The Manxman Part 40

He glowered at her as at a scout of the enemy, but she did not mind that. She was very happy. The sun was still shining. On reaching the top of the brow, she began to skip and run where the road descends by Folieu. Thus, with a light heart and a light step, thinking ill of no one, in love with all the world, she went hurrying to her doom.

The sea below lay very calm and blue. Nothing was to be seen on the water but a line of black smoke from the funnel of a steamship which had not yet risen above the horizon.

VI.

Philip put up his horse at the Hibernian, a mile farther on the high-road, and the tongue of the landlady, Mistress Looney went like a mill-race while he ate his dinner. She had known three generations of his family, and was full of stories of his grandfather, of his father, and of himself in his childhood. Full of facetiae, too, about his looks, which were "rasonable promising," and about the girls of Douglas, who were "neither good nor middling." She was also full of sage counsel, advising marriage with a warm girl having "nice things at her--nice lands and pigs and things"--as a ready way to square the "bobbery" of thirty years ago at Ballawhaine.

Philip left his plate half full, and rose from the table to go down to Port Mooar.

"But, boy veen, you've destroyed nothing,", cried the landlady. And then coaxingly, as if he had been a child, "You'll be ateing bits for me, now, come, come! No more at all? Aw, it's failing you are, Mr. Philip!

Going for a walk is it? Take your topcoat then, for the clover is closing."

He took the road that Pete had haunted as a boy on returning home from school in the days when Kate lived at Cornaa, going through the network of paths by the mill, and over the brow by Ballajora. The new miller was pulling down the thatched cottage in which Kate had been born to put up a slate house. They had built a porch for shelter to the chapel, and carved the figure of a slaughtered lamb on a stone in the gable. Another lamb--a living lamb--was being killed by the butcher of Ballajora as Philip went by the shambles. The helpless creature, with its inverted head swung downwards from the block, looked at him with its piteous eyes, and gave forth that distressful cry which is the last wild appeal of the stricken animal when it sees death near, and has ceased to fight for life.

The air was quiet, and the sea was calm, but across the Channel a leaden sky seemed to hover over the English mountains, though they were still light and apparently in sunshine. As Philip reached Port Mooar, a cart was coming out of it with a load of sea-wrack for the land, and a lobster-fisher on the beach was shipping his gear for sea.

"Quiet day," said Philip in pa.s.sing.

"I'm not much liking the look of it, though," said the fisherman.

"Mortal thick surf coming up for the wind that's in." But he slipped his boat, pulled up sail, and rode away.

Philip looked at his watch and then walked down the beach. Coming to a cave, he entered it. The sea-wrack was banked up in the darkness behind, and between two stones at the mouth there were the remains of a recent fire. Suddenly he remembered the cave. It was the cave of the Carasdhoo men. He eould hear the voice of Pete in its rumbling depths; he could hear and see himself. "Shall we save the women, Pete?--we always do."

"Aw, yes, the women--and the boys." The tenderness of that memory was too much for Philip. He came out of the cave, and walked back over the sh.o.r.e.

"She will come by the church," he thought, and he climbed the cliffs to look out. A line of fir-trees grew there, a comb of little misshapen ghoul-like things, stunted by the winds that swept over the seas in winter. In a fork of one of these a bird's nest of last year was still hanging; but it was now empty, songless, joyless, and dead.

"She's here." he told himself, and he drew his breath noisily. A white figure had turned the road by the sundial, and was coming on with the step of a greyhound.

The black clouds above the English mountains were heeling down on the land. There was a storm on the other coast, though the sky over the island was still fine. The steamship had risen above the horizon, and was heading towards the bay.

VII.

She met him on the hill slope with a cry of joy, and kissed him. It came into his mind to draw away, but he could not, and he kissed her back.

Then she linked her arm in his, and they turned down the beach.

"I'm glad you've come," he began.

"Did you ever dream I wouldn't?" she said. Her face was a smile, her voice was an eager whisper.

"I have something to say to you, Kate--it is something serious."

"Is it so?" she said. "So very serious?"

She was laughing and blushing together. Didn't she know what he was going to say? Didn't she guess what this serious something must be? To prolong the delicious suspense before hearing it, she pretended to be absorbed in the things about her. She looked aside at the sea, and up at the banks, and down at the little dubbs of salt water as she skipped across them, crying out at sight of the sea-holly, the anemone, and the sea-mouse shining like fire, but still holding to Philip's arm and bounding and throbbing on it.

"You must be quiet, dear, and listen," he said.

"Oh, I'll be good--so very good," she said. "But look! only look at the white horses out yonder--far out beyond the steamer. Davy's putting on the coppers for the parson, eh?"

She caught the grave expression of Philip's face, and drew herself up with pretended severity, saying, "Be quiet, Katey. Behave yourself.

Philip wants to talk to you--seriously--very seriously."

Then, leaning forward with head aside to look up into his face, she said, "Well, sir, why don't you begin? Perhaps you think I'll cry out. I won't--I promise you I won't."

But she grew uneasy at the settled gravity of his face, and the joy gradually died off her own. When Philip spoke, his voice was like a cracked echo of itself.

"You remember what you said, Kate, when I brought you that last letter from Kimberley--that if next morning you found it was a mistake------"

"_Is_ it a mistake?" she asked.

"Becalm, Kate."

"I am quite calm, dear. I remember I said it would kill me. But I was very foolish. I should not say so now. Is Pete alive?"

She spoke without a tremor, and he answered in a husky whisper, "Yes."

Then, in a breaking voice, he said, "We were very foolish Kate--jumping so hastily to a conclusion was very foolish-it was worse than foolish, it was wicked. I half doubted the letter at the time, but, G.o.d forgive me, I _wanted_ to believe it, and so----"

"I am glad Pete is living," she said quietly.

He was aghast at her calmness. The irregular lines in his face showed the disordered state of his soul, but she walked by his side without the quiver of an eyelid, or a tinge of colour more than usual. Had she understood?

"Look!" he said, and he drew Pete's telegram from his pocket and gave it to her.

She opened it easily, and he watched her while she read it, prepared for a cry, and ready to put his arms about her if she fell. But there was not a movement save the motion of her fingers, not a sound except the crinking of the thin paper. He turned his head away. The sun was shining; there was a steely light on the firs, and here and there a white breaker was rising like a sea-bird out of the blue surface of the sea.

"Well?" she said.

"Kate, you astonish me," said Philip. "This comes on us like a thundercloud, and you seem not to realise it."

She put her arms about his neck, and the paper rustled on his shoulder.

"My darling," she said, "do you love me still?"

"You know I love you, but----"

"Then there is no thundercloud in heaven for me now," she said.

The simple grandeur of the girl's love shamed him. Its trust, its confidence, its indifference to all the evil chance of life if only he loved her still, this had been beyond him. But he disengaged her arms and said, "We must not live in a fool's paradise, Kate. You promised yourself to Pete----"

"But, Philip," she said, "that was when I was a child. It was only a half promise then, and I didn't know what I was doing. I didn't know what love was. All that came later, dearest, much later--you know when."

"To Pete it is the same thing, Kate," said Philip. "He is coming home to claim you----"