There was a chorus of applause. Kate was still laughing. Philip’s head was down.

  “And now, friends,” continued the parson, “Captain Quilliam has been a successful man abroad, but he has had to come home to do the best piece of work he ever did.” (A voice— “Do it yourself, parzon.”) “It is true I’ve never done it myself. Vanity of vanities, love is not for me. It’s been the Lord’s will to put me here to do the marrying and leave my people to do the loving. But there is a young man present who has all the world before him and everything this life can promise except one thing, and that’s the best thing of all — a wife.” (Kate’s laughter grew boisterous.) “This morning he helped his friend to marry a pure and beautiful maiden. Now let me remind him of the text which says, ‘Go thou and do likewise.’”

  The toast was drunk standing, with shouts of “Cap’n Pete,” and, amid much hammering on the table, stamping on the floor, and other thunderings of applause, Cap’n Pete rolled up to reply. After a moment’s pause, in which he distributed sage winks and nods on every side, he said: “I’m not much for public spaking myself. I made my best speech and my shortest in church this morning — I will. The parzon has has been telling my dooiney molla to do as I have done today. He can’t. Begging pardon of the ladies, there’s only one woman on the island fit for him, and I’ve got her.” (Kate’s laughter grew shrill.) “My wife — —”

  At this word, uttered with an air of life-long familiarity, twenty clay pipes lost their heads by collision with the table, and Pete was interrupted by roars of laughter.

  “Gough bless me, can’t a married man mention his wife in company? Well then. Mistress Cap’n Peter Quilliam — —”

  This mouthful was the signal for another riotous interruption, and a general call for more to drink.

  “Won’t that do for you neither? I’m not going back on it, though. ‘Whom God hath joined together let no man put asunder’ — isn’t that it, Parzon Quiggin? What’s it you’re saying — no man but the Dempster? Well, the Dempster’s here that is to be — I’ll clear him of that, anyway.”

  Kate’s laughter became explosive and uncontrollable. Pete nodded sideways to fill up the gap in his eloquence, and then went on. “But if my dooiney molla can’t marry my wife, there’s one thing he can do for her — he can make her house his home in Ramsey when he goes to Douglas for good and comes down here to the coorts once a fortnight.”

  Kate laughed more immoderately than ever; but Philip, with a look of alarm, half rose from his seat, and said across the table, “There’s my aunt at Ballure, Pete.”

  “She’ll be following after you,” said Pete.

  “There are hotels enough for travellers,” said Philip.

  “Too many by half, and that’s why I asked in public,” said Pete.

  “I know the brotherly feeling — —” began Philip.

  “Is it a promise?” demanded Pete.

  “If I can’t escape your kindness — —”

  “No, you can’t; so there’s an end of it.”

  “It will kill me yet — —”

  “May you never die till it polishes you off.”.

  At Philip’s submission to Pete’s will, there was a general chorus of cheers, through which Kate’s shrill laughter rang like a scream. Pete patted the back of her hand, and continued, “And now, young fellows there, let an ould experienced married man give you a bit of advice — he swore away all his worldly goods this morning, so he hasn’t much else to give. I’ve no belief in bachelors myself. They’re like a tub without a handle — nothing to lay hould of them by.” (Much nudging and whispering about the bottom of the table.) “What’s that down yonder? ‘The vicar,’ you say? Aw, the vicar’s a grand man, but he’s only a parzon, you see. Mr. Christian, is it? He’s got too much work to do to be thinking about women. We’re living on the nineteenth century, boys, and it’s middling hard feeding for some of us. If the fishing’s going to the dogs and the farming going to the deuce, don’t be tossing head over tip at the tail of the tourist. If you’ve got the pumping engine inside of you, in plain English, if you’ve got the indomable character of the rael Manxman, do as I done — go foreign. Then watch your opportunity. What’s Shake-spar saying?” Pete paused. “What’s that he’s saying, now?” Pete scratched his forehead. “Something about a flood, anyway.” Pete stretched his hand out vigorously. “‘Lay hould of it at the flood,’ says he, ‘that’s the way to make your fortune.’”

  Then Pete melted to sentiment, glanced down at Kate’s head, and continued, “And when you come back to the ould island — and there isn’t no place like it — you can marry the girl of your heart, God bless her. Work’s black, but money’s white, and love is as sweet on potatoes and herrings three times a day, as on nothing for dinner, and the same every night of the week for supper. While you’re away, you’ll be draming of her. ‘Is she faithful?’ ‘Is she thrue?’ Coorse she is, and waiting to take you the very minute you come home.” Kate was still laughing as if she could not stop. “Look out for the right sort, boys. Plenty of the like in yet. If the young men of these days are more smart and more educated than their fathers, the young women are more handsome and more virtuous than their mothers. So ben-my-chree, my hearties, and enough in the locker to drive away the divil and the coroner.”

  Through the volley of cheers which followed Pete’s speech came the voice of Black Tom, thick with drink, “Drive off the crow at the wedding-breakfast.”

  Everybody rose and looked. A great crow, black as night, had come in at the open door of the mill, calmly, sedately, as if by habit, for the corn that usually lay there.

  “It manes divorce,” said Black Tom.

  “Scare it away,” cried some one.

  “It’s the new wife must do it,” said another.

  “Where’s Kate?” cried Nancy.

  But Kate only looked and went on laughing as before.

  The crow turned tail and took flight of itself at finding so eager an audience. Then Pete said, “Whose houlding with such ould wife’s wonders?”

  And Cæsar answered, “Coorse not, or fairies either. I’ve slept out all night on Cronk-ny-airy-Lhaa — before my days of grace, I mane — and I never seen no fairies.”

  “It would be a fool of a fairy, though, that would let you see him, Cæsar,” said Black Tom.

  At nine o’clock Cæsar’s gig was at the door of “The Manx Fairy” to take the bride and bridegroom home. They had sung “Mylecharane,” and “Keerie fu Snaighty,” and “Hunting the Wren,” and “The Win’ that Shook the Barley,” and then they had cleared away the tables and danced to the fiddle of John the Clerk and the clarionet of Jonaique Jelly. Kate, with wild eyes and flushed cheeks, had taken part in everything, but always fiercely, violently, almost tempestuously, until people lost enjoyment of her heartiness in fear of her hysteria, and Cæsar whispered Pete to take her away, and brought round the gig to hasten them.

  Kate went up for her cloak and hat, and in the interval between her departure and reappearance, Grannie and Nancy Joe, both glorified beings, Nancy with her unaccustomed cap askew, stood in the middle of a group of women, who were deferring, and inquiring, and sympathising.

  “I don’t know in the world how she has kept up so long,” said Grannie.

  “And dear heart knows how I’m to keep up when she’s gone,” said Nancy, with her apron to her eyes.

  Kate came down ready. Everybody followed her into the road, and all stood round the gig with flashes from the gig-lamps on their faces, while Pete swung her up into the seat, lifting her bodily in his great arms.

  “You wouldn’t drown yourself to-night for an ould rusty nail, eh, Capt’n?” cried somebody with a laugh.

  “You go bail,” said Pete, and he leapt up to Kate’s side, twiddled the reins, cracked the whip, and they drove away.

  XXIV.

  Philip had stood at the door of the porch, struggling to command his soul, and employing all his powers to look cheerful and even gay. But as Kate had passed she had looked at him with an imploring look, and then he had seemed to understand everything — that she had made a mistake and that she knew it, that her laughter had been bitterer than tears, that some compulsion had been put upon her, and that she was a wretched and miserable woman. At the next moment she had gone by with an odour of lace and perfume; and then a flood of tenderness, of pity, of mad jealousy had come upon him, and it had been as much as he could do to restrain himself. One instant he held himself in hand, and at the next the wheels of the gig had begun to move, the horse had started, the women had trooped into the house again, and there was nothing before him but the broad back of Cæsar, who was looking into the darkness after the vanishing gig-lamps, and breathing asthmatical breath.

  “Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother and shall cleave unto his wife,” said Cæsar. “You’re time enough yet, sir; come in, come in.”

  But the man was odious to Philip at that moment, the house was odious, the people and the talk inside were odious, and he slipped away unobserved.

  Too late! From the torment of his own thoughts he could not escape — his lost love, his lost happiness, his memories of the past, his dreams of the future. A voice — it was his own voice — seemed to be taunting him constantly: “You were not worthy of her. You did not know her value. She is gone; and what have you got instead!”

  The Deemstership! That was of no consequence now. A name, an idle name! Love was the only thing worth having, and it was lost. Without it all the rest was nothing, and he had flung it away. He had been a monster, he had been a fool. The thought of his folly was insupportable; the recollection of his selfishness was stifling; the memory of his calculating deliberations was dragging him again in the dust. Thus, with a sense of crushing shame, he plunged down the dark road, trying not to think of the gig that had gone swinging along in front of him.

  He would leave the island. To-morrow he would sail for England. No matter if he lost the chance of promotion. To-morrow, to-morrow! But to-night? How could he live through the hours until morning, with the black thoughts which the darkness generated? How could he sleep? How lie awake? What drug would bring forgetfulness? Kate! Pete! To-night! Oh, God! oh, God!

  XXV.

  Six strides of the horse into the darkness and Kate’s hysteria was gone. She had been lost to herself the whole day-through, and now she possessed herself again. She grew quiet and silent, and even solemn. But Pete rattled on with cheerful talk about the day’s doings. At the doors of the houses on the road as they passed, people were standing in the half-light to wave them salutations, and Pete sent back his answers in shouts and laughter. Turning the bridge they saw a little group at the porch of the “Ginger.”

  “There’s company waiting for us yonder,” said Pete, giving the mare a touch of the whip.

  “Let us get on,” said Kate in a nervous whisper.

  “Aw, let’s be neighbourly, you know,” said Pete. “It wouldn’t be dacent to disappoint people at all. We’ll hawl up for a minute just, and hoof up the time at a gallop. Woa, lass, woa, mare, woa, bogh!”

  As the gig drew up at the inn door, a voice out of the porch cried, “Joy to you, Capt’n, and joy to your lady, and long life and prosperity to you both, and may the Lord give you children and health and happiness to rear them, and may you see your children’s children, and may they call you blessed.”

  “Glasses round. Mrs. Kelly,” shouted Pete.

  “Go on, please,” said Kate in a fretful whisper, and she tugged at Pete’s sleeve.

  The stars came out; the moon gave a peep; the late hay of the Curragh sent a sweet odour through the night. Kate shuddered and Pete covered her shoulders with a rug. Then he began to sing snatches. He sang bits of all the songs that had been sung that night, but kept coming back at intervals to an old Manx ditty which begins —

  “Little red bird of the black turf ground,

  Where did you sleep last night?”

  Thus he sang like a great boy as he went rolling down the dark road, and Kate sat by his side and trembled.

  They came to the town, rattled down the Parliament Street, passed the Court-house under the trees, turned the sharp angle by the market-place, and drew up at Elm Cottage in the corner.

  “Home at last,” cried Pete, and he leapt to the ground.

  A dog began to bark inside the house. “D’ye hear him?” said Pete. “That’s the master in charge.”

  The porch door was opened, and a comfortable-looking woman in a widow’s cap came out with a lighted candle shaded by her hand.

  “And this is your housekeeper, Mrs. Gorry,” said Pete.

  Kate did not answer. Her eyes had been fixed in a rigid stare on the hind-quarters of the horse, which were steaming in the light of the lamps. Pete lifted her down as he had lifted her up. Then Mrs. Gorry took her by the hand, and saying, “Mind the step, ma’am — this way, ma’am,” led her through the gate and along the garden path, and up to the porch. The porch opened on a square hall, furnished as a sitting-room. A fire was burning, a lamp was lit, the table was laid for supper, and the place was warm and cosy.

  “There! What d’ye say to that?” cried Pete, coming behind with the whip in his hand.

  Kate looked around; she did not speak; her eyes began to fill.

  “Isn’t it fit for a Dempster’s lady?” said Pete, sweeping the whip-handle round the room like a showman.

  Kate could bear no more. She sank into a chair and burst into a fit of tears. Pete’s glowing face dropped in an instant.

  “Dear heart alive, darling, what is it?” he said. “My poor girl, what’s troubling you at all? Tell me, now — tell me, bogh, tell me.”

  “It’s nothing, Pete, nothing. Don’t ask me,” said Kate. But still she sobbed as if her heart would break.

  Pete stood a moment by her side, smoothing her arm with his hand. Then he said, with a crack and a quaver in his great voice, “It is hard for a girl, I know that, to lave father and mother and every one and everything that’s been sweet and dear to her since she was a child, and to come to the house of her husband and say, ‘The past has been very good to me; but still and for all, I’m for trusting the future to you.’ It’s hard, darling; I know it’s hard.”

  “Oh, leave me! leave me!” cried Kate, still weeping.

  Pete brushed his sleeve across his eyes, and said, “Take her upstairs, Mrs. Gorry, while I’m putting up the mare at the ‘Saddle.’”

  Then he whistled to the dog, which had been watching him from the hearthrug, and went out of the house. The handle of the whip dragged after him along the floor.

  Mrs. Gorry, full of trouble, took Kate to her room. Would she not eat her supper? Then salts were good for headache-should she bring a bottle from her box? After many fruitless inquiries and nervous protestations, the good soul bade Kate good-night and left her.

  Being alone, Kate broke into yet wilder paroxysms of weeping. The storm-cloud which had been gathering had burst at last. It seemed as if the whole weight of the day had been deferred until then. The piled-up hopes of weeks had waited for that hour, to be cast down in the sight of her own eyes. It was all over. The fight with Fate was done, and the frantic merriment with which she had kept down her sense of the place where the blind struggle had left her made the sick recoil more bitter.

  She thought of Philip, and her trouble began to moderate. Somewhere out of the uncrushed part of her womanhood there came one flicker of womanly pride to comfort her. She saw Philip at last from the point of revenge. He loved her; he would never cease to love her. Do what he might to banish the thought of her, she would be with him always; the more surely with him, the more reproachfully and unattainably, because she would be the wife of another man. If he could put her away from him in the daytime, and in the presence of those worldly aims for which he had sacrificed her, when night came he would be able to put her away no more. He would never sleep but he would see her. In every dream he would stretch out his arms to her, but she would not be there, and he would awake with sobs and in torment. There was a real joy in this thought, although it tore her heart so terribly.

  She got strength from the cruel comforting, and Mrs. Gorry in the room below, listening intently, heard her crying cease. With her face still shut in both her hands, she was telling herself that she had nothing to reproach herself with; that she could not have acted differently; that she had not really made this marriage; that she had only submitted to it, being swept along by the pitiless tide, which was her father, and Pete, and everybody. She was telling herself, too, that, after all, she had done well. Here she lay in close harbour from the fierce storm which had threatened her. She was safe, she was at peace.

  The room lay still. The night was very quiet within those walls. Kate drew down her hands and looked about her. The fire was burning gently, and warming her foot on the sheepskin rug that lay in front of it. A lamp burned low on a table behind her chair. At one side there was a wardrobe of the shape of an old press, but with a tall mirror in the door; on the other side there was the bed, with the pink curtains hanging like a tent. The place had a strange look of familiarity. It seemed as if she had known it all her life. She rose to look around, and then the inner sense leapt to the outer vision, and she saw how it was. The room was a reproduction of her own bedroom at home, only newer and more luxurious. It was almost as if some ghost of herself had been there while she slept — as if her own hand had done everything in a dream of her girlhood wherein common things had become grand.

  Kate’s eyes began to fill afresh, and she turned to take off her cloak. As she did so, she saw something on the dressing-table with a label attached to it. She took it up. It was a little mirror, a handglass like her own old one, only framed in ivory, and the writing on the label ran —

  Insted of The one that is bruk with fond Luv to Kirry.

  peat.

  Her heart was now beating furiously. A flood of feeling had rushed over her. She dropped the glass as if it stung her fingers. With both hands she covered her face. Everything in the room seemed to be accusing her. Hitherto she had thought only of Philip. Now for the first time she thought of Pete.

 

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