The Manxman Part 64

But Pete scoffed at the idea. "A boy? Never! No, no--a girl for your life. I'm all for girls myself, eh, Kitty? Always was, and now I've got two of them."

The child began to cry, and Grannie took it back and rocked it, face downwards, across her knees.

"Goodness me, the voice at him!" said Pete. "It's a skipper he's born for--a harbour-master, anyway."

The child slept, and Grannie put it on the pillow turned lengthwise at Kate's side.

"Quiet as a Jenny Wren, now," said Pete. "Look at the bogh smiling in his sleep. Just like a baby mermaid on the egg of a dogfish. But where's the ould man at all? Has he seen it? We must have it in the papers. The _Times?_Yes, and the 'Tiser too. 'The beloved wife of Mr. Capt'n Peter Quilliam, of a boy--a girl,' I mane. Aw, the wonder there'll be all the island over--everybody getting to know. Newspapers are like women--ter'ble bad for keeping sacrets. What'll Philip say? But haven't you a toothful of anything, Grannie? Gin for the ladies, Nancy. Goodness me, the house is handy. What time was it? Wait, don't tell me! It was five o'clock this morning, wasn't it? Yes? Gough bless me, I knew it!

High water to the very minute--aw, he'll rise in the world, and die at the top of the tide. How did I know when the child was born, ma'am? As aisy as aisy. We were lying adrift of Cronk ny Irrey Lhaa, looking up for daylight by the fisherman's clock. Only light enough to see the black of your nail, ma'am. All at once I heard a baby's cry on the waters. 'It's the nameless child of Earey Cushin,' sings out one of the boys. 'Up with the clout,' says I. And when we were hauling the nets and down on our knees saying a bit of a prayer, as usual, 'G.o.d bless my new-born child,' says I, 'and G.o.d bless my child's mother, too,' I says, and G.o.d love and protect them always, and keep and presarve myself as well.'" There was a low moaning from the bed.

"Air! Give me air! Open the door!" Kate gasped.

"The room is getting too hot for her," said Grannie.

"Come, there's one too many of us here," said Nancy. "Out of it," and she swept Pete from the bedroom with her ap.r.o.n as if he had been a drove of ducks.

Pete glanced backward from the door, and a cloak that was hanging on the inside of it brushed his face.

"G.o.d bless her!" he said in a low tone. "G.o.d bless and reward her for going through this for me!"

Then he touched the cloak with his lips and disappeared. A moment later his curly black poll came stealing round the door jamb, half-way down, like the head of a big boy.

"Nancy," in a whisper, "put the tongs over the cradle; it's a pity to tempt the fairies. And, Grannie, I wouldn't lave it alone to go out to the cow-house--the lil people are shocking bad for changing."

Kate, with her face to the wall, listened to him with an aching heart.

As Pete went down the doctor returned.

"She's hardly so well," said the doctor. "Better not let her nurse the child. Bring it up by hand. It will be best for both."

So it was arranged that Nancy should be made nurse and go to Elm Cottage, and that Mrs. Gorry should come in her place to Sulby.

Throughout four-and-twenty hours thereafter, Kate tried her utmost to shut her heart to the child. At the end of that time, being left some minutes alone with the little one, she was heard singing to it in a sweet, low tone. Nancy paused with the long brush in her hand in the kitchen, and Granny stopped at her knitting in the bar.

"That's something like, now," said Nancy.

"Poor thing, poor Kirry! What wonder if she was a bit out of her head, the bogh, and her not well since her wedding?"

They crept upstairs together at the unaccustomed sounds, and found Pete, whom they had missed, outside the bedroom door, half doubled up and holding his breath to listen.

"Hush!" said he, less with his tongue than with his mouth, which he pursed out to represent the sound. Then he whispered, "She's filling all the room with music. Listen! It's as good as fairy music in Glentrammon.

And it's the little fairy itself that's 'ticing it out of her."

Next day Philip came, and nothing would serve for Pete but that he should go up to see the child.

"It's only Phil," he said, through the doorway, dragging Philip into Kate's room after him, for the familiarity that a great joy permits breaks down conventions. Kate did not look up, and Philip tried to escape.

"He's got good news for himself, too" said Pete. "They're to be making him Dempster a month to-morrow."

Then Kate lifted her eyes to Philip's face, and all the glory of success withered under her gaze. He stumbled downstairs, and hurried away. There was the old persistent thought, "She loves me still," but it was working now, in the presence of the child, with how great a difference! When he looked at the little, downy face, a new feeling took possession of him.

Her child--hers--that might have been his also! Had his bargain been worth having? Was any promotion in the world to be set against one throb of Pete's simple joy, one gleam of the auroral radiance that lights up a poor man's home when he is first a father, one moment of divine partnership in the babe that is fresh from G.o.d?

Three weeks later, Pete took his wife home in Caesar's gig. Everything was the same, as when he brought her, save that within the shawls with which she was wrapped about the child now lay with its pink eyelids to the sky, and its fiat white bottle against her breast. It was a beautiful spring morning, and the young sunlight was on the sallies of the Curragh and the gold of the roadside gorse. Pete was as silly as a boy, and he chirped and croaked all the way home like every bird and beast of heaven and earth. When they got to Elm Cottage, he lifted his wife down as tenderly as if she had been the babe she had in her arms.

He was strong and she was light, and he half helped, half carried her to the porch door. Nancy was there to take the child out of her hands, and, as she did so, Pete, back at the horse's head, cried, "That's the last bit of furniture the house was waiting for, Nancy. What's a house without a child? Just a room without a clock."

"Clock, indeed," said Nancy; "clocks are stopping, but this one's for going like a mill."

"Don't be tempting the Nightman, Nancy," cried Pete; but he was full of childlike delight.

Kate stepped inside. The fire burned in the hall parlour, the fire-irons shone like gla.s.s, there were sprigs of fuchsia-bud in the ornaments on the chimneypiece--everything was warm and cheerful and homelike. She sat down without taking off her hat. "Why can't I be quiet and happy?" she thought. "Why can't I make myself love him and forget?"

But she was like one who traversed a desert under the sea--a vast submerged Sahara. Over her head was all her life, with all her love and all her happiness, and the things around her were only the ghostly shadows cast by them.

IX.

The more Kate realised that she was in the position of a bad woman, the more she struggled to be a good one. She flew to religion as a refuge.

There was no belief in her religion, no faith, no creed, no mystical transports, but only fear, and shame, and contrition. It was fervent enough, nevertheless. On Sunday morning she went to The Christians, on Sunday afternoon to church, on Sunday evening to the Wesleyan chapel, and on Wednesday night to the mission-house of the Primitives. Her catholicity did not please her father. He looked into her quivering face, and asked if she had broken any commandment in secret. She turned pale, and answered "No."

Pete followed her wherever she went, and, seeing this, some of the baser sort among the religious people began to follow him. They abused each other badly in their efforts to lay hold of his money-bags. "You'll never go over to yonder lot," said one. "They're holding to election--a soul-destroying doctrine." "A respectable man can't join himself to Cowley's gang," said another. "They're denying original sin, and aren't a ha'p'orth better than infidels."

Pete took the measure of them all, down to the watch-pockets of their waistcoats.

"You remind me," said he, "when you're a-gate on your doctrines, of the Kaffirs out at Kimberley. If one of them found an ould hat in the compound that some white man had thrown away, they'd light a camp-fire after dark, and hould a reg'lar Tynwald Coort on it. There they'd be squatting round on their haunches, with nothing to be seen of them but their eyes and their teeth, and there'd be as many questions as the Catechism. '_Who_ found it!' says one. '_Where_ did he find it?' says another. 'If _he_ hadn't found it, who else would have found it?' That's how they'd be going till two in the morning, and the fire dead out, and the lot of them squealing away same as monkeys in the dark. And all about an ould hat with a hole in it, not worth a ha'penny piece."

"Blasphemy," they cried. "But still and for all, you give to the widow and lend to the Lord--you practise the religion you don't believe in, Cap'n Quilliam."

"There's a pair of us, then." said Pete, "for you believe in the religion you don't practise."

But Caesar got Pete at last, in spite of his scepticism. The time came for the annual camp-meeting. Kate went off to it, and Pete followed like a big dog at her heels. The company a.s.sembled at Sulby Bridge, and marched through the village to a revival chorus. They stopped at a field of Caesar's in the glen--it was last year's Melliah field--and Caesar mounted a cart which had been left there to serve as a pulpit. Then they sang again, and, breaking up into many companies, went off into little circles that were like gorse rings on the mountains. After that they rea.s.sembled to the strains of another chorus, and gathered afresh about the cart for Caesar's sermon.

It dealt with the duty of sinless perfection. There were evil men and happy sinners in the island these days, who were telling them it was not good to be faultless in this life, because virtue begot pride, and pride was a deadly sin. There were others who were saying that because a man must repent in order to be saved, to repent he had to sin. Doctrines of the devil--don't listen to them. Could a man in the household of faith live one second without committing sin? Of course he could. One minute?

Certainly. One hour? No doubt of it. Then, if a man could live one hour without sin, he could live one day, one week, one month, one year--nay, a whole lifetime.

In getting thus far, Caesar had worked himself into a perspiration, and he took off his coat, hung it over the cartwheel, and went on in his shirt-sleeves. Let them make no excuses for backsliders. It was a trick of the devil to deal with you, and forget to pay strap (the price). It was an old rule and a good one that, if any were guilty of the sins of the flesh, they should be openly punished in this world, that their sins might not be counted against them in the day of the Lord.

Caesar threw off his waistcoat and finished with a pa.s.sionate exhortation, calling upon his hearers to deliver themselves of secret sins. If oratory is to be judged of by its effects, Caesar's sermon was a great oration. It began amid the silence of his own followers, and the _tschts_ and _pshaws_ of a little group of his enemies, who lounged on the outside of the crowd to cast ridicule on the "swaddler" and the "publican preacher." But it ended amid loud exclamations of praise and supplications from all his hearers, sighing and groaning, and the bodily clutching of one another by the arm in paroxysms of fear and rapture.

When Caesar's voice died down like a wave of the sea, somebody leapt up from the gra.s.s to pray. And before the first prayer had ended, a second was begun. Meantime the penitents had begun to move inward through the throng, and they fell weeping and moaning on their knees about the cart.

Kate was among them, and, when she took her place, Pete still held by her side A strong shuddering pa.s.sed over her shoulders, and her wet eyes were on the gra.s.s. Pete took her hand, and feeling how it trembled, his own eyes also filled. Above their heads Caesar was towering with fiery eyes and face aflame. In a momentary pause between two prayers, he tossed his voice up in a hymn. The people joined him at the second bar, and then the wailing of the penitents was drowned in a general shout of the revival tune--

"If some poor wandering child of Thine Have spurned to-day the voice divine, Now, Lord, the gracious work begin, Let him no more lie down in sin."

Kate sobbed aloud--poor vessel of human pa.s.sions tossed about, tormented by the fire that was consuming her.

As the penitents grew calmer, they rose one by one to give their experience of Satan and salvation. At length Caesar seized his opportunity and said, "And now Brother Quilliam will give us his experience."

Pete rose from Kate's side with tearful eyes amid a babel of jubilation, most of it facetious. "Be of good cheer, Peter, be not afraid."