The Manxman Part 52

"I don't think I'll go to Douglas to-day, mother," said Kate in a broken voice. "I'm not so very well, after all."

"Aw, the bogh!" said Grannie. "Making too sure of herself, was she? It's the way with them all when they're mending."

With cheerful protestations Grannie helped her back to bed, and then went off with an anxious face to tell Caesar that she was more ill than ever.

She was ill indeed; but her worst illness was of the heart. "If I go to him and tell him," she thought, "he will marry me--yes. No fear that he will leave me at the church door or elsewhere. He will stay with me. We will be man and wife to the last. The world will know nothing. But _I_ will know. As long as I live I will remember that he only sacrificed himself to repair a fault That shall never be--never, never!"

Caesar came up in great alarm. He seemed to be living in hourly dread that some obstacle would arise at the last moment to stop the marriage.

"Chut, woman!" he said play-. fully. "Have a good heart, Kitty. The sun's not going down on you yet at all."

That night there were loud voices from the bar-room. The talk was of the marriage which had taken place in the morning, and of its strange and painful sequel. John the Clerk was saying, "But you'd be hearing of the by-child, it's like?"

"Never a word," said somebody.

"Not heard of it, though? Fetching the child to the wedding to have the bad name taken off it--no? They were standing the lil bogh---it's only three--two is it, Grannie, only two?--well, they were standing the lil thing under its mother's perricut while the sarvice was saying."

"You don't say!"

"Aw, truth enough, sir! It's the ould Manx way of legitimating. The parsons are knowing nothing of it, but I've seen it times."

"John's right," said Mr. Jelly; "and I can tell you more--it was just _that_ the man went to church for."

"Wouldn't trust," said John the Clerk. "The woman wasn't getting much of a husband out of it anyway."

"No," said Pete--he had not spoken before--"but the child was getting the name of its father, though."

"That's not mountains of thick porridge, sir," said somebody. "Bobbie's gone. What's the good of a father if he's doing nothing to bring you up?"

"Ask your son if you've got any of the sort," said Pete; "some of you have. Ask me. I know middling well what it is to go through the world without a father's name to my back. If your lad is like myself, he's knowing it early and he's knowing it late. He's knowing it when he's saying his bits of prayers atop of the bed in the gable loft: 'G.o.d bless mother--and grandmother,' maybe--there's never no 'father' in his little texes. And he's knowing it when he's growing up to a lump of a lad and going for a trade, and the beast of life is getting the grip of him. Ten to one he comes to be a waistrel then, and, if it's a girl instead, a hundred to nothing she turns out a--well, worse. Only a notion, is it? Just a parzon's lie, eh? Having your father's name is nothing--no?

That's what the man says. But ask the _child_, and shut your mouth for a fool."

There was a hush and a hum after that, and Kate, who had reached from the bed to open the door, clutched it with a feverish grasp.

"But Christian Killip is nothing but a trollop, anyway, sir," said Caesar.

"Every cat is black in the night, father--the girl's in trouble," said Pete. "No, no! If I'd done wrong by a woman, and she was having a child by me, I'd marry her if she'd take me, though I'd come to hate her like sin itself."

Grannie in the kitchen was wiping her eyes at these brave words, but Kate in the bedroom was tossing in a delirium of wrath. "Never, never, never!" she thought.

Oh, yes, Philip would marry her if she imposed herself upon him, if she hinted at a possible contingency. He, too, was a brave man; he also had a lofty soul--he would not shrink. But no, not for the wealth of worlds.

Philip loved her, and his love alone should bring him to her side. No other compulsion should be put upon him, neither the thought of her possible future position, nor of the consequences to another. It was the only justice, the only safety, the only happiness now or in the time to come.

"He shall marry me for _my_ sake," she thought, "for my own sake--my own sake only."

Thus in the wild disorder of her soul--the tempest of conflicting pa.s.sions--her pride barred up the one great way.

XVII.

There was no help for it after all--she must go on as she had begun, with the old scheme, the old chance, the old gambling hazard. Heart-sick and ashamed, waiting for Philip, and listening to every step, she kept her room two days longer. Then Caesar came and rallied her.

"Gough bless me, but n.o.body will credit it," he said. "The marriage for Monday, and the bride in bed a Wednesday. People will say it isn't coming off at all."

This alarmed her. It partly explained why Philip did not come. If he thought there was no danger of the marriage, he would be in no hurry to intervene. Next day (Thursday) she struggled up and dressed in a light wrapper, feeling weak and nervous, and looking pale and white like apple-blossom nipped by frost. Pete would have carried her downstairs, but she would not have it. They established her among a pile of cus.h.i.+ons before a fire in the parlour, with its bowl of sea-birds' eggs that had the faint, unfamiliar smell--its tables of old china that shook and rang slightly with every step and sound. The kitchen was covered with the litter of dressmakers preparing for the wedding. There were bodices to try on, and decisions to give on points of style. Kate agreed to everything. In a weak and toneless voice she kept on telling them to do as they thought hest. Only when she heard that Pete was to pay did she a.s.sert her will, and that was to limit the dresses to one.

"Sakes alive now, Kirry," cried Nancy, "that's what I call ruining a good husband--the man was willing to buy frocks for a boarding-school."

Pete came, sat on a stool at her feet, and told stories. They were funny stories of his life abroad, and now and again there came bursts of laughter from the kitchen, where they were straining their necks to catch his words through the doors, which they kept ajar. But Kate hardly listened. She showed signs of impatience sometimes, and made quick glances around when the door opened, as if expecting somebody. On recovering herself at these moments, she found Pete looking up at her with the big, serious, moist eyes of a dog.

He began to tell of the house he had taken, to excuse himself for not consulting her, and to describe the progress of the furnis.h.i.+ng.

"I've put it all in the hands of Cannell & Quayle, Kitty," he said, "and they're doing it beautiful. Marble slabs, bless you, like a butcher's counter; carpets as soft as daisies, and looking-gla.s.ses as tall as a man."

Kate had not heard him. She was trying to remember all she knew of the courts of the island--where they were held, and on what days.

"Have you seen Philip lately?" she asked.

"Not since Monday," said Pete. "He's in Douglas, working like mad to be here on Monday, G.o.d bless him!"

"What did he say when he heard we had changed the day?"

"Wanted to get out of it first. 'I'm sailing on Tuesday,' said he."

"Did you tell him that _I_ proposed it?"

"Trust me for not forgetting that at all. 'Aw, then,' says he, 'there's no choice left,' he says."

Kate's pale face became paler, the dark circles about her eyes grew yet more dark. "I think I'll go back to bed, mother," she said in the same toneless voice.

Pete helped her to the foot of the stairs. The big, moist eyes were looking at her constantly. She found it hard to keep an equal countenance.

"But will you be fit for it, darling?" said Pete.

"Why, of course she'll be fit, sir," said Caesar. "What girl is ever more than middling the week before she's married?"

Next day she persuaded her father to take her to Douglas. She had little errands there that could not be done in Ramsey. The morning was fine but cold. Pete helped her up in the gig, and they drove away. If only she could see Philip, if only Philip could see her, he would know by the look of her face that the marriage was not of her making--that compulsion of some sort was being put on her. She spent four hours going from shop to shop, lingering in the streets, but seeing nothing of Philip. Her step was slow and weary, her features were pinched and starved, but Caesar could scarcely get her out of the town. At length the daylight began to fail, and then she yielded to his importunities.

"How short the days are now," she said with a sigh, as they ran into the country.

"Yes, they are a c.o.c.k's stride shorter in September," said Caesar; "but when a woman once gets shopping, Midsummer day itself won't do--she's wanting the land of the midnight sun."

Pete lifted her out of the gig in darkness at the door of the "Fairy,"

and, his great arms being about her, he carried her into the house and set her down in the fire-seat. She would have struggled to her feet if she had been able; she felt something like repulsion at his touch; but he looked at her with the mute eloquence of love, and she was ashamed.

The house was full of gossips that night. They talked of the marriage customs of old times. One described the "pay-weddings," where the hat went round, and every guest gave something towards the cost of the breakfast and the expenses of beginning housekeeping--rude forefather of the practice of the modern wedding present. Another pictured the irregular marriages made in public-houses in the days when the island had three breweries and thirty drinking shops to every thousand of its inhabitants. The publican laid two sticks crosswise on the floor, and said to the bride and bridegroom--