The Manxman Part 117

"Aw, no Caesar, we're on the road now. It's dry enough here, anyway."

"'Many bulls have compa.s.sed me; great bulls of Bashan have beset me round. Save me from the lion's mouth; for Thou hast heard me from the horns of the unicorn.'"

"Never mind the lion and the unicorn, father, but come and we'll change thy wet trousers."

"'Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean; wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow.'"

"Aw, yes, we'll wash thee enough when we get to Ramsey. Come, then, bogh."

He had dropped his ram's horn somewhere, and she took him by the hand.

Then he suffered himself to be led away, and the two old children went off into the darkness.

XVII.

There was a letter waiting for Philip at home. It was from the Clerk of the Rolls. Only a few lines scribbled on the back of a draft deposition, telling him the pet.i.tion for divorce had been heard that day within closed doors. The application had been granted, and all was settled and comfortable.

"I don't want to hurt your already much wounded feelings, Christian,"

wrote the Clerk of the Rolls, "or to add anything to your responsibility when you come to make provision for the woman, but I must say she has given up for your sake a deuced good honest fellow."

"I know it," said Philip aloud.

"When I told him that all was over, and that his erring wife would trouble him no more, I thought he was going to burst out crying."

But Philip had no time yet to think of Pete. All his heart was with Kate. She would receive the official intimation of the divorce, and it would fall on her in her prison like a blow. She would think of herself, with all the world against her, and of him with all the world at his feet. He wanted to run to her, to pluck her up in his arms, to kiss her on the lips, and say, "Mine, mine at last!" His wife--her husband--all forgiven--all forgotten!

Philip spent the rest of the night in writing a letter to Kate. He told her he could not live without her; that now for the first time she was his, and he was hers, and they were one; that their love was re-born, and that he would spend the future in atoning for the wrongs he had inflicted upon her in the past. Then he dropped to the sheer babble of affection and poured out his heart to her--all the babydom of love, the foolish prattle, the tender nonsense. What matter that he was Governor now, and the first man in the island? He forgot all about it. What matter that he was writing to a fallen woman in prison? He only remembered it to forget himself the more.

"Just a little longer, my love, just a little longer. I am coming to you, I am coming. Older, perhaps, perhaps sadder, and a boy no more, but hopeful still, and ready to face whatever fate befall, with her I love beside me."

Next day Jem-y-Lord took this letter to Castle Rushen and brought back an answer. It was one line only--"My darling! At last! At last! Oh, Philip! Philip! _But what about our child?_"

XVIII.

The proclamation of Philip's appointment as Governor of the Isle of Man had been read in the churches, and nailed up on the doors of the Court-houses, and the Clerk of the Rolls was pushing on the arrangements for the installation.

"Let it be on the Tuesday of Easter week," he wrote, "and of course at Castle Rushen. The retiring Governor is ready to return for that day to deliver up his seals of office and to receive your commission."

"P. S.--Private. And if you think that soft-voiced girl has been long enough 'At Her Majesty's pleasure,' I will release her. Not that she is taking any harm at all, but we had better get these little accounts squared off before your great day comes. Meantime you may wish to provide for her future. Be liberal, Christian; you can afford to treat her liberally. But what am I saying? Don't I know that you will be ridiculously over-generous?"

Philip answered this letter promptly. "The Tuesday of Easter week will do as well as any other day. As to the lady, let her stay where she is until the morning of the ceremony, when I will myself settle everything."

Philip's correspondence was now plentiful, and he had enough work to cope with it The four towns of the island vied with each other in efforts to show him honour. Douglas, as the scene of his career, wished to entertain him at a banquet; Ramsey, as his birthplace, wanted to follow him in procession. He declined all invitations.

"I am in mourning," he wrote. "And besides, I am not well."

"Ah! no," he thought, "n.o.body shall reproach me when the times comes."

There was no pause, no pity, no relenting rest in the world's kindness.

It began to take shapes of almost fiendish cruelty in his mind, as if the devil's own laughter was behind it.

He inquired about Pete. Hardly anybody knew anything; hardly anybody cared. The spendthrift had come down to his last shilling, and sold up the remainder of his furniture. The broker was to empty the house on Easter Tuesday. That was all. Not a word about the divorce. The poor neglected victim, forgotten in the turmoil of his wrongdoer's glory, had that last strength of a strong man--the strength to be silent and to forgive.

Philip asked about the child. She was still at Elm Cottage in the care of the woman with the upturned nose and the shrill voice. Every night he devised plans for getting possession of Kate's little one, and every morning he abandoned them, as difficult or cruel or likely to be spurned.

On Easter Monday he was busy in his room at Ballure, with a mounted messenger riding constantly between his gate and Government offices. He had spent the morning on two important letters. Both were to the Home Secretary. One was sealed with his seal as Deemster; the other was written on the official paper of Government House. He was instructing the messenger to register these letters when, through the open door, he heard a formidable voice in the hall. It was Pete's voice. A moment afterwards Jem-y-Lord came up with a startled face.

"He's here himself, your Excellency. Whatever _am_ I to do with him?"

"Bring him up," said Philip.

Jem began to stammer. "But--but--and then the Bishop may be here any minute."

"Ask the Bishop to wait in the room below."

Pete was heard coming upstairs. "Aisy all, aisy! Stoop your lil head, bogh. That's the ticket!"

Philip had not spoken to Pete since the night of the drinking of the brandy and water in the bedroom. He could not help it--his hand shook.

There would be a painful scene.

"Stoop again, darling. There you are."

And then Pete was in the room. He was carrying the child on one shoulder; they were both in their best clothes. Pete looked older and somewhat thinner; the tan of his cheeks was fretted out in pale patches under the eyes, which were nevertheless bright. He had the face of a man who had fought a brave fight with life and been beaten, yet bore the world no grudge. Jem-y-Lord and the messenger were gone from the room in a moment, and the door was closed.

"What d'ye think of that, Phil? Isn't she a lil beauty?"

Pete was dancing the child on his knee and looking sideways down at it with eyes of rapture.

"She's as sweet as an angel," said Philip in a low tone.

"Isn't she now?" said Pete, and then he rattled on as if he were the happiest man alive. "You've been wanting something like this yourself this long time, Phil. 'Deed you have, though. It would be diverting you wonderful. Ter'ble the fun there is in babies. Talk about play-actorers!

They're only funeral mutes where babies come. Bittending this and bittending that--it's mortal amusing they are. You'd be getting up from your books, tired shocking, and ready for a bit of fun, and going to the stair-head and shouting down, 'Where's my lil woman?' Then up she'd be coming, step by step, houlding on to the bannisters, dot and carry one.

And my gracious, the dust there'd be here in the study! You down on the carpet on all fours, and the lil one straddled across your back and slipping down to your neck. Same for all the world as the man in the picture with the world atop of his shoulders. And your own lil world would be up there, too, laughing and crowing mortal. And then at night, Phil, at night--getting up from your summonses and your warrantees, and going creeping to the lil one's room tippie-toe, tippie-toe, and 'Is she sleeping comfor'bly?' thinks you; and listening at the crack of the door, and hearing her breathing, and slipping in to look, and everything quiet, and the red fire on her lil face, and 'Grod bless her, the darling!' says you, and then back to your desk content. Aw, you'll have to be having a lil one of your own one of these days, Phil."

"He has come to say something," thought Philip.

The child wriggled off Pete's knee and began to creep about the floor.

Philip tried to command himself and to talk easily.

"And how have you been yourself, Pete?" he asked.

"Well," said Pete, meddling with his hair, "only middling, somehow."

He looked down at the carpet, and faltered, "You'll be wondering at me, Phil, but, you see "--he hesitated--"not to tell you a word of a lie----" then, with a rush, "I'm going foreign again; that's the fact."