said he, “that we are apt to marry unwisely.”

“I do that,” said the Governor.

“There's no telling,” said Philip, with a faint crack of his fingers; and the Governor frowned a little--the pock-marks seemed to spread.

“Of course, all this is outside my duty, Mr. Christian--I needn't tell you that; but I feel an interest in you, and I've done you some services already, though naturally a young man will think he has done everything for himself. Ah!” he said, rising from his seat at the sound of a gong, “luncheon is ready. Let us join the ladies.” Then, with one hand on Philip's shoulder familiarly, “only a word more, Mr. Christian. Send in your application immediately, and--take the advice of an old fiddler--marry as soon afterwards as may be. But with your prospects it would be a sin not to walk carefully. If she's English, so much the better; but if she's Manx--take care.”

Philip lunched with the Governor's wife, who told him she remembered his grandfather; also with his unmarried daughter, who said she had heard him speak for the fishermen at Peel. An official “At home,” the last of the summer, was to be held in the garden that afternoon, and Philip was invited to remain. He did so, and thereby witnessed the assaults of the wasps at the glue-pot. They buzzed about the Governor, they buzzed about his wife, they buzzed about his dog and about a tame deer, which took grapes from the hands of the guests.

An elderly gentleman, sitting alone in a carriage, drove up to the lawn. It was Peter Christian Ballawhaine, looking feebler, whiter, and more splay-footed than before. Philip stepped up to his uncle and offered his arm to alight by. But the Ballawhaine brushed it aside and pushed through to the Governor, to whom he talked incessantly for some minutes of his son Ross, saying he had sent for him and would like to present him to his Excellency.

If Philip lacked enjoyment of the scene, if his face lacked heart and happiness, it was not the fault of his host. “Will you not take Lady So-and-so to have tea?” the Governor would say; and presently Philip found himself in a circle of official wifedom, whose husbands had been made Knights by the Queen, and themselves made Ladies by--God knows whom. The talk was of the late Deemster.

“Such a life! It's a mercy he lasted so long!”

“A pity, you mean, my dear, not to be hard on him either.”

“Poor thing! He ought to have married. Such a man wants a wife to look after him. Don't you think so, Mr. Christian?”

“Why,” said a white-haired dame, “have you never heard of his great romance?”

“Ah! tell us of that. Who was the lady?”

“The lady----” there was a pause; the white-haired dame coughed, smiled, closed her little ferret eyes, dropped her voice, and said with mock gravity, “The lady was the blacksmith's daughter, dearest.” And then there was a merry trill of laughter.

Philip felt sick, bowed to his hosts, and left. As he was going off, his uncle intercepted him, holding out both hands.

“How's this, Philip? You never come to Ballawhaine now. I see! Oh, I see! Too busy with the women to remember an old man. They're all talking of you. Putting the comather on them, eh? I know, I know; don't tell me.”

III.

Philip's way home lay through the town, but he made a circuit of the country, across Onchan, so heartsick was he, so utterly choked with bitter feelings. He felt as if all the angels and devils together must be making a mock at him. The thing he had worked for through five heavy years, the end he had aimed at, the goal he had fought for, was his already--his for the stretching out of his hand. Yet now that it was his, he could not have it. Oh, the mockery of his fate! Oh, the irony of his life! It was shrieking, it was frantic!

Then his bolder spirit seemed to say, “What is all this childish fuming about? Fortune comes to you with both hands full. Be bold, and you may have both the wish of your soul and the desire of your heart--both the Deemster-ship and Kate.”

It was impossible to believe that. If he married Kate, the Governor would not recommend him as Deemster. Had he not admitted that he stood in some fear of the public opinion of the island? And was it not conceivable that, besides the unselfish interest which the Governor had shown in him, there was even a personal one that would operate more powerfully than fear of the old-fashioned Manx conventions to prevent any recommendation of the husband of the wrong woman? At one moment a vague memory rose before Philip, as he crossed the fields, of the lunch at Government House, of the Governor's wife and daughter, of their courtesy and boundless graciousness. At the next moment he had drawn up sharply, with pangs of self-contempt, hating himself, loathing himself, swearing at himself for a mean-souled ingrate, as he kicked up the grass and the turf beneath it But the idea had taken root. He could not help it; the Governor's interest went for nothing in his reckoning.

“What a fool you are, Philip,” something seemed to whisper out of the darkest corner of his conscience; “take the Deemstership first, and marry Kate afterwards.” But it was impossible to think of that either. Say it could be done by any arts of cunning or duplicity, what then? Then there were the high walls of custom and prejudice to surmount. Philip remembered the garden-party, and saw that they could never be surmounted. The Deemster who slapped the conventions in the face would suffer for it. He would be taboo to half the life of the island--in public an official, in private a recluse. An icy picture rose before his mind's eye of the woman who would be his wife in her relations with the ladies he had just left. She might be their superior in education, certainly in all true manners, and in natural grace and beauty, in sweetness and charm, their mistress beyond a dream of comparison. But they would never forget that she was the daughter of a country innkeeper, and every little cobble in the rickety pyramid, even from the daughter of the innkeeper in the town, would look down on her as from a throne.

He could see them leaving their cards at his door and driving hurriedly off. They must do that much. It was the bitter pill which the Deemster's doings made them swallow. Then he could see his wife sitting alone, a miserable woman, despised envied, isolated, shut off from her own class by her marriage with the Deemster, and from his class by the Deemster's marriage with her. Again, he could see himself too powerful to offend, too dangerous to ignore, going out on his duties without cheer, and returning to his wife without company. Finally, he remembered his father and his mother, and he could not help but picture himself sitting at home with Kate five years after their marriage, when the first happiness of each other's society had faded, had staled, had turned to the wretchedness of starvation in its state of siege. Or perhaps going out for walks with her, just themselves, always themselves only, they two together, this evening, last evening, and to-morrow evening; through the streets crowded by visitors, down the harbour where the fishermen congregate, across the bridge and over the head between sea and sky; people bowing to them respectfully, rigidly, freezingly; people nudging and whispering and looking their way. Oh, God, what end could come of such an abject life but that, beginning by being unhappy, they should descend to being bad as well?

“What a fuss you are making of things,” said the voice again, but more loudly. “This hubbub only means that you can't have your cake and eat it. Very well, take Kate, and let the Deemstership go to perdition.”

There was not much comfort in that counsel, for it made no reckoning with the certainty that, if marriage with Kate would prevent him from being Deemster, it would prevent him from being anything in the Isle of Man. As it had happened with his father, so it would happen with him--there would be no standing ground in the island for the man who had deliberately put himself outside the pale.

“Don't worry me with silly efforts to draw a line so straight. If you can't have Kate and the Deemstership together, and if you can't have Kate without the Deemstership, there is only one thing left--the Deemstership without Kate. You must take the office and forego the girl. It is your duty, your necessity.”

This was how Philip put it to himself at length, and the daylight had gone by that time, and he was walking in the dark. But the voice which had been pleading on his side now protested on hers.

“Don't prate of duty and necessity. You mean self-love and self-interest. Man, be honest. Because this woman is an obstacle in your career, you would sacrifice her. It is boundless, pitiless selfishness. Suppose you abandon her, dare you think of her without shame! She loves you, she trusts you, and she has given you proof of her love and trust. Hold your tongue. Don't dare to whisper that nobody knows it but you and heir--that you will be silent, that she will have no temptation to speak. She loves you. She has given you all. God bless her!”

Affectionate pity swept down the selfish man in him. As the lights of the town appeared on his path, he was saying to himself boldly, “Since either way there is trouble, I'll do as I said last night--I'll leave Heaven to decide whether I'm to be a great man or a little man, and decide for myself whether I'm to be a true man or a happy man. I'll take my heart in my hand and go right forward.”

In this temper he returned to his chambers. The rooms fronted to Athol Street, but backed on to the churchyard of St. George's. They were quiet, and not overlooked. His lamp was lit. The servant was laying the cloth.

“Lay covers for two, Jemmy,” said Philip. Then he began to hum something.

Presently, in feeling for his keys, his fingers touched an unfamiliar substance in his pocket. He remembered what it was. It was the cracked medallion of his father. He could not bear to look at it. Unlocking a chest, he buried it at the bottom under a pile of winter clothing.

This recalled a possession yet more painful, and going to a desk, he drew out the packet of his father's letters and proceeded to hide them away with the medallion. As he did so his hand trembled, his limbs shook, he felt giddy, and he thought the voice that had tormented him with conflicting taunts was ringing in his ears again. “Bury him deep! Bury your father out of all sight and all remembrance. Bury his love of you, his hopes of you, his expectations and dreams of you. Bury and forget him for ever.”

Philip hesitated a moment, and then banged down the lid of the chest, and relocked it as his servant returned to the room. The man was a solemn, dignified, and reticent person, who had been groom to the late Bishop. His gravity he had acquired from his horses, his dignity from his master; but his reticence he had created for himself, being a thing beyond nature in creature or man. His proper name was Cottier; he had always been known as Jemy-Lord.

“Company not arrived, sir,” he said. “Wait or serve?”

“What is the time?” said Philip.

“Struck eight; but clock two minutes soon.”

“Serve the supper at once,” said Philip.

When the dishes had been brought in and the man dismissed, Philip, taking his place at the table, drew from his button-hole a flower which he had picked out of his water-bowl at lunch, and, first putting it to his lips, he tossed it on to the empty place before the chair which had been drawn up opposite. Then he sat down to eat.

He ate little; and, do what he would, he could not keep his mind from wandering. He thought of his aunt, and how hurt she had been the previous night; of his uncle, and how he had snubbed and then slavered over him; of the Governor, and how strange the interest he had shown in him; and finally, he thought of Pete, and how lately he was dead, and how soon forgotten.

In the midst of these memories, all sad and some bitter, suddenly he remembered again that he was supping with Kate. Then he struggled to be bright and even a little gay. He knew that she would be taking her supper at Sulby at that moment, thinking of him and making believe that he was with her. So he tried to think that she was with him, sitting in the chair opposite, looking across the table between the white cloth and the blue lamp-shade, out of her beaming eyes, with her rings of dark hair dancing on her forehead, and her ripe mouth twitching merrily. Then the air of the room seemed to be filled with a sweet presence. He could have fancied there was a perfume of lace and dainty things. “Sweetheart!” He laughed--he hardly knew if it was himself that had spoken. It was dear, delicious fooling.

But his eyes fell on the chest wherein he had buried the letters and the medallion, and his mind wandered again. He thought of his father, of his grandfather, of his lost inheritance, and how nearly he had reclaimed the better part of it, and then once more of Pete, crying aloud at last in the coil of his trouble, “Oh, if Pete had only lived!”

His voice startled and his words horrified him. To wipe out both in the first moment of recovered consciousness, he filled his glass to the brim, and lifted it up, rising at the same time, looking across the table, and saying in a soft whisper, “Your health, darling, your health!”

The bell rang from the street door, and he stood listening with the wine-glass in his hand. When he knew anything more, a voice at his elbow was saying out of a palpitating gloom, “The gentleman can't come, seemingly; he has sent a telegram.”

It was Jem-y-Lord holding a telegram in his hand.

Philip tore open the envelope and read--

“Coming home by Ramsey boat to-morrow well and hearty tell Kirry Peat.”

IV.

Somewhere in the dead and vacant dawn Philip went to bed, worn out by a night-long perambulation of the dark streets. He slept a heavy sleep of four deep hours, with oppressive dreams of common things swelling to enormous size about him.

When Jem-y-Lord took the tea to his master's bedroom in the morning, the tray was almost banged out of his hands by the clashing back of the door, after he had pushed it open with his knee. The window was half up, and a cold sea-breeze was blowing into the room; yet the grate and hearth showed that a fire had been kindled in the night, and his master was still sleeping.

Jem set down his tray, lifted a decanter that stood on the table, held it to the light, snorted like an old horse, nodded to himself knowingly, and closed the window.

Philip awoke with the noise, and looked around in a bewildered way. He was feeling vaguely that something had happened, when the man said--

“The horse will be round soon, sir.”

“What horse?” said Philip.

“The horse you ride, sir,” said Jem, and, with an indulgent smile, he added, “the one I ordered from Shimmen's when I posted the letter.”

“What letter?”

“The letter you gave me to post before I went to bed.”

All was jumbled and confused in Philip's mind. He was obliged to make an effort to remember. Just then the newsboys went shouting down the street beyond the churchyard: “Special edition--Death of the Deemster.”

Then everything came back. He had written to Kate, asking her to meet him at Port Mooar at two o'clock that day. It was then, and in that lonesome place, that he had decided to break the news to her. He must tell all; he had determined upon his course.

Without appetite he ate his breakfast. As he did so he heard voices from a stable-yard in the street. He lifted his head and looked out mechanically. A four-wheeled dogcart was coming down the archway behind a mettlesome young horse with silver-mounted harness. The man driving it was a gorgeous person in a light Melton overcoat. One of his spatted feet was on the break, and he had a big cigar between his teeth. It was Ross Christian.

The last time Philip had seen the man he had fought him for the honour of Kate. It was like whips and scorpions to think of that now. Ashamed, abased, degraded in his own eyes, he turned away his head.

V.

In the middle of the night following the Melliah, Kate, turning in bed, kissed her hand because it had held the hand of Philip. When she awoke in the morning she felt a great happiness. Opening her eyes and half raising herself in bed, she looked around. There were the pink curtains hanging like a tent above her, there were the scraas of the thatched roof, with the cracking whitewash snipping down on the counterpane, there were the press and the wash-hand table, the sheep-skin on the floor, and the sun coming through the orchard window. But everything was transfigured, everything beautiful, everything mysterious. She was like one who had gone to sleep on the sea, with only the unattainable horizon round about, and awakened in harbour in a strange land that was warm and lovely and full of sunshine. She closed her eyes again, so that nothing might disturb the contemplation of the mystery. She folded her round arms as a pillow behind her head, her limbs dropped back of their own weight, and her mouth broke into a happy smile. Oh, miracle of miracles! The whole world was changed.

She heard the clatter of pattens in the room below; it was Nancy churning in the dairy. She heard shouts from beyond the orchard--it was her father stacking in the haggard; she heard her mother talking in the bar, and the mill-wheel swishing in the pond. It seemed almost wonderful that the machinery of ordinary life could be working away the same as ever.

Could she be the same herself? She reached over for a hand-glass to look at her face. As she took it off the table, it slipped from the tips of her fingers, and, falling face downwards, it broke. She had a momentary pang at that accident as at a bad omen, but just then Nancy came up with a letter. It was the letter which Philip had written at Ballure. When she was alone again she read it. Then she put it in her bosom. It seemed to be haunted by the odour of the gorse, the odour of the glen, of the tholthan, of Philip, and of all delights.

A faint ghost of shame came to frighten her. Had she sinned against her sex? Was it disgraceful that she had wooed and not waited to be won? With all his love of her, would Philip be ashamed of her also? Her face grew hot. She knew that she was blushing, and she covered up her head as if her lover were there to see. Such fears did not last long. Her joy was too bold to be afraid of tangible things. So overwhelming was her happiness that her only fear was lest she might awake at some moment and find that she was asleep now, and everything had been a dream.

That was Friday, and towards noon word came from Kirk Michael that the Deemster had died on the afternoon of the day before.

“Then they ought to put Philip Christian in his place,” she said promptly; “I'm sure no one deserves it better.”

They had been talking in low tones in the kitchen with their backs to her, but faced about with looks of astonishment.

“Sakes alive, Kirry,” cried Nancy, “is it yourself it was? What were you saying a week ago?”

“Well, do you expect a girl to be saying the one thing always?” laughed Kate.

“Aw, no,” said Cæsar. “A woman's opinions isn't usually as stiff as the tail of a fighting Tom cat. They're more coming and going, of a rule.”

Next day, Saturday, she received Philip's second letter, the letter written at Douglas after the supper and the arrival of Pete's telegram. It was written crosswise, in a hasty hand, on a half-sheet of note-paper, and was like a postscript, without signature or superscription:--.

“Most urgent. Must see you immediately. Meet me at Port Mooar at two o'clock to-morrow. We can talk there without interruption. Be brave, my dear. There are serious matters to discuss and arrange.”

The message was curt, and even cold, but it brought her no disquiet. Marriage! That was the only vision it conjured up. The death of the Deemster had hastened things--that was the meaning of the urgency. Port Mooar was near to Ballure--that was why she had to go so far. They would have to face gossip, perhaps backbiting, perhaps even abuse--that was the reason she had to be brave. Why and how the Deemster's death should affect her marriage with Philip was a matter she did not puzzle out. She had vague memories of girls marrying in delightful haste and sailing away with their husbands, and being gone before you had time to think they were to go. But this new fact of her life was only a part of the great mystery, and was not to be explained by everyday ideas and occurrences.

Kate ran up to dress, and came down like a bud bursting into flower. She had dressed more carefully than ever. Philip had great expectations; he must not be disappointed. Making the excuse of shopping, she was setting off towards Ramsey, when her father shouted from the stable that he was for driving the same way. The mare was harnessed to the gig, and they got up together.

Cæsar had made inquiries and calculations. He had learned that the _Johannesburg_, from Cape Town, arrived in Liverpool the day before; and he concluded that Pete's effects would come by the _Peveril_, the weekly steamer to Ramsay, on Saturday morning, The _Peveril_ left Liverpool at eight; she would be due at three. Cæsar meant to be on the quay at two.

“It's my duty as a parent, Kate,” said he. “What more natural but there's something for yourself? It's my duty as a pastor, too, for there's Manx ones going that's in danger of the devil of covetousness, and it's doing the Lord's work to put them out of the reach of temptation. You may exhort with them till you're black in the face, but it's throwing good money in the mud. Just _chuck!_ No ring at all; no way responsive!”

Kate was silent, and Cæsar added familiarly, “Of course, it's my right too, for when a man's birth is _that_ way, there's no heirship by blood, and possession is nine points of the law. That's so, Kate. You needn't be looking so hard. It's truth enough, girl. I've had advocate's opinion.”

Kate had looked, but had not listened. The matter of her father's talk was too trivial, it's interest was too remote. As they drove, she kept glancing seaward and asking what time it was.

“Aw, time enough yet, woman,” said Cæsar. “No need to be unaisy at all. She'll not be round the Head for an hour anyway. Will you come along with me to the quay, then? No? Well, better not, maybe.”

At the door of a draper's she got down from the gig, and told her father not to wait for her on going home. Cæsar moistened his forefinger and held it in the air a moment.

“Then don't be late,” said he, “there's weather coming.”

A few minutes afterwards she was walking rapidly up Ballure. Passing Ballure House, she found herself treading softly. It was like holy ground. She did not look across; she gave no sign; there was only a tremor of the eyelids, a quiver of the mouth, and a tightening of the hand that held her purse, as, with head down, she passed on. Going by the water-trough, she saw the bullet-head of Black Tom looking seaward over the hedge through a telescope encased in torn and faded cloth. Though the man was repugnant to her, she saluted him cheerfully.

“Fine day, Mr. Quilliam.”

“It _was_ doing a fine day, ma'am, but the bees is coming home,” said Tom.

He glowered at her as at a scout of the enemy, but she did not mind that. She was very happy. The sun was still shining. On reaching the top of the brow, she began to skip and run where the road descends by Folieu. Thus, with a light heart and a light step, thinking ill of no one, in love with all the world, she went hurrying to her doom.

The sea below lay very calm and blue. Nothing was to be seen on the water but a line of black smoke from the funnel of a steamship which had not yet risen above the horizon.

VI.

Philip put up his horse at the Hibernian, a mile farther on the high-road, and the tongue of the landlady, Mistress Looney went like a mill-race while he ate his dinner. She had known three generations of his family, and was full of stories of his grandfather, of his father, and of himself in his childhood. Full of facetiæ, too, about his looks, which were “rasonable promising,” and about the girls of Douglas, who were “neither good nor middling.” She was also full of sage counsel, advising marriage with a warm girl having “nice things at her--nice lands and pigs and things”--as a ready way to square the “bobbery” of thirty years ago at Ballawhaine.

Philip left his plate half full, and rose from the table to go down to Port Mooar.

“But, boy veen, you've destroyed nothing,”, cried the landlady. And then coaxingly, as if he had been a child, “You'll be ateing bits for me, now, come, come! No more at all? Aw, it's failing you are, Mr. Philip! Going for a walk is it? Take your topcoat then, for the clover is closing.”

He took the road that Pete had haunted as a boy on returning home from school in the days when Kate lived at Cornaa, going through the network of paths by the mill, and over the brow by Ballajora. The new miller was pulling down the thatched cottage in which Kate had been born to put up a slate house. They had built a porch for shelter to the chapel, and carved the figure of a slaughtered lamb on a stone in the gable. Another lamb--a living lamb--was being killed by the butcher of Ballajora as Philip went by the shambles. The helpless creature, with its inverted head swung downwards from the block, looked at him with its piteous eyes, and gave forth that distressful cry which is the last wild appeal of the stricken animal when it sees death near, and has ceased to fight for life.

The air was quiet, and the sea was calm, but across the Channel a leaden sky seemed to hover over the English mountains, though they were still light and apparently in sunshine. As Philip reached Port Mooar, a cart was coming out of it with a load of sea-wrack for the land, and a lobster-fisher on the beach was shipping his gear for sea.

“Quiet day,” said Philip in passing.

“I'm not much liking the look of it, though,” said the fisherman. “Mortal thick surf coming up for the wind that's in.” But he slipped his boat, pulled up sail, and rode away.

Philip looked at his watch and then walked down the beach. Coming to a cave, he entered it. The sea-wrack was banked up in the darkness behind, and between two stones at the mouth there were the remains of a recent fire. Suddenly he remembered the cave. It was the cave of the Carasdhoo men. He éould hear the voice of Pete in its rumbling depths; he could hear and see himself. “Shall we save the women, Pete?--we always do.” “Aw, yes, the women--and the boys.” The tenderness of that memory was too much for Philip. He came out of the cave, and walked back over the shore.

“She will come by the church,” he thought, and he climbed the cliffs to look out. A line of fir-trees grew there, a comb of little misshapen ghoul-like things, stunted by the winds that swept over the seas in winter. In a fork of one of these a bird's nest of last year was still hanging; but it was now empty, songless, joyless, and dead.

“She's here.” he told himself, and he drew his breath noisily. A white figure had turned the road by the sundial, and was coming on with the step of a greyhound.

The black clouds above the English mountains were heeling down on the land. There was a storm on the other coast, though the sky over the island was still fine. The steamship had risen above the horizon, and was heading towards the bay.

VII.

She met him on the hill slope with a cry of joy, and kissed him. It came into his mind to draw away, but he could not, and he kissed her back. Then she linked her arm in his, and they turned down the beach.

“I'm glad you've come,” he began.

“Did you ever dream I wouldn't?” she said. Her face was a smile, her voice was an eager whisper.

“I have something to say to you, Kate--it is something serious.”

“Is it so?” she said. “So very serious?”

She was laughing and blushing together. Didn't she know what he was going to say? Didn't she guess what this serious something must be? To prolong the delicious suspense before hearing it, she pretended to be absorbed in the things about her. She looked aside at the sea, and up at the banks, and down at the little dubbs of salt water as she skipped across them, crying out at sight of the sea-holly, the anemone, and the sea-mouse shining like fire, but still holding to Philip's arm and bounding and throbbing on it.

“You must be quiet, dear, and listen,” he said.

“Oh, I'll be good--so very good,” she said. “But look! only look at the white horses out yonder--far out beyond the steamer. Davy's putting on the coppers for the parson, eh?”

She caught the grave expression of Philip's face, and drew herself up with pretended severity, saying, “Be quiet, Katey. Behave yourself. Philip wants to talk to you--seriously--very seriously.”

Then, leaning forward with head aside to look up into his face, she said, “Well, sir, why don't you begin? Perhaps you think I'll cry out. I won't--I promise you I won't.”

But she grew uneasy at the settled gravity of his face, and the joy gradually died off her own. When Philip spoke, his voice was like a cracked echo of itself.

“You remember what you said, Kate, when I brought you that last letter from Kimberley--that if next morning you found it was a mistake------”

“_Is_ it a mistake?” she asked.

“Becalm, Kate.”

“I am quite calm, dear. I remember I said it would kill me. But I was very foolish. I should not say so now. Is Pete alive?”

She spoke without a tremor, and he answered in a husky whisper, “Yes.”

Then, in a breaking voice, he said, “We were very foolish Kate--jumping so hastily to a conclusion was very foolish-it was worse than foolish, it was wicked. I half doubted the letter at the time, but, God forgive me, I _wanted_ to believe it, and so----”

“I am glad Pete is living,” she said quietly.

He was aghast at her calmness. The irregular lines in his face showed the disordered state of his soul, but she walked by his side without the quiver of an eyelid, or a tinge of colour more than usual. Had she understood?

“Look!” he said, and he drew Pete's telegram from his pocket and gave it to her.

She opened it easily, and he watched her while she read it, prepared for a cry, and ready to put his arms about her if she fell. But there was not a movement save the motion of her fingers, not a sound except the crinking of the thin paper. He turned his head away. The sun was shining; there was a steely light on the firs, and here and there a white breaker was rising like a sea-bird out of the blue surface of the sea.

“Well?” she said.

“Kate, you astonish me,” said Philip. “This comes on us like a thundercloud, and you seem not to realise it.”

She put her arms about his neck, and the paper rustled on his shoulder. “My darling,” she said, “do you love me still?”

“You know I love you, but----”

“Then there is no thundercloud in heaven for me now,” she said.

The simple grandeur of the girl's love shamed him. Its trust, its confidence, its indifference to all the evil chance of life if only he loved her still, this had been beyond him. But he disengaged her arms and said, “We must not live in a fool's paradise, Kate. You promised yourself to Pete----”

“But, Philip,” she said, “that was when I was a child. It was only a half promise then, and I didn't know what I was doing. I didn't know what love was. All that came later, dearest, much later--you know when.”

“To Pete it is the same thing, Kate,” said Philip. “He is coming home to claim you----”

She stopped him by getting in front of him and saying, with face down, smoothing his sleeve as she spoke, “You are a man, Philip, and you cannot understand. How can you, and how can I tell you? When a girl is not a woman, but only a child, she is a different person. She can't love anybody then--not really--not to say love, and the promises she makes can't count. It was not I that promised myself to Pete--if I did promise. It was my little sister--the little sister that was me long, long ago, but is now gone--put to sleep inside me somewhere. Is that _very_ foolish, darling?”

“But think of Pete,” said Philip; “think of him going away for love of you, living five years abroad, toiling, slaving, saving, encountering privations, perhaps perils, and all for you, all for love of you. Then think of him coming home with his heart full of you, buoyed up with the hope of you, thirsting, starving, and yearning for you, and finding you lost to him, dead to him, worse than dead--it will kill him, Kate.”

She was unmoved by the picture. “I am very sorry, but I do not love him,” she said quietly. “I am sorry--what else can a girl be when she does not love a young man?”

“He left me to take care of you, too, and you see--you see by the telegram--he is coming home with faith in my loyalty. How can I tell him that I have broken my trust? How can I meet him and explain----”

“I know, Philip. Say we heard he was dead and----”

“No, it would be too wretched. It's only three weeks since the letter came--and it would not be true, Kate--it would revolt me.”

She lifted her eyes in a fond look of shame-faced love, and said again, “_I_ know, then--lay the blame on me, Philip. What do I care? Say it was all my fault, and I made you love me. _I_ shan't care for anybody's talk. And it's true, isn't it? Partly true, eh?”

“If I talked to Pete of temptation I should despise myself,” said Philip; and then she threw her head up and said proudly--

“Very well, tell the truth itself--the simple truth, Philip. Say we tried to be faithful and loyal, and all that, and could not, because we loved each other, and there was no help for it.”

“If I tell him the truth, I shall die of shame,” said Philip. “Oh, there is no way out of this miserable tangle. Whether I cover myself with deceit, or strip myself of evasion, I shall stain my soul for ever. I shall become a base man, and year by year sink lower and lower in the mire of lies and deceit.”

She listened with her eyes fixed on his quivering face, and her eyelids fluttered, and her fond looks began to be afraid.

“Say that we married,” he continued; “we should never forget that you had broken your promise and I my trust. That memory would haunt us as long as we lived. We should never know one moment's happiness or one moment's peace. Pete would be a broken-hearted man, perhaps a wreck, perhaps--who knows?--dead of his own hand. He would be the ghost between us always.”

“And do you think I should be afraid of that?” she said. “Indeed, no. If you were with me, Philip, and loved me still, I should not care for all the spirits of heaven itself.”

Her face was as pale as death now, but her great eyes were shining.

“Our love would fail us, Kate,” said Philip. “The sense of our guilt would kill it. How could we go on loving each other with a thing like that about us all day and all night--sitting at our table--listening to our talk--standing by our bed? Oh, merciful God!”

The terror of his vision mastered him, and he covered his face with both hands. She drew them down again and held them in a tight lock in her fingers. But the stony light of his eyes was more fearful to look upon, and she said in a troubled voice, “Do you mean, Philip, that we--could--not marry--now?”

He did not answer, and she repeated the question, looking up into his face like a criminal waiting for his sentence--her head bent forward and her mouth open.

“We cannot,” he muttered. “God help us, we dare not,” he said; and then he tried to show her again how their marriage was impossible, now that Pete had come, without treason and shame and misery. But his words frayed off into silence. He caught the look of her eyes, and it was like the piteous look of the lamb under the hands of the butcher.

“Is that what you came to tell me?” she asked.

His reply died in his throat. She divined rather than heard it.

Her doom had fallen on her, but she did not cry out. She did not yet realise in all its fulness what had happened. It was like a bullet-wound in battle; first a sense of air, almost of relief, then a pang, and then overwhelming agony.

They had been walking again, but she slid in front of him as she had done before. Her arms crept up his breast with a caressing touch, and linked themselves behind his neck.