The Manxman Part 33

Time was called for rest as Nancy Joe came through the gate bringing a basket with bottles and a can.

"The belly's a malefactor that forgets former kindness," said Caesar; "ate and drink."

Then the men formed a group about the ale, the older women drank tea, the children making bands were given b.u.t.ter-milk, and the younger women with babes went cooing and clucking to the hedge where the little ones lay nuzzled up and unattended, some asleep in shawls, some awake on their backs and grabbing at the wondrous forests of marguerites towering up beside them, and all crying with one voice at sight of the breast, which the mothers were as glad to give as they to take.

The rooks cawed in the glen, there was a hot hum of bees, and a company of starlings pa.s.sed overhead, glittering in the sunlight like the scales of a herring.

"They're taiching us a lesson," said Caesar. "They're going together over the sea; but there's someones on earth would sooner go to heaven itself solitary, and take joy if they found themselves all alone and the c.o.c.k of the walk there."

Kate and Philip stood and talked where they had been shearing quietly, simply, without apparent interest, and meanwhile the workers discussed them.

First the men: "He works his siggle like a man though."--"A stout boy anyway; give him practice and he'd shear many a man in bed." Then the women: "She's looking as bright as a pewter pot, and she's all so pretty as the Govenar's daughter too."--"Got a good heart, though. Only last week she had word of Pete, and look at the scarlet perricut." Finally both men and women: "Lave her alone, mother; it's that Ross that's wasting the woman."--"Well, if I was a man I'd know my tack."--"Wouldn't trust. It comes with Caesar anyway; the Lord prospers him; she'll have her pickings. Nothing bates religion in this world.

It's like going to the shop with an ould Manx s.h.i.+lling--you get your pen'orth of taffy and twelve pence out."--"Lend's a hand with the jough then, boy. None left? Aw, Caesar's wonderful religious, but there's never much lavings of ale with him."

Caesar was striding through the stooks past Philip and Kate.

"Will it thrash well, Mr. Cregeen?" said Philip.

"Eight bolls to the acre maybe, but no straw to spake of, sir," said Caesar. "Now, boys, let the weft rest on the last end, finish your work."

The workers fell to again, and the sickle of the leader sang round his head as he hacked and blew and sent off his breath in spits until the green gra.s.s springing up behind him left only a triangular corner of yellow corn. Fore-rig and the after-rig took a tussle together, and presently nothing was standing of all the harvest of Glenmooar but one small shaft of ears a yard wide or less. Then the leaders stopped, and all the shearers of the field came up and cast down their sickles into the soil in a close circle, making a sheaf of crescent moons.

"Now for the Melliah," said Caesar. "Who's to be Queen?"

There was a cry for Kate, and she sailed forward buoyantly, fresh still, warm with her work, and looking like the afterglow from the sunset in the lengthening shadows from the west.

"Strike them from their legs, Kirry," cried Nancy Joe, and Kate drew up one of the sickles, swept her left arm over the standing corn, and at a single stroke of her right brought the last ears to the ground.

Then there was a great shout. "Hurrah for the Mel-liah!" It rang through the glen and echoed in the mountains. Grannie heard it in the valley, and said to herself, "Caesar's Melliah's took."

"Well, we've gathered the ripe corn, praise His name," said Caesar, "but what shall be done at the great gathering for unripe Christians?"

Kate lifted her last sheaf and tied it about with a piece of blue ribbon, and Philip plucked the cus.h.a.g (the ragwort) from the hedge, and gave it her to put in the band.

This being done; the Queen of the Melliah stepped back, feeling Philip's eyes following her, while the oldest woman shearer came forward.

"I've a crown-piece, here that's being lying in my pocket long enough, Joney," said Caesar with an expansive air, and he gave the woman her accustomed dole.

She was a timid, shrinking creature, having a face walled with wrinkles, and wearing a short blue petticoat, showing heavy dull boots like a man's, and thick black stockings.

Then the young fellows went racing over the field, vaulting the stooks, stretching a straw rope for the girls to jump over, heightening and tightening it to trip them up, and slacking and twirling it to make them skip. And the girls were falling with a laugh, and leaping up again and flying off like the dust, tearing their frocks and dropping their sun-bonnets as if the barley grains they had been reaping had got into their blood.

In the midst of this maddening frolic, while Caesar and the others were kneeling behind the barley stack, Kate s.n.a.t.c.hed Philip's hat from his head and shot like a gleam into the depths of the glen.

Philip dragged up his coat by one of its arms and fled after her.

XXIII.

Sulby Glen is winding, soft, rich, sweet, and exquisitely beautiful.

A thin thread of blue water, laughing, babbling, brawling, whooping, leaping, gliding, and stealing down from the mountains; great boulders worn smooth and ploughed hollow by the wash of ages; wet moss and lichen on the channel walls; deep, cool dubbs; tiny reefs; little cascades of boiling foam; lines of trees like sentinels on either side, making the light dim through the overshadowing leaf.a.ge; gaunt trunks torn up by winds and thrown across the stream with their heads to the feet of their fellows; the golden fuschia here, the green trammon there; now and again a poor old tholthan, a roofless house, with gra.s.s growing on its kitchen floor; and over all the sun peering down with a hundred eyes into the dark and slumberous gloom, and the breeze singing somewhere up in the tree-tops to the voice of the river below.

Kate had run out on the stem of one of the fallen trees, and there Philip found her, over the middle of the stream, laughing, dancing, waving his hat in one hand, and making sweeping bows to her reflection in the water below.

"Come back," he cried. "You terrible girl, you'll fall. Sit down there--don't torment me, sit down."

After a curtsey to him she turned her attention to her skirts, wound them about her ankles, sat on the trunk, and dangled her shapely feet half an inch over the surface of the stream.

Then Philip had time to observe that the other end of the tree did not reach the opposite bank, but dipped short into the water. So he barricaded his end by sitting on it, and said triumphantly: "My hat, if you please."

Kate looked and gave a little cry of alarm and then a chuckle, and then she said--

"You thought you'd caught me, didn't you? You can't, though," and she dropped on to a boulder from which she might have skipped ash.o.r.e.

"I can't, can't I?" said Philip; and he twisted a smaller boulder on his side, so that Kate was surrounded by water and cut off from the bank.

"My hat now, madam," he said with majestic despotism. 10

She would not deliver it, so he pretended to leave her where she was.

"Good-bye, then; good evening," he cried over the laughter of the stream, and turned away a step bareheaded.

A moment later his confidence was dashed. When he turned his head back Kate had whipped off her shoes and stockings, and was ramming the one inside the other.

"What are you doing?" cried Philip.

"Catch this--and this," she said, flinging the shoes across to him. Then clapping his straw hat on the crown of her sun-bonnet, she tucked up her skirts with both hands and waded ash.o.r.e.

"What a clever boy you are! You thought you'd caught me again, didn't you?" she said.

"I've caught your shoes, anyway," said Philip, "and until you give me my hat I'll stick to them."

She was on the s.h.i.+ngle, but in her bare feet, and could not make a step.

"My shoes, please?" she pleaded.

"My hat first," he answered.

"Take it."

"No; you must give it me."

"Never! I'll sit here all night first," said Kate.

"I'm willing," said Philip.

They were sitting thus, the one bare-headed, the other with bare feet, and on the same stone, as if seats in the glen were scarce, when there came the sound of a hymn from the field they had left, and then it was agreed by way of mutual penalty that Kate should put on Philip's hat on condition that Philip should be required to put on Kate's shoes.