Complete works of hall c.., p.258
Complete Works of Hall Caine, page 258
Then she turned on the postman and Black Tom. “Out of it, you lil thief, your mouth’s only a dirty town-well and your tongue’s the pump in it. Go home and die, you big black spider — you’re ould enough for it and wicked enough, too. Out of it, the lot of you!” she cried, and clashed the door at their backs, and then opened it again for a parting shot. “And if it’s true you’re on your way to heaven together, just let me know, and I’ll see if I can’t put up with the other place myself.”
XIX.
That evening Pete was sitting with one foot on the cradle rocker, one arm on the table, and the other hand trifling tenderly with the ring and the earrings which he had found in the drawer of the dressing-table, when there was a hurried knock on the door. It had the hollow reverberation of a knock on the lid of a coffin.
“Come in,” called Pete.
It was Philip, but it was almost as if Death had entered, so thin and bony were his cheeks, so wild his eyes, so cold his hands.
Pete was prepared for anything. “You’ve found me out, too, I see you have,” he said defiantly. “You needn’t tell me — it’s chasing caught fish.”
“Be brave, Pete,” said Philip. “It will be a great shock to you.”
Pete looked up and his manner changed. “Speak it out, sir. It’s a poor man that can’t stand — —”
“I’ve come on the saddest errand,” said Philip, taking a seat as far away as possible.
“You’ve found her — you’ve seen her, sir. Where is she?”
“She is — —” began Philip, and then he stopped.
“Go on, mate; I’ve known trouble before to-day,” said Pete.
“Can you bear it?” said Philip. “She is — —” and he stopped again.
“She is — where?” said Pete.
“She is dead,” said Philip at last.
Pete rose to his feet. Philip rose also, and now poured out his message with the headlong rush of a cataract.
“In fact, it all happened some time ago, Pete, but I couldn’t bring myself to tell you before. I tried, but I couldn’t. It was in Douglas — of a fever — in a lodging — alone — unattended — —”
“Hould hard, sir! Give me time,” said Pete. “I’d a gunshot wound at Kimberley, and since then I’ve a stitch in my side at whiles and sometimes a bit of a catch in my breathing.”
He staggered to the porch door and threw it open, then came back panting— “Dead! dead! Kate is dead!”
Nancy came from the kitchen at the moment, and hearing what he was saying, she lifted both hands and uttered a piercing shriek. He took her by the shoulders and turned her back, shut the door behind her, and said, holding his right hand hard at his side, “Women are brave, sir, but when the storm breaks on a man — —” He broke off and muttered again, “Dead! Kirry is dead!”
The child, awakened by Nancy’s cry, was now whimpering fretfully. Pete went to the cradle and rocked it with one foot, crooning in a quavering treble, “Hush-a-bye! hush-a-bye!”
Philip’s breathing was oppressed. He felt like a man at the edge of a precipice, with an impulse to throw himself over. “God forgive me,” he said. “I could kill myself. I’ve broken your heart; — —”
“No fear of me, sir,” said Pete. “I’m an ould hulk that’s seen weather. I’ll not go to pieces from inside at all. Give me time, mate, give me time.” And then he went on muttering as before, “Dead! Kirry dead! Hush-a-bye! My Kirry dead!”
The little one slept, and Pete drew back in his chair, nodded into the fire, and said in a weak, childish voice, “I’ve known her all my life, d’ye know? She’s been my lil sweetheart since she was a slip of a girl, and slapped the schoolmaster for bating me wrongously. Swate lil thing in them days, mate, with her brown feet and tossing hair. And now she’s a woman and she’s dead! The Lord have mercy upon me!”
He got up and began to walk heavily across the floor, dipping and plunging as if going upstairs. “The bright and happy she was when I started for Kimberley, too; with her pretty face by the aising stones in the morning, all laughter and mischief. Five years I was seeing it in my drames like that, and now it’s gone. Kirry is gone! My Kirry! God help me! O God, have mercy upon me!”
He stopped in his unsteady walk, and sat and stared into the fire. His eyes were red; blotches of heart’s blood seemed to be rising to them; but there was not the sign of a tear. Philip did not attempt to console him. He felt as if the first syllable would choke in his throat.
“I see how it’s been, sir,” said Pete. “While I was away her heart was changing her, and when I came back she thought she must keep her word. My poor lamb! She was only a child anyway. But I was a man — I ought to have seen how it was. I’m like a drowning man, too — things are coming back on me. I’m seeing them plain enough now. But it’s too late! My poor Kirry! And I thought I was making her so happy!” Then, with a helpless look, “You wouldn’t believe it, sir, but I was never once thinking nothing else. No, I wasn’t; it’s a fact. I was same as a sailor working all the voyage home, making a cage, and painting it goold, for the love-bird he’s catcht in the sunny lands somewhere; but when he’s putting it in, it’s only wanting away, poor thing.”
With a sense of grovelling meanness, Philip sat and listened. Then, with eyes wandering across the floor, he said, “You have nothing to reproach yourself with. You did everything a man could do — everything. And she was innocent also. It was the fault of another. He came between you. Perhaps he thought he couldn’t help it — perhaps he persuaded himself — God knows what lie he told himself — but she’s innocent, Pete; believe me, she’s — —”
Pete brought his fist down heavily on the table, and the rings that lay on it jumped and tingled. “What’s that to me?” he cried hoarsely. “What do I care if she’s innocent or guilty? She’s dead, isn’t she? and that’s enough. Curse the man! I don’t want to hear of him. She’s mine now. What for should he come here between me and my own?”
The torn heart and racked brain could bear no more. Pete dropped his head on the table. Presently his anger ebbed. Without lifting his head, he stretched his hand across the rings to feel for Philip’s hand. Philip’s hand trembled in his grasp. He took that for sympathy, and became the more ashamed.
“Give me time, mate,” he said. “I’ll be my own man soon. My head’s moithered dreadful — I’m not knowing if I heard you right. In Douglas, you say? By herself, too? Not by herself, surely? Not quite alone neither? She found you out, didn’t she? You’d be there, Phil? You’d be with her yourself? She’d be wanting for nothing?”
Philip answered huskily, his eyes still wandering. “If it will be any comfort to you... yes, I was with her — she wanted for nothing.”
“My poor girl!” said Pete. “Did she send — had she any — maybe she said a word or two — at the last, eh?”
Philip clutched at the question. There was something at last that he could say without falsehood. “She sent a prayer for your forgiveness,” he said. “She told me to tell you to think of her as little as might be; not to grieve for her too much, and to try to forget her, so that her sin also might be forgotten.”
“And the lil one — anything about the lil one?” asked Pete.
“That was the bitterest grief of all,” said Philip. “It was so hard that you must think her an unnatural mother. ‘My Katherine! My little Katherine! My sweet angel!’ It was her cry the whole day long.”
“I see, I see,” said Pete, nodding at the fire; “she left the lil one for my sake, wanting it with her all the while. Poor thing! You’d comfort her, Philip? You’d let her go aisy?”
“‘The child is well and happy,’ I told her. ‘He’s thinking nothing of yourself but what is good and kind,’ I said.”
“God’s peace rest on her! My darling! My wife!” said Pete solemnly. Then suddenly in another tone, “Do you know where she’s buried?”
Philip hesitated. He had not foreseen this question. Where had been his head that he had never thought of it? But there was no going back now. He was compelled to go on. He must tell lie on lie. “Yes,” he faltered.
“Could you take me to the grave?”
Philip gasped; the sweat broke out on his forehead.
“Don’t be freckened, sir,” said Pete; “I’m my own man again. Could you take me to my wife’s grave?”
“Yes,” said Philip. He was in the rapids. He was on the edge of precipitation. He was compelled to go over. He made a blindfold plunge. Lie on lie; lie on lie!
“Then we’ll start by the coach to-morrow,” said Pete.
Philip rose with rigid limbs. He had meant to tell one lie only, and already he had told many. Truly “a lie is a cripple;” it cannot stand alone. “Good night, Pete; I’ll go home. I’m not well to-night.”
“We’ll stop the coach at your aunt’s gate in the morning,” said Pete.
They stepped to the door together, and stood for a moment in the dank and lifeless darkness.
“The world’s getting wonderful lonely, man, and you’re all that’s left to me now, Phil — you and the child. I’m not for wailing, though. When I got my gun-shot wound out yonder, I was away over the big veldt, hundreds of miles from anywhere, behind the last bush and the last blade of grass, with the stones and the ashes and the dust — about as far, you’d say, as the world was finished, and never looking to see herself and the ould island and the ould faces no more. I’m not so lonesome as that at all. Good-night, ould fellow, and God bless you!”
The gate opened and closed, Philip went stumbling up the road. He was hating Pete. To hate this open-hearted man who had dragged him into an entanglement of lies was the only resource of his stifled conscience.
Pete went back to the house, muttering, “Kirry is dead! Kirry is dead!” He put the catch on the door, said, “Close the shutters, Nancy,” and then returned to his chair by the cradle.
XX.
Later the same night Pete carried the news to Sulby. Grannie was in the bar-room, and he broke it to her gently, tenderly, lovingly.
Loud voices came from the kitchen. Cæsar was there in angry contention with Black Tom. An open Bible was between them on their knees. Tom tugged it towards him, bobbed his blunt forefinger down on the page, and cried, “There’s the text — that’ll pin you — publicans and sinners.”
Cæsar leaned back’in his seat, and said with withering scorn, “It’s a bad business — I’ll give you lave to say that. It’s men like you that’s making it bad. But whether is it better for a bad business to be in bad hands or in good ones? There’s a big local praicher in London, they’re telling me, that’s hot for joining the public-house to the church, and turning the parsons into the publicans. That’s what they all were on the Isle of Man in ould days gone by, and pity they’re not so still. Oh, I’ve been giving it my sarious thoughts, sir. I’ve been making it a subject for prayer. ‘Will I give up my public or hould fast to it to keep it out of worse hands?’ And I’m strong to believe the Lord hath spoken. ‘It’s a little vineyard — a little work in a little vineyard. Stick to it, Cæsar,’ and so I will.”
Pete stepped into the kitchen and flung his news at Cæsar with a sort of wild melancholy, as who would say, “There, is that enough for you? Are you satisfied now?”
“Mair yee shoh — it’s the hand of God,” said Cæsar.
“A middling bad hand then,” said Pete; “I’ve seen better, anyway.”
A high spiritual pride took hold of Cæsar — Black Tom was watching him, and working his big eyebrows vigorously. With mouth firmly shut and head thrown back, Cæsar said in a sepulchral voice, “The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away. Blessed be the name of the Lord!”
Pete made a crack of savage laughter.
“Aren’t you feeling it, sir?” said Cæsar.
“Not a feel near me,” said Pete. “I never did the Lord no harm that I know of, but He’s taken my young wife and left my poor innocent lil one motherless.”
“Unsearchable the wisdom and justice of God,” said Cæsar.
“Unsearchable?” said Pete. “It’s all that. But I don’t know if you’re calling it justice. I’m not myself. It isn’t my tally. Blasphemy? I lave it with you. A scoffer, am I? So be it. The Lord’s licked me, and I’ve had enough. But I’m not going down on my knees for it, anyway. The Almighty and me is about quits.”
With that word on his lips he strode out of the place, grim, implacable, almost savage, a fierce smile fluttering on his ashy face.
XXI.
Grannie came to Elm Cottage next morning with two duck eggs for Pete’s breakfast. She was boiling them in a saucepan when Pete came downstairs.
“Come now,” she said coaxingly, as she laid them on the table, with the water smoking off the shells. But Pete could not eat.
“He hasn’t destroyed any food these days,” said Nancy. A little before she had rolled her apron, slipped out into the street, and brought back a tiny packet screwed up in a bit of newspaper.
“Perhaps he’ll ate them on the road,” said Grannie. “I’ll put them in the hankerchief in his hat anyway.”
“My faith, no, woman!” cried Nancy. “He’s the mischief for sweating. He’ll be mopping his forehead and forgetting the eggs. But here — where’s your waistcoat pocket, Pete? Have you room for a hayseed anywhere? There!... It’s a quarter of twist, poor boy,” she whispered behind her hand to Grannie.
Thus they vied with each other in little attentions to the down-hearted man. Meantime Crow, the driver of the Douglas coach, a merry old sinner with a bulbous nose and short hair, standing erect like the steel pins of an electric brush, was whistling as he put his horses to in the marketplace. Presently he swirled round the corner and drew up at the gate. The women then became suddenly quiet, and put their aprons to their mouths, as if a hearse had stopped at the door; but Pete bustled about and shouted boisterously to cover the emotion of his farewell.
“Good-bye, Grannie; I’ll say a word for you when I get there. Good-bye, Nancy; I’ll not be forgetting yourself neither. Good bye, lil bogh,” dropping on one knee at the side of the cradle. “What right has a man’s heart to be going losing him while he has a lil innocent like this to live for? Good-bye!”
There was a throng of women at the gate talking of Kate. “Aw, a civil person, very — a civiller person never was.”— “It’s me that’ll be missing her too. I served her eggs to the day of her death, as you might say. ‘Good morning, Christian Anne,’ says she — just like that. Welcome, you say? I was at home at the woman’s door.”— “And the beautiful she came home in the gig with the baby! Only yesterday you might say. And now, Lord-a-massy!”— “Hush! it’s himself! I’m fit enough to cry when I look at the man. The cheerful heart is broke at him.”— “Hush!”
They dropped their heads so that Pete might avoid their gaze, and held the coach-door open for him, expecting that he would go inside, as to a funeral. But he saluted them with “Good morning all,” and leapt to the box-seat with Crow.
The coach stopped to take up the Deemster at the gate of Ballure House. Philip looked thin and emaciated, and walked with a death-like weakness, but also a feverish resolution. Behind him, carrying a rag, came Aunty Nan in her white cap, with little nervous attentions, and a face full of anxiety.
“Drive inside to-day, Philip,” she said.
“No, no,” he answered, and kissed her, pushed her to the other side of the gate with gentle protestation, and climbed to Pete’s side. Then the old lady said —
“Good-morning, Peter. I’m so sorry for your great trouble, and trust... But you’ll not let the Deemster ride too long outside if it grows... He’s had a sleepless night and — —”
“Go on, Crow,” said Philip, in a decisive voice.
“I’ll see to that, Miss Christian, ma’am,” shouted Crow over his shoulder. “His honour’s studdying a bit too hard — that’s what he is. But a gentleman’s not much use if his wife’s a widow, as the man said — eh? Looking well enough yourself, though, Miss Christian, ma’am. Getting younger every day, in fact. I’ll have to be fetching that East Indee capt’n up yet. I will that. Ha! ha! Get on, Boxer!” Then, with a flick of the whip, they were off on their journey.
The day was calm and beautiful. Old Barrule wore his yellow skull-cap of flowering gorse, the birds sang on the trees, and the sea on the shore sang also with the sound of far-off joy-bells. It was a heart-breaking day to Pete, but he tried to bear himself bravely.
He was seated between Philip and the driver. On the farther side of Crow there were two other passengers, a farmer and a fisherman. The farmer, a foul-mouthed fellow with a long staff and two dogs racing and barking on the road, was returning from Midsummer fair, at which he had sold his sheep; the fisherman, a simple creature, was coming home from the mackerel-fishing at Kinsale, with a box of the fish between his legs.
“The wife’s been having a lil one since I was laving in March,” said the fisherman, laughing all over his bronzed face. “A boy, d’ye say? Aw, another boy, of coorse. Three of them now — all men. Got a letter at Ramsey post-office coming through. She’s getting on as nice as nice, and the ould woman’s busy doing for her.”
“Gee up, Boxer — we’ll wet its head at the Hibernian,” said Crow.
“I’m not partic’lar at all,” said the fisherman cheerily. “The mack’rel’s been doing middling this season, anyway.”
And then in his simple way he went on to paint home, and the joy of coming back to it, with the new baby, and the mother in child-bed, and the grandmother as housekeeper, and the other children waiting for new frocks and new jackets out of the earnings of the fishing, and himself going round to pay the grocer what had been put on “strap” while he was at Kin-sale, till Pete was melted, and could listen no longer.
“I’m persuaded still she wasn’t well when she went away,” he whispered, turning his shoulder to the men and his face to Philip. He talked in a low voice, just above the rumble of the wheels, trying to extenuate Kate’s fault and to excuse her to Philip.
