Complete works of hall c.., p.262
Complete Works of Hall Caine, page 262
Pete drew up the third chair, and then all interest was centred on the child. “She’s growing,” said Philip huskily.
“And getting wise ter’ble,” said Pete. “You wouldn’t be-lave it, sir, but that child’s got the head of an almanac. She has, though. Listen here, sir — what does the cow say, darling?”
“Moo-o,” said the little one.
“Look at that now!” said Pete rapturously.
“She knows what the dog says too,” said Nancy. “What does Dempster say, bogh?”
“Bow-wow,” said the child.
“Bless me soul!” said Pete, turning to Philip with amazement at the child’s supernatural wisdom. “And there’s Tom Hommy’s boy — and a fine lil fellow enough for all — but six weeks older than this one, and not a word out of him yet.”
Hearing himself talked of, the dog had come from under the table. The child gurgled down at it, then made purring noises at its own feet, and wriggled in Nancy’s lap.
“Dear heart alive, if it’s not like nursing an eel,” said Nancy. “Be quiet, will you?” and the little one was shaken back to her seat.
“Aisy all, woman,” said Pete. “She’s just wanting her lil shoes and stockings off, that’s it.” Then talking to the child. “Um — am-im — lum — la — loo? Just so! I don’t know what that means myself, but she does, you see. Aw, the child is taiching me heaps, sir. Listening to the lil one I’m remembering things. Well, we’re only big children, the best of us. That’s the way the world’s keeping young, and God help it when we’re getting so clever there’s no child left in us at all.”
“Time for young women to be in bed, though,” said Nancy, getting up to give the baby her bath.
“Let me have a hould of the rogue first,” said Pete, and as Nancy took the child out of the room, he dragged at it and smothered its open mouth with kisses.
“Poor sport for you, sir, watching a foolish ould father playing games with his lil one,” said Pete.
Philip’s answer was broken and confused. His eyes had begun to fill, and to hide them he turned his head aside. Thinking he was looking at the empty places about the walls, Pete began to enlarge on his prosperity, and to talk as if he were driving all the trade of the island before him.
“Wonderful fishing now, Phil. I’m exporting a power of cod. Gretting postal orders and stamps, and I don’t know what. Seven-and-sixpence in a single post from Liverpool — that’s nothing, sir, nothing at all.”
Nancy brought back the child, whose silvery curls were now damp.
“What! a young lady coming in her night-dress!” cried Pete.
“Work enough! had to get it over her head, too,” said Nancy. “She wouldn’t, no, she wouldn’t. Here, take and dry her hair by the fire while I warm up her supper.”
Pete rolled the sleeves of his jersey above his elbows, took the child on his knee, and rubbed her hair between his hands, singing —
“Come, Bridget, Saint Bridget, come in at my door.”
Nancy clattered about in her clogs, filled a saucepan with bread and milk, and brought it to the fire.
“Give it to me, Nancy,” said Philip, and he leaned over and held the saucepan above the bar. The child watched him intently.
“Well, did you ever?” said Pete. “The strange she’s making of you, Philip? Don’t you know the gentleman, darling? Aw, but he’s knowing you, though.”
The saucepan boiled, and Philip handed it back to Nancy.
“Go to him then — away with you,” said Pete. “Gro to your godfather. He’d have been your name-father too if it had been a boy you’d been. Off you go!” and he stretched out his hairy arms until the child touched the floor.
Philip stooped to take the little one, who first pranced and beat the rushes with its feet as with two drumsticks, then trod on its own legs, swirled about to Pete’s arms, dropped its lower lip, and set up a terrified outcry.
“Ah! she knows her own father, bless her,” cried Pete, plucking the child back to his breast.
Philip dropped his head and laughed. A sort of creeping fear had taken possession of him, as if he felt remotely that the child was to be the channel of his retribution.
“Will you feed her yourself, Pete?” said Nancy. She was coming up with a saucer, of which she was tasting the contents. “He’s that handy with a child, sir, you wouldn’t think ‘Deed you wouldn’t.” Then, stooping to the baby as it ate its supper, “But I’m saying, young woman, is there no sleep in your eyes to-night?”
“No, but nodding away here like a wood-thrush in a tree,” said Pete. He was ladling the pobs into the child’s mouth, and scooping the overflow from her chin. “Sleep’s a terrible enemy of this one, sir. She’s having a battle with it every night of life, anyway. God help her, she’ll have luck better than some of us, or she’ll be fighting it the other way about one of these days.”
“She’s us’ally going off with the spoon in her mouth, sir, for all the world like a lil cherub,” said Nancy.
“Too busy looking at her godfather to-night, though,” said Pete. “Well, look at him. You owe him your life, you lil sandpiper. And, my sakes, the straight like him you are, too!”
“Isn’t she?” said Nancy. “If I wasn’t thinking the same myself! Couldn’t look straighter like him if she’d been his born child; now, could she? And the curls, too, and the eyes! Well, well!”
“If she’d been a boy, now — —” began Pete.
But Philip had risen to return to the Court-house, and Pete said in another tone, “Hould hard a minute, sir — I’ve something to show you. Here, take the lil one, Nancy.”
Pete lit a candle and led the way into the parlour. The room was empty of furniture; but at one end there was a stool, a stone mason’s mallet, a few chisels, and a large stone.
The stone was a gravestone.
Pete approached it solemnly, held up the candle in front of it, and said in a low voice, “It’s for her. I’ve been doing it myself, sir, and it’s lasted me all winter, dark nights and bad days. I’ll be finishing it to-night, though, God willing, and to-morrow, maybe, I’ll be taking it to Douglas.”
“Is it — —” began Philip, but he could not finish.
The stone was a plain slab, rounded at the top, bevelled about the edge, smoothed on the face, and chiselled over the back; but there was no sign or symbol on it, and no lettering or inscription.
“Is there to be no name?” asked Philip at last.
“No,” said Pete.
“No?”
“Tell you the truth, sir, I’ve been reading what it’s saying in the ould Book about the Recording Angel calling the dead out of their graves.”
“Yes?”
“And I’ve been thinking the way he’ll be doing it will be going to the graveyards and seeing the names on the gravestones, and calling them out loud to rise up to judgment; some, as it’s saying, to life eternal, and some to everlasting punishment.”
“Well?”
“Well, sir, I’ve been thinking if he comes to this one and sees no name on it” — Pete’s voice sank to a whisper— “maybe he’ll pass it by and let the poor sinner sleep on.”
Stumbling back to the Court-house through the dark lane Philip thought, “It was a lie then, but it’s true now. It must be true. She must be dead.” There was a sort of relief in this certainty. It was an end, at all events; a pitiful end, a cowardly end, a kind of sneaking out of Fate’s fingers; it was not what he had looked for and intended, but he struggled to reconcile himself to it.
Then he remembered the child and thought, “Why should I disturb it? Why should I disturb Pete? I will watch over it all its life. I will protect it and find a way to provide for it. I will do my duty by it. The child shall never want.”
He was offering the key to the lock of the prisoners’ yard when some one passed him in the lane, peered into his face, then turned about and spoke.
“Oh, it’s you, Deemster Christian?”
“Yes, doctor. Good-night!”
“Have you heard the news from Ballawhaine? The old gentleman had another stroke this morning.”
“No, I had not heard it. Another? Dear me, dear me!”
Back in his room, Philip resumed his wig and gown and returned to the Court-house. The place was now lit up by candlelight and densely crowded. Everybody rose to his feet as the Deemster stepped to the dais.
V.
“Come, Bridget, Saint Bridget, come in at my door,
The crock’s on the bink and the rush — —”
“She’s fast,” said Nancy. “Rocking this one to sleep is like waiting for the kettle to boil. You may try and try, and blow and blow, but never a sound. And no sooner have you forgotten all about her, but she’s singing away as steady as a top.”
Nancy put the child into the cradle, tucked her about, twisted the head of the little nest so that the warmth of the fire should enter it, and hung a shawl over the hood to protect the little eyelids from the light. “Will you keep the house till I’m home from Sulby, Pete?”
“I’ve my work, woman,” said Pete from the parlour.
“I’ll put a junk on the fire and be off then,” said Nancy.
She pulled the door on to the catch behind her and went crunching the gravel to the gate. There was no sound in the house now but the gentle breathing of the sleeping child, soft as an angel’s prayer, the chirruping of the mended fire like a cage of birds, the ticking of the clock, and, through the parlour wall, the dull pat-put, pat-put of the wooden mallet and the scrape of the chisel on the stone.
Pete worked steadily for half an hour, and then came back to the hall-kitchen with his tools in his hands. The cob of coal had kindled to a lively flame, which flashed and went out, and the quick black shadows of the chairs and the table and the jugs on the dresser were leaping about the room like elves. With parted lips, just breaking into a smile, Pete went down on one knee by the cradle, put the mallet under his arm, and gently raised the shawl curtain. “God bless my motherless girl,” he said, in a voice no louder than a breath. Suddenly, while he knelt there, he was smitten as by an electric shock. His face straightened and he drew back, still holding the shawl at the tips of his fingers.
The child was sleeping peacefully, with one of its little arms over the counterpane. On its face the flickering light of the fire was coming and going, making lines about the baby eyes and throwing up the baby features. It is in such lights that we are startled by resemblances in a child’s face. Pete was startled by a resemblance. He had seen it before, but not as he saw it now.
A moment afterwards he was reaching across the cradle again, his arms spread over it, and his face close down at the child’s face, scanning every line of it as one scans a map. “‘Deed, but she is, though,” he murmured. “She’s like him enough, anyway.”
An awful idea had taken possession of his mind. He rose stiffly to his feet, and the shawl flapped back. The room seemed to be darkening round him. He broke the coal, though it was burning brightly, stepped to the other side of the cradle, and looked at the child again. It was the same from there. The resemblance was ghostly.
He felt something growing hard inside of him, and he returned to his work in the parlour. But the chisel slipped, the mallet fell too heavily, and he stopped. His mind fluctuated among distant things. He could not help thinking of Port Mooar, of the Carasdhoo men, of the day when he and Philip were brought home in the early, morning.
Putting his tools down, he returned to the room. He was holding his breath and walking softly, as if in the presence of an invisible thing. The room was perfectly quiet — he could hear the breath in his nostrils. In a state of stupor he stood for some time with bis back to the fire and watched his shadow on the opposite wall and on the ceiling. The cradle was at his feet. He could not keep his eyes off it. From time to time he looked down across one of his shoulders.
With head thrown back and lips apart, the child was breathing calmly and sleeping the innocent sleep. This angel innocence reproached him.
“My heart must be going bad,” he muttered. “Your bad thoughts are blackening the dead. For shame, Pete Quilliam, for shame!”
He was feeling like a man who is in a storm of thunder and lightning at night. Familiar things about him looked strange and awful.
Stooping to the cradle again, he turned back the shawl on to the cradle-head as a girl turns back the shade of her sun-bonnet Then the firelight was full on the child’s face, and it moved in its sleep. It moved yet more under his steadfast gaze, and cried a little, as if the terrible thought that was in his mind had penetrated to its own.
He was stooping so when the door was opened and Cæsar entered violently, making asthmatic noises in his throat. Pete looked up at him with a stupefied air. “Peter,” he said, “will you sell that mortgage?”
Pete answered with a growl.
“Will you transfer it to me?” said Cæsar.
“The time’s not come,” said Pete.
“What time?”
“The time foretold by the prophet, when the lion can lie down with the lamb.”
Pete laughed bitterly. Cæsar was quivering, his mouth was twitching, and his eyes were wild. “Will you come over to the ‘Mitre,’ then?”
“What for to the ‘Mitre’?”
“Ross Christian is there.”
Pete made an impatient gesture. “That stormy petrel again! He’s always about when there’s bad weather going.”
“Will you come and hear what the man’s saying?”
“What’s he saying?”
“Will you hear for yourself?”
Pete looked hard at Cæsar, looked again, then caught up his cap and went out at the door.
VI.
With two of his cronies the man had spent the day in a room overlooking the harbour, drinking hard and playing billiards. Early in the afternoon a messenger had come from Ballawhaine, saying, “Your father is ill — come home immediately.” “By-and-bye,” he had said, and gone on with the game.
Later in the afternoon the messenger had come again, saying, “Your father has had a stroke of paralysis, and he is calling for you.” “Let me finish the break first,” he had replied.
In the evening the messenger had come a third time, saying, “Your father is unconscious.” “Where’s the hurry, then?” he had answered, and he sang a stave of the “Miller’s Daughter” —
“They married me against my will,
When I was daughter at the mill.”
Finally, Cæsar, who had been remonstrating with the Ballawhaine at the moment of his attack, came to remonstrate with Ross, and to pay off a score of his own as well.
“Honour thy father and thy mother, that thy days — —” cried Cæsar, with uplifted arm and the high pitch of the preacher. “But your days will not be long, anyway, and, if you are the death of that foolish ould man, it won’t be the first death you’re answerable for.”
“So you believe it, too?” said Ross, cue in hand. “You believe your daughter is dead, do you, old Jephthah Jeremiah? Would you be surprised to hear, now — —” (the cronies giggled) “that she isn’t dead at all? —— Good shotr-cannon off the cushion. Halloa! Jephthah Jeremiah has seen a ghost seemingly. Saw her myself, man, when I was up in town a month ago. Want to know where she is? Shall I tell you? Oh, you’re a beauty! You’re a pattern! You know how to train up a child in the way —— Pocket off the red —— It’s you to preach at my father, isn’t it? She’s on the streets of London — ah, Jeremiah’s gone ——
‘They married me against my will ‘ —
There you are, then — good shot — love — twenty-five and nothing left.”
Pete pushed through to the billiard-room. Fearing there might be violence, hoping there would be, yet thinking it scarcely proper to lend the scene of it the light of his countenance, Cæsar had stayed outside.
“Halloa! here’s Uriah!” cried Ross. “Talk of the devil — just thought as much. Ever read the story of David and Uriah? Should, though. Do you good, mister. David was a great man. Aw” (with a mock imitation of Pete’s Manx), “a ter’ble, wonderful, shocking great man. Uriah was his henchman. Ter’ble clavar, too, but that green for all, the ould cow might have ate him. And Uriah had a nice lil wife. The nice now, you wouldn’t think. But when Uriah was away David took her, and then — and then” (dropping the Manx) “it doesn’t just run on Bible lines neither, but David told Uriah that his wife was dead — ha! ha! ha! ——
‘Who saw her diet
I said the fly,
I saw her — —’
Stop that — let go — help —— You’ll choke me — help! help!”
At two strides Pete had come face to face with Ross, put one of his hands at the man’s throat and his leg behind him, doubled him back on his knee, and was holding him there in a grip like that of a vice.
“Help! — help! — oo — ugh!” The fellow gasped, and his face grew dark.
“You’re not worth it,” said Pete. “I meant to choke the life out of your dirty body for lying about the living and blackening the dead, but you’re not worth hanging for. You’ve got the same blood in you, too, and I’m ashamed for you. There! get up.”
With a gesture of indescribable loathing, Pete flung the man to the ground, and he fell over his cue and broke it.
The people of the house came thronging into the room, and met Pete going out of it. His face was hard and ugly. At first sight they mistook him for Ross, so disfigured was he by bad passions.
Cæsar was tramping the pavement outside. “Will you let me do it now?” he said in a hot whisper.
“Do as you like,” said Pete savagely.
“The wicked is snared in the work of his own hand. Higgaion. Selah,” said Cæsar, and they parted by the entrance to the Court-house.
Pete went home, muttering to himself, “The man was lying — she’s dead, she’s dead!”
At the gate of Elm Cottage the dog came up to him, barking with glee. Then it darted back to the house door, which stood open. “Some one has come,” thought Pete. “She’s dead. The man lied. She’s dead,” he muttered, and he stumbled down the path.
