Complete works of hall c.., p.628
Complete Works of Hall Caine, page 628
Lovibond had kept pace with Davy’s warmth, but now he paused and said quietly, “I’m afraid she’s in trouble.”
“Poor thing!” said Davy. “How’s that, mate?”
“People can never disguise their feelings in singing a hymn,” said Lovibond.
“You say true, mate,” said Davy; “nor in giving one out neither. Now, there was old Kinvig. He had a sow once that wasn’t too reg’lar in her pigging. Sometimes she gave many, and sometimes she gave few, and sometimes she gave none. She was a hit-and-a-missy sort of a sow, you might say. But you always know’d how the ould sow done, by the way Kinvig gave out the hymn. If it was six he was as loud as a clarnet, and if it was one his voice was like the tram-bones. But go on about the girl.”
“That’s all,” said Lovibond. “When the service was over I walked down the aisle behind her, and touched her dress with my hand, and somehow—”
“I know,” cried Davy. “Gave you a kind of ‘lectricity shock, didn’t it? Lord alive, mate, girls is quare things.”
“Then she walked off the other way,” said Lovibond.
“So you don’t know where she comes from?” said Davy.
“I couldn’t bring myself to follow her, Capt’n.”
“And right too, mate. It’s sneaking. Following a girl in the streets is sneaking, and the man that done it ought to be wallopped till all’s blue. But you’ll see her again, I’ll go bail, and maybe hear who she is. Rael true women is skess these days, sir; but I’m thinking you’ve got your flotes down for a good one. Give her line, mate — give her line — and if I wasn’t such a downhearted chap myself I’d be helping you to land her.”
Lovibond observed that Capt’n Davy was more than usually restless after this conversation, and in the course of the afternoon, while he lay in a hazy dose on the sofa, he overheard this passage between the captain and his boy: —
“Willie Quarrie, didn’t you say there was an English lady staying with Mistress Quiggin at Castle Mona?”
“Miss Crows; yes,” said Willie. “So Peggy Quine is telling me — a little person with a spyglass, and that fond of the mistress you wouldn’t think.”
“Then just slip across in the morning, and spake to herself, and say can I see her somewheres, or will she come here, and never say nothing to nobody.”
Davy’s uneasiness continued far into the evening. He walked alone to and fro on the turf of the Head in front of the house, until the sun set behind the hills to the west, where a golden rim from its falling light died off on the farthest line of the sea to the east, and the town between lay in a haze of deepening purple. Lovibond knew where his thoughts were, and what new turn they had taken; but he pretended to see nothing, and he gave no sign.
Sunday as it was, Capt’n Davy’s cronies came as usual at nightfall. They were a sorry gang, but Davy welcomed them with noisy cheer. The lights were brought in, and the company sat down to its accustomed amusements. These were drinking and smoking, with gambling in disguise at intervals. Davy lost tremendously, and laughed with a sort of wild joy at every failure. He was cheated on all hands, and he knew it. Now and again he called the cheaters by hard name, but he always paid them their money. They forgave the one for the sake of the other, and went on without shame. Lovibond’s gorge rose at the spectacle. He was an old gambler himself, and could have stripped every rascal of them all as naked as a lettuce after a locust. His indignation got the better of him at last, and he went out on to the Head.
The calm sea lay like a dark pavement dotted with the reflection of the stars overhead. Lights in a wide half-circle showed the line of the bay. Below was the black rock of the island of the Tower of Refuge, and the narrow strip of the old Red pier; beyond was the dark outline of the Head, and from the seaward breast of it shot the light of the lighthouse, like the glow of a kiln. It was as quiet and beautiful out there as it had been noisy and hideous within.
Lovibond had been walking to and fro for more than an hour listening to the slumberous voices of the night, and hearing at intervals the louder bellowing from the room where Captain Davy and his cronies were sitting, when Davy himself came out.
“I can’t stand no more of it, and I’ve sent them home,” he said. “It’s like saying your prayers to a hornpipe, thinking of her and carrying on with them wastrels.”
He was sober in one sense only.
“Tell me more about the little girl in church. Aw, matey, matey! Something under my waistcoat went creep, creep, creep, same as a sarpent, when you first spake of her; but its easier to stand till that jaw inside anyway. Go on, sir. Love at first sight, was it? Aw, well, the eyes isn’t the only place that love is coming in at, or blind men would all be bachelors. Now mine came in at the ear.”
“Did you fall in love with her singing, Capt’n?” said Lovibond.
“Yes, did I,” said Davy, “and her spaking, too, and her whispering as well, but it wasn’t music that brought love in at my ear — my left ear it was, Matey.”
“Whatever was it then, Capt’n,” said Lovibond.
“Milk,” said Davy.
“Milk?” cried Lovibond, drawing up in their walk.
“Just milk,” said Davy again. “Come along and I tell you. It was this way. Ould Kinvig kep’ two cows, and we were calling the one Whitie and the other Brownie. Nelly and me was milking the pair of them, and she was like a young goat, that full of tricks, and I was same as a big calf, that shy. One evening — it was just between the lights — that’s when girls is like kittens, terr’ble full of capers and mischievousness — Nelly rigged up her kopie — that’s her milking-stool — agen mine, so that we sat back to back, her milking Brownie and me milking Whitie. ‘What she agate of now?’ thinks I, but she was looking as innocent as the bas’es themselves, with their ould solem faces when they were twisting round. Then we started, and there wasn’t no noise in the cow-house, but just the cows chewing constant, and, maybe, the rope running on their necks at whiles and the rattle of the milk in the pails. And I got to draeming same as I was used of, with the smell of the hay stealing down from the loft and the breath of the cows coming puff when they were blowing, and the tits in my hands agoing, when the rattle-rattle aback of me stopped sudden, and I felt a squish in my ear like the syringe at the doctor’s. ‘What’s that?’ thinks I. ‘Is it deaf I’m going?’ But it’s deaf I’d been and blind, too, and stupid for all down to that blessed minute, for there was Nessy laughing like fits, and working like mad, and drops of Brownie’s milk going trickling out of my ear on to my shoulder. ‘It’s not deafness,’ thinks I; ‘it’s love’; and my breath was coming and going and making noises like the smithy bellows. So I twisted my wrist and blazed back at her, and we both fired away, ding-dong, till the cows was as dry as Kinvig when he was teetotal, and the cow-house was like a snowstorm with a gale of wind through it, and you couldn’t see a face at the one of us for swansdown. That’s how Nelly and me ‘came engage.”
He was laughing noisily by this time, and crying alternately, with a merry shout and a husky croak, “Aw, dear, aw, dear; the days that was, sir — the days that was!”
Lovibond let him rattle on, and he talked of Nelly for an hour. He had stories without end of her, some of them as simple as a baby’s prattle, some as deep as the heart of man, and splitting open the very crust of the fires of buried passion.
It was late when they turned in for the night. The lights on the line of the land were all put out, and save for the reflection of the stars only the lamps of ships at anchor lit up the waters of the bay.
“Good night, capt’n,” said Lovi-bond. “I suppose you’ll go to bed now?”
“Maybe so, maybe no,” said Davy. “You see, I’m like Kinvig these days, and go to bed to do my thinking. The ould man’s cart-wheel came off in the road once, and we couldn’t rig it on again no how. ‘Hould hard, boys,’ says Kinvig; and he went away home and up to the loft, and whipped off his clothes, and into the blankets and stayed there till he’d got the lay of that cartwheel. Aw, yes, though — thinking, thinking, thinking constant — that’s me when I’m in bed. But it isn’t the lying awake I’m minding. Och, no; it’s the wakening up again. That’s like nothing in the world but a rusty nail going driving into your skull afore a blacksmith’s seven-pound sledge. Good night, mate; good night.”
CHAPTER IV.
Next day Lovibond saw Mrs. Quiggin at Castle Mona. He had come at once in obedience to her summons, and she took his sympathies by storm. It was hard for him to realize that he had not seen her somewhere before. He had seen her — in his own description of the girl in church, helped out, led on, directed, vivified, and transfigured by Capt’n Davy’s own impetuous picture, just as the mesmerist sees what he pretends to show by aid of the eye of the mesmerized. There she sat, like one for whom life had lost its savor. Her great slow eyes, her pale and quivering face,’ her long deep look as she took his hand, and her softly tightening grasp of it went through him like a knife. Not all his loyalty to Capt’n Davy could crush the thought that the man who had thrown away a jewel such as this must be a brute and a blockhead. But the sweet woman was not so lost to life that she did not see her advantage. There were some weary sighs and then she said: —
“I am in great, great trouble about my husband. They say he is wasting his money. Is it true?”
“Too true,” said Lovibond.
“And that if he goes on as he is now going he will be penniless?”
“Not impossible,” said Lovibond, “provided the mad fit last long enough.”
“Is remonstrance quite useless, Mr. Lovibond?”
“Quite, Mrs. Quiggin.”
The great slow eyes began to fill, and Lovibond’s gaze to seek the laces of his boots.
“It is sorrow enough to me, Mr. Lovibond, that my husband and I have quarreled and parted, but it will be the worst grief of all if some day I should have to think that I came into his life to wreck it.”
“Don’t blame yourself for that, Mrs. Quiggin. It will be his own fault if he ruins himself.”
“You are very good, Mr. Lovi-bond.”
“Your husband will never blame you either.”
“That will hardly reconcile me to his misfortunes.”
[“The man’s an ass,” thought Lovibond.]
“I shall not trouble him much longer with my presence here,” Mrs. Quiggin continued, and Lovibond looked up inquiringly.
“I am going back home soon,” she added. “But if before I go some friend would help me to save my husband from himself — —”
Lovibond rose in an instant. “I am at your service, Mrs. Quiggin,” he said briskly. “Have you thought of anything?”
“Yes. They tell me that he is gambling, and that all the cheats of the island are winning from him.”
“Well?”
The pale face turned very red, and quivered visibly about the lips.
“I have heard him say, when he has spoken of you, Mr. Lovibond, that — that — but will you forgive what I am going to tell you?”
“Anything,” said Lovibond.
“That out on the coast you could win from anybody. I remembered this when they told me that he was gambling, and I thought if you would play against my husband — for me —— —”
“I see what you mean, Mrs. Quiggin,” said Lovibond.
“I don’t want the money, though he was so cruel as to say I had only married him for sake of it. But you could put it back into Dumbell’s Bank day by day as you got it.”
“In whose name?” said Lovibond.
The great eyes opened very wide. “His, surely,” she said falteringly.
Lovibond saw the folly of that thought, but he also recognized its tenderness.
“Very well,” he said; “I’ll do my best.”
“Will it be wrong to deceive him, Mr. Lovibond?”
“It will be mercy itself, Mrs. Quiggin.”
“To be sure, it is only to save him from ruin. But you will not believe that I am thinking of myself, Mr. Lovibond?”
“Trust me for that, Mrs. Quiggin.”
“And when the wild fit is over, and my husband hears of what has been done, you will be careful not to let him know that it was I who thought of it?”
“You shall tell him yourself, Mrs. Quiggin.”
“Ah! that can never, never be,” she said, with a sigh. And then she murmured softly, “I don’t know what my husband may have told you about me, Mr. Lovibond—”
Lovibond’s ardor overcame his prudence. “He has told me that you were an angel once — and he has wronged you, the dunce and dulbert — you are an angel still.”
While Lovibond was with Mrs. Quig-gin Jenny Crow was with Capt’n Davy. She had clutched at his invitation with secret delight. “Just the thing,” she thought. “Now, won’t I give the other simpleton a piece of my mind, too?” So she had bowled off to Fort Ann with a heart as warm as toast, and a tongue that was stinging hot. But when she had got there her purpose had suddenly changed. The first sight of Capt’n Davy’s face had conquered her. It was so child-like, and yet so manly, so strong and yet so tender, so obviously made for smiles like sunshine, and yet so full of the memories of recent tears! Jenny recalled her description of the sailor on the Head, and thought it no better than a vulgar caricature.
Davy wiped down a chair for her with the outside of his billycock and led her up to it with rude but natural manners. “The girl was a ninny to quarrel with a man like this,” she thought. Nevertheless she remembered her purpose of making him smart, and she stuck to her guns for a round or two.
“It’s rael nice of you to come, ma’am,” said Davy.
“It’s more than you deserve,” said Jenny.
“I shouldn’t wonder but you think me a blundering blocket,” said Davy.
“I didn’t think you had sense enough to know it,” said Jenny.
With that second shot Jenny’s powder was spent. Davy looked down into her face and said —
“I’m terr’ble onaisy about herself, ma’am, and can’t take rest at nights for thinking what’s to come to her when I am gone.”
“Gone?” said Jenny, rising quietly.
“That’s so ma’am,” said Davy. “I’m going away — back to that ould Nick’s oven I came from, and I’ll want no money there.”
“Is that why you’re wasting it here, Captain Quiggin?” said Jenny. Her gayety was gone by this time.
“No — yes! Wasting? Well maybe so, ma’am, may be so. It’s the way with money. Comes like the droppings out of the spout at the gable, ma’am; but goes like the tub when the bull has tipped it. Now I was thinking ma’am — —”
“Well, Captain?”
“She won’t take any of it, coming from me, but I was thinking, ma’am—”
“Yes?” Davy was pawing the carpet with one foot, and Jenny’s eyes were creeping up the horn buttons of his waistcoat.
“I was thinking, ma’am, if you could take a mossle of it yourself before it’s all gone, and go and live with her — you and she together somewheres — some quiet place — and make out somehow — women’s mortal clever at rigging up yarns that do no harm — make out that somebody belonging to you is dead — it can’t kill nobody to say that ma’am — and left you a bit of a fortune out of hand — —”
Davy’s restless foot was digging away at the carpet while he was stammering out these broken words:
“Haven’t you no ould uncle, ma’am, that would do for the like of that?”
Jenny had to struggle with herself not to leap up and hug Capt’n Davy then and there, “What a ninny the girl was!” she thought. But she said aloud, as well as she could for her throat that was choking her, “I see what you mean, Captain Quiggin. But, Cap tain — —”
“Ma’am?” said Davy.
“If you have so much thought — (gulp, gulp) — for your wife’s welfare (gulp), you — must love her still (gulp, gulp)?
“I daren’t say no, ma’am,” said Davy, with downcast eyes.
“And if you love her, however deeply she may have offended you, surely you should never leave her. Come, now, Captain, forgive and forget; she is only a woman, you know.”
“That’s just where the shoe pinches, ma’am, so I’m taking it off. Out yonder it’ll be easier to forgive. And if it’ll be harder to forget, what matter?”
Jenny’s eyes were beginning to fill.
“No use crying over spilled milk, is it, ma’am? The heart-ache is a sort of colic that isn’t cured by drops.”
Jenny was breaking down fast.
“Aw, the heart’s a quare thing, ma’am. Got its hunger same as anything else. Starve it, and it’ll know why. Gives you a kind of a sinking at the pit of your stomach, ma’am. Did you never feel it, ma’am?”
Davy’s speech was rude enough, but that only made its emotion the more touching to Jenny. Between gulp and gulp she tried to say that if he went away he would never be happy again.
“Happy, ma’am? D’ye say happy? I’m not happy now,” said Davy.
“It isn’t everybody would think so, Captain,” said Jenny, “considering how you spend your evenings — singing and laughing — —”
“Laughing! More cry till wool, ma’am, same as clipping a pig.”
“So your new friends, Captain, those that your riches have brought you—”
“Friends? D’ye say friends? Them wastrels! What are they? Nothing but a parcel of Betty Quilleash’s baby’s stepmothers. And I’m nothing but Betty Quilleash’s baby myself, ma’am; that’s what I am.”
The stalwart fellow did not look much like anybody’s infant, but Davy could not laugh, and Jenny’s eyes were streaming.
“Betty lived at Michael, ma’am, and died when her baby was suckling. There wasn’t no feeding-bottles in them days, and the little one was missing the poor dead mawther mortal. But babies is like lammies, ma’am, they’ve got their season, and mostly all the women of the parish had babies that year. So first one woman would whip up Betty’s baby and give it a taste of the breast, and then another would whip it up and do likewise, until the little baby cuckoo was in every baby nest in the place, and living all over the street, like the rum-butter bowl and the preserving pan. But no use at all, at all. The little mite wasted away. Poor thing, poor thing. Twenty mawthers wasn’t making up to it for the right one it had lost. That’s me, ma’am; that’s me.”
