Complete works of hall c.., p.240
Complete Works of Hall Caine, page 240
She had wronged him — deeply, awfully, beyond atonement or hope of forgiveness. He loved her; he had married her; he had brought her to his home, to this harbour of safety, and she had deceived and betrayed him — she had suffered herself to be married to him while still loving another man.
A sudden faintness seized her. She grew dizzy and almost fell. A more terrible memory had come behind. The thought was like ravens flapping their black wings on her brain. She felt her temples beating against her hands. They seemed to be sucking the life out of her heart.
Just then the voice of Pete came beating up the echoes between the house and the chapel beyond the garden —
“Little red bird of the black turf ground,
Where did you sleep last night?”
She heard him open the garden gate, clash it back, come up the path with an eager step, shut the door of the house and chain it on the inside. Then she heard his deep voice speaking below.
“Better now, Mrs. Gorry?”
“Aw, better, sir, yes, and quiet enough this ten minutes.”
“Give her time, the bogh! Be aisy with the like, be aisy.”
Presently she heard him send off Mrs. Gorry for the night, saying he should want no supper, and should be going to bed soon. Then the house became quiet, and the smell of tobacco smoke came floating up the stairs.
Kate’s hot breath on her hands grew damp against her face. She felt herself swooning, and she caught hold of the mantelpiece.
“It cannot be,” she thought. “He must not come. I will go down to him and say, ‘Pete, forgive me, I am really the wife of another.’”
Then she would tell him everything. Yes, she would confess all now. Oh, she would not be afraid. His love was great. He would do what she wished.
She made one step towards the door, and was pulled up as by a curb. Pete would say, “Do you mean that you have been using me as a cloak? Do you ask me to live in this house, side by side with you, and let no one suspect that we are apart? Then why did you not ask me yesterday? Why do you ask me to-day, when it is too late to choose?”
No, she could not confess. If confession had been difficult yesterday, it was a thousand times more difficult to-day, and it would be a thousand thousand times more difficult tomorrow.
Kate caught up the cloak she had thrown aside. She must go away. Anywhere, anywhere, no matter where. That was the one thing left to her — the only escape from the wild tangle of dread and pain. Pete was in the hall; there must be a way out at the back; she would find it.
She lowered the lamp, and turned the handle of the door. Then she saw a light moving on the landing, and heard a soft step on the stairs. It was Pete, with a candle, coming up in his stockinged feet. He stopped midway, as if he heard the click of the latch, and then went noiselessly down again.
Kate closed the door. She would not go. If she left the house that night she would cover Pete with suspicion and disgrace. The true secret would never be known; the real offender would never suffer; but the finger of scorn would be raised at the one man who had sheltered and shielded her, and he would die of humiliation and blind self-reproach.
This reflection restrained her for the moment, and when the stress of it was spent she was mastered by a fear that was far more terrible. For good or for all she was now married to Pete, and he had the rights of a husband. He had a right to come to her, and he would come. It was inevitable; it had to be. No boy or girl love now, no wooing, no dallying, no denying, but a grim reality of life — a reality that comes to every woman who is married to a man. She was married to Pete. In the eye of the world, in the eye of the law, she was his, and to fly from him was impossible.
She must remain. God himself had willed it As for the shame of her former relation to Philip, it was her own secret. God alone knew of it, and He would keep it safe. It was the dark chamber of her heart which God only could unlock. He would never unlock it until the Day of Judgment, and then Philip would be standing by her side, and she would cast it back upon him, and say, “His, not mine, O God,” and the Great Judge of all would judge between them.
But she began to cry again, like a child in the dark. As she threw off her cloak a second time, her dress crinkled, and she looked down at it and remembered that it was her wedding-dress. Then she looked around at the room, and remembered that it was her wedding chamber. She remembered how she had dreamt of coming in her bridal dress to her bridal room — proud, afraid, tingling with love, blushing with joy, whispering to herself, “This is for me — and this — and this. He has given it, for he loves me and I love him, and he is mine and I am his, and he is my love and my lord, and he is coming to—”
There was a gentle knocking at the door. It made her flesh creep. The knock came again. It went shrieking through and through her.
“Kirry,” whispered a voice from without.
She did not stir.
“It’s only Pete.”
She neither spoke nor moved.
There was silence for a moment, and then, half nervously, half jovially, half in laughter, half with emotion as if the heart outside was palpitating, the voice came again, “I’m coming in, darling!”
PART IV. MAN AND WIFE.
I.
Next morning Kate said to herself, “My life must begin again from to-day.” She had a secret that Pete did not share, but she was not the first woman who had kept something from her husband. When people had secrets which it would hurt others to reveal, they ought to keep them close. Honour demanded that she should be as firm as a rock in blotting Philip from her soul. Remembering the promise which Pete had demanded of Philip at the wedding to make their house his home in Ramsey, and seeing that Philip must come, if only to save appearances, she asked herself if she ought to prevent him. But no! She resolved to conquer the passion that made his presence a danger. There was no safety in separation. In her relation to Philip she was like the convict who is beginning his life again — the only place where he can build up a sure career is precisely there where his crime is known. “Let Philip come,” she thought. She made his room ready.
She was married. It was her duty to be a good wife. Pete loved her — his love would make it easy. They were sitting at breakfast in the hall-parlour, and she said, “I should like to be my own housekeeper, Pete.”
“And right, too,” said Pete. “Be your own woman, darling — not your woman’s woman — and have Mrs. Gorry for your housemaid.”
To turn her mind from evil thoughts, she set to work immediately, and busied herself with little duties, little economies, little cares, little troubles. But the virtues of housekeeping were just those for which she had not prepared herself. Her first leg of mutton was roasted down to the proportions of a frizzled shank, and her first pudding was baked to the colour and consistency of a badly burnt brick. She did not mend rapidly as a cook, but Pete ate of all that his faultless teeth could grind through, and laid the blame on his appetite when his digestion failed.
She strove by other industries to keep alive a sense of her duty as a wife. Buying rolls of paper at the paperhanger’s, she set about papering every closet in the house. The patterns did not join and the paste did not adhere. She initialled in worsted the new blankets sent by Grannie, with a P and a Q and a K intertwined. Than she overhauled the linen; turned out every room twice a week; painted every available wooden fixture with paint which would not dry because she had mixed it herself to save a sixpence a stone and forgotten the turpentine. Pete held up his hands in admiration at all her failures. She had thought it would be easy to be a good wife to a good husband. It was hard — hard for any one, hardest of all for her. There are the ruins of a happy woman in the bosom of every over-indulged wife.
She could not keep to anything long, but every night for a week she gave Pete lessons in reading, writing, and arithmetic. His reading was laborious, his spelling was eccentric, his figuring he did on the tips of his heavy fingers, and his writing he executed with his tongue in his cheek and his ponderous thumb down on the pen nib.
“What letter is that, Pete?” she said, pointing with her knitting needle to the page of a book of poems before them.
Pete looked up in astonishment. “Is it me you’re asking, Kitty? If you don’t know, I don’t know.”
“That’s a capital M, Pete.”
“Is it, now?” said Pete, looking at the letter with a searching eye. “Goodness me, the straight it’s like the gate of the long meadow.”
“And that’s a capital A.”
“Sakes alive, the straight it’s like the coupling of the cart-house.”
“And that’s a B.”
“Gough bless me, d’ye say so? But the straight it’s like the hoof of a bull, though.”
“And M A B spells Mab — Queen Mab,” said Kate, going on with her knitting.
Pete looked up at her with eyes wide open. “I suppose, now,” he said, in a voice of pride, “I suppose you’re knowing all the big spells yourself, Kitty?”
“Not all. Sometimes I have to look in the dictionary,” said Kate.
She showed him the book and explained its uses.
“And is it taiching you to spell every word, Kitty?” he asked.
“Every ordinary word,” said Kate.
“My gough!” said Pete, touching the book with awe.
Next day he pored over the dictionary for an hour, but when he raised his face it wore a look of scepticism and scorn. “This spelling-book isn’t taiching you nothing, darling,” he said.
“Isn’t it. Pete?”
“No, nothing,” said Pete. “Here I’ve been looking for an ordinary word — a very ordinary word — and it isn’t in.”
“What word is it?” said Elate, leaning over his shoulder.
“Love,” said Pete. “See,” pointing his big forefinger, “that’s where it ought to be, and where is it?”
“But love begins lo,” said Kate, “and you’re looking at lu. Here it is — love.”
Pete gave a prolonged whistle, then fell back in his chair, looked slowly up and said, “So you must first know how the word begins; is that it, Kitty?”
“Why, yes,” said Kate.
“Then it’s you that’s taiching the spelling-book, darling; so we’ll put it back on the shelf.”
For a fortnight Kate read and replied to Pete’s correspondence. It was plentiful and various. Letters from heirs to lost fortunes offering shares in return for money to buy them out of Chancery; from promoters of companies proposing dancing palaces to meet the needs of English visitors; from parsons begging subscriptions to new organs; from fashionable ladies asking Pete to open bazaars; from preachers inviting him to anniversary tea-meetings, and saying Methodism was proud of him. If anybody wanted money, he kissed the Blarney Stone and applied to Pete. Kate stood between him and the worst of the leeches. The best of them he contrived to deal with himself, secretly and surreptitiously. Sometimes there came acknowledgments of charities of which Kate knew nothing. Then he would shuffle them away and she would try not to see them. “If I stop him altogether, I will spoil him,” she thought.
One day the post brought a large envelope with a great seal at the back of it, and Kate drew out a parchment deed and began to read the indorsement—”’Memorandum of loan to Cæsar Cre — —’”
“That’s nothing,” said Pete, snatching the document and stuffing it into his jacket-pocket.
Kate lifted her eyes with a look of pain and shame and humiliation, and that was the end of her secretaryship.
II.
A month after their marriage a man came through the gate with the air of one who was doing a degrading thing. The dog, which had been spread out lazily in the sun before the porch, leapt up and barked furiously.
“Who’s this coming up the path with his eyes all round him like a scallop?” said Pete.
Kate looked. “It’s Ross Christian,” she said, with a catch in her breathing.
Ross came up, and Pete met him at the door. His face was puffy and pale, his speech was soft and lisping, yet there lurked about the man an air of levity and irony.
“Your dog doesn’t easily make friends, Peter,” he said.
“He’s like his master, sir; it’s against the principles of his life,” said Pete.
Ross laughed a little. “Wants to be approached with consideration, does he, Capt’n?”
“You see, he’s lived such a long time in the world and seen such a dale,” said Pete.
Ross looked up sharply and said in another tone, “I’ve just dropped in to congratulate you on your return home in safety and health and prosperity, Mr. Quilliam.”
“You’re welcome, sir,” said Pete.
Pete led the way indoors. Ross followed, bowed distantly to Kate, who was unpicking a dress, and took a chair.
“I must not conceal from you, however, that I have another object — in fact, a private matter,” said Ross, glancing at Kate.
The dress rustled in Kate’s fingers, her scissors dropped on to the table, and she rose to go.
Pete raised his hand. “My wife knows all my business,” he said.
Ross gave out another little chirp of laughter. “You’ll remember what they say of a secret, Captain — too big for one, right for two, tight for three.”
“A man and his wife are one, sir — so that’s two altogether,” said Pete.
Kate took up the scissors and went on with her work uneasily. Ross twisted on his seat and said, “Well, I feel I must tell you, Peter.”
“Quilliam, sir,” said Pete, charging a pipe; but Ross pretended not to hear.
“Only natural, perhaps, for it — in fact, it’s about our father.”
“Tongue with me, tongue with thee,” thought Pete, lighting up.
“Five years ago he made me an allowance, and sent me up to London to study law. He believes I’ve been called to the English bar, and, in view of this vacant Deemstership, he wants me admitted to the Manx one.”
Pete’s pipe stopped in its puffing. “Well?”
“That’s impossible,” said Ross.
“Things haven’t come with you, eh?”
“To tell you the truth, Captain, on first going up I fell into extravagant company. I thought my friends were rich men, and I was never a niggard. There was Monty, the patron of the Fancy” — the scissors in Kate’s hand clicked and stopped — and Ross blurted out, “In fact, I’ve not been called, and I’ve never studied at all.”
Ross squirmed in his chair, glancing under his brows at Kate. Pete leaned forward and puffed up the chimney without speaking.
“You see I speak freely, Peter — something compels me. Well, if a man can’t reveal his little failings to his own brother, Peter — —”
“Don’t let’s talk about brothers,” said Pete. “What am I to do for you?”
“Lend me enough to help me to do what our father thinks I’ve done already,” said Ross, and then he added, hastily, “Oh, I’ll give you my note of hand for it.”
“They’re telling me, sir,” said Pete, “your notes of hand are as cheap as cowries.”
“Some one has belied me to you, Captain. But for our father’s sake — he has set his heart on this Deemstership — there may still be time for it.”
“Yes,” said Pete, striking his open hand on the table, “and better men to fill it.”
Ross glanced at Kate, and a smile that was half a sneer crossed his evil face. “How nice,” he said, “when the great friends of the wife are also the great friends of the husband.”
“Just so,” said Pete, and then Ross laughed a little, and the clicking of Kate’s scissors stopped again. “As to you, sir,” said Pete, rising, “if it’s no disrespect, you’re like the cormorant that chokes itself swallowing its fish head-ways up. The gills are sticking in your gizzard, sir, only,” touching Ross’s shoulder with something between a pat and push, “you shouldn’t be coming to your father’s son to help you to ram it down.”
As Ross went out Cæsar came in. “That wastrel’s been wanting something,” said Cæsar.
“The tide’s down on him,” said Pete.
“Always was, and always will be. He was born at low water, and he’ll die on the rocks. Borrowing money, eh?” said Cæsar, with a searching glance.
“Trying to,” said Pete indifferently.
“Then lend it, sir,” said Cæsar promptly. “He’s not to trust, but lend it on his heirship. Or lend it the ould man at mortgage on Ballawhaine. He’s the besom of fire — it’ll come to you, sir, at the father’s death, and who has more right?”
The shank of Pete’s pipe came down from his mouth as he sat for some moments beating out the ash on the jockey bar. “Something in that, though,” he said mechanically. “But there’s another has first claim for all. He’d be having the place now if every one had his own. I must be thinking of it — I must be thinking of it.”
III.
Philip had left the island on the morning after the marriage. He had gone abroad, and when they heard from him first he was at Cairo. The voyage out had done him good — the long, steady nights going down the Mediterranean — walking the deck alone — the soft air — the far-off lights — thought he was feeling better — calmer anyway. He hoped they were settled in their new home, and well — and happy. Kate had to read the letter aloud. It was like a throb of Philip’s heart made faint, feeble, and hardly to be felt by the great distance. Then she had to reply to it on behalf of Pete.
“Tell him to be quick and come out of the land of Egypt and the house of bondage,” said Pete. “Say there’s no manner of sense of a handsome young man living in a country where there isn’t a pretty face to be seen on the sunny side of a blanket. Write that Kirry joins with her love and best respects and she’s busy whitewashing, and he’d better have no truck with Pharaoh’s daughters.”
The next time they heard from Philip he was at Rome. He had suffered from sleeplessness, but was not otherwise unwell. Living in that city was like an existence after death — all the real life was behind you. But it was not unpleasant to walk under the big moon amid the wrecks of the past. He congratulated Mrs. Quilliam on her active occupation — work was the same as suffering — it was strength and power. Kate had to read this letter also. It was like a sob coming over the sea.
