The Manxman Part 92

"Hail, Isle of Man, Swate ocean lan', I love thy sea-girt border."

XIV.

The sky became overcast, rain began to fall, and there was a rush for the carts. In half an hour Tynwald Hill was empty, and the people were splashing off on every side like the big drops of rain that were pelting down.

Pete hired a brake that was going back to the north, and gathered up his friends from Ramsey. When these were seated, there was a rush of helpless and abandoned ones who were going in the same direction--young mothers with children, old men and old women. Pete hauled them up till the seats and the floor were choked, and the brake could hold no more.

He got small thanks. "Such crushing and scrooging! I declare my black merino frock, that I've only had on once, will be teetotal spoilt."--"If they don't start soon I'll be taking the neuralgy dreadful."

They got started at length, and, at the tail of a line of stiff carts, they went rattling over the mountain-road. The harebells nodded their washed faces from the hedge, and the talk was brisk and cheerful.

"Our Thorn's sowl a hafer, and got a good price."--"What for didn't you buy the mare of Corlett Beldroma, Juan?"--"Did I want to be killed as dead as a herring?"--"Kicks, does she? Bate her, man; bate her. A horse is like a woman. If you aren't bating her now and then----"

They stopped at every half-way houses--it was always halfway to somewhere. The men got exceedingly drunk and began to sing. At that the women grew very angry.

"Sakes alive! you're no better than a lot of Cottonies."--"Deed, but they're worse than any Cottonies, ma'am. Some excuse for the like of _them_. In their cotton-mills all the year, and nothing at home but a piece of gra.s.s the size of your hand in the backyard, and going hopping on it like a lark in a cage."

The rain came down in torrents, the mountain-path grew steep and desolate, the few houses pa.s.sed were empty and boarded up, gorse bushes hissed to the rising breeze, geese scuttled and screamed across the untilled land, a solitary black crow flew across the leaden sky, and on the sea outside a tall pillar of smoke went stalking on and on, where the pleasure-steamer carried her freight of tourists round the island.

Then songs gave way to sighs, some of the men began to pick quarrels, and some to break into fits of drunken sobbing.

Pete kept them all up. He chaffed and laughed and told funny stories.

Choking, stifling, wounded to the heart as he was, still he was carrying on, struggling to convince everybody and himself as well, that nothing was amiss, that he was a jolly fellow, and had not a second thought.

He was glad to get home, nevertheless, where he need play the hypocrite no longer. Going through Sulby, he dropped out of the brake and looked in at the "Fairy." The house was shut. Grannie was sitting up for Caesar, and listening for the sound of wheels. There was something unusual and mysterious about her. Cruddled over the fire, she was smoking, a long clay in little puffs of blue smoke that could barely be seen. The sweet old soul in her troubles had taken to the pipe as a comforter. Pete could see that something had happened since morning, but she looked at him with damp eyes, and he was afraid to ask questions. He began to talk of the great doings of the day at Tynwald, then of Philip, and finally of Kate, apologising a little wildly for the mother not coming home sooner to the child, but protesting that she had sent the little one no end of presents.

"Presents, bless ye," he began rapturously----

"You don't ate enough, Pete, 'deed you don't," said Grannie.

"Ate? Did you say ate?" cried Pete. "If you'd seen me at the fair you'd have said, 'That man's got the inside of a limekiln!' Aw, no, Grannie, I'm not letting my jaws travel far. When I've got anything before me it's--down--same as an ostrich."

Going away in the darkness, he heard Caesar creaking up in the gig with old Horney, now old Mailie, diving along in front of him.

Nancy was waiting for Pete at Elm Cottage. She tried to bustle him upstairs.

"Come, man, come," she said; "get yourself off to bed and I'll bring your clothes down to the fire."

He had never slept in the bedroom since Kate had left. "Chut! I've lost the habit of beds," he answered. "Always used of the gable loft, you know, and the wind above the thatch."

Not to be thought to behave otherwise than usual, he went upstairs that night. But--

"Feather beds are saft, Pent.i.t rooms are bonnie, But ae kiss o' my dear love Better's far than ony."

The rain was still falling, the sea was loud, the mighty breath of night was shaking the walls of the house and rioting through the town. He was wet and tired, longing for a dry skin and a warm bed and rest.

"Yet fain wad I rise and rin If I tho't I would meet my dearie."

The long-strained rapture of faith and confidence was breaking down. He saw it breaking. He could deceive himself no more. She was gone, she was lost, she would lie on his breast no more.

"G.o.d help me! O, Lord, help me," he cried in his crushed and breaking heart.

XV.

When Kate thought of her husband after she had left him, it was not with any crushing sense of shame. She had injured him, but she had gained nothing by it. On the contrary, she had suffered, she had undergone separation from her child. To soften the hard blow inflicted, she had outraged the tenderest feelings of her heart. As often as she thought of Pete and the deep wrong she had done him, she remembered this sacrifice, she wept over this separation. Thus she reconciled herself to her conduct towards her husband. If she had bought happiness at the cost of Pete's sufferings, her remorse might have been deep; but she had only accepted shame and humiliation and the severance of the dearest of her ties.

When she had said in the rapture of pa.s.sionate confidence that if she possessed Philip's love there could be no humiliation and no shame, she had not yet dreamt of the creeping degradation of a life in the dark, under a false name, in a false connection: a life under the same roof with Philip, yet not by his side, unacknowledged, unrecognised, hidden and suppressed. Even at the moment of that avowal, somewhere in the secret part of her heart, where lay her love of refinement and her desire to be a lady, she had cherished the hope that Philip would find a way out of the meanness of their relation, that she would come to live openly beside him, she hardly knew how, and she did not care at what cost of scandal, for with Philip as her own she would be proud and happy.

Philip had not found that way out, yet she did not blame him. She had begun to see that the deepest shame of their relation was not hers but his. Since she had lived in Philip's house the man in him had begun to decay. She could not shut her eyes to this rapid demoralisation, and she knew well that it was the consequence of her presence. The deceptions, the subterfuges, the mean shifts forced upon him day by day, by every chance, every accident, were plunging him in ever-deepening degradation.

And as she realised this a new fear possessed her, more bitter than any humiliation, more crushing than any shame--the fear that he would cease to love her, the terror that he would come to hate her, as he recognised the depth to which she had dragged him down.

XVI.

Back from Tynwald, Philip was standing in his room. From time to time he walked to the window, which was half open, for the air was close and heavy. A misty rain was falling from an empty sky, and the daylight was beginning to fail. The tombstones below were wet, the treed were dripping, the churchyard was desolate. In a corner under the wall lay the angular wooden lid which is laid by a gravedigger over an open grave. Presently the iron gates swung apart, and a funeral company entered. It consisted of three persons and an uncovered deal coffin. One of the three was the s.e.xton of the church, another was the curate, the third was a policeman. The s.e.xton and the policeman carried the coffin to the church-door, which the curate opened. He then went into the church, and was followed by the other two. A moment later there were three strokes of the church bell. Some minutes after that the funeral company reappeared. It made for the open grave in the corner by the wall. The cover was removed, the coffin was lowered, the policeman half lifted his helmet, and the s.e.xton put a careless hand to his cap. Then the curate opened a book and closed it again. The burial service was at an end. Half an hour longer the s.e.xton worked alone in the drenching rain, shovelling the earth back into the grave.

"Some waif," thought Philip; "some friendless, homeless, nameless waif."

He went noiselessly up the stairs to the floor above, slinking through the house like a shadow. At a door above his own he knocked with a heavy hand, and a woman's voice answered him from within--

"Is any one there?"

"It is!," he said. "I am coming to see you."

Then he opened the door and slipped into the room. It was a room like his own at all points, only lower in the ceiling, and containing a bed.

A woman was standing with her back to the window, as if she had just turned about from looking into the churchyard. It was Kate. She had been expecting Philip, and waiting for him, but she seemed to be overwhelmed with confusion. As he crossed the floor to go to her, he staggered, and then she raised her eyes to his face.

"You are ill," she said. "Sit down. Shall I ring for the brandy?"

"No," he answered. "We have had a hard day at Tyn-wald--some trouble--some excitement--I'm tired, that's all."

He sat on the end of the bed, and gazed out on the veil of rain, slanting across the square church tower and the sky.

"I was at Ramsey two days ago," he said; "that's what I came to tell you."

"Ah!" She linked her hands before her, and gazed out also. Then, in a trembling voice, she asked, "Is mother well?"

"Yes; I did not see her, but--yes, she bears up bravely."

"And--and--" the words stuck in her throat, "and Pete?"

"Well, also--in health, at all events."