The Manxman Part 68

"Don't think of that, Philip. If you love me there can be no humiliation and no shame for me in anything. I love you, dear, I cannot help but love you. Only love me a little, Philip, just a little, dearest, and I will never care--no, I will never, never care whatever happens."

Her pa.s.sionate devotion swept down all his scruples. His throat thickened, his eyes grew dim. She put one arm tenderly on his shoulder.

"I will follow you wherever you must go," she said. "You are my real husband, Philip, and always have been. We will love one another, and that will make up for everything. There is nothing I will not do to make you forget. If you must go away--far away--no matter where--I will go with you--and the child as well--and if we must be poor, I'll work with you."

But he did not seem to hear her as he crouched with buried face by the fire. And, in the silence, Pete's m.u.f.fled voice came again through the wall, singing his rugged ditty--

"I'm not engaged to any young man, I solemnly do swear, For I mane to be a vargin and still the laurels wear."

Unconsciously their hands touched and their fingers intertwined.

"It will break his heart," he muttered.

She only grasped his hand the closer, and crouched beside him. They were like two guilty souls at the altar steps, listening to the cheerful bell that swings in the tower for the happy world outside.

The door opened with a bang, and Pete rolled in, heaving with laughter.

"Did you think it was an earth wake, Philip?" he shouted, "or a blackbird a bit tipsy, eh? Bless me, man, it's good of you, though, sitting up in the chimney there same as a good ould jackdaw, keeping the poor wife company when her selfish ould husband is flirting his tail like a stonechat. The company's going now, Kitty. Will they say good-night to you? No? Have it as you like, bogh. You're looking tired, anyway. Dempster, the boys are asking when the ceremony is coming off, and will you come home to Ramsey that night? But, sakes alive, man, your eye is splashed with blood as bad as the egg of a robin."

In his suffering and degradation, Philip felt as if he wished the earth to open and swallow him.

"Bloodshot, is it?" he said. "It's nothing. The ceremony? I'm to take the oath to-morrow at three o'clock at the Special Council in Douglas.

Yes, I'll come back to Ballure for the night?"

"Driving, eh?"

"Yes."

"Six o'clock, maybe?"

"Perhaps seven to eight."

"That's all right. Mortal inquisitive the boys are, though. It's in the breed of these Manx ones, you know. Laxey way, now?"

"I'll drive by St. John's," said Philip.

With a look of wondrous wisdom, and a knowing wink at Kate across Philip's back, Pete went out. Then there was much talking in low tones in the hall, and on the paths outside the house.

Philip understood what it meant. He glanced back at the door, leaned over to Kate, and said in a whisper, without looking into her eyes--

"The carriage shall come at half-past seven. It will stand for a moment in the Parsonage Lane, and then drive back to Douglas by way of Laxey."

His face was broken and ugly with shame and humiliation. As she saw this she thought of her confession, and it seemed odious to her now; but there was an immense relief in the feeling that the crisis was over.

Pete was shouting at the porch, "Good-night, all! Goodnight!"

"Good-night!" came back in many voices.

Grannie came in m.u.f.fled up to the throat. "However am I to get back to Sulby, and your father gone these two hours?" she said.

"Not him," said Pete, coming behind with one eye screwed up and a finger to his nose. "The ould man's been on the back-stairs all night, listening and watching wonderful. His bark's tremenjous, but his bite isn't worth mentioning."

And then a plaintive voice came from the hall, saying, "Are you _never_ coming home, mother? I'm worn out waiting for you."

A little patch of youth had blossomed in Grannie since the baby came.

"Good-night, Pete," she cried from the gate, "and many happy returns of the christening-day."

"One was enough for yourself, mother," said Caesar, and then his voice went rumbling down the street.

Philip had come out into the hall. "You're time enough yet," said Pete.

"A gla.s.s first? No? I've sent over to the 'Mitre' for your mare. There she is; that's her foot on the path. I must be seeing you off, anyway.

Where's that lantern, at all?"

They stepped out. Pete held the light while Philip mounted, and then he guided him, under the deep shadow of the old tree, to the road.

"Fine night for a ride, Phil. Listen! That's the churning of the nightjar going up to Ballure glen. Well, good-night! Good-night, and G.o.d bless you, old fellow!"

Kate inside heard the deadened sound of Philip's "Goodnight," the crunch of the mare's hoofs on the gravel and the clink of the bit in her teeth.

Then the porch door closed with a hollow vibration like that of a vault, the chain rattled across it, and Pete was back in the room.

"_What_ a night we've had of it! And now to bed."

XII.

Kate was up early the next morning, but Pete was stirring before her. As soon as he had heard the news of Philip's appointment he had organised a drum and bra.s.s band to honour the day of the ceremony. The bra.s.s had been borrowed from Laxey, but the drum had been bought by Pete.

"Let's have a good sizable drum," said he; "something with a voice in it, not a bit of a toot, going off with a pop like bladder-wrack."

The parchment was three feet across, the steel rings round it were like the hoops of a dog-cart, and the black drumsticks, according to Pete, were like the bullet heads of two n.i.g.g.e.rs. Jonaique Jelly played the clarionet, and John the Widow played the trombone, but the drum was the leading instrument. Pete himself played it. He pounded it, boomed it, thundered it. While he did so, his eyes blazed with rapture. A big heroic soul spoke out of the drum for Pete. With the strap over his shoulders, he did not trouble much about the tune. When the heart Leapt inside his breast, down came the n.i.g.g.e.r heads on to the mighty protuberance in front of it; and surely that was the end and aim of all music.

The band practised in the cabin which Pete had set up for a summer-house in the middle of his garden. They met at daybreak that morning for the last of their rehearsals. And, being up before their morning meal, they were constrained to smoke and drink as well as play. This they did out of a single pipe and a single pot, which each took up from the table in turn as it fell to his part to have a few bars' rest.

While their m.u.f.fled melody came to the house through the wooden walls and the dense smoke, Kate was cooking breakfast. She did everything carefully, for she was calmer than usual, and felt relieved of the load that had oppressed her. But once she leaned her head on the mantelshelf while stooping over the frying-pan, and looked vacantly into the fire; and once she raised herself up from the table-cloth at the sound of the drum, and pressed her hand hard on her brow.

The child awoke in the bedroom above and cried. Nancy Joe went flip-flapping upstairs, and brought her down with much clucking and cackling. Kate took the child and fed her from a feeding-bottle which had been warming on the oven top. She was very tender with the little one, kissing all its extremities in the way that women have, worrying its legs, and putting its feet into her mouth.

Pete came in, hot and perspiring, and Kate handed the child back to Nancy.

"Hould hard," cried Pete; "don't take her off yet. Give me a hould of her, the lil rogue. My sailor! What a child it is, though! Look at that, now. She's got a grip of my thumb. What a fist, to be sure! It's lying in my hand like a meg. Did you stick a piece of dough on the wall at your last baking, Nancy? Just as well to keep the evil eye off.

Coo--oo--oo! She's going it reg'lar, same as the tide of a summer's day.

By jing, Kitty, I didn't think there was so much fun in babies."

Kate, seated at the table, was pouring out the tea, and a sudden impulse seized her.

"That's the way," she said. "First the wife is everything; but the child comes, and then good-bye to the mother who brought it."