The Manxman Part 105

"I've my work, woman," said Pete from the parlour.

"I'll put a junk on the fire and be off then," said Nancy.

She pulled the door on to the catch behind her and went crunching the gravel to the gate. There was no sound in the house now but the gentle breathing of the sleeping child, soft as an angel's prayer, the chirruping of the mended fire like a cage of birds, the ticking of the clock, and, through the parlour wall, the dull pat-put, pat-put of the wooden mallet and the sc.r.a.pe of the chisel on the stone.

Pete worked steadily for half an hour, and then came back to the hall-kitchen with his tools in his hands. The cob of coal had kindled to a lively flame, which flashed and went out, and the quick black shadows of the chairs and the table and the jugs on the dresser were leaping about the room like elves. With parted lips, just breaking into a smile, Pete went down on one knee by the cradle, put the mallet under his arm, and gently raised the shawl curtain. "G.o.d bless my motherless girl,"

he said, in a voice no louder than a breath. Suddenly, while he knelt there, he was smitten as by an electric shock. His face straightened and he drew back, still holding the shawl at the tips of his fingers.

The child was sleeping peacefully, with one of its little arms over the counterpane. On its face the flickering light of the fire was coming and going, making lines about the baby eyes and throwing up the baby features. It is in such lights that we are startled by resemblances in a child's face. Pete was startled by a resemblance. He had seen it before, but not as he saw it now.

A moment afterwards he was reaching across the cradle again, his arms spread over it, and his face close down at the child's face, scanning every line of it as one scans a map. "'Deed, but she is, though," he murmured. "She's like him enough, anyway."

An awful idea had taken possession of his mind. He rose stiffly to his feet, and the shawl flapped back. The room seemed to be darkening round him. He broke the coal, though it was burning brightly, stepped to the other side of the cradle, and looked at the child again. It was the same from there. The resemblance was ghostly.

He felt something growing hard inside of him, and he returned to his work in the parlour. But the chisel slipped, the mallet fell too heavily, and he stopped. His mind fluctuated among distant things. He could not help thinking of Port Mooar, of the Carasdhoo men, of the day when he and Philip were brought home in the early, morning.

Putting his tools down, he returned to the room. He was holding his breath and walking softly, as if in the presence of an invisible thing.

The room was perfectly quiet--he could hear the breath in his nostrils.

In a state of stupor he stood for some time with bis back to the fire and watched his shadow on the opposite wall and on the ceiling. The cradle was at his feet. He could not keep his eyes off it. From time to time he looked down across one of his shoulders.

With head thrown back and lips apart, the child was breathing calmly and sleeping the innocent sleep. This angel innocence reproached him.

"My heart must be going bad," he muttered. "Your bad thoughts are blackening the dead. For shame, Pete Quilliam, for shame!"

He was feeling like a man who is in a storm of thunder and lightning at night. Familiar things about him looked strange and awful.

Stooping to the cradle again, he turned back the shawl on to the cradle-head as a girl turns back the shade of her sun-bonnet Then the firelight was full on the child's face, and it moved in its sleep. It moved yet more under his steadfast gaze, and cried a little, as if the terrible thought that was in his mind had penetrated to its own.

He was stooping so when the door was opened and Caesar entered violently, making asthmatic noises in his throat. Pete looked up at him with a stupefied air. "Peter," he said, "will you sell that mortgage?"

Pete answered with a growl.

"Will you transfer it to me?" said Caesar.

"The time's not come," said Pete.

"What time?"

"The time foretold by the prophet, when the lion can lie down with the lamb."

Pete laughed bitterly. Caesar was quivering, his mouth was twitching, and his eyes were wild. "Will you come over to the 'Mitre,' then?"

"What for to the 'Mitre'?"

"Ross Christian is there."

Pete made an impatient gesture. "That stormy petrel again! He's always about when there's bad weather going."

"Will you come and hear what the man's saying?"

"What's he saying?"

"Will you hear for yourself?"

Pete looked hard at Caesar, looked again, then caught up his cap and went out at the door.

VI.

With two of his cronies the man had spent the day in a room overlooking the harbour, drinking hard and playing billiards. Early in the afternoon a messenger had come from Ballawhaine, saying, "Your father is ill--come home immediately." "By-and-bye," he had said, and gone on with the game.

Later in the afternoon the messenger had come again, saying, "Your father has had a stroke of paralysis, and he is calling for you." "Let me finish the break first," he had replied.

In the evening the messenger had come a third time, saying, "Your father is unconscious." "Where's the hurry, then?" he had answered, and he sang a stave of the "Miller's Daughter"--

"They married me against my will, When I was daughter at the mill."

Finally, Caesar, who had been remonstrating with the Ballawhaine at the moment of his attack, came to remonstrate with Ross, and to pay off a score of his own as well.

"Honour thy father and thy mother, that thy days----" cried Caesar, with uplifted arm and the high pitch of the preacher. "But your days will not be long, anyway, and, if you are the death of that foolish ould man, it won't be the first death you're answerable for."

"So you believe it, too?" said Ross, cue in hand. "You believe your daughter is dead, do you, old Jephthah Jeremiah? Would you be surprised to hear, now----" (the cronies giggled) "that she isn't dead at all?----Good shotr-cannon off the cus.h.i.+on. Halloa! Jephthah Jeremiah has seen a ghost seemingly. Saw her myself, man, when I was up in town a month ago. Want to know where she is? Shall I tell you? Oh, you're a beauty! You're a pattern! You know how to train up a child in the way----Pocket off the red----It's you to preach at my father, isn't it? She's on the streets of London--ah, Jeremiah's gone----

'They married me against my will '--

There you are, then--good shot--love--twenty-five and nothing left."

Pete pushed through to the billiard-room. Fearing there might be violence, hoping there would be, yet thinking it scarcely proper to lend the scene of it the light of his countenance, Caesar had stayed outside.

"Halloa! here's Uriah!" cried Ross. "Talk of the devil--just thought as much. Ever read the story of David and Uriah? Should, though. Do you good, mister. David was a great man. Aw" (with a mock imitation of Pete's Manx), "a ter'ble, wonderful, shocking great man. Uriah was his henchman. Ter'ble clavar, too, but that green for all, the ould cow might have ate him. And Uriah had a nice lil wife. The nice now, you wouldn't think. But when Uriah was away David took her, and then--and then" (dropping the Manx) "it doesn't just run on Bible lines neither, but David told Uriah that his wife was dead--ha! ha! ha!----

'Who saw her diet I said the fly, I saw her----'

Stop that--let go--help----You'll choke me--help! help!"

At two strides Pete had come face to face with Ross, put one of his hands at the man's throat and his leg behind him, doubled him back on his knee, and was holding him there in a grip like that of a vice.

"Help!--help!--oo--ugh!" The fellow gasped, and his face grew dark.

"You're not worth it," said Pete. "I meant to choke the life out of your dirty body for lying about the living and blackening the dead, but you're not worth hanging for. You've got the same blood in you, too, and I'm ashamed for you. There! get up."

With a gesture of indescribable loathing, Pete flung the man to the ground, and he fell over his cue and broke it.

The people of the house came thronging into the room, and met Pete going out of it. His face was hard and ugly. At first sight they mistook him for Ross, so disfigured was he by bad pa.s.sions.

Caesar was tramping the pavement outside. "Will you let me do it now?" he said in a hot whisper.