Complete works of hall c.., p.247
Complete Works of Hall Caine, page 247
“So he did, ma’am.”
“And now that he’s Deemster itself he owns you still.”
“Aw, lave him alone for that, ma’am.”
“Did you hear what he said about you in his speech. It isn’t everybody in his place would have done that before all, Pete.”
“‘Deed no, ma’am.”
“He’s true to his friends, whatever they are.”
“True as steel.”
The maid was carrying the dishes into the dining-room, and Auntie Nan said in a strained way, “You won’t stay to dinner, Pete, will you? Perhaps you want to get home to the mistress. Well, home is best for all of us, isn’t it? Martha, I’ll tell the Deemster myself that dinner is on the table. Well, good-night, Peter. I’m always so glad to see you.”
She was whisking about to go upstairs, but Pete had taken one step into the dining-room, and was gazing round with looks of awe.
“Lord alive, Miss Christian, ma’am, what feelings now-barefooted boy, you say? You’re right there, and cold and hungry too, sleeping in the gable-house with the cow, and not getting much but the milk I was staling from her, and a leathering at the ould man for that. Philip fetched me in here one evenin’ — that was the start, ma’am. See that pepper-and-salt egg on the string there? It’s a Tommy Noddy’s. Philip got it nesting up Gob-ny-Garvain. Nearly cost him his life, though. You see, ma’am, Tommy Noddy has only one, and she fights like mad for it. We were up forty fathom and better, atop of a cave, and had two straight rocks below us in the sea, same as an elephant’s hoofs, you know, walking out on the blue floor. And Phil was having his lil hand on the ledge where the egg was keeping, when swoop came the big white wings atop of his bare head. If I hadn’t had a stick that day, ma’am, it would have been heaven help the pair of us. The next minute Tommy Noddy was going splash down the cliffs, all feathers and blood together, or Philip wouldn’t have lived to be Dempster.... Aw, frightened you, have I, ma’am, for all it’s so long ago? The heart’s a quare thing, now, isn’t it? Got no yesterday nor to-morrow neither. Well, good-night, ma’am.” Pete was making for the door, when he looked down and said, “What’s this, at all? Down, Dempster, down!”
The dog had came trotting into the hall as Pete was going out. He was perking up his big ears and wagging his stump of a tail in front of him.
“My dog, ma’am? Yes, ma’am, and like its master in some ways. Not much of itself at all, but it has the blood in it, though, and maybe it’ll come out better in the next generation. Looking for me, are you, Dempster? Let’s be taking the road, then.”
“Perhaps you’re wanted at home, Pete?”
“Wouldn’t trust. Good night, ma’am.” Auntie Nan hopped upstairs in her rustling dress, relieved and glad in the sweet selfishness of her love to get rid of Pete and have Philip to herself.
XVI.
Pete went off whistling in the darkness, with the dog driving ahead of him. “I’m to blame, though,” he thought. “Should have gone home directly.”
The town was now quiet, the streets were deserted, and Pete began to run. “She’d be alone, too. That must have been Nancy in the crowd yonder by Mistress Beatty’s. ‘Lowed her out to see the do, it’s like. Ought to be back now, though.”
As Pete came near to Elm Cottage, the moon over the tree-tops lit up the panes of the upper windows as with a score of bright lamps. One step more, and the house was dark.
“She’ll be waiting for me. Listening, too, I’ll go bail.”
He was at the gate by this time, and the dog was panting at his feet with its nose close to the lattice.
“Be quiet, dog, be quiet.”
Then he raised the latch without a sound, stepped in on tiptoe, and closed the gate as silently behind him.
“I’ll have a game with her; I’ll take her by surprise.”
His eyes began to dance with mischief, like a child’s, and he crept along the path with big cat strides, half doubled up, and holding his breath, lest he should laugh aloud.
“The sweet creatures! A man shouldn’t frighten them, though,” he thought.
When he reached the porch he went down on all fours, and began mewing like a mournful tom-cat near to the bottom of the door. Then he listened with his ear to the jamb. He expected a faint cry of alarm, the raucous voice of Nancy Joe, and the clatter of feet towards the porch. There was not a sound.
“She’s upstairs,” he thought, and stepped back to look up at the front of the house. There was no light in the rooms above.
“I know what it is. Nancy is not home yet, and Kirry’s fallen asleep at the rocking.”
He stole up to the window and tried to look into the hall, but the blind was down, and he could not see much through the narrow openings at the sides of it.
“She’s sleeping, that’s it. The house was quiet and she dropped off, rocking the lil one, that’s all.”
He scraped a handful of the light gravel and flung a little of it at the window. “That’ll remind her of something,” he thought, and he laughed under his breath.
Then he listened again with his ear at the sill. There was no noise within. He flung more gravel and waited, thinking he might catch her breathing, but he could hear nothing.
Then rising hurriedly and throwing off his playfulness, he strode to the door and tried to open it. The door was locked. He returned to the window.
“Kate!” he called softly. “Kate! Are you there? Do you hear me? It’s Pete. Don’t be frightened, Kate, bogh!”
There was no response. He could hear the beat of the sea on the shore. The dog had perched himself on one end of the window sill and was beginning to whine.
“What’s this at all? She can’t be out. Couldn’t take the child anyway. Where’s that Nancy? What right had the woman to lave her? She has fainted, being left alone; that’s what’s going doing.”
He tried to open the window, but the latch was shot. Then he tried the other windows, and the back door, and the window above the hall, which he reached from the roof of the porch; but they would not stir. When he returned to the hall window, the white blind was darker. The lamp inside the room was going out.
The moonlight was dripping down on him through the leaves of the trees. He found some matches beside his pipe in his side pocket, struck one, and looked at the sash, then took out his clasp knife to remove the pane under the latch. His hand trembled and shook and burst through the glass with a jerk. It cut his wrist, but he felt the wound no more than if it had been the glass instead of his arm that bled. He thrust his hand through, shot back the latch, then pushed up the sash, and clambered into the room past the blind. The cat, sitting on the ledge inside, rubbed against his hand and purred.
“Kirry! Kate!” he whispered.
The lamp had given up its last gleam with the puff of wind from the window, and, save for the slumbering fire, all was dark within the house. He hardly dared to drop to his feet for fear of treading on something. When he was at last in the middle of the floor he stood with legs apart, struck another match, held the light above his head, and looked down and around, like a man in a cave.
There was nothing. The child, awakened by the draught of the night air, began to cry from the cradle. He took it up and hushed it with baby words of tenderness in a breaking voice. “Hush, bogh, hush! Mammie will come to it, then. Mammie will come for all.”
He lit a candle and crept through the house, carrying the light about with him. There was no sign anywhere until he came to the bedroom, when he saw that the hat and cloak of Kate’s daily wear had gone. Then he knew that he was a broken-hearted man. With a cry of desolation he stopped in his search and came heavily downstairs.
He had been warding off the moment of despair, but he could do so no longer now. The empty house and the child, the child and the empty house; these allowed of only one interpretation. “She’s gone, bogh, she’s left us; she wasn’t willing to stay with us, God forgive her!”
Sitting on a stool with the little one on his knees, he sobbed while the child cried — two children crying together. Suddenly he leapt up. “I’m not for believing it,” he thought. “What woman alive could do the like of it? There isn’t a mother breathing that hasn’t more bowels. And she used to love the lil one, and me too — and does, and does.”
He saw how it was. She was ill, distraught, perhaps even — God help her I — perhaps even mad. Such things happened to women after childbirth — the doctor himself had said as much. In the toils of her bodily trouble, beset by mental terrors, she had fled away from her baby, her husband, and her home, pursued by God knows what phantoms of disease. But she would get better, she would come back.
“Hush, bogh, hush, then,” he whimpered tenderly. “Mammie will come home again. Still and for all she’ll come back.”
There was the click of a key in the lock, and he crept back to the stool. Nancy came in, panting and perspiring.
“Dear heart alive! what a race I’ve had to get home,” she said, puffing the air of the night.
She was throwing off her bonnet and shawl, and talking before looking round.
“Such pushing and scrooging, you never seen the like, Kirry. Aw, my best Sunday bonnet, only wore at me once, look at the crunched it is! But what d’ye think now? Poor Christian Killip’s baby is dead for all. Died in the middle of the rejoicings. Aw, dear, yes, and the band going by playing ‘The Conquering Hero’ the very minute. Poor thing! she was distracted, and no wonder. I ran round to put a sight on the poor soul, and —— why, what’s going wrong with the lamp, at all? Is that yourself on the stool, Kirry? Pete, is it? Then where’s the mistress?”
She plucked up the poker, and dug the fire into a blaze. “What’s doing on you, man? You’ve skinned your knuckles like potato peel. Man, man, what for are you crying, at all?”
Then Pete said in a thick croak, “Hould your bull of a tongue, Nancy, and take the child out of my arms.”
She took the baby from him, and he rose to his feet as feeble as an old man.
“Lord save us!” she cried. “The window broke, too. What’s happened?”
“Nothing,” growled Pete.
“Then what’s coming of Kirry? I left her at home when I went out at seven.”.
“I’m choking with thirst, woman. Can’t you be giving a man a drink of something?”
He found a dish of milk on the table, where the supper had been laid, and he gulped it down at a mouthful.
“She’s gone — that’s what it is. I see it in your face.” Then going to the foot of the stairs, she called, “Kirry! Kate! Katherine Cregeen!”
“Stop that!” shouted Pete, and he drew her back from the stairs.
“Why aren’t you spaking, then?” she cried. “If you’re man enough to bear the truth, I’m woman enough to hear it.”
“Listen to me, Nancy,” said Pete, with uplifted fist. “I’m going out for an hour, and till I’m back, stay you here with the child, and say nothing to nobody.”
“I knew it!” cried Nancy. “That’s what she hurried me out for. Aw, dear! Aw, dear! What for did you lave her with that man this morning?”
“Do you hear me, woman?” said Pete; “say nothing to nobody. My heart’s lying heavy enough already. Open your lips, and you’ll kill me straight.”
Then he went out of the house, staggering, stumbling, bent almost double. His hat lay on the floor; he had gone bareheaded.
He turned towards Sulby. “She’s there,” he thought “Where else should she be? The poor, wandering lamb wants home.”
XVII.
The bar-room of “The Manx Fairy” was full of gossips ‘that night, and the puffing of many pipes was suspended at a story that Mr. Jelly was telling.
“Strange enough, I’m thinking. ‘Deed, but it’s mortal strange. Talk about tale-books — there’s nothing in the ‘Pilgrim’s Progress’ itself to equal it. The son of one son coming home Dempster, with processions and bands of music, at the very minute the son of the other son is getting kicked out of the house same as a dog.”
“Strange uncommon,” said John the Widow, and other voices echoed him.
Jonaique looked round the room, expecting some one to question him. As nobody did so, except with looks of inquiry, he said, “My ould man heard it all. He’s been tailor at the big house since the time of Iron Christian himself.”
“Truth enough,” said Cæsar.
“And he was sewing a suit for the big man in the kitchen when the bad work was going doing upstairs.”
“You don’t say!”
“‘You’ve robbed me!’ says the Ballawhaine.”
“Dear heart alive!” cried Grannie. “To his own son, was it?”
“‘You’ve cheated me!’ says he, ‘you deceaved me, you’ve embezzled my money and broke my heart!’ says he. ‘I’ve spent a fortune on you, and what have you brought me back?’ says he. ‘This,’ says he, ‘and this — and this — barefaced forgeries, all of them!’ says he.”
“The Lord help us!” muttered Cæsar.
“‘They’re calling me a miser, aren’t they?’ says he. ‘I grind my people to the dust, do I? What for, then? Whom for? I’ve been a good father to you, anyway, and a fool, too, if nobody knows it!’ says he.”
“Nobody! Did he say nobody, Mr. Jelly?” said Cæsar, screwing up his mouth.
“‘If you’d had my father to deal with,’ says he, ‘he’d have turned you out long ago for a liar and a thief.’ ‘My God, father,’ says Ross, struck silly for the minute. ‘A thief, d’ye hear me?’ says the Ballawhaine; ‘a thief that’s taken every penny I have in the world, and left me a ruined man.’”
“Did he say that?” said Cæsar.
“He did, though,” said Jonaique. “The ould man was listening from the kitchen-stairs, and young Ross snaked out of the house same as a cur.”
“And where’s he gone to?” said Cæsar.
“Gone to the devil, I’m thinking,” said Jonaique.
“Well, he’d be good enough for him with a broken back — pity the ould man didn’t break it,” said Cæsar. “But where is the wastrel now?”
“Gone to England over with to-night’s packet, they’re saying.”
“Praise God, from whom all blessings flow,” said Cæsar.
A grunt came out of the corner from behind a cloud of smoke. “You’ve your own rasons for saying so, Cæsar,” said the husky voice of Black Tom. “People were talking and talking one while there that he’d be ‘bezzling somebody’s daughter, as well as the ould miser’s money.”
“Answer a fool according to his folly,” muttered Cæsar; and then the door jerked open, and Pete came staggering into the room. Every pipe shank was lowered in an instant, and Grannie’s needles ceased to click.
Pete was still bareheaded, his face was ghastly white, and his eyes wandered, but he tried to bear himself as if nothing had happened. Smiling horribly, and nodding all round, as a man does sometimes in battle the moment the bullet strikes him, he turned to Grannie and moved his lips a little as if he thought he was saying something, though he uttered no sound. After that he took out his pipe, and rammed it with his forefinger, then picked a spill from the table, and stooped to the fire for a light.
“Anybody — belonging — me — here?” he said, in a voice like a crow’s, coughing as he spoke, the flame dancing over the pipe mouth.
“No, Pete, no,” said Grannie. “Who were you looking for, at all?”
“Nobody,” he answered. “Nobody partic’lar. Aw, no,” he said, and he puffed until his lips quacked, though the pipe gave out no smoke. “Just come in to get fire to my pipe. Must be going now. So long, boys! S’long! Bye-bye, Grannie!”
No one answered him. He nodded round the room again and smiled fearfully, crossed to the door with a jaunty roll, and thus launched out of the house with a pretence of unconcern, the dead pipe hanging upside down in his mouth, and his head aside, as if his hat had been tilted rakishly on his uncovered hair.
When he had gone the company looked into each other’s faces in surprise and fear, as if a ghost in broad daylight had passed among them. Then Black Tom broke the silence.
“Men,” said he, “that was a d —— — lie.”
“Si —— —” began Cæsar, but the protest foundered in his dry throat.
“Something going doing in Ramsey,” Black Tom continued. “I believe in my heart I’ll follow him.”
“I’ll be going along with you, Mr. Quilliam,” said Jonaique.
“And I,” said John the Clerk.
“And I”— “And I,” said the others, and in half a minute the room was empty.
“Father,” whimpered Grannie, through the glass partition, “hadn’t you better saddle the mare and see if any thing’s going wrong with Kirry?”
“I was thinking the same myself, mother.”
“Come, then, away with you. The Lord have mercy on all of us!”
XVIII.
As soon as he was out of earshot Pete began to run. Within half an hour he was back at Elm Cottage. “She’ll be home by this time,” he told himself, but he dared not learn the truth too suddenly. Creeping up to the hall window, he listened at the broken pane. The child was crying, and Nancy Joe was talking to herself, and sobbing as she bathed the little one.
“Bless its precious heart, it’s as beautiful as the angels in heaven. I’ve bathed her mother on the same knee a hundred times. ‘Deed have I, and a thousand times too. Mother, indeed! What sort of mothers are in now at all? She must have a heart-as hard as a stone to lave the like of it. Can’t be a drop of nature in her.... Goodness, Nancy, what are saying for all? Kate is it? Your own little Kirry, and you blackening her! Aw, dear! — aw, dear! The bogh! — the bogh!”
Pete could not go in. He crept back to the cabin in the garden and leaned against it to draw his breath and think. Then he noticed that the dog was on the path with its long tongue hanging over its jaw. It stopped its panting to whine woefully, and then it turned towards the darker part of the garden.
“He’s telling me something,” thought Pete.
