The Manxman Part 35

"Sunk!" said Philip, laughing and clapping his hands. "You're doomed to be an old maid, Kate. Phonodoree says so."

"Cruel Brownie! I'm vexed that I bothered with him," said Kate, dropping her lip. Then nodding to her reflection in the water where the willow bough had disappeared, she said, "Poor little Katey! He might have given you something else. Anything but that dear, eh?"

"What," laughed Philip, "crying? Because Phonodoree--never!"

Kate leapt up with averted face. "What nonsense you are talking!" she said.

"There are tears in your eyes, though," said Philip.

"No wonder, either. You're so ridiculous. And if I'm meant for an old maid, you're meant for an old bachelor--and quite right too!"

"Oh, it is, is it?"

"Yes, indeed. You've got no more heart than a mushroom, for you're all head and legs, and you're going to be just as bald some day."

"I am, am I, mistress?"

"If I were you, Philip, I should hire myself out for a scarecrow, and then having nothing under your clothes wouldn't so much matter."

"It wouldn't, wouldn't it?" said Philip.

She was shying off at a half circle; he was beating round her.

"But you're nearly as old as Methuselah already, and what you'll be when you're a man----"

"Lookout!"

She made him an arch curtsey and leapt round a tree, and cried from the other side, "I know. A squeaking old croaker, with the usual old song, 'Deed yes, friends, this world is a vale of sin and misery.' The men's the misery and the women's the sin----"

"You rogue, you!" cried Philip.

He made after her, and she fled, still speaking, "What do you think a girl wants with a----Oh! Oh! Oo!"

Her tirade ended suddenly. She had plunged into a bed of the p.r.i.c.kly gorse, and was feeling in twenty places at once what it was to wear low shoes and thin stockings.

"With a Samson, eh?" cried Philip, striding on in his riding breeches, and lifting the captured creature in his arms. "Why, to carry her, you torment, to carry her through the gorse like this."

"Ah!" she said, turning her face over his shoulder, and tickling his neck with her breath.

Her hair caught in a tree, and fell in a dark shower over his breast. He set her on her feet; they took hands, and went carolling down the glen together:

"The brightest jewel in my crown, Wad be my queen, wad be my queen."

The daylight lingered as if loth to leave them. There was the fluttering of wings overhead, and sometimes the last piping of birds. The wind wandered away, and left their voices sovereign of all the air.

Then there came a distant shout; the cheer of the farm people on reaching home with the Melliah.. It awakened Philip as from a fit of intoxication.

"This is madness," he thought. "What am I doing?" "He is going to speak now," she told herself.

Her gaiety shaded off into melancholy, and her melancholy burst into wild gaiety again. The night had come down, the moon had risen, the stars had appeared. She crept closer to Philip's side, and began to tell him the story of a witch. They were near to the house the witch had lived in. There it was--that roofless cottage--that tholthan under the deep trees like a dungeon.

"Have you never heard of her, Philip? No? The one they called the Deemster's lady?"

"What Deemster?" said Philip.

"This one, Deemster Mylrea, who is said to be dying."

"He is dying; he is killing himself; I saw him to-day,' said Philip.

"'Well, she was the blacksmith's daughter, and he left her, and she went mad and cursed him, and said she was his wife though they hadn't been to church, and he should never marry anybody else. Then her father turned her out, and she came up here all alone, and there was a baby, and they were saying she killed it, and everybody was afraid of her. And all the time her boy was making himself a great, great man until he got to be Deemster. But he never married, never, though times and times people were putting this lady on him and then that; but when they told the witch, she only laughed and said, 'Let him, he'll get lave enough!' At last she was old and going on two sticks, and like to die any day, and then he crept out of his big house unknown to any one and stole up here to the woman's cottage. And when she saw the old man she said, 'So you've come at last, boy; but you've been keeping me long, bogh, you've been keeping me long.' And then she died. Wasn't that strange?"

Her dark eyes looked up at him and her mouth quivered.

"Was it witchcraft, then?" said Philip.

"Oh, no; it was only because he was her husband. That was the hold she had of him. He was tempted away by a big house and a big name, but he _had_ to come back to her. And it's the same with a woman. Once a girl is the wife of somebody, she _must_ cling to him, and if she is ever false she must return. Something compels her. That's if she's really his wife--really, truly. How beautiful, isn't it? Isn't it beautiful?"

"Do you think that, Kate? Do you think a man, like a woman, would cling the closer?"

"He couldn't help himself, Philip."

Philip tried to say it was only a girl's morality, but her confidence shamed him. She slipped her moist fingers into his hand again. They were close by the deserted tholthan, and she was creeping nearer and nearer to his side. A bat swirled above their heads and she made a faint cry.

Then a cat shot from under a gooseberry bush, and she gave a little scream. She was breathing irregularly. He could smell the perfume of her fallen hair. He was in agony of pain and delight. His heart was leaping in his bosom; his eyes were burning.

"She's right," he thought. "Love is best. It is everything. It is the crown of life. Shall I give it up for the Dead Sea fruit of worldly success? Think of the Deemster! Wifeless, childless, living solitary, dying alone, unregretled, unmourned. What is the wickedness you are plotting? Your father is dead, you can do him neither good nor harm.

This girl is alive. She loves you. Love her. Let the canting hypocrites prate as they will."

She had disengaged her hand, and was creeping away from him in the half darkness, treading softly and going off like a gleam.

"Kate!" he called.

He heard her laughter, he heard the drowsy hum of the gill, he could smell the warm odour of the gorse bushes.

"But this is madness," he thought. "This is the fever of an hour. Yield now and I am ruined for life. The girl has come between me and my aims, my vows, my work--everything. She has tempted me, and I am as weak as water."

"Kate!"

She did not answer.

"Come here this moment, Kate. I have something to say to you."

"Bite!" she said, coming back and holding an apple to his lips. She had plucked it in the overgrown garden.

"Listen! I'm leaving Ramsey for good--don't intend to practise in the northern courts any longer--settling in Douglas--best work lies there, you see--worst of it is--we shan't meet again soon--not very soon, you know--not for years, perhaps----"

He began by stammering, and went on stuttering, blurting out his words, and trembling at the sound of his own voice.

"Philip, you must not go!" she cried. "I'm sorry, Kate, very sorry.

Shall always remember so tenderly--not to say fondly--the happy boy and girl days together."