The Manxman Part 72

Boom! Boom! Boom!

The band had begun again. It was coming nearer. Philip! Philip! He was her only refuge now. All else was a blank.

The side-door had been little used. Its hinges and bolt were rusty and stiff. She broke her nails in opening it. From the other side came the light jingle of a curb chain, and over the wall hovered a white sheet of smoking light.

The carriage was in the lane, and the driver--Philip's servant, Jem-y-Lord--stood with the door open. Kate stumbled on the step and fell into the seat. The door was closed.

Then a new thought smote her. It was about the child, about Philip, about Pete. In leaving the little one behind her, though she had meant it so unselfishly, she had done the one thing that must be big with consequences. It would bring its penalty, its punishment, its retribution. Stop! She would go back even yet. Her face was against the gla.s.s; she was struggling with the strap. But the carriage was moving. She heard the rumble of the wheels; it was like a deafening reverberation from the day of doom. Then her senses dwaled away and the carriage drove on.

XV.

Outside Ballure House there was a crowd which covered the garden, the fence, the high-road, and the top of the stone wall opposite. The band had ceased to play, and the people were shouting, clapping hands, and cheering. At the door--which was open--Philip stood bareheaded, and a shaft of the light in the house behind him lit up a hundred of the eager faces gathered in the darkness. He raised his hand for silence, but it was long before he was allowed to speak. Salutations rugged, rough--almost rude--but hearty to the point of homeliness, and affectionate to the length of familiarity, flew at his head from every side. "Good luck to you, boy!"--"Bravo for Ramsey!"--"The Christians for your life!"--"A chip of the ould block--Dempster Christian the Sixth!"--"Hush, man, he's spaking!"--"Go it, Phil!"--"Give it fits, boy!"--"Hush! hush!"

"Fellow-townsmen," said Philip--his voice swung like a quivering bell over a sea,--"you can never know how much your welcome has moved me. I cannot say whether in my heart of hearts I am more proud of it or more ashamed. To be ashamed of it altogether would dishonour _you_, and to be too proud of it would dishonour _me_, I am not worthy of your faith and good-fellowship. Ah!"--he raised his hand to check a murmur of dissent (the crowd was now hushed from end to end)--"let me utter the thought of all. In honouring me you are thinking of others also ('No,' 'Yes'); you are thinking of my people--above all, of one who was laid under the willows yonder, a wrecked, a broken, a disappointed man--my father, G.o.d rest him! I will not conceal it from you--his memory has been my guide, his failures have been my lightship, his hopes my beacon, his love my star. For good or for evil, my anchor has been in the depths of his grave. G.o.d forbid that I should have lived too long under the grasp of a dead hand. It was my aim to regain what he had lost, and this day has witnessed its partial reclamation. G.o.d grant I may not have paid too dear for such success."

There were cries of "No, sir, no."

He smiled faintly and shook his head. "Fellow-countrymen, you believe I am worthy of the name I bear. There is one among you, an old comrade, a tried and trusted friend, whose faith would be a spur if it were not a reproach----"

His voice was breaking, but still it pealed over the sea of heads.

"Well, I will try to do my duty--from this hour onwards you shall see me try. Fellow-Manxmen, you will help me for the honour of the place I fill, for the sake of our little island, and--yes, and for my own sake also, I know you will--to be a good man and an upright judge. But"--he faltered, his voice could barely support itself--"but if it should ever appear that your confidence has been misplaced--if in the time to come I should seem to be unworthy of this honour, untrue to the oath I took to-day to do G.o.d's justice between man and man, a wrongdoer, not a righter of the wronged, a whited sepulchre where you looked for a tower of refuge--remember, I pray of you, my countrymen, remember, much as you may be suffering then, there will be one who will be suffering more--that one will be myself."

The general impression that night was that the Deemster's speech had not been a proper one. Breaking up with some damp efforts at the earlier enthusiasm, the people complained that they were like men who had come for a jig and were sent home in a wet blanket. There should have been a joke or two, a hearty word of congratulation, a little natural glorification of Ramsey, and a quiet slap at Douglas and Peel and Castletown, a few fireworks, a rip-rap or two, and some general illumination. "But sakes alive! the solemn the young Dempster was! And the melancholy! And the mystarious!"

"Chut!" said Pete. "There's such a dale of comic in you, boys. Wonder in the world to me you're not kidnapped for pantaloonses. Go home for all and wipe your eyes, and remember the words he's been spaking. I'm not going to forget them myself, anyway."

Handing over the big drum to little Jonaique, Pete turned to go into the house. Auntie Nan was in the hall, hopping like a canary about Philip, in a brown silk dress that rustled like withered ferns, hugging him, drawing him down to the level of her face, and kissing him on the forehead. The tears were raining over the autumn sunshine of her wrinkled cheeks, and her voice was cracking between a laugh and a cry.

"My boy! My dear boy! My boy's boy! My own boy's own boy!"

Philip freed himself at length, and went upstairs without turning his head, and then Auntie Nan saw Pete standing in the doorway.

"Is it you, Pete?" she said with an effort. "Won't you come in for a moment? No?"

"A minute only, then--just to wish you joy, Miss Christian, ma'am," said Pete.

"And you, too, Peter. Ah!" she said, with a bird-like turn of the head, "you must be a proud man to-night, Pete."

"Proud isn't the word for it, ma'am--I'm clane beside myself."

"He took a fancy to you when you were only a little barefooted boy, Pete."

"So he did, ma'am."

"And now that he's Deemster itself he owns you still."

"Aw, lave him alone for that, ma'am."

"Did you hear what he said about you in his speech. It isn't everybody in his place would have done that before all, Pete."

"'Deed no, ma'am."

"He's true to his friends, whatever they are."

"True as steel."

The maid was carrying the dishes into the dining-room, and Auntie Nan said in a strained way, "You won't stay to dinner, Pete, will you?

Perhaps you want to get home to the mistress. Well, home is best for all of us, isn't it? Martha, I'll tell the Deemster myself that dinner is on the table. Well, good-night, Peter. I'm always so glad to see you."

She was whisking about to go upstairs, but Pete had taken one step into the dining-room, and was gazing round with looks of awe.

"Lord alive, Miss Christian, ma'am, what feelings now-barefooted boy, you say? You're right there, and cold and hungry too, sleeping in the gable-house with the cow, and not getting much but the milk I was staling from her, and a leathering at the ould man for that. Philip fetched me in here one evenin'--that was the start, ma'am. See that pepper-and-salt egg on the string there? It's a Tommy Noddy's. Philip got it nesting up Gob-ny-Garvain. Nearly cost him his life, though. You see, ma'am, Tommy Noddy has only one, and she fights like mad for it.

We were up forty fathom and better, atop of a cave, and had two straight rocks below us in the sea, same as an elephant's hoofs, you know, walking out on the blue floor. And Phil was having his lil hand on the ledge where the egg was keeping, when swoop came the big white wings atop of his bare head. If I hadn't had a stick that day, ma'am, it would have been heaven help the pair of us. The next minute Tommy Noddy was going splash down the cliffs, all feathers and blood together, or Philip wouldn't have lived to be Dempster.... Aw, frightened you, have I, ma'am, for all it's so long ago? The heart's a quare thing, now, isn't it? Got no yesterday nor to-morrow neither. Well, good-night, ma'am."

Pete was making for the door, when he looked down and said, "What's this, at all? Down, Dempster, down!"

The dog had came trotting into the hall as Pete was going out. He was perking up his big ears and wagging his stump of a tail in front of him.

"My dog, ma'am? Yes, ma'am, and like its master in some ways. Not much of itself at all, but it has the blood in it, though, and maybe it'll come out better in the next generation. Looking for me, are you, Dempster? Let's be taking the road, then."

"Perhaps you're wanted at home, Pete?"

"Wouldn't trust. Good night, ma'am." Auntie Nan hopped upstairs in her rustling dress, relieved and glad in the sweet selfishness of her love to get rid of Pete and have Philip to herself.

XVI.

Pete went off whistling in the darkness, with the dog driving ahead of him. "I'm to blame, though," he thought. "Should have gone home directly."

The town was now quiet, the streets were deserted, and Pete began to run. "She'd be alone, too. That must have been Nancy in the crowd yonder by Mistress Beatty's. 'Lowed her out to see the do, it's like. Ought to be back now, though."

As Pete came near to Elm Cottage, the moon over the tree-tops lit up the panes of the upper windows as with a score of bright lamps. One step more, and the house was dark.

"She'll be waiting for me. Listening, too, I'll go bail."

He was at the gate by this time, and the dog was panting at his feet with its nose close to the lattice.

"Be quiet, dog, be quiet."

Then he raised the latch without a sound, stepped in on tiptoe, and closed the gate as silently behind him.

"I'll have a game with her; I'll take her by surprise."

His eyes began to dance with mischief, like a child's, and he crept along the path with big cat strides, half doubled up, and holding his breath, lest he should laugh aloud.